The Nome StaticKNOM Radio Mission

PO Box 988Nome, AK 99762

Transmiss ion 605: May 2015 visit us at knom.org

dear friend of knom,What makes Alaska a place like no-

where else? And how are we striving, in ever-new ways, to sustain and improve upon our service to this region? These are questions we always aim to answer for you in each issue of this publication. This issue is no different.

And yet, in many respects, May in the sub-Arctic is different.

May, in Alaska, has elements of winter, of spring, and even of summer, all rolled into one month: while the midnight sun already beams down upon us, its light is often ob-scured with snowfall, even blizzards. Coastal sea ice is unpredictable; it may have entirely melted by the time you read these words — or still endure almost to the June solstice. And while our supporters and loved ones in the Lower 48 think of May flowers and pre-pare excursions to the beach, our memories are still fresh with the sled-dog mushing that’s a hallmark of our long, lustrous winter.

The May Static you hold in your hands, we believe, offers a few new examples of what makes our special region so wonder-ful and fascinating, especially with regards to its culture: you’ll find sled-dog mushing at right and Alaska Native language learning on page 4. The middle of the issue, meanwhile, focuses on a few ways we’re working to keep our mission going, especially with the tech-nological needs and construction progress of our ongoing studios construction project.

In a place like nowhere else, and a time like no month else, we’re so glad to know you — you are, truly, supporters like no one else. Thank you so much for your gener-osity and for all you do for KNOM. We hope you enjoy this issue; it’s one of a kind.

francesca on the trailIt was an adventure that she describes as one

of the most incredible highlights of her year of service. In April, news volunteer Francesca Fenzi (pictured above, in Nome) hit the trail for a sled dog race that happens relatively late in the year. Compared with the Iditarod, about which we wrote last month, the race Francesca covered is somewhat less “on the radar” — both for the annals of this newsletter and, likely, for most sled dog fans from the Lower 48 — but it’s no less a shining example of what makes our region so special. Indeed, this race offers a look at rural Alaska that even the Iditarod may not.

The Kobuk 440 (KOH-buck) Sled Dog Race begins and concludes in the Arctic city of Kotzebue (COT-suh-byoo), Alaska, about 180 miles northeast of Nome and just past the northern fringes of KNOM’s listening range.

Kotzebue and Nome have close ties, not only because they’re among the most significant hub cit-ies of the Alaskan Bush (in company with the cities of Barrow and Bethel), but also because they share much of the same heritage — especially with regards to Alaska Native culture.

With the region’s strong traditional ties to sled dog mushing, it’s no surprise that some of the same mushers who arrived in Nome in March as finishers of the Iditarod appeared in Kotzebue several weeks later as competitors of the Kobuk 440. Thanks to an

It is always springtime in the heart that loves God.

Continued on page 2

one, big battery unit to power them all

Here’s a quick update on our ongoing studio project. Even though the Tom and Florence Busch Digital Studios themselves are still under-construction, their uninterruptible power supply (UPS) battery unit — an impressive apparatus that will provide backup power for the entire studio — has just come online.

KNOM has used UPS units for years, but like the digital studios themselves, our new UPS will be more energy-efficient and technologically advanced. Rather than relatively small units (about a third the size of a record player) placed alongside essential computers and other hardware throughout the building, the UPS we’ve just installed (pictured page 3, top, with volun-teer engineer Rolland Trowbridge) is a large, single unit capable of providing continuous power for the entire station in the event of an outage. Contrast the photo of the new unit with the stack of smaller batter-ies Rolland replaced from KNOM’s smaller, older UPS units during 2013 (readers may recognize this photo from our January 2014 Static).

The person who does things that count doesn’t usually stop to count them.

ongoing “tradeout” sponsorship with a regional air-line, Francesca was there, too; she was able to fly for free to Kotzebue and then to several checkpoints along the Kobuk 440 trail. Over a long weekend, she sent back news stories for our on-air broadcasts and posted updates and ample photos to knom.org.

The race pictures at left show a side of ru-ral Alaska very indicative of the region — and of its people, landscape, and culture — that your support allows us to serve. Captions, top to bottom: musher Jeff King traverses the Kobuk 440 trail between the checkpoints of Shungnak (SHUUNG-knack) and Kobuk; eventual Kobuk 440 champion Cim Smyth, his beard and jacket encrusted in snow, in the Ambler checkpoint; a similarly snow-encrusted dog in Am-bler; two residents of Ambler, one seated on a snow-machine (or snowmobile); past Iditarod champion Jeff King with his team in Shungnak.

As always, thanks so much for helping us send volunteers like Francesca to bring back stories from some of the most incredible, rural corners of Western Alaska. In many cases, your support bridges the differ-ence between these stories being told... or not at all.

at the big conference, a look at what’s next

As the basic construction work of KNOM’s digital studios nears its end, we’re preparing for our studios’ next major step: selecting and installing the broadcast hardware pieces that will empower them.

The timing works out well this year, since last month brought an event — the annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) — that offered the rare opportunity for a few KNOM repre-sentatives to see and touch a wide variety of cutting-edge sound equipment.

In attendance at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, were general manager Ric Schmidt, en-gineer Rolland Trowbridge, and former KNOMer Tom Bunger (pictured), the latter two of whom volunteered their vacation time to make this crucial trip possible. The three explored the myriad technol-ogy offerings of the NAB floor show (such as sound boards, pictured) to isolate the pieces that, through a combination of appropriate features and cost-effi-ciency, will be best suited for our new studios.

On NAB’s massive show floor, Ric, Rolland, and Tom met with sales reps, compared prices, and tested hardware from a variety of companies, working to ensure that, in the end, the new studios employ tech-nology perfectly matched for our unique needs.

Like the small UPS units it’s replacing, our new UPS is designed not for long-term use but, rather, as an interim power solution: to keep our computers, sound equipment, and broadcasting hardware func-tioning without interruption while our diesel power generator has time to switch on.

Considering the challenges of providing power to Nome and environs — among them, the difficulty of working with a small, isolated power grid — it’s no surprise that KNOM’s facilities experience at least a handful of power outages every year. As our con-tractors head into the final construction steps of the digital studios, we’re excited to be able to incorporate technologies like our new UPS that will help our sta-tion function at its best even amid the challenges of life in the sub-Arctic.

As always, we’re so grateful for the generos-ity of individual donors and organizations in making possible each step of this crucial construction project. Most immediately, we’re grateful, too, for the work of volunteer engineer Rolland Trowbridge and contrac-tor Pat Knodel (pictured). Thanks, all!

Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

Please consider KNOM in your estate planning.

take knom with youWant to read this newsletter on your smartphone, tablet, or other internet-

capable mobile device? If your device has a QR code scanner, just scan the bar code at right. Or, simply visit this address (on any device): knom.org/static/605.

learning iñupiaq, one word — and one laugh — at a time

“Learning a new language is hard. Learn-ing Iñupiaq is harder,” volunteer producer Caitlin Whyte (pictured above) says.

Caitlin’s talking about one of the Alaska Native languages (Iñupiaq, in-YOO-pee-ock) that’s most common to KNOM’s listening area. It’s a language in which our listeners have become slightly more fluent thanks to a new series of radio “spots,” or short, public service announce-ments (PSAs), on which Caitlin’s been working closely with local community deejay Marjorie Tahbone, an Alaska Native and native of the Nome area who’s donated many hours, both on and off the air, to our mission in recent months.

In a series of impromptu recording ses-sions, Marjorie — who often goes by “Marge” or Kunaq (KOO-knock), her Iñupiaq name — has been teaching Iñupiaq words to Caitlin, who then turns their private, in-studio talks into public radio pieces. She preserves their educational conversa-tions as just that — conversations — with all of the humor and affable imperfections (“questions and noises and mistakes,” as Caitlin describes) that conversations between friends always have.

“I wanted to make the learning process a bit more accessible, less intimidating,” Caitlin says. “Learning a language can be such a vulner-able and frustrating experience. I wanted to tone

it down a notch.”Learning a language and “toning it down,”

Caitlin says, is sometimes helped with a little humor. She says she embraces the accent of her upbringing — upstate New York. “Learning Iñupi-aq with a New York accent is comical,” she writes. “So we decided to play off that.”

All joking aside, Marjorie is an amply quali-fied teacher. As we’ve written in the past, Marge has taught Iñupiaq at both the high school and college levels (she’s pictured above in the middle of one such class), and she’s also a familiar voice for our region, already, as the weekly host of Ali-anait Radio (the two-hour, Wednesday-morning program that Marge herself created in 2014).

To hear the fun, informative spots that Marge and Caitlin have created, head over to knom.org. We’ll have a link or two in the on-line version of this article to get you started. As always, thank you so much for enabling this sort of programming: these spots, we believe, exist at the intersection of informative, joyful, locally rel-evant, and inspirational in a way that only KNOM, with your support, can do.

This day is a gift from God. Will I keep it just for myself, or will I share it with others?