13 July 2016

Distant broadcast memories

I was considering some of my media memories that have persisted for decades. Along with common items like beer and cigarette jingles, firmly impressed into synapses during childhood, I have another that remains memorized in specific detail:

"This is the second network, 6WN, the regional and national station of the ABC, broadcasting from Perth." 

A broadcast program from Western Australia, not even one intentionally targeted at foreign audiences. I remember hearing this announcement on a vacuum tube shortwave radio, early in an Eastern US morning sometime around the upper regions of the 1970 sunspot cycle. It was thrilling and moving in a way that's hard to conceive today, just to be hearing a voice originating from about as far away as one could be on Earth (at least absent a shipboard transmitter closer to a precise antipode somewhere in the Indian Ocean). A signal bounced off the ionosphere a couple of times and made it around the world, back in a day where it was exotic and impressive to be "known internationally". The Internet's fiber strands across continents and oceans have certainly changed things.

05 February 2016

At the end of a snowy day, the sun came out for "Golden Hour"

Nice way to end the day. Almost missed it, but happened to look out at a timely moment.