Weekly Report from Boulder

The push towards our fund drive continues! This promises to be a big and exciting one as we have the new 1390 AM signal for people to hear us and hopefully they'll be inspired to call!

We spent the weekend doing our annual retreat. It's a chance to get together and look at issues we see ahead and start thinking about how to handle potential influx of people from Denver and to keep ourselves fresh. One area we discussed was orientation and working harder at helping people once they have completed that.

On Thursday I led our new volunteer orientation on my own. Normally there are three of us to talk, and it amazed me I still went over an hour covering the introductions and background. 27 people showed up, many from the Denver area. We use this to give people an intro to community and freeform radio. New programmer interests included the guy who likes King Crimson and wants to do a prog rock show, the British gal who was ecstatic to hear me talk about groups like Tinariwen and Adepoju, and a number of people with news and public affairs interests. It's amazing how many people are still coming in saying, "I got laid off so I have the time...." I thought the economy was supposed to be on an upswing.

I spend some time going over obscenity/indecency during orientation. So of course the high school kids were amused when I listed the seven deadly words. That part of the discussion always wakes people up.

Saturday night, Richard Thompson played at the Boulder Theater with his 1000 years of music tour. We walked in to a Scottish ballad and a madrigal. He did wonderful renditions of Shenandoah, Kiss from Prince, and the Beatles' It Won't Be Long. The way Thompson can move with such ease through so many musical forms and be able with just his voice and guitar accompanied by a spare drum kit and two female singers is really a testament to his versatility and skill as a performer.

I watched this last presidential debate at home. Bush seemed to not pause so much nor have any odd, square-shaped bulge on his back. Instead he reminded more of a pit bull, on attack for seeming little reason. Kerry, in my view, continues to show more poise and give a better presidential appearance. Today I realized that while I do live in a more liberal area, I am seeing almost no yard signs and bumperstickers for Bush.

Elaine C. Erb. KGNU Music Director. <º))))><
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