Inside WSKG

Join WSKG this May!

This month proves as exciting as ever as WSKG heads into the community with several events and brings quality viewing into the living room with new local and national shows.

Highlights: Freedom Riders screenings, Off the Page live taping in Ithaca, The Cat in the Hat visits Binghamton's Jewish Community Center, The Moth Radio Hour returns, Pathways to Understanding: Our Energy Future and "Like" us on Facebook! 

Inside WSKG gives you a behind-the-scenes look at WSKG Public Broadcasting. From station events and new television programs to radio highlights and educational outreach activities, Inside WSKG keeps you informed about WSKG, the public media for your community.

Read with The Cat in the Hat! WSKG and The Cat in the Hat will visit the Early Childhood Learning Center at the JCC in Binghamton, NY for a family Preschool Literacy Day on May 5th starting at 1:15pm. Come dressed as your favorite book character for a costume parade at 1:15pm, plus interactive storytime and library card sign up. Free to all attendees! More Event Info

Listen for all new episodes of The Moth Radio Hour  this month. The show will return to it's usual slot at
8:00pm, immediately following This American Life at 7:00pm. Entering its 4th season, The Moth recently received a 70th Annual Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media for 2010.

WSKG TV presents all-new episodes of Pathways to Understanding: Our Energy Future on May 19th at 8:00pm and 8:30pm. Hear local experts answer questions submitted directly from our community on wind energy and biofuels in Part 3 and energy conservation in Part 4.  See Parts 1 and 2 online.

"Like" WSKG on Facebook for your chance at give-aways all spring and summer!  Plus, you'll receive daily station updates, events information and special web-only content. We've already had three lucky winners of gifts from our Radio and Education Departments, as well as the Expressions Summer Concert Series complete DVD set. Show your support for WSKG in the little ways, and Like us on Facebook

Join WSKG for three screenings of the upcoming documentary Freedom Riders from PBS and American Experience.  While the first screening on May 2nd at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY has already sold out, we'll host an encore showing May 9th starting at 6:00pm at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (contact Michelle Berry, michellecourtneyberry@gmail.com, for reservations). If you're in the Binghamton area, head over the the Cornerstone Community Church in Endicott, NY for a screening on May 7th starting at 5:00pm.  More details on the events

Join Community Conversation May 17th at 7:00pm for a discussion of the Freedom Rides. In 1961, seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C. on two buses headed for the Deep South, intending to challenge segregation in interstate bus stations. The ensuing chaos and violence sent shockwaves through American society and made an important and lasting contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

Get the Math is coming to WSKG TV May 9th at 5:30pm! Get the Math is a multimedia project about algebra in the real world. See how professionals working in fashion, videogame design, and music production use algebraic thinking. Then take on interactive challenges related to those careers!

Off the Page is heading to Ithaca, NY! Participate in the live taping on May 6th at the Finger Lakes Wine Center at 5:00pm. Host Bill Jaker will discuss "Writing About Wine" with authors John Hartstock (Seasons of a Finger Lakes Winery) and Henry Stark (food and wine critic for the Ithaca Times and Ithaca Journal). Hear the broadcast May 10th at 1:00pm and 7:00pm on WSKG Radio.

Study in new ways with Regents Review 2.0. Regents Review 2.0 is a series of test-prep programs that use both TV and the Web to deliver a dynamic review session to high school students who plan on taking a NYS Regents exam this June. Check out a variety of interactive features, including a comprehensive website, on-demand videos, test prep on Facebook and watch May 16th-21st from 1:00am to 6:00am on WSKG TV.

Midsomer Murders returns to WSKG TV starting May 5th at 9:00pm with all new episodes! The cozy villages of Midsomer County reveal their most sinister secrets in these contemporary British television mysteries. Inspired by the novels of Caroline Graham, modern master of the English village mystery, the series stars John Nettles (Bergerac) as the unflappable Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.

 

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Springing Into Action this May!

WSKG looks forward to a lively 31 days of May, especially as Radio and TV prepare for a month full of new programs and events!

Fresh off the success of April's WSKG Member Roll Call, the Membership and TV Departments have excitedly jumped into planning the June TV Drive.  We've rounded up a few good staffers, and on May 11th, they'll head to Cortland, NY for an evening with the Ithaca League of Women Rollers! Content & Production Coordinator Tina Reinhard, Broadcast Operations Assistant Christy Lantz and Emerging Media & PR Specialist Teresa Peltier will get a crash course in Roller Derby 101, complete with their very own, very intimidating derby names.  Our footage from the roller derby adventure will broadcast during the airing of a new documentary from American Public Television, The Roller Derby Chronicles: Rolling Thunder.  Look for this exciting fundraising event and more as June rolls around!

While other staff gear up and skate around, members of the WSKG Radio staff will also head into the community!  On May 7th, join Off the Page on location at the Tompkins County Public Library.  The live taping kicks off the first annual Finger Lakes Literacy Festival,  and the show will feature writings about Ithaca, NY.  Novelist J. Robert Lennon, mystery writer Beth Saulnier and historian Michael Turback sit down with WSKG's Bill Jaker to discuss their hometown and its role as inspiration, setting and even a character in itself.  We invite all our listeners to the live taping, beginning promptly at 4pm!  Listen for the radio broadcast the following Tuesday, May 11th at 1:00 and 7:00pm.

Also on WSKG Radio, Community Conversation will delve into two engaging topics this May.  On May 4th, the show will examine the sometimes controversial topic of autism.  On May 18th, Community Conversation will explore the decline of manufacturing in Upstate New York and the loss of young, skilled workers from our region.  Both shows air live at 7:00pm, and as always, WSKG invites you to call or email during the program with your questions and comments! 

     

Two more popular programs, The Moth and RadioLab, will continue in May on WSKG Radio.  The Moth features stories for adults, told before a live audience, without a script.  Listen in for Season 2 Monday nights at 8:00pm.  RadioLab is back on WSKG Radio, and Season 7 concludes on May 6th, but never fear!  The very next week, we'll return to Season 1 and rebroadcast all of the previous shows throughout the coming months! 

Also back by popular demand, Curious George and WSKG team up again for an event at Kopernik Observatory on May 1st.  On May 13th, join WSKG staff at the Moore Memorial Library in Greene, NY for a special literacy event.  And finally, look out for the newest episode of Move It! on May 7th at 5:30pm!  For the final challenge of the season, the Blueberryanators and the Ripe Bananas are neck and neck as they visit the Salsa Music Appreciation Club for a salsa dance-off!  Watch Fuel It! at the Vestal Farmers' Market and Cool It! with an exploration of the power of music with harpist Melissa Collins.

We hope you join us for these events, programs and more all throughout May!

Taken Out to the Ball Game

by Bill Jaker

On May 13th OFF THE PAGE presented a program about baseball (which we don’t cover extensively on WSKG Public Radio) and about music (which we do).  It’s the 100th anniversary of the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and Tim Wiles of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown visited to speak about his new book “Baseball’s Greatest Hit”.  We even touched on the old question of why people already at the ballpark would sing “Take me out to the ball game…” when they’re already there.  Should there be a song “I Can’t Live on Peanuts and Cracker Jack / Take me out to dinner…?”

Going out to a major league baseball game can be an experience comparable to attending a symphonic concert by a world-class orchestra or a hit Broadway show.  That was certainly the case at Shea Stadium on the evening of 9 July 1969.  The New York Mets were playing the Chicago Cubs; Tom Seaver was pitching for the Mets.  There were 59,083 spectators in the stands, including my father and me.  Seated alongside us were a man and his young son who had come down from Toronto to see the game.  They told us that they were Cubs fans.

Ever since their founding in 1962 the Mets had been a cellar-dwelling joke in the National League, but in ’69 they were beginning to play pretty well and that night they were looking great.  Seaver was pitching flawlessly and by the top of the 9th it looked like we would see the first no-hitter in Mets history.

Then Cubs manager Leo Durocher (one-time manager of the departed Brooklyn Dodgers and one of those guys you loved to hate) sent up rookie outfielder Jim Qualls.  There was a conference on the pitcher’s mound – one of the Mets had once played against Qualls in the minor leagues but nobody knew for sure how Seaver should pitch against him.  Seaver was surely tired by then and when Qualls knocked a single into left-center field you could feel the agony go through the crowd.

Except that the kid sitting next to me stood up and cheered.  His father looked shocked and I was torn between protecting him from personal harm and tearing him apart myself.

A perfect game had been ruined.  There were two more outs, the Amazin’ Mets won 4-0 and would go on to win the World Series.  But that night we all left Shea Stadium a bit disappointed, still knowing that we’d been present for one more historic moment at the ol’ ball game.

Parlez-sie Proto, signor?

by Bill Jaker

The Voice of America is heard around the world in 45 languages. The Finnish public broadcaster YLE broadcasts the news in classical Latin. Across the USA radio stations’ search for a faithful “niche audience” means that languages from Korean to Navajo can sound from our speakers.

But a few weeks ago, WSKG may have had them all beat. We were broadcasting (albeit briefly) in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It was spoken about 6,000 years ago and is the root of many other languages across much of today's world, from Sanskrit to Icelandic. The “announcer” was Dr. David Anthony, professor of anthropology at Hartwick College, who was a guest on OFF THE PAGE along with his wife and fellow researcher Dorcas Brown. They came to tell about Dr. Anthony’s new book, “The Horse, the Wheel and Language”, which reveals how people in what is now the steppes of southern Russia gained power through their domestication of the horse, perfection of the wheel and of agriculture, and left their mark on today’s world and its languages.  The dominance of their husbandry, technology and poetic speech displaced many other tribal tongues.

Linguists were able to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European by applying known rules of language change and tracing back common words in known ancient languages. No one will deliberately let a tongue-twister become everyday speech. Every language has gone through modification (some would call it corruption) over the centuries, but a surprising number of words appear to have changed little since those Proto days: the wheel rotates on an axl. Nime is name, wete became water. Another PIE word that has been preserved in English is ghos-ti-. It is the root of both “guest” and “ghost”.

Ghos-ti-, however, is not necessarily related to the English word for the finny creatures that swim in the wete. Ghosti: gh, as in enough; o as in women; s as in corps; ti as in action. Fish. After 6,000 years you’d think we’d had enuf.

Penny's Picture and Civil Rights

by Bill Jaker

The March 18^th OFF THE PAGE interview with Gurdon Brewster about “No Turning Back” and his experience with Reverends Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta brought back memories of the 1950s and 60s “civil rights era” (that time and the drive for racial justice and equality has never really had a simple name). The resistance and controversy coming around centennial of the Civil War was framed as another conflict between North and South – although the nation would soon learn that racial equality wasn’t really a regional matter. But the segregated South, with its complicated social codes, could be shocking to those who didn’t grow up there, as it was to Gurdon Brewster. I spent some years in the South during that time and regularly felt consternation and the corrupting privilege of being on the “whites only” side of the color line.

While the immersion into a segregated society would be painful and humiliating to an African-American from the North who had never confronted it directly (the case of Emmett Till being the most infamous example), it could also be a shock to a white person. That’s how a college classmate of mine I’ll call Penny became an emblem of the nation’s racial conflict.

Penny and her friends from Long Island were on their high school senior class trip to Washington, DC – an excursion that was once as much a part of completing the high school years as the prom and the class ring – when a side trip was arranged to Richmond, Virginia. Their bus didn’t have bathroom facilities on board, so by the time Penny and her classmates arrived in the Capital of the Confederacy he first stop had to be the ladies’ room. She ran into the terminal and thought she had found the rest room when she noticed a sign beside the door: COLORED LADIES.

Penny stopped and looked around, her face revealing a pain that wasn’t simply physical. Just at that moment a photographer from Life Magazine working on a story about segregation snapped her picture and the following week she appeared in million of copies as an image of America’s discomfort.

Getting on Off the Page

by Bill Jaker

Whenever anyone asks about an appearance on OFF THE PAGE one of my first questions is, “Do you [or the author you’re representing] have a phone number starting with 607?”  I’m not necessarily looking for contact information at that point but it’s the quickest way to determine who is a “regional author”.  WSKG Radio’s primary coverage area fairly duplicates the 607 area code, albeit with some spillover into 315, 845, 585 and – not limiting ourselves to New York State – Pennsylvania’s five-seventy.

Occasionally I’ll go beyond the Southern Tier and adjacent lands if a book or author is of special regional interest, but otherwise I’m simply looking for well-written fiction and non-fiction, poetry and history and anything else created by a writer from our region.  Sometimes the most important activity going on in a community is happening in solitude and in one person’s mind.  We’ve discovered an abundance of good writing here in these hills.

One question I regularly receive is, “Do you read the entire book for an OFF THE PAGE interview?”  I certainly do, usually with a speedy re-read just before the broadcast.  There are some people who think you can get the idea of both style and substance by reading only the first and last chapters, but that seems to me like simply eating the crackers without the cheese in the middle.

A book can be itself an object of beauty, but there’s an old saying about not judging a book by its cover and it is literally true.  Some of the best books I’ve seen lately were cheaply printed and bound, perhaps by the author himself.  That should not detract from interest in the writing within.

An increasing number of authors choose to self-publish, often because they simply don’t want to take the time to hassle with agents and publishers.  Especially at the beginning of a writing career DIY publishing is a sure way to get into print.  But it may be more difficult to get into the bookstores, or even on-line sellers, especially if someone has written an especially personal book or one that deals with their own community.  That should make such a book all the more relevant to the WSKG audience, for it means that on OFF THE PAGE you’re regularly learning about a first edition right from the person who wrote it, and possibly published it.

These days even well-established publishing houses are turning to print-on-demand and the invention of the e-book has made it possible for anyone to get their words into distribution.  OFF THE PAGE will continue to concentrate on the content and quality of books by authors in our part of the country, how their mind and spirit was conveyed to us, with less concern about the system that made it happen.