We moved to the temporary new station on 500 West by the Homeless Shelter sometime in 1999, I think. I'm a bit hazy on exact dates, but I think it must have been 1999 because I think the tornado that wrecked the Sun and attacked the Delta Center (In Vain, Unbelievers!) occurred in 1999.
I remember the day well, and as a fascinating digression I will tell the tale of my own brush with the Power of Nature embodied by the human fear reponse: That day I walked out the front door of the station and down the stairs into the tiny parking lot that had been fenced off from the gigantic parking lots used by our neighbors and walked to my car. I think I may have been retrieving my lunch or some change or something. As I walked to my car I noticed that there seemed to be a bit of wind, and rather large bits of garbage, papers and leaves and such blowing around in our parking lot.
I glanced across 5th West at the Homeless Shelter, where you could sometimes see the fellows wandering around in the small bit of lawn under the grim blank wall that was the west side of the Shelter on the other side of the street. There were a few trees growing in that bit of lawn, against the side of the wall, under which the fellows at times reposed.
As I looked, I noticed that the trees were swaying back and forth in the wind with a surprising radius and speed of motion for plants of that size and wooden firmness, and then observed one of the trees falling all the way over onto a car parked at the side of the lawn.
Somewhat startled by this, and noticing a great deal of movement to my left, I turned my head north to observe a maelstrom of flying pieces of garbage of unusual size and disturbing heft right across 200 West not a few dozen yards away from me...
I have no memory of running back up the steps and through the front doors of the station and all the way down the long hallway by the admin offices and around the bathroom and down the rest of the long hallway past the green room all the way to the break room about a half mile into the building in about 2.5 seconds, but I must have done that because that's where I came to my senses as I hyperventilated out of my system whatever ancient, potent hormones had gripped my brain and energized my legs, now shaking and weak from the effort of carrying my 240 pound frame at near Olympic speed out of harm's way.
Also sometime in 1999, right before the Spring radiothon, an ugly financial crisis had reared its head, and the board had complained and Bart, the GM, had resigned, and the board had made Betty the GM, and Linda had resigned, and Betty had made Cathy (name changed) the Development Director and my boss. I approved of these changes, even though I liked Bart a lot. He'd been suspicious of me, but I tend to judge other people solely on their quality as entertainment, and Bart had been terrifically entertaining for me personally, taking me into his office for long rambling discussions, taking me and other staffers to a local bar that offered a "Lingerie Lunch" (I won't describe it), and enthusiastically complimenting me for my new haircut (shaved my head for various personal reasons, but I averred it was in admiration for his own shiny pate).
Later on, the board treasurer, Natalya (name changed) discovered after much investigation the whereabouts of a not-insignificant amount of money (about 10% the station's operating budget) that had been mis-laid. This considerably improved the station's financial outlook, and gave Betty quite a boost at the beginning of her tenure as GM, but Natalya convinced the rest of the board that the GM - or any one person - should not have sign-off authority for checks on the station's account. This meant that all checks - and staff paychecks - required two signatures, and meant that at least once every two weeks someone from staff, often myself, had to drive around town looking for a board member to sign some checks. I'm sure that Betty regarded this as a somewhat obnoxious degree of oversight - I certainly did because I hated driving around after people, and felt she was being punished for the mistakes of previous GMs.
Since then, with experience with other non-profits, I have come to see the wisdom in this level of board oversight. No GM or Exec. Director should ever have single-signing authority over checks drawn from donated funds. But at the time it was a pain in the bum.
I also experienced in 1999 another of my periodic spasms of anguish over my rights to creative expression in the workplace. By which I mean I didn't like my job duties, which I've already described, and wanted the opportunity to "create", as they call it in school. I don't think I voiced these desires to anyone else on staff, choosing to express my restlessness and discontent by pretending to sleep during staff meetings and hiding the windex from a certain OCD volunteer who'd called me "an insect" when I'd walked into the on-air studio during her show.
I remember the day well, and as a fascinating digression I will tell the tale of my own brush with the Power of Nature embodied by the human fear reponse: That day I walked out the front door of the station and down the stairs into the tiny parking lot that had been fenced off from the gigantic parking lots used by our neighbors and walked to my car. I think I may have been retrieving my lunch or some change or something. As I walked to my car I noticed that there seemed to be a bit of wind, and rather large bits of garbage, papers and leaves and such blowing around in our parking lot.
I glanced across 5th West at the Homeless Shelter, where you could sometimes see the fellows wandering around in the small bit of lawn under the grim blank wall that was the west side of the Shelter on the other side of the street. There were a few trees growing in that bit of lawn, against the side of the wall, under which the fellows at times reposed.
As I looked, I noticed that the trees were swaying back and forth in the wind with a surprising radius and speed of motion for plants of that size and wooden firmness, and then observed one of the trees falling all the way over onto a car parked at the side of the lawn.
Somewhat startled by this, and noticing a great deal of movement to my left, I turned my head north to observe a maelstrom of flying pieces of garbage of unusual size and disturbing heft right across 200 West not a few dozen yards away from me...
I have no memory of running back up the steps and through the front doors of the station and all the way down the long hallway by the admin offices and around the bathroom and down the rest of the long hallway past the green room all the way to the break room about a half mile into the building in about 2.5 seconds, but I must have done that because that's where I came to my senses as I hyperventilated out of my system whatever ancient, potent hormones had gripped my brain and energized my legs, now shaking and weak from the effort of carrying my 240 pound frame at near Olympic speed out of harm's way.
Also sometime in 1999, right before the Spring radiothon, an ugly financial crisis had reared its head, and the board had complained and Bart, the GM, had resigned, and the board had made Betty the GM, and Linda had resigned, and Betty had made Cathy (name changed) the Development Director and my boss. I approved of these changes, even though I liked Bart a lot. He'd been suspicious of me, but I tend to judge other people solely on their quality as entertainment, and Bart had been terrifically entertaining for me personally, taking me into his office for long rambling discussions, taking me and other staffers to a local bar that offered a "Lingerie Lunch" (I won't describe it), and enthusiastically complimenting me for my new haircut (shaved my head for various personal reasons, but I averred it was in admiration for his own shiny pate).
Later on, the board treasurer, Natalya (name changed) discovered after much investigation the whereabouts of a not-insignificant amount of money (about 10% the station's operating budget) that had been mis-laid. This considerably improved the station's financial outlook, and gave Betty quite a boost at the beginning of her tenure as GM, but Natalya convinced the rest of the board that the GM - or any one person - should not have sign-off authority for checks on the station's account. This meant that all checks - and staff paychecks - required two signatures, and meant that at least once every two weeks someone from staff, often myself, had to drive around town looking for a board member to sign some checks. I'm sure that Betty regarded this as a somewhat obnoxious degree of oversight - I certainly did because I hated driving around after people, and felt she was being punished for the mistakes of previous GMs.
Since then, with experience with other non-profits, I have come to see the wisdom in this level of board oversight. No GM or Exec. Director should ever have single-signing authority over checks drawn from donated funds. But at the time it was a pain in the bum.
I also experienced in 1999 another of my periodic spasms of anguish over my rights to creative expression in the workplace. By which I mean I didn't like my job duties, which I've already described, and wanted the opportunity to "create", as they call it in school. I don't think I voiced these desires to anyone else on staff, choosing to express my restlessness and discontent by pretending to sleep during staff meetings and hiding the windex from a certain OCD volunteer who'd called me "an insect" when I'd walked into the on-air studio during her show.
Crisis Resolved:
I experienced the ego-fulfillment and narcissistic joy of hearing my voice on the radio, begging for listener money in 60 second spots engineered by Stan and conceived by Cathy as an attempt to increase mail-in donations by casting me myself as a bumbling but loveable, heart-in-the-right-place type of character that I found hilarious until I realized that nobody thought of it as a "character" as in something made up. Then I stopped finding it hilarious, but I kept doing the spots, and I finally understood the people you see on TV and in sporting events that dress in the funny animal suits and jump on little trampolines and don't seem to ever understand or maybe care how despised they are because no one sees your face.
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