Scenes From a Radio Station

I've decided to take a trip through memory lane by reviewing some of sklogs I did about the non-profit radio station where I worked for a while. I'd originally thought to include only the sklogs done while I was actually an employee at the station, but after looking through the sklogs, I discovered that my memory has played tricks on me; I didn't do any sklogs while I worked at the station. I started posting the sklogs more than a year after I'd left the station, and I did all the posted drawings of the radio station's offices and control room and volunteer events as a hanger-on, not even as a proper volunteer. Here's one from a meeting I attended at Brewvies, attended by programming staff and on-air volunteers:

I have no idea what I was doing at this meeting. I never had anything to do with programming as a staff member.  I utilized the station CD library - the bitterly contested subject of this meeting- but not for on-air programming, just for...my own enjoyment, basically. It seems a little shameful to admit now. That is the dominant feeling I have, when reviewing these old pictures; shame.  And for more than just being an odiously lazy and selfish hanger-on.  There were many hangers-on in the station volunteer community, people who just showed up at events and meetings and maybe manned the station's tent-booth at one or two events a year or subbed for a couple shows in that same period, and there were the rare few like myself who did absolutely nothing but make copies of CDs from the library and attended a few meetings. This would make me less ashamed if there hadn't been a core group of extremely diligent and helpful people who subbed for a lot of shows, even the late night shows that the programming director would tear his hair out over. These people went to the meetings too, but they probably had more emotionally invested input than I did, by which I mean they attended the meeting with the idea of discussing a problem which they wished to solve, whereas I attended all the meetings to create an unrecognizable portrait of the people attending the meeting which I would scan and upload to my now defunct web page with as many uninteresting comments as I could fit on the page, thereby destroying whatever tattered scraps of aesthetic value the drawing had been able to hold together from my original doodling. Then I would proudly email all the people who had attended the meeting to let them now I'd created a piece about them, and invite them to follow the provided link to view and enjoy it. 

Then over the next day or so I would maintain a close watch on my inbox for any emails pertaining to the sklog. If they contained polite complements, I would print them for future review. If they contained the slightest hint of criticism I would delete them and lock myself in the bathroom for a few hours. If the message from a sklog recipient contained no mention of the sklog but asked how I was doing or what movie I'd seen or what books I'd been reading I would shriek with physical pain, remove the sender from my contacts, pray for immediate death by lightning strike, and lock myself in the bathroom. 

It was a pleasant time in my life that I look back to with great fondness. I also drew some sklogs of volunteer DJs in the control room while they did their show. 

I drew these while sitting at one of the guest mics in the booth. 

There's a mic on a bendy robot arm looking thing that you can move around, and a counter where you can put your notes or laptop or a good book if you like reading.  You're facing the DJ, so you can make a signal to them if they're talking too much or slurring their words. 

 If I were the manager of the radio station I would do all my desk work at one of the two guest mic seats in the booth, and would make occasional comments on the mic, just to let people know I was there. If someone called me I could put them on the air or talk about what they'd said after. And I would do a sklog as I worked, and that would be my only interaction with station staff. They would have to decipher my instructions from random on air comments and the sklog. Unless they wanted a raise. Then they would have to ask me on air, with all the station donors listening

Trial by Water and the Innovation of VPC

On the same trip that I saw all the ranches, we also took a ferry to Victoria. Victoria the city. Prior to going, I had when describing the plan referred to Victoria Island as the ultimate destination, but we actually went to Vancouver...Island. Not to Vancouver the city. For some inexplicable reason human beings seem to be addicted to confusing and overlapping and anarchic geographical terms, so the Canadians gave the island the same name as the city which is not on the island, and gave the city on the island a completely different name. Similarly, here in Utah, we have the largest city in the state, called Salt Lake City, in Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. This is acceptable and easy to remember. But in a few decades the largest city in the county and the state will be West Valley City, an odiously bland and bureaucratic name for a gigantic subdivision of Salt Lake City which is not part of Salt Lake City. What do visitors make of the name West Valley?  Why not call it What Valley City?  Even North Las Vegas has a better name. 

Anyway, we took a ferry to the island. I'd looked forward to this ferry ride as I had many fond memories of taking ferries in Puget sound many years before. But some misgivings prowled at the dimly lit corners of my mind. Although I had not experienced any sea sickness on those previous ferries, they had all been in Puget sound, whereas this ferry to the island would traverse the mouth of the sound, with some possible exposure to oceanic waves, and to the possibility of the motion sickness forever associated in my mind with the open sea, both for myself and the unfortunates to whom I have bequeathed a portion of my DNA. 

This possibility was vividly pushed to the forefront of my consciousness by several episodes of car sickness experienced by my older child during our ventures through the Washington Rockies. I purchased Dramamine for the kids, but held back for myself, unwisely. The ferry turned out to have more exposure to the waves than I feared, and my time afloat was haunted by the expectation of nausea (the word itself derives from the same ancient Latin root as the word nautical).  But necessity is the mother of invention, and in the absence of pharmaceutical aids I was able to devise a scientifically based system for managing the revolting motion of the ship. I call the technique Visuo-Proprioceptive-Calibration, or VPC. I stayed on the upper deck of the ferry, in the intense cold wind, abandoned by my family (all safely drugged except for my steely nerved wife, who is completely immune to such troubles), and focused my vision on the deck railing and its motion relative to the horizon. This motion aligned exactly with the lurching motion my senses were experiencing with each malignant wave, and gave my stomach a constant reassurance that maintained its contents in a peaceful state. I include visual aids along with my journal entries from the trip:

1515

No waving movement at all. Extremely windy. Ominous whitecaps. 

Smoke above the city. A warning?

Mistook a man's spoon for a selfie stick. Felt awful about it. Infant crying. 

1530

It has begun. First dip. Mount baker. 

Wind worse 

1545

Halfway. Two railing dips

1601

Two thirds 1.75 to 0.5 railings, quick.  Open ocean to west or right. Port?

1615

Ship slowing down. Still windy. Measured a 3.5  maybe 4 rating wave at time of turn. Going down to survey damage