Talk To Your Opposite - NPR's One Small Step

Have you given up on dialogue with people who vote differently than you? NPR is asking for volunteers who still believe they can talk over political fences.   

An Alaska Public Media webpage has this description:

"No matter their political leanings, a majority of Americans agree that divisiveness is a major problem impacting our ability to deal with the pandemic and serious challenges facing our country. There is hope: A majority of Americans also say they are optimistic that our country can overcome political divisiveness in the years ahead.  At a moment like this, aren’t we called to try to find a better way forward — together?

One Small Step is an effort to reconnect Americans, one conversation at a time.

Apply to be matched for One Small Step"

The map shows seven locations where they are trying this:  Anchorage, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, California, Nevada, and Vermont.  I can't tell from their map the cities in the other states.  I'm not sure how diverse a group you get from people who listen to NPR.  Maybe it's more diverse than I realize, but I think the audience leans left. But maybe it just leans rational.  But that no longer includes most Republicans.

Let's see if this goes anywhere.  

This Is So Cool - Radio.Garden Offers You Easy Access To Any Radio Station In The World

David Pogue (@Pogue)  tweeted a link too Radio.garden.  You get to a page. Click open and 

you then  get the world, literally.  Each green dot is a radio station.  And when you zoom in you get

told the location and many more local green dots.  Put the circle on the dot you want and start 

listening.  I'm listening to music from Kerala on the southern tip of India right now.  

Have fun.  And if there's something happening in some distant (from you - remember you are also in a distant part of the world from others) part of the world, you can quickly tune in to local or nearby stations to get the new direct.  Many capitals, at least, have an English language station.

1964 Alaska Earthquake - I Learn From The Author That A New Book Is Coming Out Soon

I didn't think to take Jon's picture
This profile was  on the edge of
a picture of the children's march.

I also met author Jon Mooallem at the MLK children's march yesterday.

His daughter is a friend of my granddaughter.  It was only later that I realized that I'd crossed paths with Jon before.  We hadn't met, but  I posted about his book Wild Ones:  A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America in December 2017.  I didn't get around to reading the whole book, but I was struck by his observation about how many animals are in kids' lives - in books, on pajamas and sheets and cereal boxes,  or stuffed - yet many are disappearing in the real world.

I probably wouldn't mention meeting Jon, except that he's writing a new book on - Alaskans are you paying attention? - the 1964 Alaska earthquake.  I told him I'd recently read a book on that earthquake, and he said Henry Fountain's book (which I posted about in 2018) came out just as he was submitting his proposal.

The new one will focus more on the three days after the quake, and on Genie Chance broadcasting on KENI that connected Alaskans and communicated to the rest of the world.  There is also a tie-in to social scientists who came to Alaska to study how communities deal with a catastrophe.  And there are other story lines that get followed  - like Frank Brink's AMU production of our town that was scheduled that weekend.

As I was getting more information, I found a 99%Invisible broadcast featuring Jon with a radio spoken drama about the earthquake, which I'm sure was an early presentation of notes Jon had already then put together.  (It's good listening, part of the legacy that This America Life has had on broadcasting story-news. And check out the name of the music group on the show.  A kind of tribute, Jon told me in a followup.)

So this post is a heads-up that there's a new 1964 Alaska earthquake book coming out around the beginning of 2020 (that's only a year away)  and you can get a preview at 99%Invisible.

Here's a bit of the transcript from the 99%Invisible website, but you really should listen to the audio.

JON: And one of KENI’s biggest on-air-personalities was a woman named Genie Chance.
Genie was 37. She’d grown up poor in Bonham, Texas then came to Alaska with her husband a few years earlier looking for opportunity. They only sort of found it, at first. He sold used cars. She watched their three kids at home. But Genie loved radio. So she started working construction every morning, in exchange for childcare. Then she’d go to work all afternoon at KENI.
Back then, women usually covered cooking or fashion. But Genie turned herself into a gutsy roving reporter, driving across Alaska with a mobile radio unit in her car. She flew with smoke jumpers, covered Arctic warfare exercises, reported from Inuit villages and crab boats.
Genie’s voice was part of the city. Everyone in Anchorage trusted her, respected her—and in a way women journalists weren’t always respected in 1964. Later, a New York paper would celebrate her as:
VOICE/ROMAN:“An Alaskan housewife and mother of three children who does a man-sized job with a radio microphone.”

I should have put up a link to Jon Mooallem's website when I first put this up this morning.

Alaska And Radio History Dramatically Fused: 99% Invisible's Show On Gene Chance

The Alaska Press Club tweeted a link to 99% Invisible's show about Gene Chance and the Alaska earthquake of 1964.   For good reason.  This is a great show.  Partly, of course, because it's about one of the most important events in our state history.  But it's also a story about the power of radio.

Just click the link and listen.  (I don't see a way to embed this here.)

Screen Shot from 99% Invisible

I'd note that while this show is focused on Anchorage, but the earthquake was centered 75 miles away and most of the deaths were due to tsunamis that followed.  Accounts I find online vary and don't identify Anchorage deaths which were low because no tsunamis hit Anchorage.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) splits the total deaths and tsunami deaths.

The quake took 131 lives and caused $350-500 million in property damage (One hundred twenty-two of the deaths were attributed to the tsunami.) The area of the damage zone (50,000 square miles) and the duration of the quake (3 to 4 minutes) were extraordinary.

(You might also note that NOAA says it lasted 3-4 minutes while the 99% Invisible story says 5 minutes.)

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Earthquake Center splits between the Alaska and Outside deaths:

"The number of deaths from the earthquake totalled 131; 115 in Alaska and 16 in Oregon and California. The death toll was extrememly small for a quake of this magnitude due to low population density, the time of day and the fact that it was a holiday, and the type of material used to construct many buildings (wood)."

For another first hand account, see Anchorage cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shoal's 2007 animated video which recreates his experience as a five year old when the earthquake struck.


For a lot of pictures of the earthquake, see this USGS site.