Twelve years ago, I came to KBOO and tomorrow I leave. Back then, I loved radio and wanted to change the world. That pretty much describes the station, so it seemed like a good fit. As Membership Coordinator, I got to build the department almost from the ground up. It was exciting as we improved the pledge drives and increased membership, and there were always new projects in fundraising and promotions to invent and implement. The great parts were the creative freedom, finding new ways to tell the stories and the amazing volunteers in the membership department.

Local high school Oregon City Service Learning Academy recently awarded KBOO a grant to teach young people how to mix live bands. It was quite an honor to attend the awards ceremony which included luminaries such as local musician Obo Addy (on behalf of his Homowo foundation).  The students were big KBOO fans and familiar with our indie, punk and hip hop programs, amongst others.

The funding will pay for a sound engineer to lead a series of tranings, provide additional hours for our Youth Advocate to turn the trainings into an ongoing class and create a small scholarship to make the project more accessible and exciting for the youth participating.  This is especially exciting because we can use this curriculum to start training our adults with a more formal program as well.

KBOO is a big, wonderful, crazy and sometimes challenging community. With so much diversity (age, gender, ethnicity, spirituality, physical ability, sexual orientation, etc.) in an open, participatory and expressive environment, conflict is bound to happen, and occasionally differences spill out into the public arena as we saw in last week’s Willamette Week article on three of our program hosts. 

Amy Goodman appeared at the Bagdad Theater last Saturday in a conversation with KBOO's talk-radio hosts Jo Ann Bowman and Dave Mazza.  There was a sense of warmth and community as Portland welcomed the woman who arguably sets the standard for contemporary journalism.

The discussion included causes for both hope and worry as Amy examined the implications of our existing power structure and those who work to effect grassroots change in our communities.  A key insight was the idea  that we can't just wait around to "see what happens" during this time of change.  We are approaching the end of the first 100 days of the present administration.  It has been all to easy for many of us to say, "I'm not sure how Obama will turn out as President.  I'll just wait and see."  While us common folks are tempted to wait and see, those with money and lobbyists are hard at work to influence the outcomes of decisions early in this administration's tenure.  This speaks to the need for each of us to speak up now and not wait until it's too late.  We are doing our part at KBOO by bringing a different side of the story to air than what you hear from the corporate media...

I got to kick off my holiday vacation with the KBOO Winter Square Dance.  Our own Saturday-morning bluegrass host Dave Elliot and his band Loafer opened, and then we got introduced to square dancing with Paul Silveria and Ebenezer.  The Too Loose Cajun Band brought it all home at the end of the night with their performance.  Even for a non-dancer like myself, the KBOO square dance was a lot of fun!  And it felt inclusive for anyone who showed up.  I was talking to one of our board members, Joe Azavedo, about how I’d hoped to stop by the thrift store and pick up some blue jeans and a plaid shirt, but I hadn’t managed due to the weather.  He said, “That’s the great thing about a KBOO square dance:  You can just come as you are, just be yourself, and fit right in!”  It was a great time, raised money for the station and was a fun community event...

As the winter snow falls, it's time to get cozy in front of the radio--or the computer monitor, but that doesn't sound as "cozy"--and it's also a nice time to remember all the good work we've done over the past year. 

Sisters Of The Road offered us just such an opportunity for reflection when they invited me to write an article on nonviolence and culture change at KBOO.  The newsletter was mailed out last month, but you can read it at:  http://www.sistersoftheroad.org/wa/sisters/of_the_road/C115 and click on November 2008, or see page 5 of the file attached to this post. 

We have been fortunate to have a hard-working, collegial and stable board, staff and volunteer base this last year.  We've watered the seeds for many new beginnings, and we have many reasons to be proud of our community:

* We have accomplished real change on the air.  Our on air change was based on a year-long process of setting goals and values, holding community meetings, doing surveys and engaging in an NFCB Station Assessment.  The first steps were moving Democracy Now! to 7am and strengthening our evening programming.  In the first quarter of 2009, we will make changes between 7am and 7pm.  These changes focus on the basics of making our schedule easier to follow, putting the strongest programming on during popular listening hours and improving our blocks and strips.
* We believe that treating people well is a cornerstone of our community, incorporating training, discussion, mediation and boundary setting.  We are now training to others in this regard.
* We continue to do a lot with a little and surpassed budget expectations for last year. 
* We are a model for other community media organizations.  When we hosted the Grassroots Radio Conference in 2008 and worked closely with the National Federation of Community Broadcasters Conference in 2007, we received a great deal of feedback as to how impressed other organizations were with KBOO and specific ways in which other stations were modeling themselves based on our efforts.

Click to play

KBOO: Four Decades of Our Voice is a Portland Community Media studio class production recorded on September 25th 2008 that raises awareness KBOO community radio through a conversation with the staff, board and producers of KBOO. Produced and directed by Miae Kim.

I was enjoying our 40th Anniversary party the other night when a listener approached me to ask if we’d “received any feedback on the Dada and Surrealism Festival, and was any of it negative?”  I replied, “No…Nothing much.  What, are you going to be the first guy to complain?”  He laughed because, as you can guess, we heard from listeners in droves.

You probably know that we’re moving Democracy Now! to 7am. You may know that we’re making further program changes this summer and winter.  And you may also be wondering, “What’s up at the ‘BOO?”