Friends, I just would like to point out two things:

1) If you are getting this post via an aggregator and don’t otherwise visit the site (probably because there’s really nothing new there, and hasn’t been for some time,) there is something new worth checking out. I have listed a number of internet radio sites on my sidebar directly to the right of this post. Some of them are political, most are news, talk and good music. You can just click the link and it opens in your windows media player, and you can listen to it all damned day if you like (including Air America, NPR, and that whack KPFA from Berkeley! If you have never been to the North Bay but want to find out what sort of whackjobs live out there, just listen to KPFA for a little bit, and you will get a small sampling. But you still have to go for the full experience. This is like getting a whiff of something that you can’t quite put your finger on. The real deal is rather more surreal.)

On that note, Radio Havana now plays English Language broadcasts at 10pm local (Mountain Time) that’s Midnight on the East Coast, 9pm on the West Coast. You can click their button, displayed prominently by the animated icon, and listen to all the best news you won’t hear in the United States. If you ever wanted to take a trip back to the cold war, this is how you do it. The broadcast is not too professional sounding: in fact it sounds like a propaganda bureau in a communist country. But it is great to listen to and supplement the normal garbage you get from this country. It presents “the other side”, if you will, the stuff we’re too scared to say. RHC also breaks the hour in two places with Cuban music, and political commercials informing the world that the Cuban 5 will return. I love it, and would listen to it every night, if I could get the computer time to do so. The English broadcast lasts 2 hours, and then abruptly switches back to Spanish language at midnight, sometimes mid sentence.

2) Which brings me to my second point: If you can’t get the computer time, or don’t have one (you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t), get yourself a cheap shortwave radio. I got one for 10 bucks online, tuned it to 6000 kHz, and listened to a crackly, ghostlike broadcast straight out of Havana tonight, in my son’s nursery. At the midnight cut off, I switched through some channels and got a relatively clear broadcast of Radio Australia! Yes, that’s right, radio from half way around the world, literally, over the air. While the static is sometimes very difficult to deal with, nonetheless, you can listen to broadcasts without wasting your time on a computer. I have begun writing my times and freqs down (as shortwave hobbyists do), and when I get a significant number of them I’ll post them.

For now, know that Radio Havana is on from 10 PM Mountain on channel 6.00, and Radio Australia is on channel 9.70 at midnight. The weather has a lot to do with reception, and things throwing off huge amounts of EM waves (like your computer, for instance, or your microwave) will destroy any hope you have of getting any reception on a SW radio, so use it where there is the fewest plugs, EM generators, and other things like this, and maybe try an external antenna for clearer sound (apparently, getting the antenna out of the house will do wonders, especially in steel frame houses. It’s like listening to AM radio and driving under a bridge: it doesn’t work, but you all know what I am talking about, and if not, try it.)

Enjoy internet radio at Supernova Earth, and Dan, I’ll look for an AlJazerra link online for you too.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

Sincerely,
The Reverend