- Playing
- Buckstaff Planetarium
- From
- Jon Stricklin
In four years of college, I've managed to go inside of every single building on the UW-Oshkosh campus, except for the one I've wanted to get inside. Buckstaff Planetarium.
In making this piece, I learned how few people had actually gone inside of the building, and finally, I managed to get inside myself.
This piece won a 1st Place Regional Audio Feature Segment award in National Broadcasting Society-AERho's Region Five. It was nominated for Best Audio Feature Segment for National Broadcasting Society, but lost out to this piece: http://www.prx.org/pieces/15091
Related Pieces
Piece Description
In four years of college, I've managed to go inside of every single building on the UW-Oshkosh campus, except for the one I've wanted to get inside. Buckstaff Planetarium. In making this piece, I learned how few people had actually gone inside of the building, and finally, I managed to get inside myself. This piece won a 1st Place Regional Audio Feature Segment award in National Broadcasting Society-AERho's Region Five. It was nominated for Best Audio Feature Segment for National Broadcasting Society, but lost out to this piece: http://www.prx.org/pieces/15091
2 Comments
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Review of Buckstaff PlanetariumI love planetariums, and I love secret places! This piece brings the two together with an irresistible good humor. It's well paced, perhaps a bit too cute at times, but overall a fun listen. When Stricklin finally ventures across the "alien landscape" of upper campus and into the elusive planetarium show, the result is extremely satisfying. "Buckstaff Planetarium" is certainly worthy of some airtime. |
Broadcast History
WRST-FM Oshkosh - Now Hear This! - November 2005
Transcript
When was the last time that you looked at the stars? I mean, really looked at the stars, laid on your back in the middle of a dark field and gotten lost amidst patterns with names like Orion, Leo, Ursa Major, and Draco? Or spent hours watching Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage, Lost in Space, or Star Wars? Or even visited your local planetarium?
The first two come easy for me, even though the city lights obscure the milky way on the rare times I?m out in the country, and I must endure the ridicule of a nerdy obsession in addition to hours in front of the television. But the latter?is difficult. Its also pathetic, since for the past three years of college, I?ve passed by Buckstaff Planetarium nearly every day, never once having gone inside. I haven?t been to a planetarium since the 4th grade, and man, that?s a world away, both time and age wise. It might even be fair to say that I h...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Intro: 0:00
Tag: 5:26
Music Full Sound - 5:31-5:51 (fades 10 seconds from end)
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James Reiss
Posted on March 20, 2007 at 07:46 AM | Permalink
Review of Buckstaff Planetarium
This amusing drop-in is Jon Stricklin's debut piece as a young producer. Stricklin has enormous promise as a public radio personality.
He takes us on a tour of the universe, asking us, "When was the last time that you looked at the stars, I mean, really looked at the stars, laid on your back in the middle of a field and gotten lost in its patterns in the sky, with names like Orion, Leo, Ursa Major, or Draco?" From there it would seem that a trip to his college planetarium would follow as night follows day.
Not so. In all his three years at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, Stricklin has never visited the campus's Buckstaff Planetarium. Neither have his student interviewees, who offer mock-scary descriptions of Buckstaff. One coed quips that the domed building is devoted to "breeding wolverines for cage fights." Another gal opines the planetarium is a place for "massive naked orgies." Nonetheless, Stricklin's growing interest in the stars leads him to take an astronomy course and experience Professor "Halsey's lecture pits," which somehow never involve a field trip to Buckstaff Planetarium.
When he finally wends his way through upper campus and steps inside the eerie edifice, we hear a voice-over of Neil Armstrong's fabled words about having taken "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Stricklin finds groups of townies, Boy Scouts, and a planetarium worker, Terell, who lets him know Buckstaff is, as we suspect, under-utilized.
As clever and sound-rich as it is, for me this piece de-mystifies things and doesn't end up conveying the passion of "space fever" that it begins with. Not that I'm looking for spaced-out poetry, only more of the excitement Stricklin expresses in the first minute or so of his piece. The devil's in the details here, and -- to mix metaphors -- I end up losing sight of the sky for the earthlings.