Transcript for the Piece Audio version of My Own Private Alaska

Morning Edition
Commentary: Public Radio in Alaska
On-Air Fundraising Partnership

My Own Private Alaska

by Geo Beach

[Host Intro:

When commentator Geo Beach lived in Boston and New York City, he never listened to public radio. Then he moved to Alaska. ]

My own private Alaska is simple: a plain house whose most beautiful aspect is what's not there - a square hole where the window lets in what's outside.

That's one of the lessons of Alaska - even if you're a rugged individualist, you don't want to get walled off, you want to let the world in. When I came here almost 20 years ago from a big fast back-east city, I didn't bring many things. But the empty cabin I moved into had a transistor radio, and one night in a Joni Mitchell whisper it called to me You turn me on I'm a radio.

And public radio became the soundtrack to Alaska. Public radio played in my cabin and in my truck. Marine weather forecasts and tide tables and Fish & Game advisories and tsunami warnings were the traffic reports and stock quotes for this little fishing village, integral details for folks who work with their hands. And it all came from the local public radio station.

And that same public radio was on in the store, at the gas station, in the bar. NPR was playing on the boat when we made our way out onto the North Pacific. And it was NPR at the volunteer fire department when we came back from ambulance calls and sat and looked into our coffee cups, quiet.

Public radio makes community here. See, Alaska is a state without roads, and so quickly it becomes a state of mind. The links - the lines that connect the dots - are made in leaps: floatplanes, boat rides. And radio waves.

I learned that Alaska is not an island at the top of the world. New friends amplified reports from their old homes that we heard on Morning Edition. Thoughts from all around the world began to turn into deeds in my backyard. Aike made ground nut stew and said Nigeria's Obasanjo was just a general dressed in civilian clothes, and Yule told tales of telemark skiing in Switzerland at his Sunday saunas, and Taro decorated the skies with a big carp windsock on Boys Day and reminded the fisherman how special Alaska salmon are when they arrive fresh in Japan.

Your own private Alaska is likely just as complex. America's collective imagination is lodged up here, in the rafters of consciousness. Alaska is both very real and ethereal too. It's no surprise so many familiar voices -- Corey Flintoff, Elizabeth Arnold, Peter Kenyon, Tom Goldman - first resonated in this clear Arctic atmosphere, because radio is part magic. And public radio is partly about making magic come true, letting thought take form.

Funny, when I moved to Alaska I thought I was coming to the end of the world. I had no idea that with the flick of a switch, the world would come to me. I just had to learn that my private Alaska was right there on the air, on public radio.

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[Host outro:

Firefighter and commercial fisherman Geo Beach is a frequent commentator on NPR's Living on Earth. ]