The Working Ghost

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Radio address for May 3, 2014, a continuation of the previous episode. There are lots of reasons not to like cookie-cutter suburban developments, but: there may be an upside.

Mention is made of A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Egnle and The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, and also (somewhat obliquely) of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carre.

Closing music is An Old Peasant Like Me from the Prince Avalanche soundtrack.

From Ciphers, a book of suburban photography. Photo by Christoph Gielen.

Download MP3 audio – 5:14, 7.54 MB

Radio address for April 19, 2014. The gap between the ideal and the actual social fabric in my suburban neighborhood.

As I mention at the end, there’s a Part Two to these thoughts that will be coming in the next address.

Mention is made of communal ovens: here’s how it worked out in Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, and there’s also one in Pittsburgh. A couple of Australian women blogged about the idea, and their commenters found all kinds of potential problems with it.

Download MP3 audio – 7:54, 11.21 MB

Radio address for April 12, 2014. What it means to do low-focus podcasting in a high-focus world, and how to keep it going that way.

I mention my recent haphazard writing on mystic experience and religious conversion. The extended quote in the middle is from Shunryu Suzuki’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

The ending music is On My Way by The Melodic. (There’s also the album version, but it doesn’t have nearly enough kick compared to their live performances.)

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Radio broadcast for February 22, 2014. A narrative of the first two legs of the trip I took in response to the signal seen on the Baie Comeau in January: a midnight snowshoe hike in the woods, and boiler-stoking our way over Heston Grade in the train.

The closing music is The Ghost of O’Donahue by Johnny Flynn.

Download MP3 audio – 11:23, 13.39 MB – or Read Transcript

Radio address for January 24, 2014.

Mention is made of the book The Discarded Image and (towards the very end) of “Unix philosophy”. Music is by Trentemøller.

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Radio address for January 11, 2013: Weather and shipping news, visitors to Howell Creek from Vancouver, and the blue light gleaming from the icy deck of the Baie Comeau.

Mention is made of the recent cold snap in Minnesota, beatific vision, and virtue ethics.

View more shipping information and photos at Duluth Shipping News. Closing music is Stubborn Love by The Lumineers.

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There is no radio address this week, or the first weekend in 2014, due to the holidays. In lieu of a creative monologue, I’m here to deliver a short meta-report — something I do not more than once per year — and an announcement, or perhaps a quasi-announcement…really just more like a simple, cryptic heads-up.

Creatively speaking, Howell Creek Radio will be going in a bit of a new direction in 2014. I’ve already left several clues, and I’ll leave it to you to figure it out as it happens.

Mention is made of a blog post with technical notes about recent updates to the podcast: stay tuned, it’ll be up within the next day or two.

If you have headphones on, you can clearly hear the atmospheric background music “Leviathan” by Z. D. Smith. It’s currently my favourite audio for thinking, tinkering, and producing: an ethereal yet crunchy digital mystery; the lightless, calming cacophony of the ocean floor and the relentless machinations of an artificial intelligence. You should really get your own copy at http://zdsmith.com — it’s name-your-own-price, and the rest of the tracks are free. I’m not getting anything for this, in fact he doesn’t even know I’m doing this, and I just hope he doesn’t mind.

Download MP3 audio – 8:00, 9.64 MB – or Read Transcript

Radio address for December 21, 2013, about the affinity I feel for a cat at work that is, for the time being, both alive and dead.

Very prominent mention is made of “Schrödinger’s Cat” — read all the details on Wikipedia, for starters. It seems likely that quantum mechanics is right about small systems existing simultaneously as a superposition of two states correct even though in reality the cat would actually be dead or alive long before you opened the box (hint: the Geiger counter is itself an observer).

There is also the obvious problem that the cat would make an ungodly racket.

An artistic interpretation of the impossibility of Schrödinger’s Cat. By Jie Qi (CC license).

Read more about the many appearances of Schrödinger’s Cat in popular culture

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Radio address for December 14, 2013. We tend to place a bit of our power into things: trees, books, jewels, bullets and hats. Lose one of these talismans, and you are put to a world of trouble to get it back again.

I never really thought I’d write about the experience of losing my wedding ring, but the time seems to have come when I can talk about it reasonably. Not long after it happened, encouraged by stories such as this one, I tried posting on some treasure hunting boards, and a couple of people said they’d look but ultimately I never heard back.

The second loss (not talked about in the audio): As mentioned at the tail end of the episode, there was another time when I actually lost my second ring too: it went missing for a few months. One day my mom shows up at my door with the ring: it had been found under their piano, looking like this:

The jeweler was able to restore it to its original condition, and in the process reduce it by a half size, making it a little less likely that I’ll ever have to live through this again.

This address’s extremely appropriate and well-placed music cues are:

• The Blue World from Lady in the Water by James Newton Howard
• Wow, from Finding Nemo, by Thomas Neumann
• Treasure, from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by Alberto Inglesias — “…those wanings of power, which are the inevitable result of old age…”
• …blended seamlessly into One Ring to Rule Them All, from Fellowship Of The Ring, by Howard Shore
• and ending with The Grey Havens, also by Howard Shore, from The Return of the King

Download MP3 audio – 13:38, 16.09 MB – or Read Transcript

Radio address for December 7, 2013: a glimpse into everything, everywhere, all at once.

Mention is made of the living, breathing digital experience The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity created by David Hirmes, and the short story on which it is based. There is also a reading of 0016. Similarity from my in-progress ebook, Noise of Creation, which I promise is still in-progress.

The musical dimension for this episode is by Z.D. Smith, who I met through his ideas and writings on Thoughtstreams.io. You can listen and download the music at his website, http://zdsmith.com.

Bill Watterson drew this strip about what it’s like to suddenly see both sides of an argument.