Surfing the shortwaves

One of the luxuries of this semester has been having time to read some magazines cover-to-cover--for instance, the most recent issue of Baltic Worlds (free for the taking from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies [CBEES] @Södertörn University, home of the 2011 Baltic Studies in Europe conference)!

The article in particular that's prompting me to write is a short piece by Thomas Lundén on shortwave radio listening during the Cold War. It made me think of being in Šeduva and listening to shortwave in the late-90s...

As a conversational English teacher, I didn't have much of anything to sort in terms of grading--and a week's course prep could be adapted to the full range of ability levels. So... there was a lot of time for other things! And though I didn't have a TV, I didn't really miss it--I had my cassette/radio player.

I can remember going regularly to the BBC, but also searching around for random things... Hearing broadcasts meant for troops in the Persian Gulf was something--and hearing coded bursts of numbers and letters was something else. (This was echoed by the 2011 Wired piece discussing a curious Russian station.)



Of course, there was also "Radio Vilnius," the half-hour English-language daily broadcast on the Lithuanian state radio... That was an access point to local news and culture, as much or more than The Baltic Times. And my interest in that show was parlayed into actually working for the program in 2000-2001, but that's another post for another time...

I wonder if Mr. Lundén is on Facebook?

Click here for a set of archived recordings of "Radio Vilnius" from 1990-1991!