Expect another damp week ahead. Skies will remain overcast through much of the coming seven days, with daytime temperatures generally in the 50s and nighttime readings falling into the 30s. Rain is likely on five days and should leave about three-quarters of an inch across the county before the week is finished.
It will be the sort of weather that settles into one's coat and seems reluctant to leave. Fortunately, the birch and poplar have taken to the hillsides in bright yellow, particularly along the Gunflint Trail. On a gray October day, they provide considerably more cheer than my thermometer.
Here at the weather tower, Mr. Erickson has been occupied with the persistent troubles that have plagued WGMW for the better part of a month. Having exhausted our list of likely causes, we have begun going through the station piece by piece, inspecting everything and putting it together again. The hope is that by morning we shall possess either a dependable radio station or a much better understanding of why we do not.
I generally prefer to leave philosophy until the end of these columns, but John Dewey has observed that the best learning often comes from giving a pupil something to do rather than merely something to learn. Mr. Erickson has lately been given quite a lot to do. I find myself doing less explaining and more asking what he thinks ought to be tried next. More often than not, he has an answer.
Our high school seniors may soon receive a similar education. The senior class has begun gathering school notes for publication in the News Herald, and I have invited them to the weather tower during the noon hour to read some of their reports over WGMW. Writing for an actual reader is a different exercise from writing only for a teacher, and speaking into a microphone adds another sort of instruction altogether.
Should they arrive on one of our less cooperative days, they may also receive practical lessons concerning capacitors, tubes, knobs, and dials. Mr. Erickson can conduct that portion of the curriculum.
The high school recently held its initiation program for the first-year students, complete with stunts, ballet dancing, and difficult acrobatics. Once properly initiated, the newcomers were rewarded with a social hour of games, dancing, and music.
That seems a civilized arrangement. In my experience, most initiations into adult life provide the acrobatics first and neglect the dancing afterward.
Editor's note: No photos survive of the inside of the weather tower, but the above photo shows what a radio station looked like in 1926. It shows Paul O'Hana at the KNX transmitter controls, 1926.