“Home thoughts from abroad”
Also known as some year-end reflections from afar…
January 2026
For the past several winters, I’ve been lucky enough to spend the holiday season tucked away among the Berkshire hilltowns of western Massachusetts, fairly remote from the city’s clamor or incidental interruptions, as well as from neighbors or interactions of any kind. This also means being remote from much radio worth tuning in, as options are limited and reception is questionable at best. But I’ve come to count on the radio as accompaniment to pretty much all my waking or working hours—accustomed to having WBJC on from waking to slumber. Houston, we have a problem.
What a boon, therefore, to be able to stream WBJC remotely. What a treasured companion this technological wizardry has provided for hours spent puttering in the kitchen to put together a holiday nosh for family; or with my feet up in front of the fire, endlessly rethinking one of my theater history courses for Towson undergraduates; or traversing the snow-laden back roads—like a latter-day Robert Frost with his baffled nag—on my way from one charming local library to the next to provision my reading, or snaking down the hill to the local butcher for a selection of his so-caringly crafted meat to provision the larder.
From the first, pre-coffee stirrings of the morning as crisp, fresh fox tracks criss-crossing the meadow catch the early sun to the final, dying echoes of the evening as the last embers glow on the hearth, those familiar voices of WBJC fill out my world and ply their trade. Like so many listener-members of long standing, I consider these disembodied musical savants, with their impeccable taste in curation and inimitable tidbits of salient information, my friends and daily companions. While I may have come to know them in person recently as a member of the staff, it is by way of the broadcast that I have long welcomed them into my days and grown accustomed to carrying them through my life, at home or in the car. How excellent to carry this on while hidden away in my semi-hermetic isolation hundreds of miles away.
So it was that, over these past holiday weeks, I could enjoy a discussion with my brother-in-law about the newly published history of Händel and the political, cultural backdrop to his composing The Messiah punctuated by the station’s annual broadcast (and re-broadcast) tradition—complete with Jonathan’s characteristic commentary. So it was that, kneading dough late on Friday night for another semi-successful attempt at an artisanal loaf, I could enjoy Kati’s typically brilliant selections for Listener’s Choice, buoyed in my culinary frustration by her inclusion of the sprightly dances of Simon Jeffes’ Still Life at the Penguin Cafe. So it was that my indecision over spring syllabus decisions got softened by learning from Abhinn new details about an old Brahms composition, which helped me hear the piece with fresh ears. So it was that Judith’s distinctive dulcet tones, setting up Florence Price’s Dances in the Canebrakes, helped keep me from whiteknuckling my slushy slide across Skyline Trail in the quiet lull of New Year’s Day after Mark’s rumbling basso had helped kick the day and year into gear. And so, too, it was that chopping potatoes and other root vegetables to purée for the family’s dinner a few days later went quickly and lightly to plan thanks to Dyana’s crisply good-humored commentary and reliable choice of Gilbert and Sullivan extracts.
So I ended last year, and have begun the new: ever more grateful for the managerial foresight, technical skill, financial support, and collective effort that makes this streaming feature possible. But even more so (in which I suspect I speak for many of you) grateful to and for the wonderful—and wonderfully motley—assemblage of talent and passion that, for me at least, continues to define WBJC’s staff, on air and off! All made possible by a truly fervent pool of generous listeners, both close to home and far-flung, who keep us on the air; each evidently as appreciative as I for the chance to set our daily routine to the rhythms of this station, wherever we are and wherever we go.
-Gavin
