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If you own a business or know someone who does, and you think there is interest in becoming an underwriter, please contact
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CONTACT US
Portsmouth Community Radio
P.O. Box 6532
Portsmouth, NH 03802-6532
603.430.9722
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Dear Friends,
It's an extremely busy time of the year for everyone, and that goes for us here at Portsmouth Community Radio, too. Read on to find out what we've been up to and what we have planned in the coming month.
To save you time, we'll keep this intro nice and short. From all of us at Portsmouth Community Radio to all of you, our listeners and supporters, have a happy and healthy Holiday season!
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From the BoardAn Update on Portsmouth Community Radio's Fall Pledge Drive On behalf of all the dedicated volunteers at Portsmouth Community Radio, a great big "thank you" to the Seacoast community for its tangible support of our programming during our on-air Pledge Drive earlier this month. This has been an important year for our all-volunteer radio station, a year in which we recommitted to our mission of delivering radio programming to reflect the interests and tastes of the community we serve. We've taken a big step in that direction with increased focus on our news and public affairs programming. We've been out in the community interviewing residents and visitors alike, and when Portsmouth went to the polls to elect its City Council and a new mayor, we were on the scene, reporting the results just as the votes were tallied. We set a goal of $25,000 for our Pledge Drive this time around, our most ambitious goal to date. During the Drive's on-air portion, we brought in $10,000 - a good start. Within a week or so, we will be sending out mailings with what represents the second piece of the Drive. These additional donations will bring us closer to our goal. In the meantime, we know that many listeners who wanted to support Portsmouth Community Radio simply didn't get the chance to pledge. To them, our message is that it's not too late. Our website offers another opportunity to help us achieve our goal and keep community-focused radio coming to the Seacoast. Just click on Join Online and follow the prompts to make a secure donation with your credit card or checking account. And while you're there, we ask you to please consider a sustaining membership. Thank you again to our supportive listeners, without whom none of our programming would be possible. Ann Bliss Chair, Board of Trustees
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Special EventsPortsmouth Community Radio to Hold Winter Dance with the Jeannie Daniels Band
Mark your calendars for Portsmouth Community Radio's annual fundraiser dance with The Jeannie Daniels Band on Saturday, January 28. Join your friends and neighbors for a rockin' community dance at The Hall, 238 Deer Street in downtown Portsmouth.
 What better way to heat things up in the dead of winter than with The Jeannie Daniels Band, who will perform their infectious mix of rock, R&B, Motown, soul, funk, and swing? The Hall features a comfortable atmosphere with a large dance floor, lots of room to sit back and relax with friends, reasonable beverage prices, and free on-site parking. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the music runs from 8 p.m. until midnight. This will be a 21-plus event. _______________________________________________ WSCA Returns to First Night Portsmouth  Join Portsmouth Community Radio DJs for the First Night Portsmouth Street Dance on New Year's Eve in Market Square. The fun starts at 5 p.m. and runs until just after midnight.
Once again WSCA is providing the tunes to get your boogie on during the Street Dance. This year we're asking you, our listeners, to send in your requests by noon on Tuesday, December 27. Requests can be sent via e-mail to volunteer@wscafm.org. Songs must be family friendly, and requests will be fulfilled to the best of our abilities . . . we may not get to every request made, but we will try!
Thanks so much and see you at the Street Dance! _______________________________________________ Special Holiday Programming Announced Tune in to Portsmouth Community Radio on Thursday, December 22, from 6 to 9:30 p.m for a special holiday program. WSCA will broadcast previously recorded local holiday concerts from around the region, including performances from Portsmouth Middle School and Portsmouth High School. Performances from Portsmouth Pro Musica and the Community Chorus of South Berwick will also be featured in this special broadcast. Stay tuned for encore performances from these local groups Friday and Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. Get in the holiday spirit with community performers through your community radio station, WSCA! |
With Gratitude
Volunteer of the Month: Ann Bliss
 There's an old saying, "If you have something that needs to get done, give it to a busy person to do." Whoever said that might well have had our Board Chair, Ann Bliss, in mind.
Ann is a mental health professional with a full schedule every week. She is also President of the Board of the Seacoast Area Renewable Energy Initiative, of which she and her husband Michael were founders. Since April of this year, she has also been the Chair of Portsmouth Community Radio's Board of Trustees.
Clearly, Ann is a busy woman. Yet, when we needed someone to manage our Fall Pledge Drive this year, it was Ann who raised her hand to take on the assignment.
We consider ourselves most fortunate to have Ann Bliss as Board Chair of Portsmouth Community Radio, and we thank her for her leadership in that role and for all the good, hard work she's done these past couple of months to help make our Fall Pledge Drive a success.
Congratulations to our Volunteer of the Month for December, Ann Bliss!
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New on the Schedule
Bioneers Radio Show Comes to WSCA
The radio series Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature premiered on Portsmouth Community Radio November 9 and now airs every Wednesday from 4:30 to 5 p.m. This award-winning show features social and scientific innovators with breakthrough solutions for people and the planet. It is described as cutting edge, charismatic, provocative, and hopeful. To introduce the program to Portsmouth Community Radio, we had Bioneers senior producer, co-writer, and host Neil Harvey live in the studio speaking with Steve Diamond, producer of Making Waves (Saturdays, 12-1 p.m.). Neil has had an extensive career in radio as an independent producer, narrator, and writer. He has produced feature reports for Morning Edition, National Native News, and The Voice of America and is a part-time resident of Hampton. | | Neil Harvey speaks during the November kickoff |
A special Bioneers kick-off event was held on November 14 in Durham. Video from the October 2011 Bioneers Conference was shown, followed by a discussion with Neil. Forty people came to the event, including WSCA volunteers Jean Proulx, Steve Diamond, and Judi Matthews. Sponsored by the Greater Seacoast Permaculture Group, Durham Community Church, the Seacoast Area Renewable Energy Initiative, and Portsmouth Community Radio, it was a great evening of making connections and helping to spread the word about our station.Tune in to hear Bioneers on WSCA every Wednesday from 4:30 to 5 p.m.
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Psychic Stories, with Host Susan Gorman
 Psychic Stories (Mondays, 9-10 a.m.) is a new show hosted by Susan Gorman, a practicing intuitive. Psychic Stories is sponsored by Water Street Bookstore.
Susan has been "listening to people from literally all walks of life, all around the globe, for over twenty years," she says. "I provide spiritual coaching and psychic insight into the lives of my clients. I teach people to meditate and how to develop a spirituality that really works. My passion is helping my clients lead lives worth living . . .
"From my view, the spiritual and psychic are happening every hour of every day and are as natural to us as breathing. Our society has marginalized these experiences, which is why we think they are weird. A big part of my job is to bring our intuitive awareness away from the edges of life and help people talk about what they can't bring up at the water cooler or at a cocktail party."
On Psychic Stories, Susan interviews practitioners, authors, and everyday people about their spiritual and psychic experiences. She hopes to give listeners "another layer of spirituality to ponder," she says. "Hopefully they will feel connected to the community that humanity is, and less alone."
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Transitions
MacDonald Named Communications Director
 Citing the importance of communicating to our listening community a "clear and single-minded message about our identity and our mission," Board Chair Ann Bliss announced that Terry MacDonald has been named Portsmouth Community Radio's first Director of Communications.Having joined the station in 2005 to host Jazz Straightahead (Wednesdays, 6-9 a.m.), Terry later became Jazz Director and still serves in that role. In May 2010, he was elected to the station's Board of Trustees, of which he is now Vice Chair.As Communications Director, Terry has hit the ground running, leading the development of the station's Pledge Drive-related communications materials for on- and off-air use: announcements, ads, posters, news releases, mailings, and more. And soon to be unveiled: a whole new station-identity graphics package that returns us to our "Portsmouth Community Radio" roots, underscoring our commitment to engaging with the Seacoast's listening community. Read more . . .
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Award-Winning Journalist Roger Wood Joins the WSCA News Team  Portsmouth resident Roger Wood is well known to anyone who listens to NPR, NHPR, WBUR, or WOKQ. Roger recently joined Portsmouth Community Radio's news team and is heard weekly on Radiogazette (Fridays, 9-10 a.m.) during the news portion of the program. Roger provides an original, three-minute report on a specific current event, called "Roger Wood Reports.""Roger is helping us provide professional, up-to-the-minute reporting, something that is very difficult to do with an all-volunteer news team," says Ann Haggart, WSCA's News and Public Affairs Director. "We are grateful for his time and expertise."
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Deidre Randall Announces Her Exit From Writers in the Round
 Deidre Randall, the longtime host of Writers in the Round (Wednesdays, 7-8 p.m.) announced recently that she is leaving the show. "After seven years, I have decided to stop hosting Writers in the Round on WSCA," she wrote. "Wednesday, December 14, was the last live show I had scheduled for myself, and it was also the last show for our wonderful engineer, Lou Clark.
"I had four incredible guests on the 14th, including John Grady, Thomas D'Amour, Mark Decarteret, and Jerry Short. Hosting this show, since the first on-air week, has been a great experience for me. I love the station and I hope to be involved again at some point. For now I have decided to focus away from the promotion of other artists and work on some of my own music again. Read more . . .
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Have You Heard?
Under the Radar: "Big Band Monday"
It's time for another "Big Band Monday" on Under the Radar, January 2, from 8 to 10 p.m. Your host, Steve Shervanian, will be swinging with the big bands again as the only big band radio show on the Seacoast plays the tunes even your grandma can jump 'n' jive to.Steve's featured performer this month will be the leader of a swinging big band that rivaled on record - and exceeded in person - the orchestras of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie. Get ready to have your feet tappin' to Jimmy Lunceford and His Harlem Express. You'll hear studio and live recordings of Lunceford's distinctive two-beat swing, and you'll understand why his aggregation was noted less for its soloists than for its ensemble work. So if you like big bands, swing music, and plenty of horns, listen to Under the Radar: "Big Band Monday" the first Monday of each month, from 8 to 10 p.m. on Portsmouth Community Radio. And don't forget, if you have a big band request of any kind or just want to chat, you can e-mail Steve at wscautr@yahoo.com.
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Pledge Drive Raffle Winner Announced
The second and final on-air Pledge Drive of 2011 came to an end with the drawing and awarding of the grand prize raffle: $500 worth of gift certificates to some of the best restaurants on the Seacoast. Anyone who donated during the on-air drive week was eligible, but it was longtime listener Pat Karmeris of Dover who claimed the prize.
 | | Ann Bliss shows winner Pat Karmeris what's she's won |
Keith Lemerise of Taste of the Seacoast dropped off the gift certificates, and Ann Bliss, Chair of the Board of Trustees, presented Pat with her winnings.
Portsmouth Community Radio is grateful for the generosity of the raffle sponsor, Taste of the Seacoast, and to all listeners who pledged.
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WSCA Marches in Annual Holiday Parade
December 3 was a fun and festive night for the several Portsmouth Community Radio volunteers who gathered to march in this year's Portsmouth Holiday Parade.
Many thanks to volunteers Anita Croteau, Tim Stone, Steve Kowal, Cindy Bistoury, George Leonard, Jean Proulx, and Mark Pruett, as well as to their family members who marched along with us. Our marchers were greeted by cheers and words of thanks and praise all along the route. Special thanks go out to Mark Pruett and his daughter Veronica for decorating the WSCA banner with glitter and colored lights. The father-daughter team also "hand crafted" dozens of candy canes, each with a program schedule and station info affixed.
Thank you to all who made our participation in this special evening possible!
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left to right: Anita Croteau, George Leonard, Jean Proulx, Steve Kowal, and Mark Pruett
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Did You Know?
The History of Radio: A Tribute to Norman Corwin, American Radio's "Poet Laureate"
by John Lovering
The greatest director, writer, and producer in the history of radio, Norman Corwin, passed away October 18 at 101 years of age.
 Corwin was known as American radio's "poet laureate." During his 84 years of writing, directing, and producing, he earned one World Award, two Peabody Medals, an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a DuPont Columbia Award, an Oscar nomination, an Academy Award, an Honorary Doctorate, and places in the National Radio Hall of Fame and the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters Diamond Circle. Read more . . .
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