Page 6 - Sonoma County Gazette - May 2019

By Dan Kerbein
It’s just what you’d expect from a radio station named KOWS, to celebrate
Lacking perfect knowledge, sometime we have to choose the safest error. The chance of the reader’s dog becoming ill from a DAPP booster vaccination is very, very small. Keeping the booster updated according to the vaccine manufacturer’s recommendation is the safest “mistake” we can make.
be because he’s taken more than $270,000 from energy companies. Just sayin’....
the move to its new studio in Santa Rosa with a “barn raising”. It’s actually a meet-and-greet, an afternoon of live music set for Saturday, May 25 at Three Disciples Brewing. But this a DJ crew that likes to “milk” the humor in their messaging.
Hope this helps,
Michael Trapani
Bdega Bay Veteerinary Hospital The Family Pet clumnist
Jason Kishineff Democratic Congressional candidate, district 5 American Canyon
KOWS Community Radio has been broadcasting since February from its new studio at 445 7th Street (near Orchard) in Santa Rosa. But its roots go back to January 18 2008, when DJ Robert Feuer went live from a small room upstairs upstairs from an Occidental cafe. Sitting at the console with KOWS- FM founder and first General Manager Phil Tymon, he played both sides of Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”.
Other DJs quickly joined Feuer, to the point where KOWS-FM 92.5 is now served by a “herd” of 60 volunteer programmers, playing to their own freeform tastes. (KOWS embraces its bovine moniker, but it’s never been a country format station.)
hours of driving. Chasing the KOWS-FM 92.5 signal takes you from Occidental to Santa Rosa, with surprising clarity in the city all the way to Fountaingrove and Annadel Heights.
From the beginning the station’s goal has been “to provide
exceptional quality programming that is diverse, and which is
That vision has sustained this low-power, thinly budgeted station through its series of eastward moves. “Our tag line is ‘Serving Santa Rosa and all of Western Sonoma County,” Program Director Don Campau points out. “We’re not forgetting our roots, we’re bringing them with us. We are expanding our vision to include Santa Rosa and, via the internet, the world.”
“KOWS is clear as a bell in much of Santa Rosa,” explains Dave Stroud, Social and Web Media Coordinator on the KOWS-FM Steering Committee. “Due to the contours of the land heading out eastward. Although we tried we couldn’t get a strong signal in Sebastopol, so it was hard to get much volunteer support with a blocked signal. In Santa Rosa we have a new base of listeners to draw from.” He points out that several new volunteers have joined the herd since the move.
inspired by the lives of our local residents.”
From the beginning KOWS’ antenna has beamed its small but mighty signal from a tree at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. The first KOWS herd primarily lived around Occidental, where the studio resided for 9 years. The quest for a new home led briefly to Sebastopol, before finding the space in Santa Rosa.
In the low power world, stations are noncommercial and too small to afford rating surveys like Arbitron. Social media provide accessible stats, which show for example that KOWS leads all the other North Bay public radio stations
in Facebook followers. The station has also cultivated an online streaming presence, found at www.kowsfm.com. This data shows a significant Santa Rosa audience.
Programmers of years’ duration have brought their talent over to the new Santa Rosa studio. “Laura’s Living Room”, hosted by Laura Goldman, was the first show aired in KOWS’ new home, as well as one of the first to go live back in 2008, in Occidental.
“Our beginnings were very West County,” Stroud recalls, “and they were modest. But the energy has always been positive. Our preference is for community members producing their own shows. Going forward we’d like to see even more diversity in the communities we represent - Latinx, First Nations, all people of color, the homeless, LGBTQ - we invite it.”
At first, the move seemed a stretch. “I live between Occidental and Bodega,” says Goldman, “so the studio was easier to get to. I was concerned people would stop coming by once I got to the Santa Rosa studio, but it hasn’t happened, they’re still stopping by.”
Laura Goldman summarizes her assessment of the station with this thumbs- up: “We’ve been going for 12 years, that is a phenomenal achievement. We’re expanding our community to include Santa Rosa. We’re 100% volunteers, we do it for the love of what we do, and we have these talented and dedicated people. I’m glad to be part of it.”
Like others from the original herd, Goldman had wondered whether KOWS could still be a community station if its studio is in downtown Santa Rosa,
but has come to see in it the enduring value of the station. “It doesn’t matter as much where our studio is,” she told the Gazette, “except that we have to remember our roots, remember why we were formed. Community radio holds a space for people, gives them a chance to express themselves.”
For readers of the Sonoma County Gazette who would like to enjoy the afternoon with a herd of low-power but energized DJs, 3 Disciples Brewing is located at 501 Mendocino Ave. in Santa Rosa.
The KOWS Meet-and-greet starts 5pm, with a silent auction, a no-host brew bar, and Mountain Mike’s Pizza serving as a pop-up food vendor. A $5 donation is requested but nobody will be turned away.
Low power designation was created in 1999 to provide underserved communities with a radio signal, a few small watts compared to the thousands commanded by larger stations. In one sense, the “community” served by a low power station might be defined by its reach, most easily detected through a few
6 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 5/19
LETTERS cont’d from. page 5
Green New Deal
Scientists have given us 12 years
to halt climate change before the average temperature of the planet
is raised 1.5 degrees Celsius and a threshold is crossed making it very difficult, if not impossible, to go
back. The natural response to this
is the Green New Deal, primarily halting fossil fuel production as quickly as possible and moving to renewable energy. Congressman Mike Thompson co-sponsored the Green New Deal, but most people don’t realize that he turned around and voted for more oil drilling THE VERY NEXT DAY! And six weeks later voted to explore even MORE oil drilling in over 20 central and eastern European countries (HR 1616). And why is he not co-sponsoring HR 3671, the Off Fossil Fuels Act? It might
of dogs have received this vaccination on a 3-year booster schedule without demonstrated risk of harm.
In the reader’s circumstances, where the agility training center needs to be sure that no harm will come to any of its students, requiring up to date DAPP boosters offers as close to a guarantee of preventing disease from those disease agents as can be obtained. Are some of those student animals immune for life after their puppy series? Probably. Can anyone guarantee that lifelong immunity will develop in every pup? Absolutely not.
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