October 2: Shortwave Radio

I would listen back in high school when the eastern bloc countries were changing and the Berlin wall fell. It was a perfect time to have a shortwave radio, in the era before the internet listening to faraway voices give me the news. Or read Frankenstein in ten minute sections over the course of a month. The odd station signals. The thin tinny voices and middle eastern music. Radio Kiev. Radio Berlin. The BBC. Flitty bits without name. Morse code and ship to shore breaking in. I would listen in the dark in my bedroom to the great giant world breathing and telling me how it was over warbly static. Being able to only hear is scarier than seeing it on a screen.