Air Date: Week of December 17, 1999

Listeners responded to our reports on playing music to whales, our profile of Roger Masters and our story on bears in Massachusetts.

Transcript

CURWOOD: And now it's time for your comments.

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: Our profile of Jim Nollman, a guitarist who uses music to communicate with whales, sparked this memory for retired Naval officer G.E. Beyer, a listener to KPBX in Spokane, Washington. He writes, "Almost 40 years ago we used to play for the porpoise in the Atlantic and Caribbean. I served on a destroyer, and we had an underwater telephone to talk to submarines while conducting exercises. In the evenings, one of my shipmates who played a pretty fair trumpet would run scales and riffs into the microphone, and the porpoise would respond note for note. Doesn't take much to entertain sailors at sea."

Phyllis Libby called in from Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she hears us on KOSU. Ms. Libby, a clinical researcher in child brain development, took note of our report on the work of Roger Masters, a sociologist who is examining the connection between heavy metal toxicity and violence. Ms. Libby says this type of research could have far-reaching consequences.

LIBBY: It would blow the lid off of everything if people realized how much toxicity in this culture has contributed to whole generations of children being wiped out. Not just lead, but all the other stuff in the ground and the water.

CURWOOD: And Deborah Ofsowitz, who hears us on WMFE in Orlando, Florida, was disturbed by the language in our story on the growing bear population in Massachusetts. She writes, "I find it ironic that the bears and other animals were referred to as encroaching animals. Aren't we the encroaching ones? I have a feeling the bears and other such animals were here for a long time before we moved in."
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