We’re celebrating WYSO’s 60th birthday this year by listening to highlights from our historic audio collection.

In the early 1970s. WYSO had a growth spurt, adding staff and expanding the listening area. In 1973 came the first grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The money allowed us to buy programs from NPR for the first time. Also that year, the first on-air fundraiser was held. Listeners and businesses donated goods and services for an on-air auction, things like airplane rides and fresh baked bread. The fundraisers were called marathons. Regular programming was suspended for four straight days. Those who remember say the programming was wild and kinda wacky, and the few precious recordings we have confirm that things did get pretty squirrelly.

21 years ago I had the opportunity to talk to Donald McCaig about his epic Civil War novel "Jacob's Ladder." He came through Dayton on his book tour and stopped at our studios that afternoon for a live interview. I was charmed.

He shared his fascinating personal story about how he had made the transition from a "Mad Men" style Madison Avenue advertising man to become a writer and a sheep rancher in rural Virginia.

And then there was the book; what a magnificent story he tells in "Jacob's Ladder." 21 years later it remains one of my favorite novels about our Civil War.

I wrote my recent annual almanack as a horoscope in nature. The word horoscope comes from two Greek words, hora, which means hour or time, and skopos, which means observer. The time observer is a horoscoper, and for the horoscoper  who watches the seasons, an “almanack horoscope in nature” can offer a useful guide to the galaxy as well as to one’s own neighborhood.

In The Emerald Tablet, an ancient text by Hermes Trismegistus, the author attempts to explain the astrological mysteries of the cosmos. The work contains the phrase: “As above, so below.”