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Around the Nation
2:15 am
Sat November 3, 2012

Nation's Christmas Tree Plucked From Colorado

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Credit Luke Runyon for NPR
This year's Capitol Christmas Tree comes from White River National Forest in Northwest Colorado. The spruce is more than 70 feet tall.
Credit Luke Runyon for NPR
Santa Claus supervises as crews cut down the tree. To prevent the tree from falling over, the workers put a sling around it, then hoist it onto a flatbed truck.
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Originally published on Sat November 3, 2012 10:57 am

The undeniable smell of fresh-cut spruce filled the air Friday morning as crews crowded around the trunk of this year's Capitol Christmas Tree, prepping it for departure to Washington, D.C.

The task of finding this year's tree was left largely up to one man: Scott Fitzwilliams, forest supervisor for the White River National Forest in Colorado. In picking the tree, Fitzwilliams was asked to follow a few guidelines.

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Superstorm Sandy: Before, During And Beyond
2:15 am
Sat November 3, 2012

Lessons From Katrina Boost FEMA's Sandy Response

Credit Bebeto Matthews / AP
Victims of Superstorm Sandy wait in line to apply for recovery assistance at a FEMA processing center Friday on New York's Coney Island. The agency has been praised for its response to the storm.
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Originally published on Sat November 3, 2012 10:22 am

Following Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has received good grades from politicians and even some survivors of the storm. In part, that's due to lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.

For Staten Island resident Deb Smith, whose house was flooded by the storm surge from Sandy, FEMA has been a savior.

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Economy
2:15 am
Sat November 3, 2012

Divergent Labor Markets: Private Gains, Public Losses

Credit John Moore / Getty Images
Job applicants meet potential employers at the NYC Startup Job Fair in September. Last month, the private sector created jobs while the public sector resumed laying off workers.
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Originally published on Sat November 3, 2012 10:00 am

The last unemployment report before the election came out Friday, and the news was middling: Unemployment ticked up to 7.9 percent.

The private sector created more than 180,000 new jobs, but state and local governments resumed laying workers off. That discrepancy is part of a longer-term trend.

For a few years now, private sector employment has been growing, but since mid-2010, state and local governments have eliminated roughly half a million jobs.

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Superstorm Sandy: Before, During And Beyond
2:14 am
Sat November 3, 2012

Marathon Runners Wonder, Why Not Cancel Earlier?

Credit Louis Lanzano / AP
Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners, announces the cancellation of the maration Friday in New York with Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson (left) and George Hirsch, chairman of the board of New York Road Runners.
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Originally published on Sat November 3, 2012 9:48 am

For the first time since it began in 1970, the New York City Marathon will not take place.

Marathon officials and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had initially insisted that Sunday's race would go on despite the devastation caused by Sandy. But mounting opposition forced the organizers to change their minds Friday.

All week, the group that organizes the race, the New York Road Runners, kept saying the marathon would go on. But on Friday night, Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg made this announcement:

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Music News
11:03 pm
Fri November 2, 2012

Radio Tanzania: A Disappearing History On Tape

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Credit Jonathan Kalan
Radio Tanzania archivist Bruno Nanguka stands with just a few of the 15,000 reel-to-reel tapes stored in the station's archives.
Credit Courtesy of the Tanzania Heritage Project
Radio Tanzania was the country's only station from its birth in 1951 until the mid-1990s; its tape archives hold poetry, drama and speeches in addition to music.
Credit Courtesy of the Tanzania Heritage Project
"During the '60s, '70s and '80s, Tanzania had one of the most lively musical scenes in East Africa," Corey says. The music of that era is now referred to as zilipendwa — literally, "the ones that were loved."
Credit Courtesy of the Tanzania Heritage Project
As Tanzania's one-party system collapsed in the 1980s, the state media monopoly ended. Radio Tanzania became just another signal on the dial, which it remains today.
Credit Jonathan Kalan
Radio Tanzania archivist Bruno Nanguka stands with just a few of the 15,000 reel-to-reel tapes stored in the station's archives.
Credit Courtesy of the Tanzania Heritage Project
Rebecca Corey, a 25-year-old music lover from Athens, Ga., fell in love with Tanzania when she was 18 and visited the country to volunteer at an orphanage. Today, she leads the effort to save the Radio Tanzania tapes.
Credit Jonathan Kalan
Rebecca Corey, project director for the Tanzania Heritage Project, and archivist Bruno Nanguka are working to save Radio Tanzania's reel-to-reel tapes.
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Originally published on Sat November 3, 2012 4:10 pm

At the archives of Radio Tanzania, more than 15,000 reel-to-reel tapes are stacked in floor-to-ceiling shelves. Each band, musician and recording date is painstakingly notated. The tapes reside inside three musty rooms of the Tanzania Broadcasting Corp., which occupies the old brick-and-concrete BBC building in Dar es Salaam.

Radio Tanzania was the country's only station from its birth in 1951 until the mid-1990s, when competing stations came on the air and state-controlled radio became irrelevant.

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