500 Edition 12 5/8" x 16 1/2"

Once or twice a day, radio stations in northern Alaska broadcast messages to people in the remote villages, a practice started when many villages lacked telephone service. All activity halts when the "Ptarmigan Telegraph" comes on and everyone gathers around the radio. In the ouse where I was listening to the Ptarmigan Telegraph in Shaktoolik, I noticed two-pound coffee cans hanging overhead - to catch the drips from the leaky ceiling, I was told.