This Week's Letter
March 12, 1977
<ADDRESS REDACTED>
Houston, TX 77019
KPFT Staff and Volunteers,
Here is another small chunk of cash to throw on the fire... a most well earned chunk of cash I should say. The station sounds good.
I hope your total energy and spiritual reserve are set on "full speed ahead." I hope everyone there is trying his or her best to work together.
Surmsa! (That means 'upwards!" you dummies).
Listening,
<REDACTED>
Editor's Note
Dated March 12, 1977, this letter seems fitting today, September 25, 2022.
KPFT returned to live broadcasting yesterday and is was sounding great. There's still much work to be done and for now the station is only doing live broadcasts for about 12 hours a day. That is a return to the earliest days of the station when they stopped transmitting when the last programmer went home for the evening.
In this clip, Wally James and Sandy Weinmann welcome The Mighty 90 back on the air....
Soon, KPFT will return to around-the-clock live broadcasts, but for now everyone is pulling together and pulling in the same direction to get the station back where it belongs.
This letter writer speaks to us across 45 years to remind us "full speed ahead," and "upwards!," ever upwards.
As always, comments, corrections, and additions are welcome. Contact Us
About The Mailbag
The letters posted here were among the boxes recovered from 419 Lovett Blvd, as documented in The Mighty 90 Project post and are reminiscent of the work done at Found Magazine and PostSecret. The vast majority of letters date from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, although some newer materials of more recent vintage have been supplied by programmers.
Historically KPFT would, on occasion, read letters on the air and in some cases the letter writers explicitly ask NOT to be so presented. Attitudes towards consent and personal privacy are very different in 2022 as compared to the time these letters were mailed and no one then writing could have imagined the modern internet, much less this type of public sharing.
Accordingly, whenever a letter has personally identifiable information from a correspondent it will be lightly redacted to protect the privacy of the original author.
