Boston Harbor Islands on Radio Boston

In case you missed it, Radio Boston—a weekly show on WBUR (the local NPR station)—did a show last month on the Boston Harbor Islands. Even without a visual medium, the program did a nice job in capturing the atmosphere of the islands and discussing some of the challenges in managing the National Park Area with a finite budget and resources. The show is archived on the Radio Boston web site and worth a listen. (Not to mention, one of my pictures of Boston Light is featured on the bottom of the page.)

They interviewed a number of the interesting personalities who are connected to the harbor and the islands, such as Sally Snowman, the first female keeper of Boston Light. There's a slide show with Sally on the Radio Boston web site that's interesting to listen to. (I interviewed Sally and a number of other people who appear on the program for the Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands guidebook, and they have such interesting stories to tell.) I was happy to see that Radio Boston also touched upon the future of the summer residents of Peddocks Island, the last remaining community on the islands.

I found this to be the most interesting factoid from the show: last year the Boston Harbor Islands attracted 85,000 people while Walden Pond attracted 650,000. Last time I checked, the islands were closer to most of the population of metropolitan Boston than Thoreau's old haunt out in Concord. So the islands hold plenty of potential; it's just a matter of tapping into it.