The Wind

This is part of a series featuring recordings of my Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed, for 5 consecutive posts. Link for photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp

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Name: Stovepipe Wind Harp

Recording: Recorded on dry lake bed, Fall 2025.

Construction: Made of a metal stovepipe: 4 strings, diamond shaped hole cut into face. Stovepipe salvaged from house fire.

Mix: Mostly Dry. EQ for wind noise, Hint of Reverb

Notes: This was my 2nd harp, and first to work well. I built it at the end of the episode “How to Build an Aeolian Harp.” Since initial construction, I added a string and have experimented with tunings. I’ve found that the sound has mellowed out over 3-4 years, sounding less distorted or ‘buzzy’. I hand cut aspen plugs to place inside the stovepipe, which is how the hardware is fastened to the body. Will sing pretty easily with a light breeze.

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Pictures and videos will be available here:

https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp

For the next 5 episodes, I’ll be playing audio of Aeolian harps (built by myself, Eleanor Qull and/or Michael Corbitt). The episodes will not include introductions or narration, so they’ll just be harp sound, with detailed information in the episode descriptions.

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The first harp sound will drop tomorrow, and then they’ll drop in every day this week.

Thanks for being here, and I hope you enjoy listening to the wind harps.

To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewind

Subscribe at thewind.org

Extra Extra!! From the banks of the Reese River, a newspaper that propped up a honest-to-goodness LIARS CLUB, no lie, and a story from the city who built itself on such falsehoods. The secret history of bitcoin? The Toiyabe Mole Man in the mines of ERN, NEVADA? The TRUE story of TOTAL LIARS and the history they invented for themselves, and for us. 

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A story about lies, hoaxes, squibs and narrative foundations poured directly on top of rock-hard truth in some places, yet in others, onto the shaky ground of an earth pocked with tunnels and holes

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Folks of many religious persuasions have ways of doing it, sometimes around or between temples, sometimes encircling specific mountains, like the Kora of Mt Kailash in Tibet.

In the 1960s, poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg began annual circumambulations of Mt. Tamalpais in the SF bay area. Snyder learned the practice from Zen Bhuddists in Japan, and the three explained their walk as “opening of the mountain.”

Though there is at least one Tibetan group that calls for a counter-clockwise direction, most clearly denote the clockwise movement an important directional distinction, to avoid throwing order into chaos.

So as the sky illuminates to the East I head clockwise, down the mountain.

Thank you to Michael P. Branch who read the Mark Twain passage (Highly recommend his book How to Cuss in Western) Mark Maynard, Eleanor Qull, Scott Mortimore, Mike Corbitt and all of the folks who’ve helped support the show this year, there are too many to list.MUSIC:

Two tracks from Haana Lee’s new album called Textures

Emily Pratt, who makes music as Howls Road

Friend of the show Yclept Insan

and a few tracks from the Public Domain through Free Music Archive.

Further reading: The Way Around by Nicholas Triolo • The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane • The Living Mountain by Nan Sheperd

Thank you for being here, and keep listening.

To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewind

Subscribe at thewind.org

Subscribe | Patreon | Website

I’ve been thinking about the radio

About the towers on the mountain

And the people far away who choose what’s on them.

Some Scared and angry and building bunkers, the men who own the ways we communicate,  all just a line item somewhere in the lowest dustiest corner of a spreadsheet.

Some of this thought path has been paved — the short postcard form of this program is now on a dozen terrestrial stations and counting. Though these are of course of the public radio variety, with different gate keepers.

Though the gates abound, it seems that swinging them open is more likely than pleasing the algorithms: the response controlled, non-human machine-learned attention-eating beasts that have snuck into our dining rooms, our living rooms our bedrooms, the place where I stack my

books.

But the place where my desk is, out in the mountains, still feels a bit untethered, even as I tether it with my presence. Likewise it is Not untouched, as there is no such thing, as it’s all touching each other all the time.

Here by default, the sound is an archive. The artisan well and all the willows that the out of place water has fostered, how the long grass it’s grown moves in the wind. The missing limbs and branches of trees long felled, the planes and cars and whirring of snow makers on distant but earshot mountains. All the story of the place in wave form

This year I’ve been digging into my own archives, examining the sounds I’ve collected, and assembling them in new ways. As the access to information feels increasingly precarious, flooded, owned, bent…I’ve been imagining new networks of distribution, looking for some that others have built; networks that flow both ways. I’ve been examining my own archive of ideas and audio and, somewhere on the edge of the landscape that the algorithms can just barely reach, I keep a folder of sounds it could never understand. What does wind —or a wind harp—or an idea that can’t quite be explained, what does that sound like to an artificial ear?

Probably nothing. But to us, it can sound like everything.

I’m Fil Corbitt

And this is year 6 of the wind

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!! More at https://www.futureecologies.net/ !!

Dear Wind Listeners. It’s the off season right now; currently working on Year 6 but I’m here to ask for a quick favor, and then play a guest episode from one of my favorite podcasts, Future Ecologies.

In this algorithmic big-tech world, it can be very difficult to find new listeners. For the last 5 years one of the ways I’ve been trying to reach new people is by turning to public radio. In addition to this long-form podcast here in the feed, I also make a 2-minute segment specifically for public radio. It’s called "Postcards from The Wind" and it airs on 7 stations now across the US, including on my home station KUNR in Reno. BUT, I’d really like to get Postcards on more stations, and that is where you come in.

I’m asking Wind Listeners to reach out to your local public radio station and request that they air Postcards from The Wind. If you’re up for helpin’ out with that, I will send a Wind Listener Patch and sticker as a thank you. Here’s how it works:

1. Email me: fil (at) thewind (dot) org

2. Use subject line “listener”, and include your mailing address.

3. I’ll send an envelope with a pre-stamped postcard and a form note to copy, plus a Wind patch + sticker enclosed. You will then copy that short form letter by hand, or write your own and address it to your local station.

4. Then drop the postcard in the mail.

That’s it. So if you’re up for helping out, send your mailing address to Fil AT thewind DOT ORG subject line listener.

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The guest piece in this episode comes from one of my all-time favorite shows, Future Ecologies (website here) You can subscribe to them in your podcast app, or HERE. This piece is called Cosmopoetics, and it's one of their episodes that has stuck with my long after listening. Hope it'll do the same for you.

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The end of Year 5 of The Wind. 

Thank you for being here // and keep listening.

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The Wind is a podcast from a desk in the mountains. This episode was recorded live in the woods as a self-titled sort of thesis.

This episode is also available as a video -- if you'd like to watch me read this piece at the desk, visit https://thewind.org or head to https://www.youtube.com/@thewind_podcast 

Thank you to everybody who made this season of The Wind possible. This episode features the voices of Irvin Jim Jr., Jennifer Runyon, Sandra Coutinho, and John Luther Adams.

This independent podcast is listener supported. If you’d like to join the community, head to www.Patreon.com/TheWind

Thank you for being here // and keep listening.

To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewind

Subscribe at thewind.org

This independent podcast is listener supported. If you'd like to help me make this show, visit https://patreon.com/thewind to set up a monthly donation.

Thank you to Dean Barlese for trusting me with this story. Also a big thank you to BC Zahn Nahtzu (a co-defendant in the case that also held a long-distance staring contest through binoculars with mine security. BC is an artist with an Etsy store here), Max Wilbert (a co-defendent who provided pictures), Olive Greenspan, Tara Tran, Ray Pang, Kate Cowie-Haskell, Taylor Wilson for talking to me about the chemical properties of Lithium and Daniel Rothberg for speaking about mining’s effect Great Basin water tables. Daniel has a newsletter called Western Water Notes which I highly recommend if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Also a shout out to the podcast Boomtown; a Uranium Story by Alec Cowan.

Tags, Topics and Mentions: Peehee Mu'huh, Thacker Pass, Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, Ox Sam Camp, Ox Sam, Protect Thacker Pass, People of Red Mountain, Snake War, Fort Mcdermitt, Nevada, Lithium, Lithium Mining, Protest against lithium mine, Dean Barlese, Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, Numaga, Pyramid Lake, Sand in a Whirlwind, Mountain Lion Harrah's Casino in Reno, Sagebrush, Mining, Lithium Carbonate, Winnemucca

To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewind

Subscribe at thewind.org

The sun sets over Sunset Boulevard; the palm trees silhouette. In the front garden of a big house off the main drag, the puppet show begins.

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This independent podcast is made with listener support. If you like to become a patron, head to patreon.com/thewind and set up a monthly donation.

A huge thank you to all of the residents of Ag Lago for speaking with me and for hosting me over the years. Reve, Jeremy, Vita, Josh, Donnie, Storai, Theo, Arden, Sarah and Eleanor. Also a big thanks to Emily, Spoorthi, Greyson, and all the folks that were part of the puppet show and the countless folks that were part of the Ag Lago community.

Music in this episode was Timex by pas Doo, thanks to Pat Mesiti-Miller for letting me use it, Deville by friend of the show Yclept Insan and 2 songs from the public domain, Auld Lang Syne performed by the Princes Band and this song Marionette by Felix Arndt. 

The chapter markers were read by the great Cal Bannerman of the podcast Stories from The Hearth. Highly recommended.

Photos, links and more at www.thewind.org/episodes/aglago

To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewind

Subscribe at thewind.org