FUNKED UP:
Two weeks after the Friday Funk radio show was reportedly eliminated [SFR Talk, March 23: "Da Funk"]-along with its host Rocque Ranaldi-from the programming lineup at KBAC, 98.1 FM, the Funk is back. "The idea was to put it on hiatus for a while," Station Manager Ira Gordon says. "We wanted to see if it still had legs. I just wondered if after 10 years it had gone stale, if anyone cared that it was gone." Turns out, they did. Several listeners lobbied for the resurrection of "Freddie's Dead" and Gordon was happy to resuscitate the program when he took over the driver's seat of the Funk bus last Friday. "It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision," Gordon says. "I just decided to hang around and do it myself. I had filled in before-but it had been awhile." The quick turnaround took Ranaldi by surprise: "It just breaks my heart. I'm saddened. Upset. Frustrated. Lied to. They don't care about music over there and they care even less about people. Four years-that's a hell of a run playing whatever you want at a Clear Channel station-and you just get kicked in the teeth. Thanks for nothing." As for Gordon: "I created the show 10 years ago," he says. "Rocque was actually the fourth host…[and] we actually held it a couple weeks out of respect for [him]." But when KBAC brings back the Funk for good, Gordon says it will be with a yet-to-be-determined new host manning the controls. (ND)
WHOOP, THERE IT IS:
New Mexico ranks at the bottom of the heap when it comes to immunizations of children. And now this vaccine-phobic state may have yet another inoculation to elude. The Food and Drug Administration is in the process of approving two new vaccines to combat pertussis, or whooping cough. "We've been told by multiple federal agencies that the vaccines will likely be in use within a year," Chad Smelser, a New Mexico Department of Health medical epidemiologist, says. Though a vaccine targeting whooping cough is administered to small children, it appears that by the teen years the vaccine wears off. The result has been an increase of incidences of pertussis in teens and young adults. To stop the spread of whooping cough-an illness that debilitates victims and even kills them-the vaccines pending release have been designed specifically for teens and adults. "Adolescents and young adults may be the reservoir," Smelser says of pertussis. "They don't get too sick from it and they pass it among themselves and to younger kids." Smelser says the disease initiates with symptoms akin to those of the common cold but gradually becomes more severe, causing victims to cough in whoops. According to Smelser, whooping cough, which breaks out in three- to five-year cycles, has been a menace throughout the country. This is of grave concern because the disease may affect victims for months, causing them to miss chunks of school or work. Sometimes whooping cough kills. Smelser says last year there were about three pertussis-related deaths in New Mexico. Those who die from the disease usually do so from respiratory problems or pneumonia. Vaccines remain the best way to prevent incidences of whooping cough and the Department of Health will wage an immunization blitz of sorts when the new inoculations become available. "When that vaccination comes out there will be a concerted effort to stress the usefulness and the benefit of using the vaccine," Smelser says. (NK)
WHO WANTS TO KNOW:
Reporters file public records requests all the time to track down budget numbers, case files and the like. Outspoken citizen John Coventry also is no stranger to the laws governing public information. But a recent records request did not yield the information Coventry sought. He dropped by a copy of the response from the City Clerk's Office to his recent request, which reads:
Dear Mr. Coventry,
This letter is in response to your records request that was received in the City of Santa Fe Clerk's Office on March 30, 2005. We do not have any records available as to where the Mayor is.
Guess that means the Mayor doesn't have a calendar anymore. (JG)
