So, when you drive 24+ hours over a few days, you get a chance to listen to the radio a lot. Thank heavens we got Sirius installed in my car again, because that was a real life-saver. Sirius recently quietly added a couple of channels that we really enjoyed: Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s CBC1 and CBC3 (alt-rock), as well as Iceberg Radio (all-Canadian alt-pop) and a couple of francophone channels. For listening to music we kept it mostly on Iceberg, which had a good mix in spite of their predilection for old Rush songs. CBC1 had some great programming, too, including The Current (“The Voice” can read the phone book to me any day!) and National Playlist, hosted by former Moxy Fruvian Jian Ghomeshi).

We came across the show Ideas (which I later found is rebroadcast on PRI) and caught a truly amazing two-part documentary on Christmas Mummers. If all you know of mummers is the Philadelphia Mummer’s Parade, you’re in for a surprise when you find out the roots of the tradition. Both parts of the documentary are downloadable from the Battery Radio website (alas, only with Realplayer, though). It’s a wonderful example of folk traditions traveling across the ocean and changing with the times.

Of particular furry interest was the segment at the beginning of the second hour where they talk about the hobby horse, which in this context is far different from the tame toy we know – it’s a menacing, mad creature. They interview one of the hobbyhorsers and he says (paraphrasing) that when he plays the hobby horse, he’s a different person – he does what the horse wants, not the other way around. This made me smile a bit, thinking of fursuiters we all know. If you have a chance, I urge you to click and listen to the show, though – it’s a great documentary, and a little-known topic.