Behind the Mic with Crystal Sarakas

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I'm a somewhat fanatical news listener when it comes to NPR news. I listen so much at work and at home, anytime I get into the car and even when we're on vacation, I'm finding the local NPR station so I can tune in. Even so, and probably more so because of the sheer number of hours that I listen, I find that it really takes a lot these days for a story to stop me in my tracks and make me pause everything I'm doing and just listen.

That's happened to me twice in the last week. Last Monday, I was absolutely transfixed by the This American Life episode about the housing crisis. While I've certainly followed the story in the news the past few months, this particular program was one of the most educational (and appalling as I learned some of what was behind the mortgage crisis) episodes I've heard on This American Life. I highly recommend it.

The other story came today during All Things Considered. Hours later, it's still very much with me and I'm not entirely sure I know how I feel about it. It's the segment with Melissa Block, who follows a couple in Dujiangyan frantically trying to get an excavator to a collapsed apartment building, looking for their parents and their son. She interviews and follows the couple as the search takes place, and then, she's still recording as word comes back that those searching have found bodies.

The sound from that story is haunting. When I heard it this afternoon, I was in the middle of prepping for my own work during ATC and I just stopped and sat at my desk and listened. And cried.

There has been a lot of talk in various online places about how all the NPR reporters got to China so quickly to send all this coverage back. The truth is that those reporters have been in China for a few weeks, doing stories and blogging in preparation for the Olympics. It was supposed to be an entirely different story. They just happened to be there when this massive earthquake hit. 15,000 dead so far - which is something I just can't picture. There's no real world experience in my life that gives me any way to imagine it. But what I can picture is that one couple, waiting for hours only to find out that their family is gone. I'm not sure that mental image will every go away.

Excuses, excuses...

Monday's Music will return next week after an unexpected hiatus. I wish the hiatus had happened because I was off on vacation (preferably either buried in London bookshops or watching whales off the coast of Alaska) but the real story is much less interesting - I've just been that busy.

In the meantime, I want to point you to NPR's Song of the Day site. I've added their listing to my RSS feed and have been introduced to a lot of really cool new-to-me tunes. That's where I discovered Vienna Teng and where I finally got over my distrust of the hype and checked out Band Of Horses (note to fellow skeptics: the hype may be spot on for a change).

In the meantime, I'd love to know who you're listening to these days. I'm always looking for new tunes to add to my daily playlist.

Going green...

A couple of months ago, Ken Campbell (our fearless leader in radio) and I sat down to talk about my latest idea for a series. We had been kicking around the idea of doing something relating to climate change and the environment that would be of special interest to listeners in our region. Those discussions have turned into Thinking Green, which launched on Earth Day (April 22) with a call-in show that I hosted.

More pieces are in the works and there's a number of green-related news articles going up over on Everyday Thinking, the science and nature blog. But I also wanted to work on this series on a more personal level and decided that I would blog about the changes I'm making in my personal life that I hope will have a positive impact on the environment.

My good friend, Laura Intscher, is what I call my personal 'green guru.' She was one of the guests on the Thinking Green call-in program and is very inspirational in that she really walks her talk when it comes to living green. We sat down together to make a list of the things I could do that would have a big impact but that would also meet my own needs and abilities:

Stop using plastic grocery bags.
Change over all my lightbulbs to CFLs.
Stop buying bottled water.
Buy local foods.
Recycle a lot more.

It seems like such a small list but it has the potential to have a fairly large impact. I'll be blogging on this topic a few times each month and I'll share what I've learned along the way as I work to meet each of my green goals.

Stay tuned to WSKG Radio for our series as we look at various things you can do that will have a positive impact on our enviroment, and be sure to read the Thinking Green series on Everyday Thinking, the science and nature blog. If you'd like to join in as a guest blogger, send me an email.

The best idea since sliced bread...

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm an avid reader. I'm also faced with the problem of not having enough space for all the books I buy, and the annoying realization that I might spend too much money on books. I frequent the library quite often, but there are a lot of books and authors that I enjoy that aren't found at the local libraries.

So imagine my giddiness when I discovered Paperspine.* It's Netflix, but for books. The subscription prices are very reasonable - even the most expensive tier is less than what I spend per month on books. I spent some time last night comparing my 'I want to read this but the libraries don't have it and I'm not sure about buying it' list to what's available on Paperspine. Out of 20 books I compared, only 4 weren't available. It looks like Paperspine is only doing paperbacks or trade paperbacks right now, but they say they're looking at a hardcover plan too.

I think I may have found an answer to the space/money issues. I'm all excited. I'll let you know how it goes.

*Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of this company. I have no idea how well it works so if it's something you find you're interested in, please do your own research and such. But if you do join, let's see if there's a friends option where we can compare reading lists.

A little pride ...

I'm really pleased with tonight's show. I experimented with putting it together in a different way (I won't bore you with the technical details) and as I was editing it, really paid attention to the flow from one song to the next. I love it when a song sounds like a natural progression from the track before, even though it's a different artist and CD.

Wow. I am a radio geek.

I got to play a track from a CD I've been listening to a lot lately - In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2. This came to the station last month and since I'm a big fan of both U2 and of African music in general, I grabbed it. It's a pretty varied list of performers - Angelique Kidjo performs Mysterious Ways, Vieux Farka Toure performs Bullet the Blue Sky, Tony Allen (a Nigerian performer) does his version of Where the Streets Have No Name. I played my favorite track from the CD on the show tonight - the Soweto Gospel Choir performing Pride (In the Name of Love). That's one of my favorite U2 songs and I love the African gospel choir version of it. I also have a feeling I'll be ordering a few CDs by the Soweto Gospel Choir very, very soon.

I also like the liner notes for this album, which is a rarity for me since I seldom even look at liner notes. Each track has a write-up about the artist performing, and includes a little fact sheet about the country in Africa that the artist comes from. I definitely recommend this one if you like the sound of U2 with an African musical approach. Here's a video talking about the album with some samples of the music.

sploosh!

You can find such cool things on the internet. That and I'm very easily entertained.

Go for the Green - last chance!

I'm going to be on-air tonight for the last few hours of our 'Go for the Green' pledge drive so I won't have time to put together a Monday's Music article for you. That will return next Monday with a look at a wonderful indie-pop singer who plays frequently in the area.

In the meantime, here's a very cool ambient video I found on YouTube. And if you haven't contributed to the 'Go for the Green' drive, please do so. We're so close to our goal and every dollar counts.

Monday's Music: Ellis Paul

I was down in Philadelphia this past weekend to see Ray Davies in a concert at the Tower Theatre. We met up with some friends before the concert at a little bar across the street from the theater (I highly recommend their cheesesteaks!).  Somewhere in the course of our conversation, the name 'Ellis Paul' came up and caught the ears of the man sitting at the table next to us. He came over to say that he was a big fan of Ellis and spent a few moments talking to us about how much he enjoyed his music and  that he'd seen him several times in concert and always had a great time.

That kind of word-of-mouth appeal isn't something new to Ellis Paul. Over the past two decades, he's amassed quite a following and has performed with the very cream of the folk circuit crop. He was a major force in the folk revival of the early 90s and is one of the performers known as the  "Boston songwriters," a name that refers to the 'introspective and literate breed of  singer-songwriter' that was so prevalent in the thriving folk landscape out of Boston, MA.

In 2002, Ellis became friends with Nora Guthrie, daughter of folk icon, Woody Guthrie. That friendship led to an invitation to visit the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives where he was invited to choose one set of lyrics to put to song. Ellis chose "God's Promise," which Guthrie had adapted in 1955 from "What God Hath Promised." Ellis put the lyrics to music and the result, "God's Promise," has become one of my all-time favorite songs. He performed it last year at the Colorscape Chenango Arts Festival and if there had been a house to bring down, this song would have done it.

His songwriting definitely flirts with a pop sound, but remains remarkably intelligent and down-to-earth. In 2006, he released the 2-CD Ellis Paul Essentials, which spans his 15-year career and contains some songs that were sure picks and others that were chosen by polls of his fans on his website and message board. In January 2008, he released The Dragonfly Races, a family and children's album inspired by the birth of his second daughter.

Ellis Paul will be performing at the Night Eagle Cafe in Binghamton this Friday night, April 11th, at 8 p.m. He'll also be performing a special children's concert on Saturday, April 12th at 10:30 a.m.

Today's lesson...

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.  ~Clay P. Bedford

I've recently rediscovered my fascination with encyclopedias.

I grew up with the massive collection of encyclopedias in my parents home that were sadly outdated by the time I was old enough to appreciate them. They became a fun past time when I was bored, and helped foster a lifelong interest in vintage photographs (vintage sounds so much nicer than 'old').

When I moved out of my parents home, that interest faded a bit. I was going through old files on my computer the other night, and was delighted to find a complete edition of World Book on the machine (I purchased it from a friend a couple of years ago and he must have left it on there for me). This led to a very happy couple of hours of flipping through the files and being amazed at how what used to be shelves full of books is now available at the touch of a keystroke anytime I want to look.

I especially enjoy looking up dates to see what happened on a particular day in history. Today, for example, marks the following events:

240 BC - the first recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
1867 - the purchase of "Seward's Folly" for $7.2 million
1954 - the Yonge Street subway line opens in Toronto. It's the first subway in Canada.

That's among many, many others. And on the list of people who were born on March 30th is Anna Sewell, author of one of my all-time beloved books, Black Beauty. And speaking of horses, the great racehorse Secretariat was also born on March 30th.

If you like "today in history" kind of things, the New York Times has On This Day, complete with reproductions of the front page of the paper. Today is the anniversary of the shooting of President Ronald Reagan back in 1981.

What have you learned today?

Link-fu: Treating a mugger right, and Ray Davies DJ's on NPR Music

There were two interesting stories that grabbed my eye on NPR's website this week.

One is the story of  Julio Diaz, one of the most recent StoryCorps folk, who tells his story of treating a mugger "right." I've seen links to this particular entry of StoryCorps popping up all over the blogosphere and people seem to be reacting very strongly (and mostly positive) towards it. Note: the audio is slightly weird here, and sounds like its been sped up a bit. I'll have to email around and see if I can figure out what's up with that.

Item the second is that Ray Davies (frontman for The Kinks) did a DJ stint on NPR Music with host Bob Boilen. His set includes some of the songs that have inspired him over the years, with music from Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry as well as music from his new release, Working Man's Cafe. I'm heading down to the Philly area next Saturday to catch his performance at the Tower Theatre - I think I'll save this audio to the iPod to listen to on the drive down.

Here's a link to past appearances by Ray Davies on various NPR shows.

And for today's six degrees of something moment: both Julio Diaz and Ray Davies have encountered a mugger, but with very different results. Mr. Diaz seems to have had a benign encounter and quite possibly made a difference in a young teen's life. Mr. Davies, unfortunately, was shot after he chased the mugger who stole his companion's purse. The injury was more severe than was reported at the time,  but he did recover. His latest CD, Working Man's Cafe, contains a number of songs that seem to have sprung from this experience, resulting in some of the most personal and introspective songwriting yet from this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.