Behind the Mic with Crystal Sarakas

testing, testing...

Have you ever been so busy that sometimes all you can do is just sit and stare because your brain won't accept anymore input?

I certainly have.

The latest piece in the Thinking Green series aired this past week. It should be up on the website soon (vacation took some needed people away so it's pending until they return). I'll post a link as soon as it's up. There are more Thinking Green pieces in the works - I'm hoping to visit a farm in August to see how some farms are actually converting manure into energy, then there are more pieces coming up on the local food movement, farmers markets, the Ithaca CarShare, green funerals and more and more. I'm loving the series and it's been really cool to see my co-workers start to make those little eco-friendly choices in their own lives. I've been stopped in the halls many times to answer questions about recycling and reusable grocery bags. At the July 4th gathering of my husband's family, some friends were quizzing me about straw bale houses and wanting to know where they can find out more information.

Speaking of recycling, producer Jennifer Matoney is taking an excursion from her work on the Expressions series on TV and is doing a few pieces on recycling for the radio series in July. We'll be working on the editing together next week and I think it's going to be a very insightful piece looking at the question of 'so, what happens to my recycling after they truck picks it up?' I'll be sure to update and let you know when it's going to air.

You may have noticed my voice on-the-air at a bizarre hour this past week. I've been filling in on Morning Edition (Gregory Keeler decided he deserved a vacation). It's been an interesting experience, mostly in turning my body-clock completely on its head. I'll be filling in for ME (that's the insider lingo for the show) Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Tuesday, I'm filling in as the guest host for Off the Page since Bill Jaker is off (what is up with that vacation thing anyway??). I'm looking forward to the program - I'll be interviewing Tim Gallagher from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology about his new book, Falcon Fever. You may know Tim's name from his previous Off the Page experience - Tim is one of the guys who reported  seeing the ivory-billed woodpecker in 2005 and subsequently wrote a book about the team's search for the ivory-billed woodpecker in The Grail Bird. His new book is about falconry, a sport he's been involved since he was a kid. It's a wonderful book and should be an excellent program.

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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.

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.