I’ve been working on my trauma interview syllabus. I have a small stack of books and, so far, a half dozen pages of notes and ideas, this first part all about the considerate efforts one should undertake in the interview approach and process, and it is all quite fascinating,.
There are a few industry pros holding workshops with their peers on this sort of thing now. Anyone that’s had to do enough interviews following death notifications, or asked by their editors or producers to sit down with abuse or attack survivors has the beginning of this insight. Right now, though, it is hard-won experience handed down from people who are, most often, not practiced in psychology.
I can almost quote, verbatim, what I was taught about this in J-school, because it was quite brief. A professor said. “You’ll be told to interview someone who’s just lost a loved one. Ask the family members politely if they’d be willing to talk to you. Some people will want to talk with you. Some people will think you’re horrible. Accept whichever response you get, and know it isn’t personal.”
And that was it. It was the nineties.
There’s a lot more to this, a lot more particulars that students should understand. (There was never anything said, nothing at all, about the trauma reporters face and self-care.) If you think of the stories that reporters chase. Think of the places they often find themselves, this stuff will come up for them, and in a hurry.
That’s why I’m cobbling notes and dreaming up a syllabus. It could be useful, and so I look forward to pitching it. I hope I get to teach it one day.
Anyway, the office all day. The studio all night. Sports night there, so there was a lot of baseball talk. It’s the changing of the guard portion of the year. The seniors are getting ready to fly the coop, and the younger students are getting all the heavy lifting. What’s always amazing to me is how, each year, the rising seniors are all just that much better prepared, just that much more comfortable, for their new, bigger roles than the people that came before them.
And while those graduating seniors are now going over details of their contracts or are engaged in in-depth interviews, we’ve got rising sophomores who are ready to take on the world, to say nothing of some rising juniors who are industry ready, right now.
The day-to-day stuff is fine enough, but watching and charting that progress of students, following them as their skills, and their confidence, grows, that’s gratifying stuff.
I always feel like this in the springtime, the bloom of pride in the observation of self-recognition. It’s probably something to do with the flowers.
Happy Monday from the cats. Phoebe is enjoying the sun. We’ve had our share of clear skies the last few days and they’re both taking full advantage. A sun-warmed furry cat sits in her own realm of indulgence.
Poseidon also wishes you a Happy Monday. And he would like you to know that, for all of the times I tell him I outwit him because I am bigger and smarter, he is now taller than me. Way, way taller than me.
He’ll rub it in for days.
So the cats are doing great, thanks.
We went out for a bike ride this weekend. Twice, actually. Two of my three weekend rides, were outside.
These were rides two and three outdoors this year. Still low enough to count, and a late start owing to a combination of weather, my schedule(s) and my lovely bride working her way back into riding outside. These were her second and third rides on the road since her horrific crash last September.
So rare and novel, it still feels like going outside is getting away with something.
I remember, just after her surgery at the end of September, after a week of zero sleep for either of us, the surgeon came out to tell me she did well. He taught me a new word and said they’d send for me when I could go back to sit with her. While I waited, I called my mother-in-law, giving the good news, trying to reassure, being chipper. I called my mom, too. Both of them, being thoughtful moms, asked me how I was doing. I told her mom I was great: all systems go, taking care of your daughter, looking forward to seeing you soon. To my mother, I heard myself, a bit more candidly, say that, after a week of worry and sympathetic grimacing and no sleep and a fair amount of stress that “I could really use a bike ride.” Seemed selfish then, and in retrospect. My mom took the ‘You have to take care of yourself too,’ approach, which was welcome.
That was on September 29th of last year. I spent the next two weeks and change hovering over the convalescing patient. Three-and-a-half weeks after her crash I got on my bike again — riding part of the same route she’d been on — which wasn’t spooky at all. Between the rest of October and November, recovery, catching up on stuff and so on, I got in four more road rides before the weather turned. (I looked that up on the app and I am surprised the count was that high.)
Last month, on a picturesque weekend day, she wanted to ride outside. We pedaled around the neighborhood for a few minutes, going slowly, averaging just 10 miles per hour. A tentative toe in tepid water.
Saturday, after months of rehab — her ribs and shoulder blade are much better and her collarbone is finally starting to heal six months later — she decided to try riding on asphalt again. I can speak to this firsthand. As much as the physical, it’s a mental progression from riding on a trainer to dealing with wind and noise and cars and bumps. It takes a while to feel like yourself, and some more time after that to approach comfortable. She’s right on schedule, which is to say her schedule.
So Saturday, after I’d already spun out 33 miles on the trainer, we went out for a rambling 17-mile ride around the neighborhood. This is odd, because she always knows where she’s riding, but it was great, because there’s something magically freeing about riding aimlessly. No timers, no zones, no watts, just a bike ride.
Then, yesterday, another beautiful afternoon, we rode the winery route, doing four circuits of the 6.6 mile lap. It’s a quiet set of roads, loosely rectangular, with the interstate running alongside. It’s a good place to stretch out your legs. I asked her, after the first lap, how she was doing. She knew I was asking how it felt and how comfortable she was. She said she was doing OK. There weren’t a lot of cars around to bother us, just as we’d hoped, so she could concentrate on all of the rest of it. So she was concentrating on how her legs were feeling. She was frustrated, feeling sluggish, despite riding on her trainer all winter.
Reaching for an explanation, I said “You rode yesterday. And you know it’s always a little different, going from the trainer to the road. Plus this wind is everywhere.”
There’s a windmill at the top end of that route, and I watched it go around and around each time we went by. We were in a cross-head-cross-wind all the way around.
Then, for a few moments on the second lap, she found her legs. Her form straightened out, her legs took on the familiar form, the one that tells me I have to chase. And so I did, setting a two-lap PR for my efforts.
And now my legs are a bit tired.
I am now three CDs behind on the Re-Listening project. We’ve just worked our way through a stretch of really good jazz, and this next little bit is a comparative step down. An embarrassing step down, perhaps. Let’s just grin and get it over with it.
These guys got discovered in Australia at 15. Their five studio albums have moved more than 10 million units over the years. Their second record got a lot of play on MTV and alt radio, and Neon Ballroom is their third release, at the ripe old age of … 19. It topped the chart in Australia, where it went platinum three times. It also went to number one on the UK rock and metal chart. It climbed all the way to the 50th slot on the Billboard Hot 200 here, and is certified gold. It is one of those efforts that defines a little slice of 1999.
Also, and again, they were 19.
The very pointy tip of the millennial angst spear, we just didn’t think about them in marketing terms at the time.
I’m not sure I ever listened to this much, for whatever reason. A lot of it still feels new, even if it is a little dated two decades later.
Those guys went through some stuff, sadly unsurprising, perhaps, considering the attention they earned so young. They released two more records in the next seven years. After some on-again, off-again the guys split up for good in 2011.
And then there’s Sugar Ray, which was a station giveaway. I never listened to this thing. It was … not for me when I got it, and I was glad it was a freebie. That the three singles got nearly maximum plays across 1999 didn’t help.
Though this track did feature KRS-One.
And they covered a Steve Miller classic.
I’d entirely forgotten that track was on here until I played this disc the other day. As I said, I never listened to this.
Up next in the Re-Listening project, something I actually purchased, and enjoyed!
Friday / photo — Comments Off on Three quarters 7 Apr 23
Today started last night, at 10:55, because I checked my email at 11:32 p.m. And then the day began anew just before 8 a.m. with what had to be the loudest clap of thunder not recorded directly below a lightning bolt. A bit later, I drove past a duplex that was fully ablaze. First, I saw a big plume of smoke, around a curve. When I drove by, a quarter-mile or so later, the police had just arrived. The roof of the building was already gone.
The local paper tells us that the residents were evacuated and no one was hurt. But it was a substantial fire, taking the BFD about three hours to put it out.
At work, work stuff, and the view was this:
A perfect day for more jazz!
At this prolific rate of the Re-Listening project, we are now only three CDs behind, and as I’m working my way through this in the order of acquisition, I know we are somewhere in 1998 right now. Acquisition is an important term here, because this is one of those that I impulsively picked up from a giveaway table. It is a sampler, and I can find no reference to this compilation on the web which is … weird.
So, look out the window, stare at the rain drops or the sunshine or the stuff in between, and press play. Or, if you don’t have exceptional peripheral vision, press play, and then stare out the window.
Tony Gil has one of those voices that makes you wonder why you haven’t heard of him. And after 10 minutes of searching, I wonder why I can’t find out much about him. I can tell you this song appears on the Felix Grant tribute record, which won The Washington Area Music Association’s album of the year. No small feat there, as it is an organization that represents the whole area.
Paula West has been singing for three-plus decades at this point, she’s still singing across the country and the record on which “Peel Me A Grape” appeared recently got a retrospective review from The New Yorker.
I’ve confessed to my inability to properly appreciate or express anything about jazz music. But when I think of what a jazz singer should sound like, I always hear Cleve Douglass in my head. If there was nothing else on this sampler, there would be that.
But there’s a lot more! There’s Mark Rosier. On the record that spawned this song, an independent release, he played all of the guitars, all of the piano, all of the keyboards and some of the percussion. Born in New York, he found himself in Texas by way of Florida, and then charmed the locals and the tourists with his music across the White Mountains in New Hampshire and in clubs in Maine. He died in 2020, after a long bout with cancer.
Everything on this CD is worth a listen, and I wish I could share the whole thing with you. But, instead, here’s the track listing. Pick out some of these things and dig for them.
Tony Gil – I’m Old Fashioned
Maua – Devil May Care
Pam Bricker – Long As You’re Lookin’ Good
Paula West – Peel Me A Grape
Cleve Douglass – Woman
Hinda Hoffman – I Just Found Out About Love
Donna Smith & The Vintage Jazz Quartet – Get it Straight
Valucha – Voce
Sally Richards – Old Devil Moon
Jass Street Station – El Ritmo de Amour Fred Sokolow Jazz Quarter – Delilah
Karen Moore – What a Little Moonlight Can Do
Tony Gil – No Me Platiques Mas
Suzy Nelson – Am I Blue Rose Russo – Uptown Baby
Mark Rosier – I’m Just a Memory
Steve Bulmer’s Kinetic Jazz Band – Just Friends
I was on that last track, from Steve Bulmer — who, today, teaches bass at UConn — and wondering if people have spent the time and effort to create some of universally accepted spectrum of jazz. You know, ranging from the deeply important things I’ve never heard of all the way across to the stuff you might hear at a grocery store, or on hold music. There have to be lists like this, and most of them not at all derivative. And where, I wondered, would I place some of these songs, because they are just different enough. The originals, the covers, the playful stuff, the smooth and easy and the best representations of the art form, all of it. Or most of it anyway. And where would I slot in this song or that song? Then I heard the jazz violin, and now I have a new rabbit hole to explore.
The rain moved out late in the afternoon and the clouds, which hung around for a few hours, thinned. Suddenly, the light went from diffuse to directly sunny, and then it was time to go into the studio. On the third of four late days this week, I left just in time to catch a bit of the sunset.
The timestamp on that photo is 8:25. Tomorrow, another late night in the studio, but I’ll be out of the office by 7:30. The long days of the coming season are always preceded by some long nights of the present.
Today was the first of four, no, perhaps, five late days in a row. It’ll be a long week. But it won’t feel like it, until it does, which will probably be … Wednesday.
I walked outside twice today. Once, in the middle of the day for a reason I’ve already forgotten. And then, in the evening at about 7:45. (As I said, long week.) This was the first day of the year I’ve been surprised by how warm it was when I took that step across the threshold. And then I wondered why I couldn’t conduct today’s meetings, and emails and all of the rest, outdoors, under a tree.
Tomorrow it will be a mind-boggling sunny and 82 degrees. Wednesday, rainy and 72. Then the 50s and 60s into next week.
Spring officially begins in 16 days.
Time to return to the most popular feature on the site, the weekly check with the kitties.
Phoebe has re-discovered the guest room, and a great place to hide from me before I head out in the morning.
What doesn’t make so much sense is how habitual she is. This is the time of morning when she should be sunning herself in a window — she will wait in our bedroom until we open the heavy curtains, because she knows where the sun is — but this room, the guest room, faces the west.
Poseidon was cold this weekend. And shy.
He also was able to wriggle his way into forcing me out of that chair, which was an impressive feat for a 10-pound cat.
I finished the Willie Morris memoir this weekend. He took a plane from New York back to Texas, to speak at his alma mater, and then drove over to his home in Mississippi. His little boy in tow, seeing the old places with his mother and grandmother, and then, the next morning, he caught a plane back to New York. An altogether unsatisfying ending, but that’s a memoir at 31, for you.
Still, some 36 pages before the end, this is the part that has stuck with me.
So I started, yesterday, a journal by the poet May Sarton. A local author I know quoted her last summer on the anniversary of her death. “Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.” I did a little research and bought four of her books, her journals, just on the basis of that quote. I’m now on the second of those four books, a year of dear diary of a woman trying to figure out life, herself, her poetry and her gardening. But around all of that she will make you sit up and re-read a passage now and again, like this one.
I figure I should read a month at a time, and in two weeks I’ll need another book.
Another book to go with Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, which I also started this weekend. This is a 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner, and I am reading it on my Kindle, where I have a collection of dozens of books waiting for me.
I need to read more books, and so I will.
Believe it or not, we are still playing catch up on the Re-Listening project. I am playing all of my CDs, in order, in the car, and I am woefully behind in writing about them here. These aren’t reviews, just for fun and, sometimes, memories. And, at this point in 1997, we are entering a jazz phase.
And there’s some really good jazz in here. Up first, is a 1993 record from Jay Thomas, a multi-instrumentalist, with, now, 50 years of music on the books. Even back then, he’d been at it for a long time. You can hear him playing trumpet or flugelhorn or alto, tenor, or soprano, or flutes on more than 100 records. He’s fronted almost two dozen of his own. And you may not know his work, if you, like me, aren’t deep into jazz, but you’ve heard it. He shows up in commercials and movie scores quite a bit, too.
That’s the title track Blues for McVoughty. I wish I could say I had a good ear for jazz as a young guy, but I picked this up by chance off the giveaway table.
Somehow, sadly, most of this record hasn’t been uploaded to YouTube, but if you need an entry point to jazz, or easy atmosphere, or need to know what all the cool jazz aficionados were listening to in the 1990s, this is a fine place to start.
I am sure I picked this up to add something more sophisticated and mature to my collection. Can’t imagine why, though. And we’ll have two more jazz records back-to-back in our next installment(s) of the Re-Listening project.
For now, enjoy some of this nice weather, before it grows stormy again mid-week.
