Made/Bought

It's amazing how much work three minutes of audio can take. The interviewing (each time we pulled up to someone's house I really, truly did not want to get out and had to force myself with every fiber of my body), the transcribing, the rough cut, the music selection, the kinda rough cut, the finer cut, the final cut....we finally got our Radio Ephemera entry in at about one hour before deadline. The hardest part was reducing all the amazing stories down to the time alloted, especially when people had taken us into their homes - strangers! - and told us the most intimate, joyous, and heart-breaking moments in their life and I had to eye all this raw footage coldly and decide what "worked". Ouch. But I'm happy with the final result, and secretly, in my heart of hearts, I hope hope hope the judges are too. Should you care to listen, we're Item 72, "Family Tree", right here:

Besides making radio, I recently started a new job at a library and as luck would have it, a department that had been in the library forever moved to a new building and had a surplus sale of all their old goods. $5 a piece, cash and carry. It broke my heart that my husband was out of town because with an extra pair of hands and another driver I would have carted away much more. 50's and 60's era office furniture, the kind made in America with shiny chrome and bearing names like "Steel-All" are my vice. Look at the three chairs I scored (among other items). The sienna coloured steno chair and the orange shell chair are both swivel and rolling, to boot. I was dragging the red chair out on the elevator and an elderly and kind librarian gently informed me that it had been his first chair as a librarian, in 1969. Good librarian karma + sweet mid-century design - all for $15 bucks.