I don’t know this author or his work – if I did, I might be more interested in his telling of his life in Asia and how he researches. But because I can’t imagine the work, I found the piece to be missing the anchor to draw me in – the true flavor of the writing. He talks about finding characters, first abstractly, then obliquely referring to several tantalizing situations - but I just couldn’t pull it all together to be drawn in – although I did go to the website to try and get some context. Perhaps the piece should start with a well-produced reading from one of his books. Also – I listened to the piece three times – once in download and once as streaming – and besides a lot of P-popping and one very unfortunate edit – there was also a technical problem of another voice coming in behind Moore’s own reading.

The idea of extremely diverse people in a community meeting and colliding in a courtyard in a radio serial (or “soap”) is to me a very attractive one. The US doesn’t have a successful, listener-magnet of a radio soap opera like The Archers in Britain – and it could. And it could be peopled with the beautiful mosiac of our country. But I had a real problem with the didacticism of this one – and its sound. Almost all the actors sound as if they’re reading – and not well. Example: one line declaimed, then another line. You can hear the places in the script where an actor is supposed to be cut off like in normal conversation, and they just stopped speaking. There were a couple of performers with a spark of life - which only made them sound like souls wandering in a forest of dead trees. I know that bringing together a variety of intonations that sound different to different speakers is challenging – the only answer is to solicit the collaboration of the various speakers to help each person find a believable performance – try improvisation, try consulting various pairs of ears, try workshopping, anything. Because it could work - but for now, this interesting project is all happening in the mission statement and not in the ear of the listener.

This is part literary program (focusing on Jonathan Safran Foer, who appears in the program) and part cultural sound essay - but it is all parts elegance, eloquence and soul. For stations that still use reference tones - or trust a fine CD to capture the most delicate beginnings as an audience holds its breath and the orchestra begins. I only wish I'd written about it well before September 11 - but never mind - no hook required.

TRES FORT! Very noisy in the best of all possible ways. Who still alive remembers the swamp of noise from which it all came? And what will those not yet here be born into? Run this for fine arts listening -- with Jonathan Mitchell's brilliant "Vinyl" - but don't forget to place a little something quiet in between to cleanse the ear-palate. Love, Pretentious and Proud of It

The piece is really simple – a good interview, well-recorded, introduced and obviously extremely well-edited. This young woman is really eloquent on the matter of wearing the headscarf – which is under hot debate in Europe – as well as hr view of her hairdresser profession. She couldn’t state her case with more directness, dignity and conviction. I was interested in knowing a little more context – how long has she been a Muslim – was it just reading about it that attracted her? But perhaps that doesn’t matter. We need to keep a voice like this one out there.

He insists he's a vampire and she insists she's a therapist – there are also a couple of other characters and some atmospheric sound as punctuation. I think the story is quite fun to listen to. Radio plays consisting of close dialog in a room can hold the attention pretty well if the writing is intriguing – and this writing is good and often rather literary – adapted by the author from her own book. Eavesdropping on these sessions as well as the therapist’s problems outside them is entertaining late night fare – especially on Halloween, which is coming right up! (Attention: language advisory called for, I think) However, I feel duty bound to reflect on the performances (apparently it’s my thing): the two leads have VERY attractive voices. The woman is particularly sexy. They needed to work against the cosmetic qualities of their voices and “lift it off the page” with more energy and intensity. I find myself wondering why she’s so flirty in the first session. He’s controlled and – well – alittle announcer-ish. This is a play of 80 minutes – at the end it gets pretty hot – they needed to find more range at the beginning to be able to make it for the long haul. I believed the ending – which may make up for a lot – but there were too other parts I didn’t.

In this short excerpt he explains exactly and clearly - how he did what he did – following the voices of his characters – and saying, since most people are anxious to talk and talk out loud about how they see the world – aren’t we all though? and Wilson just listened – and not granting dignity to those lives over ten centuries but revealing their dignity for the world to see. And what an ear he had! I recorded Wilson for one of my very first “professional” interviews for a radio piece that never aired (pretty much because I didn’t know what I was doing and couldn’t “track and ac”). Wilson was just starting out too and was taken by surprise that anyone wanted to talk to him. “Me? I’m just a cook.” It was at the O’Neill Playwriting Conference in the cafeteria and he was workshopping Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I remember he seemed a bit distracted – and he said, “Well, you see, I just realized that I’ve written a play where a guy gets killed and so it’s my fault.” This excerpt from New Letters slips that curious comment from 20 years ago into perspective. I can’t find my own tape but this one is so much better. It’s so wonderful to hear his voice. Drop, drop, drop-in and away!

When something like Katrina happens – we hear about it night and day – yes, even in Europe, so far away, it remains the lead story for days and days. But at the end of each day you’ve learned less than nothing from the bite-sized media chunks orchestrated by editors that we don’t see or even trust any more. From the diary of Anne Frank to the slave narratives to the poems of WWI soldiers to: THIS PROGRAM! There has never been any substitute for witness. Giving a soul at least twenty minutes each - it makes a difference. I realize I haven’t heard as many TAL programs as other public radio listeners have. I’m going to listen more often – I hope I can count on this show to stay out there at those inevitable crucial moments in the future.

Several young people interview each other about what they do in their leisure time. It’s nicely produced with many charming moments – young girls shopping, a boy looking for girls, a dedicated violinist. However, I felt strongly that too much material had been included – a boy looking for girls is funny, but when he meets one, he takes the mike and does a less-than-interesting interview. The recording with the violinist meanders along, with her talking about everything including riding the bus and then she suddenly mentions she once sat next to a homeless person – a striking moment - I then start getting an overall picture of how young people can spend their youth disconnected from the realities of the world at large – a possible theme! The piece ends with a cogent interview with an expert about the role of leisure in our lives today and I wondered why this interview did not inform the rest of the program. It was not until I went on the website to read about this project that I understood that it was a workshop for high school students learning to do radio. While reading I became very impressed by the students – they did a good job considering it was the first time – but standing alone as a broadcast offering, this piece needs an overall editor to cut down some of that material and to shape it. Plus after deducting the time of the prx announcement, the show comes in at about 30:50, which, from what I know, is an almost impossible broadcast length for programmers.

It’s an important subject – and I hope stations take advantage of October as World Blindness Awareness month. (aside: I listen to a show for visually-impaired people on BBC Radio 4 over here – and they did a survey and found out they had a large number of sighted listeners – like me – because the experiences of blind people are interesting!) Now here’s my problem as a listener - it did not get or hold my attention. The carefully read and written copy, the professionally collected and edited interviews are moving past me like the usual wallpaper. Sorry the listener has been harsh. Now the producer (not a journalist exactly, but a producer) will push that listener aside and attempt to offer some constructive (I hope) reasoning. What’s the essential point? People’s attitudes towards blindness? They’re not getting jobs – even though they’re qualified? You decide. But rather than sprinkle the points all over the place, its better to begin the piece with piece of actuality (or copy, but it has to get my attention) that communicates what it must on every level (the way it sounds as well as what it says). Draw us in. You need to organize all those speakers so I can hold in my ear who they are. Then take us on an arc we can follow. It’s not about turning the news into show business. (We don’t need more of that, do we?) It’s about understanding how people listen, and forming, shaping, and sharpening the arrow of your own truth so that it hits it’s mark.

A pure delight. Katie Davis hosts an hour of material revolving around the teacher/student experience while contributing some lovely work of her own – as well as providing a slice of her own life. The program actually misted me up with a kind of double pride. One, because I’ll be going back to class at the university in a couple of weeks, and hope I don’t forget to keep trying to be the kind of teacher portrayed in two of the pieces; and secondly, I’m proud of my fellow producers being showcased here. These days, what with podcasting and audio blogging out there, audio production can be just about anything – which carries its own kind of immediacy and excitement, I don’t knock it. But this is so solid – I hope THIS brand of care and professionalism will never be thought of as Old School.

I listened to this piece several times, deciding, if I just heard on the radio, in passing, in the car, say, I would have been very intrigued - would have marvelled at the iconic personality of the man interviewed, the astonishing moments in word and voice – my interest piqued by the appearance of the son. What a great idea, a Bible salesman. But - I’m told from the intro posted for stations (and me because I read the blurb on prx) – it’s already someone else’s idea – there was a film in the late 60’s by the Maysles – I go on the web and read about the film – I see a clip. It seems amazing. So now – the listener is hungry to know more. The piece isn’t about the film. But it isn’t really profoundly about the guy either. And now the “radio critic on assignment” (for lack of another expression) asks, why interview a subject already documented in a film – even use clips from that film – without doing more with it? The guy is decades older – that could be interesting – has his attitude about what he did change? If it hasn’t, how is that interesting? I see it’s part of a longer series about people working – that gives is a kind of context – but this is a long way of saying: needs composition on some level – disappointing due to opportunity missed.

There are a number of pieces out there now about what it is for ordinary men and women with lives and families to go to war - because we never stop trying to wrap our minds around that rite of passage and what it means to all of us . This half-hour look inside families as they approach and walk through that door is particularly good. Excellent interviews - and Helen Borten writes very well too. The piece is from 2002 - and is poised at the moment on the eve of the current "situation" - historical - but far from dated. Opportunities for relevance abound - sadly.

Note: (Description states program was produced in 1994 but that's not accurate).

Again, this is impeccably produced. I love the acting, just love it. And behind acting like this there’s a really good director, so bravo. However, the name of this series of plays (most likely stage plays, they’re not radio plays and don’t really use the medium of radio as a primary element) recorded before an audience is “The Play’s the Thing,” and I liked this play about a serial killer and the people into whose lives he has brutally intruded less than I did the performances. Overall, I did not feel it added up to what I had hoped it would. Much is known about the events at the beginning, even from the description, and also from the producer/host’s introduction. Little that was revealed to me later on surprised or enlightened me about much of anything. Although the moment-to-moment texture of the writing is lovely, if you’re going to take me into this kind of territory for two hours, you’d better not just leave me there to fend for myself with nothing to chew on. I found this play presented a fundamental, obvious question (“is it evil or environment?”) and - in a very interesting scene between the prisoner and a victim, seems to begin to go somewhere (her extreme behavior seems strangely right) – but then the revelation of a wrongdoing near the end seemed beside the point – and at the end of two hours I felt not much further along than where I started with it.

This episode set in a summer camp was very upbeat – bright and a little loud in fact – I did wonder if the host always shouts into the microphone like that – perhaps it depends on where he is in any given program. However, I think that wherever it is, he really takes you there – the camp nostalgia was delightful and the musical talent of the staff and campers was impressive. On one hand the host is uncannily Keillor-like – but on the other I’m sure it’s not studied, it’s just an accident of geography. And this one aims even farther North. All in all, I find this show a breath of very fresh air from Canada –the Canada of right now, today, tonight – we’re served up a live, truly authentic setting – you are there! Isn’t that something radio does best?