is what i do

Alex and his old friend Adam Davidson collaborated on the story that took up all of This American Life last weekend, and I’m just bursting with pride. I’ve never heard such a complicated situation—America’s mortgage crisis morphing into a global credit crisis—explained so clearly and with such remarkable focus on the human beings trapped in and responsible for and bewildered by what’s happening.

Listen. You will be enlightened and entertained; you don’t get a chance like that often.

OK, clear yourself an hour, prepare to shed a few tears and have your heart lifted by the pure resilience of the human spirit. Point your browser to This American Life and click on the RA (RealAudio) icon next to last weekend’s story, “After the Flood”. This is what radio, bold and unfettered, can do. And what our print and video media, so far, have not done. Listen, and let me know what you hear.

(Disclaimer: My son is one of the producers of the show.)

It’s going to take a few days to make the move, so I’ll do some posting in the meantime. It’s Friday, cat-blogging day. I just put up a Flickr set of Louie and Vinnie. Here’s one of seven:

Melissa crawled under the cabin Friday evening, and, sometime during the night, breathed her last. We found her there Saturday morning. Through the last few days, her breathing had become labored; her appetite had vanished; a couple of days before she died, she stopped purring when we stroked her. Life, for her, had clearly become desperately uncomfortable, and, had she made it through to Monday, we would have sought a vet to have her discomfort put to an end. I’m glad that Melissa made her choice before we had to make that one.

We put her body in an old pillow case that we no longer used, one that she had slept on many times. We weighted it with rocks, sailed with our friends (and hers) the Hudsons, out to the deep water between the Head of the Cape and Pond Island, and released her, to be reclaimed by the waters that she spent so many hours, over the years, watching, with who knows what emotion or comprehension.

Melissa was a good cat; gentle with kids, responsive, easy on the furniture. She was a patient traveler and loved her annual visits to Maine. Up until a few years ago, she’d be out at night up here, hunting in the woods and eating what she caught. She was companionable; not a lap sitter, but one who sat beside you and purred when you stroked her. Whenever possible, she was where we were, sleeping on my bed or my office desk or the porch glider or her basket on the kitchen work table. She seems to have enjoyed our company, and we enjoyed hers.

We will miss her. Here is a movie we made of her unceremonious burial in beautiful Penobscot Bay.

Transom.org bills itself as “A Showcase and Workshop for New Public Radio”. The focus is on the tools and techniques and discipline required to produce good radio—radio that’s creative, relevant, emotionally gripping, and clear. Alex and his students from the graduate class he’s teaching at Columbia are Transom guests for April and May, and will be talking about, and demonstrating, how to create a great radio story. They join some pretty distinguished company; former Transom guests include Sarah Chayes and Sarah Vowell, Studs Terkel, Errol Morris, Corey Flintoff, Lawrence Weschler, and Alex’s boss Ira Glass.

In his Manifesto, Alex talks about how to determine whether you’re onto something that has a chance to succeed as a story.

Alex gives lots of examples. He also includes links to three stories that his students have produced as class assignments. The first assignment was to produce an audio profile; I was particularly moved by Nazanin Rafsanjani’s story of a woman trying to live on minimum wage. Partway in, the story drops suddenly into one of the most clear-eyed and un-self-pitying introspections I’ve heard. Gripping work. I’m looking forward to following the class over the next couple of months, to see how they develop under Alex’s tutelage.