I am pleased to announce that one of the short stories I adapted for My Audio Universe has been selected to be in an upcoming edition of the weekly hour-long show, Public Radio Remix – “the best of public radio.” The story was written by Tennessee based writer Kevin Wilson – Another Little Piece.  Reno actress Jamie Plunkett and I read.

And I am vexed.  I submitted audio of my short story Mittagessen to the Missouri Review’s annual audio contest, and the waiting is torture.  Tomorrow will be seven weeks since the deadline, and the expectancy is a constant distraction.  I am my own worst enemy and cannot stop checking my email to find out if I have won the contest … or not …

On this day in 1971, the final episode of the Honeymooners aired.  I quit television a long time ago and could not be happier for the state of my free will and reading list; but Jackie Gleason, through the television, long ago, had a significant effect on me.  Gleason’s sense of timing and humor logic is a part of me that will never go away.

seated L-R: Art Carney, Jackie Gleason. Standing: Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolf

Also on this day in 1960, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill.  There are already too many people.  To make more is unethical.

Today I celebrate May Day, kin to the Celtic festival of Beltrane and German celebration of Walpurgis Night.  Today is also International Workers Day.   On the calendar, the first of May is my favorite “cross-quarter” day, opposite of November 1^st.

Today I also commemorate the birthday of Joseph Heller who created one of the most enduring testaments to the futility of war, his novel Catch 22.  What does a sane man do in an insane world?

And I am learning a lot this week as I contrast the short stories of Raymond Carver and William Trevor in my reading response journal.  In related news, I have audio and text of four pieces of flash fiction off to three magazines and one contest so far in 2012.

And on this date in 1991, baseball great Rickey Henderson became the all-time base stealing leader when he stole his 939^th base to break Lou Brock’s record.  Henderson went on the steal 1,406 bases, nearly 500 more than the next closest player.  I am a lifetime Yankee fan and loved Rickey when he played for the Yanks, but no matter what team he played for, he added World Series caliber punch to the lineup.
On this date in 2003, George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to proclaim “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.  Bush said major combat operations were over.  We know now the deadly magnitude of that lie.  In my eyes, “W” and then vice president Dick Cheney are war criminals and should be tried in an international court as such.

If not for a politician’s painful act of hypocrisy, last night’s Nevada Medal banquet was a fabulous event.  Every year the Desert Research Institute here in Reno awards the Nevada Medal and $20,000 dollars to one of the world’s outstanding scientists, and last night they gave the prize to Dr. Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission that successfully landed twin rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) on opposite sides of the planet for ninety day missions each.  After six years engineers finally lost contact with Spirit, and Opportunity continues to rove and capture data today.  I support DRI and its mission, and Steve Squyres is a brilliant, driven man well deserving the recognition of the Nevada Medal; but the most notable moment of the evening came when Nevada governor Brian Sandoval addressed the gathering.

I carefully monitored and documented the wrangling over education funding last legislative session here in Nevada, and the Republican governor showed himself willing to decimate the state’s already decimated education budget.  His contact with paid lobbyists is shameless, and while he ran for office, one of the state’s largest lobbying firms retained the would-be governor as a consultant; so when he stabbed the state’s primary, secondary and higher education systems in their collective heart last session, I was not surprised when he dutifully served the client lists of R&R Partners and Jones Vargas; but last night, at the award ceremony, he had the temerity to stand at the podium and extol attendees about the importance of education.  He said science and technical education was central to the state’s economic success … I could tell he really loves education.  He loves learning so much, last year he had his photo taken reading Dr. Seuss to grade school kids to prove it.  Sandoval’s address was PR politics as usual, and I believe this governor is a boardroom mouth piece who will put corporate profits ahead of schools every time.   What was stunning was the ease with which he delivered his lines.  Truly a disgusting display of hypocrisy.

No Turd Left Behind

Lately I have been communicating with the larger world through chalk notes on the sidewalk in front of my house.  I walk my dog Abigail around our lovely tree rich neighborhood every day of the year, and we uniformly subscribe to the No Turd Left Behind Act of 2011 (NTLB), but not all dog owners pick up after their pets, and there is a serial pooper who, over the past month, has left a half dozen turds on my stretch of sidewalk, so yesterday I took action with sidewalk chalk:

I just completed an overhaul of the My Audio Universe website.  MAU is both an online literary magazine of sound and an hour-long terrestrial radio program featuring specially adapted flash and short fiction.  I had originally planned to launch a new site in the fall, but considering the large number of visitors the site has been attracting, I felt compelled to improve overall appearance and function ahead of schedule.  Click the image below to have a look.

And today is perhaps one of the most important days in the life of our nation – Jackie Robinson Day.  On this day in 1947 Jackie Robinson took to Ebbets Field as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and baseball’s color barrier was broken.  Baseball is the only sport I follow, and I know that in these pages I rail against the ravages of commercialism in all its insidious forms, and I consider my life-long and on-going allegiance to the New York Yankees my most obvious ideological shortcoming and vice, but baseball is an international game of peace loved by George W. Bush and Fidel Castro alike and an ideal tool for positive change; so thanks to Brooklyn Dodger owner Walter O’Malley and  Jackie Robinson for their bravery and persistence.  Once a year, on this day, every big league player and umpire wears Jackie’s number 42 … go Jackie!

And I am sad that anyone perished when the Titanic sank on this date in 1912; but I do cheer for a blow to hubris.

A couple years ago, independent radio producer Estrella Acosta asked me to help produce an hour-long documentary titled Blood Gold and Medicine: Healing Maidu Country.  She had collected hours and hours of interviews chronicling the terrible devastation of the 1849 Gold Gush on the Maidu people, a tribe native to a region northwest of Sacramento, and for me, the fact that a handful of remaining Maidu are working to bring their community back from near annihilation, transformed radio production into an act of conscience; so after four months in the studio, we came up with a compelling hour of audio storytelling.  Click the graphic below to hear part one of Blood, Gold and Medicine: Healing Maidu Country.  Estrella Acosta narrates. (29:00)

I recently completed an informal study of all the known radio episodes of Dragnet starring Jack Webb, and my next listening project is a show titled Theater Five, all 260 episodes. Named Theater Five because it aired at 5:00 p.m., the show represents the last effort of a major network to revive radio drama, and ABC aired the first episode on Aug 3, 1964 and the last on July 30^th, 1965.  I’ve sampled a handful of these shows, and the sound design marks a step forward from the tradition of strictly creating verisimilar soundscapes in radio drama.  The producers of Theater Five manipulated the scale of sound to create spaces most early radio drama did not, though sometimes their music and sound elements fall back on cliché, as you will hear.  Through the good graces of the Internet Archive, click on the graphic below for a trippy episode of Theater Five titled Dream of Death.

A couple days ago on the 20^th of March, I published the Spring 2012 Edition of My Audio Universe … the show’s production is some of the most satisfying audio work I have ever done.

Today is the birthday of writer Louis L’Amour.  Long ago I read stacks of his novels and loved them.  I’m not sure I would give the books the same reception I did then but at the time, they were unforgettable and fun encouragement to read.  Thank you Louis …

On this date in 1953, Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine …

And on this day in 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found dead in a house in a suburb of San Diego.  Adherents believed that by committing suicide they would be freed of their bodily “containers” and would enter an alien spacecraft hiding behind the comet Hale Bopp.  I will always remember these folks for their belief in and commitment to their vision, no matter how fucking crazy … do you remember Marshall Applewhite and his Nike shoes?

Every morning, without fail, my beloved border collie Abigail and I walk a well-established pattern through my neighborhood. I use the time to think about the reading I did that morning, and Abigail trots her energy away with 42 minutes of brisk walking, on average. Just past half way, a long-coated Chihuahua I call Tippy attacks a chain link fence as we walk by and barks and snarls like a 200 pound killer. In the recording offered below, I slow his snarl and dissect the series of barks, snorts and growls that makeup Tippy’s aural persona …

Here is another story from 2004 titled Delivery. I never intend to submit this piece for publication in a literary magazine, but was tickled to stumble on it in a dusky quarter of a double dutch terabyte drive and offer it here.

I have been looking for new and better ways to present audio and yesterday I discovered Sound Cloud; so here is a short story I wrote and produced in 2003 titled Plume.  This story is one of six pieces that make up my MA thesis, Wood Pussy and other Stories from the New West.  I do not intend to ever submit this story for publication, so I offer it here. I produced the story in stereo, and it matters to me that left and right channels are separate, but I have yet to learn how, or if, I can post a stereo file through Sound Cloud, so here is Plume in mono.