He’s British; she’s from Colorado, and they’re both nearly done with being grad students in theatre, talking to me from her kitchen in London.
Accompaniment provided by the rail line just outside.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
In March, 2014, my husband and I joined my parents on a whale watching expedition. I wrote about it for All Things Girl, when I got home, and meant to post it to this podcast then. A year and a half later, I’m finally doing so.
Excerpt
I also know that something deep inside me has been profoundly affected by this experience. Whales, when you’re close to them, when you look them in the eye, radiate this ages-old preternatural wisdom that you can’t quite grasp, except by the edges. The calf and I locked gazes, and it felt, for those precious seconds, like I was in the center of the universe and made of starlight and whalesong.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Production
Recorded and Produced using BossJock and Audacity. Special thanks to Clay Robeson for recording bits of D.H. Laurence’s poem, “Whales Weep Not!”
Coffee is my higher power, but tea is life. Or at least, that’s my theory.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
He’s one of my favorite podcasters, and a genuinely nice guy. He’ll make you melt when he talks about a particularly meaningful song, and we insult the French.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
A reading of a piece of creative non-fiction, from 2005 (I think): “Blood Sisters”
Excerpt
In truth, I don’t remember my mother pricking our thumbs (because, she says, we were too afraid to do it ourselves), or the act of us jamming our bleeding digits togther, letting our blood comingle, but I remember that we had heard the story of our own mothers taking a blood oath, and we insisted that we needed to do so as well. I’m told we both cried but I don’t think it was from physical pain, as much as the unconscious realization that we wouldn’t always be together.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
I talk about my great-aunt Molly (Carmella Natale) who died earlier this year at the age of 105, kitchen improv, and aglio e olio.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Debra Smouse: Writer, life coach, detangler, and one of my first friends in Texas, Debra and I talk about writing, and how everything comes back to STORY. What’s your story?
(This interview is rambly and unedited. May contain adult language. You’ve been warned.)
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Susan Fogel: Writer, real estate guru, sewist, and my mother, we chat about life in Mexico, espresso bars with no decaf, and I even let her tell one baby story.
(This interview is rambly and unedited. Probably contains adult language. You’ve been warned.)
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
In 2004, my husband and I moved from California to Texas.
In 2005, I turned the story of our trip into a creative writing piece called “Crossing the Mojave” and won a contest with it.
Excerpt
Fuzzy has gone the entire trip guzzling root beer and orange soda, but I am being good and sticking to water as much as possible, partly because it’s cheaper but mostly because it isn’t quite so vile when it is no longer throat-numbingly cold. I open my mouth to urge him to drink water, but he has a closed expression, so instead I mutter something about how the word “Mojave” changed to “Mohave” when we crossed the state line. He has no response.
I keep seeing signs for the Grand Canyon, which I have not seen since a school field trip when I was a child living in Colorado, but my husband reminds me that the dogs cannot eat until we stop for the night, and that as much as I seem to want to pretend this is just a road trip, it is not a true vacation. Instead, it’s a one-way trek halfway across the United States, to an apartment we have never seen that will be filled with furniture we do not own. I don’t tell him that I have to keep pretending we’re just exploring so I don’t get overwhelmed at the journey we’re making—not the physical trip, though that is grueling enough—but the uprooting of our lives.
Intellectually we both understand that this decision is the right one, that we were caught in a never-ending loop of bills and emergencies, that my company was failing, and that the cost of living in the Bay Area was increasing. Our ultimate destination, Dallas, Texas, isn’t the first choice for either of us, but it is the best we could agree on, and sometimes that has to be enough. Nevertheless, the knowledge that there is nothing familiar waiting for us at the end of the road is more than a little daunting.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Four dog-related entries from “100 Days of Notecards” and a plug for National Clear the Shelters Day.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
