In praise of audio engineers

My "What's Your Story?" radio series on the Virginia Voice would be far different were it not for Alex Childress.

Alex is the studio manager for the station. For me, he's an audio wizard and a godsend.

"What's Your Story?" is my half-hour interview series for the Virginia Voice, which is a nonprofit organization that broadcasts readings of news and information for those with blindness, vision impairment or physical disabilities that limit reading. "What's Your Story?," which has been plugging along for almost a year now, features interviews with ordinary -- and extraordinary -- people. It's based on the premise that everybody has a story to tell; all you have to do is ask.

I conduct the interviews "on location," using a small, portable digital recorder. You have to have a special radio to receive the broadcasts, but all of the interviews are posted online, and you can listen to them by clicking here.

It's a volunteer job for me, one which keeps me engaged and lets me practice the broadcast skills I acquired over a lifetime.

Alex takes the raw recordings and turns them into polished radio broadcasts.

Most of what he has to do is a result of the on-location aspect of the program. A half hour is long for a one-on-one interview. Phones ring, people cough and clear their throats, people lose track of their thought or struggle to find the right word, dogs bark, clocks chime, doorbells ring. Alex smooths it all out, editing out technical glitches and making us sound good.

It can be hard work: It takes much longer than 30 minutes to edit a half-hour program.

Most of the time, my guests and I record our interviews straight through, just as though we were doing a live broadcast. But on some occasions, it just doesn't work that way. I remember one guest whose husband interrupted us to offer a bowl of candy -- each piece wrapped in noisy cellophane. I did one interview in front of a fireplace with a backdraft that filled the air with the smell of creosote, which clogged us both up. We did that 30 minutes in three parts, if I'm remembering correctly. We'd record for 10 minutes or so, then stop to hack up creosote. Then there was the time when the batteries died right as we got to the good part. We stopped, changed the batteries, and tried to pick up where we'd left off.

Alex takes the bits and pieces into the control room and laboriously performs his audio wizardry.

I've never had to suggest what he should do; he just knows. I've never listened to the final product and heard an edit I didn't like. He just seems to divine what was in my mind -- and in my guest's mind.

During a lifetime in broadcasting, I've run across maybe two or three audio engineers with Alex's perception and skills.

God bless them for knowing exactly what to do and how to do it. Because they know what they're doing, they make us sound like we know what we're doing.

Catching up

I blame my recent silence on having a really wicked cold. Not only did I feel bad, I was staying home, so nothing much happened to me worth writing about.

But now that I'm feeling somewhat better, there are a few brief items that deserve a paragraph or two.

You'll recall that I wrote right around Christmas about the Ghost Kitty. She was an apparent stray who was hanging out on my deck, looking for a little love and some food. You can read more about her and see a picture by clicking here.

With the help of a neighbor, we managed to get the Ghost Kitty into the hands of a volunteer with CARE, who sheltered her, loved her and readied her for adoption. I stayed in touch by email, and the reports on the Ghost Kitty's progress were all good.

Last week, I happened to run across a notice in the want ads in the daily paper. The Ghost Kitty, now renamed Daisy, is officially up for adoption. The ad featured a picture of Daisy, looking well fed and happy. I hope she finds a great home. She certainly is a great cat.

But back to my cold. The biggest problem is boredom. I've been staying home so as not to pass on the virus. I've made a few quick trips to the grocery store (and to Hunan East and Five Guys for take-out when I just didn't feel like cooking). But mostly I've been trying to find ways to entertain myself.

I like to read, so that's been one way of passing the time. Two books -- both non-fiction -- have held my attention for the past week. One was the riveting and largely unknown story of the men in uniform who helped to save Europe's cultural treasures during World War Two.

"The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History" by Bret Witter and Robert M. Edsel isn't dry history. The authors wisely focused on the major treasures and a handful of the hundreds of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others who followed the front-line troops and rescued some of the world's most important cultural objects. Among the art they saved were works by the greatest names in Western art history: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Renoir and too many more to catalogue.

I met one of the Monuments Men a few years back. He was Sherman Lee, the father of Katherine Lee, who was at the time the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts director. Sherman Lee isn't featured prominently in "The Monuments Men" (he served in Japan right after the war ended), but I had a rare chance for a day or two to read and digitize his typewritten memoir about his work.

George Clooney is working on a movie about the Monuments Men. I hope it's as good as the book.

Friends who know I read voraciously will sometimes ask how I choose books. I picked the second book I've been reading because I saw it sitting on a shelf behind Charlie Rose on the set of his new CBS TV morning news broadcast. It's "Air Time: The Inside Story of CBS News" by Gary Paul Gates," published back in 1979. So far as I could tell, it was the only book on the shelf, which was mostly filled with other decorative objects related to the network's storied past.

Why was that particular book on the set? I didn't know. I've not finished it yet, but it focuses on the CBS news operation from the years right after World War II up through most of Walter Cronkite's tenure. It's not a vanity book. In fact, there are those who were at the network who might be offended by some of it. Now I suspect I know why it's featured on the morning news set. Charlie Rose's new broadcast is, in fact, putting the "news" back into its morning news show. Rose's new show would likely make Cronkite smile at his network's return to basics.

What else have I been doing since I've been stuck at home? Well, I rearranged my Netflix queues, both the DVD queue and the streaming-video queue.

What difference does that make in my life?

Not much. But a guy's got to stay busy, even when he has a wretched cold.