Writing for Speaking

As our work on composing and structuring the audio for our piece on The Marc Steiner Show shapes up, my group feel we are doing well on that front. However, a new challenge has arisen: writing a brief introduction for the piece.

Monica, Zoe, Nailah and I are all assigned to the "Monday" segment. It's supposed to lay a foundation, a groundwork, for the whole week. How much explanation is too much? The clips we use should be the focus, but I worry that unless we explain ourselves at least a bit, listeners simply won't have any sort of frame of reference. I think we especially need to make the connection between Sparrows Point and BayBrook explicit.

(This metaphorical illustration brought to you by Google Maps and the GIMP, because I am a whole ball of ideological contradictions.)

Since Dr. King has class meeting as usual, it will be good to both discuss our radio progress and get back into the swing of Garden Gala-related things. I feel like I've been away forever, even though it's only been a couple of weeks!

Voices & Composing

It seems weirdly appropriate to be blogging about a class focused on environmental justice today, of all days. Happy Earth Day, everybody!

Image courtesy of blog.ereach.com.

The sun is shining (for now), birds are singing (for now), and it's just all-around a nice reprieve from the horrid cold we've been dealing with. For now. :P

Work on the radio show continues. In addition to regular class times, we meet for two hours every Friday to try and keep everyone informed. It's not easy--we've been a bit discombobulated, with trouble getting all of our audio files corralled in one place for editing. The other classes have a bit of an advantage, as they've already cut up and sorted the footage used for the Mill Stories documentary, so I often feel like I'm just playing catch-up.

This week should be different, though; we've got very clear transcripts with time stamps, and should be able to begin editing. Working with a time constraint of only about 5 minutes will be a real challenge, but we're up for it!

The act of composing is a strange one, especially when working from recordings like these. On the one hand, we're cutting and framing the raw audio into a story, but at the same time, we have to remain true to the original speakers' words and messages. Our "content" can't trump their "speech" in the move to radio. Listening to these voices, some from people (like Catherine Benicevicz) who are no longer living, it hits home how big our responsibility is to properly preserve their messages.

Catherine B passed away last summer. She was interviewed during Mapping Baybrook's project to revitalize the Polish Home Hall in Curtis Bay. I've been listening to her recollections of early 20th Century Baltimore for weeks now.

Bake Sales & Radio

Hello hello! I'm finally climbing out of my kitchen; last night I spent an unreasonably long time making sure that the cupcakes for our class's bake sale were perfect. I made Devil's Food with raspberry filling, and decorated with a drizzle of chocolate and a fresh raspberry on top of each one.

Of course, now it's pouring outside, so who knows how many people will be in the mood to buy? *sigh*

On the other hand, I've really been cracking into planning out a brief radio segment. Marc Steiner of WEAA is allowing our classes time to discuss the issues of place and deindustrialization in the BayBrook and Sparrows Point areas. The planning sessions are grueling, but we're excited at this chance to spread the story.

Right now, our biggest project involves combing through transcripts of recordings from Prof. King's current and previous classes, finding soundbytes from people in the BayBrook area. Hopefully we can come up with some way to coherently cut them together with the fantastic Sparrows Point recordings from Dr. Stefano's students.

Update: The bake sale raised over $150--mostly from people pieing poor Cody in the face! He took on a lot of cream pies for the cause.