Margin Notes: Fall, Analogies, Radke and Moe

The first tree I found this year almost completely devoid of green color was on Dundas Street West in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario on 22-September-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The season has officially turned from summer to autumn, and with it came the first tree full of fall color (er, colour). While technically summer still had a few hours remaining, I was already in fall mode when I noted an almost completely-yellow tree on Dundas Street West in the Junction neighbourhood last Wednesday afternoon.

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A raccoon peered from the side of a 1942-built steam locomotive as it was switched at the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre on 26-September-2010

The start of fall means nightfall comes earlier, which helped facilitate a night photo session at the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre this evening. I'm sure spectacular night photos from the session will be appearing around the Internet from the real photographers on hand; my favorite shot from the night is featured above. We have had evidence and second-hand accounts of raccoons taking up residence in former Canadian National steam locomotive #6213, and first-hand evidence was attained the form of those eyes peering out as the locomotive was switched onto the turntable. Abatement plans are being contemplated.

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The raccoons apparently mistook a locomotive for a home, but would you mistake a telephone for a baby? It doesn't seem so crazy after watching this week's Search Engine videocast from TVO.

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The other analogy that blew me away this week came from Daniel Kehlmann and host Christopher Lydon on the Open Source podcast. They discussed the analogy of the Internet as God--it might seem blasphemous, but if one believes in a passive deity, a lot of the descriptions prove to be the same.

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Combining the last two topics of technology and babies, is anyone else as dumbfounded by the IBM ad running before CBC video programming available on line lately? It shows a baby with its abdomen clearly breathing with the voiceover: "Here is a baby... a baby generating data..." When I see a baby, I can see a lot of things, but data generation is pretty much never on the list.

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Somehow, I doubt even journalists Bill Radke and John Moe, both known for their wit, would ever see the baby that way, either. The two seem to keep following each other around in the media world. I was introduced to both of them at KUOW-Seattle when they were still hosting their own local shows there, Rewind for Radke, The Works for Moe. Radke left for Los Angeles and became host of the nationally-syndicated show Weekend America, but was eventually replaced by Moe, who had moved to the Minnesota headquarters of program producer American Public Media. Radke then signed on to host Marketplace Morning Report, and now, with the re-naming this week of Future Tense as Marketplace Tech Report, both Radke and Moe are anchoring for the same Marketplace "brand" on American Public Media. Just once, I'd like to hear these two guys co-host the same program at the same time.

Radio Pick: Master Interview of Nader

This week's radio pick was a show I almost didn't listen to. Ralph Nader has been on a book tour recently for his fictional work "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us," which has arguably been over-promoted. As often happens with well-known authors on book tours, I've heard too many interviews with him lately. Yet, just like the last time Christopher Lydon interviewed him back in 2007 (when Open Source was still a radio show), Lydon managed to get Nader talking about other things and create an interesting show. You may not agree with Nader's ideas about the difference between personal freedom and civic freedom, or his analysis of President Obama's personality, but pay attention to how Lydon gets him to talk about those things in this 38-minute podcast. This is a master interviewer at work.

Listen to MP3 of Open Source "Ralph Nader's Flight of Fancy"

Media: I Miss "The Connection"

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I am not qualified to comment on the death of John Updike. I've never ready any of the "Rabbit" novels and while I have read some of his poetry and short stories, none of them made any particular impression on me, which says less about the late author and more about my lack of literary enthusiasm in general. Yet, his death has brought out literally the best of broadcasting as a tribute to Updike. The CBC ran Al Maitland reading "A&P" on As It Happens. The calls to On Point's tribute brought out the best in story-telling by callers describing how human he could be.

What really made an impression on me, though, was a show brought out of the past. Christopher Lydon dipped into the archives to re-run an interview he did with Updike on 4-December-2000, after "Rabbit Remembered" was released. Upon seeing the subject of the podcast, I expected that it would be another retrospective with critics or other authors. Instead, I heard US3's Cantaloop and I was taken back in time. I first heard WBUR's "The Connection" at Boston's Logan Airport, waiting to take a plane back to the West Coast after my first visit there in 1997. I was blown away--the show simply operated on a higher intellectual level than anything I had heard before, even on public radio.

After I moved to Boston, I had ample opportunity to experience "The Connection" and learn what made it so unique. It didn't take long to understand. Sure, the intellectual community of Boston, nearly unique in the United States, made a difference in the pool of callers. But, if it were that simple, then commercial talk radio and other shows that have originated on WBUR in Boston since would have had the same qualities, and I can't say that any have. No, there was real genius in producer Mary McGrath and host Christopher Lydon's pacing of the show--they understood when to weave an informed caller into the show, when to have Lydon ask an intelligent question of a guest, or when to bring in an additional guest. It was truly an experience to listen--you learned from the guests, you learned from Lydon, and you learned from the callers, and the pacing kept one's attention for each self-contained hour of the show. That we got to hear two such hours each weekday was a bonus of living in Boston.

A contract dispute in 2001 caused WBUR to dump Lydon and McGrath; a show called "The Connection" with the same theme music continued onward, and actually was a worthwhile show under Dick Gordon, a former CBC host, but it wasn't the magical show that had existed previously. There has been a void on the intellectual side of my radio listening almost ever since.

Starting in July 2005, the Lydon/McGrath team did return to the air with a new show. The original incarnation of Open Source completely satisfied me, as four hours a week of Lydon-led discussions actually could lead to higher quality than the ten hours a week of The Connection, but that show lost something when it no longer took live calls, and since July 2007 it has been reduced to occasional podcasts that obviously do not have direct listener interaction. A podcast is better than no Christopher Lydon at all, but it's not the same.

I miss "The Connection."