Category: Delzell, Carmen/Archives

HV134- Close to Death

Ralph Golding's Grave, Massachusetts National CemeteryHearing Voices from NPR®
134 Close to Death: At Life’s End
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-03-21

“Close to Death” (52:00 mp3):

People near the process of death and dying:

“Four Seconds” (2005 / 9:28) Jake Warga

It takes four seconds to hit the water from the Golden Gate Bridge. A year ago the producer’s friend Phil took that fatal jump. They met several years before that when Phil’s brother committed suicide (transcript).

“The Man with the White Cane” (1980 / 9:36) Josh Darsa

Herman Porter, a blind man, slipped unseen beneath a moving subway train: 90 tons of steel and electricity. (Hear Alex Chadwick’s eulogize for NPR’s pioneering producer: “Josh Darsa Obituary“.)

“”Grandmother’s Hip”” (1985 / 2:42) Carmen Delzell

Writer Carmen Delzell visit her grandmother, who broke her hip — not uncommon, says the doctor, for an 89-year-old.

“The Death of Ruth Tuck” (1986 / 24:19) Scott Carrier

Scott Carrier talks to the family, the ex-husband, the mortuary, the doctors, even the grave digger, in piecing together the memory of a life. Prodcued for New American Radio. (Scott’s most recent book is Prisoner of Zion.)

“Kaddish” (1994 / 3:26)

Messages on my the producer’s mother’s tape machine, found after his father’s death; original music by Skyward. This Kaddish is a mourner’s prayer.

HV120- Dear Diary

Hearing Voices from NPR®
120 Dear Diary: Audio Journals
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-08-03

“Dear Diary” (52:00 mp3):

Documenting daily life:

“Cho Oyu 8201m, Tibet” (2006 / 8:00 excerpts)

Geir Jenssen, the musician who records as Biosphere, is also a mountain climber. On his Himalayan ascent of the sixth highest mountain in the world, he kept an audio journal of all the sounds. The result is the CD Cho Oyu 8201m Field Recording from Tibet (Ash International / Touch Records | Climber’s notes | Wikipedia | WFMU Beware of the Blog).

Thruout the hour, we hear excerpts from the tracks “Zhangmu: Crossing A Landslide Area” (2300 meters above sea level), “Palung: A Yak Caravan is Coming (5400m), “Cho Oyo Basecamp: Morning” (5700m), “Jobo Rabzang: A 6666 metre peak in the Cho Oyu Himal”, “Camp 3: Neighbours On Oxygen” (7500m), “Summit: Only slight breeze on the summit at 8201m.” Also this piece “sampled and processed from a cassette of Tibetan music.”

“Carmen’s Diaries” (1980 / 13:37) Art Silverman

Writer Carmen Delzell finds a box of journals she wrote as a girl, and enters an addendum as she reflects on her 1960s self. Produced for NPR All Things Considered.

“World’s Longest Diary” (1994 / 6:15) David Isay

For twenty years, Reverend Robert Shields, of Dayton, Washington, kept a written record of absolutely everything that happened to him, day and night. For four hours each day, Shields holes himself up in the small office in his home, turns on his stereo, and types. His diary, at 35 million words, is believed the world’s longest. A Sound Portraits production, on the CD Holding On: Dreamers, Visionaries, Eccentrics And Other American Heroes (and companion book)

“Nick in SLC: Home School to High School” (1999 / 16:39) Radio Diaries

For RD’s Teenage Diaries project, they gave “tape recorders to young people around the country to report on their own lives. They conduct interviews, keep an audio journal and record the sounds of daily life — usually collecting more than 40 hours of raw tape over the course of a year. Nick Epperson of Salt Lake City began his audio diary when he was 13. The talented singer/cellist music, but has a hard time making friends.

More…

HV116- Homeless

Man with sign in rain on interstate entranceHearing Voices from NPR®
116 Homeless: Living on the Streets
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-09-19 (Originally: 2011-06-01)

“Homeless” (52:00 mp3):

The voices of people who were or are homeless:

“My Name Is” (2:22) The Land of 10,000 Homeless

Land of 10K Homeless is a Minneapolis music-audio documentary project by Voices of the Streets, “An Artistic Portrayal of Homelessness in Minnesota.” Thier “website of artistic activism provides a space for the disadvantaged to share their stories.” Producer Danny Burke created this mix of the main theme, blended with interviews with individuals staying at a family shelter in Minneapolis.A couple shelter residents under the bridge

The string arrangement was written and produced by Brian J. Casey and Danny Burke of the Skeptics, and performed by the Arlington String Quartet (Matthew Knippel, cello; Conor O’ Brien, violin; Gabriel Platica, violin).

“George Hill” (2008 / 1:51) StoryCorps

After leaving the Marines, George Hill became addicted to drugs and alcohol. He soon found himself on the streets of Los Angeles, homeless for 12 years. But the kindness of another homeless man changed everything. Hill is now off the streets, working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and pursuing a computer information systems degree at Cal State University. Recorded in Santa Monica, CA; part of StoryCorps’ Griot Initiative.

“Crazy John” (1996 / 6:03) Carmen Delzell

A portrait of the self-named, Crazy John, who lives on the streets of Austin, Texas. He tells writer Carmen Delzell about his life. Carmen was homeless for a couple of years in the early 1990s. This piece was made after she got on her feet and was living in Austin. Produced by Jay Allison (PRX).

Bill with Nanette, two shelter residents“Bill Speaks” (2008 / 2:24) The Land of 10,000 Homeless

An interview with Bill, recorded near the Dorothy Day Center homeless shelter, St. Paul MN. Andrew Turpening, the Land of 10K Homeless Artistic Director, composed the music and produced the piece.

“Gospel Mission” (1983 / 4:56) Scott Carrier

The producer spends a night at a church homeless shelter in Washington DC.

“Miracle On The Streets” (2009 / 2:25) Dmae Roberts

A profile of life on the streets for homeless youth told through the experiences of 21-year-old Miracle Draven, Portland OR. Original music by Craze MC. (Longer version at PRX).

More…

Broken trucks and broken hearts

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell

This time alone living in the luxury of Martha’s house has helped me relax enough to see myself and my circumstances a little more clearly.

I’m sick of Mexico. Sick of living in fear, of poverty, of the (mostly) assholes I know there and most of all sick of loneliness.

So tonight I’ve decided to head out into the night with my digital recorder and start doing a story on loneliness. You know, loneliness is probably the hardest thing to admit and for sure the hardest thing to bear.

I was inspired last weekend by a singer songwriter named Steve, who is sadly, dead.

#1 Bar Noise at a place called Buttons.

So here I am again alone in a bar waiting for this Dave Millsap to come on stage and sing the songs of Steve Bruton whose life was loosely depicted in Crazy Heart, the movie with Jeff Bridges.

I actually cried when I saw his beat up old truck drive down one of these breath-taking New Mexico highways because God Damn It that’s me driving up from the Matehuala Desert towards Saltillo, Coahuila in my beat-up Jeep and whatever it is that’s sent me down those lonely Mexican and New Mexican roads, I’m pretty sure it has something to do with movies like this.

The difference is that I’m a woman and don’t play the guitar or paint or anything except live and write about being alienated and sad and, yes, lonely. More…

Sleep Food Gas

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell

Just imagine, if you can being an old (and you know I don’t feel all that old) woman with less than a hundred dollars to her name driving north on Hwy 57 between San Luis Potosi and Matehuala as the sun goes down.

A motel costs 400 pesos. So does a tank of gas.

Children stand by the side of the road holding out live rattle snakes for sale or a wild eagle dangled by its feet.

It’s getting dark.

The empty light comes on the dash board. There are no gas stations anywhere.

Food is out of the question till you get to the border; and when you do get there it’ll be another six hours to your friend’s house where you can sleep for a couple of nights.

Moving Away

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell (Written in 1988 just before I became homeless.)

I never intended to live the way I have.

I thought—in that hazy hopeful time right after graduation and before my foolish marriage that I could be a bohemian, a colorful avant-garde part of the late 1960s and then (I’m not sure when I thought it would actually be) I expected to have a house, go to graduate school and eventually teach at some small liberal arts college somewhere.

I guess I got a lot of these notions from biographies and magazine articles that fell into my hands from my mother’s casual (and probably mundane) choice of reading material.

She herself had fancied a similar life and she too found the shock of turning middle aged without it too much to bear.

She died.

I’m hoping I won’t have to.

Certainly not yet and hopefully not ever. More…

Mother Theresa’s House

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s the first of what we hope will be a series of posts & pix she’s calling the Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet. This one’s from India…]

Today I took my regular rickshaw to Mother Theresa’s house to see if there was anything I could do to help or just see the poorest of the poor. I was expecting to be horrified by all the suffering but it wasn’t really as bad as I had expected. When I say it wasn’t as bad I mean it wasn’t as bad as the miserable beggars I see everyday on the streets of Delhi and Jaipur. At least at Mother Theresa the people I sat with were clean, comfortable and most of all smiling.

Years ago when I was at Mother Theresa in Calcutta a traveler girl told me that the ladies loved to be touched and hugged and patted. So I did that and I sang to them and I started to dance my version of Bollywood style  movements waving my arms and undulating my hips. They were delighted… all of them old ladies or very brain damaged young women. More…

HV040- Spirit World

Crossroads sign: Spiritualist St and Mediumship WayHearing Voices from NPR®
040 Spirit World: Angels on the Line
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-09-15 (Originally: 2008-12-03)

“Spirit World” (52:00 mp3):

Paranormal sonic-expeditions:

“Alice of the Spirits” (6:07 & 8:07) David Franks

A preacher/prank-caller/audio-artist conjures up a con.

“Ritual Magic” (4:09) Carmen Delzell

Carmen samples some voodoo Santera, soaks in a spirit bath; she prays for sex, adventure, and central heat.

“Cassadega” (2:16) Ceil Muller

Ceil visits the small Florida town known as “The Psychic Center of the World.”

“A Night on Mt. Shasta” (25:04) Larry Massett

Our host hangs out in the new age atmosphere of the California city that sits below the spiritual Mecca of Mount Shasta (4,317 m. / 14,162 ft.).

Photo of the Cassedega intersection signs © Rachael Anne Ryals.

HV017- No Place Like Home

Roy Tea Hastings Road, Utah's West DesertHearing Voices from NPR®
017 No Place Like Home: Shifts in Time and Towns
Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-07-08 (Originally: 2008-06-25)

“No Place Like Home” (52:00 mp3):

The places we live and the people who live there; a desert, a city, two small towns, and another country:

Scott Carrier has a cultural history of the Great Salt Lake’s “West Desert,” a land of polygymists, bombing ranges, and toxic waste incinerators. There’s chlorine gas in the air, anthrax stored underground, and people who call the place home.

Sarah Vowell‘s childhood move from rural Oklahoma to small-town Montana was, for her, a change from the middle ages to a modern metropolis.

And two Stories from the Heart of the Land: NYC native Natalie Edwards hates grass, bugs, dirt, and trees, but attempts a walk thru Brooklyn’s Prospect Park; and Carmen Delzell tells why she moved to and has stayed in Mexico.

HV002- Visiting Hours

Hospital bedHearing Voices from NPR®:
002 Visiting Hours— In Hospital
Host— Ceil Muller of KQED Public Radio
Airs week of— 2009-03-11 (Originally: 2008-03-12)

Visiting Hours (52:00 mp3):

“The Kiss and the Dying” is host Ceil Muller’s (of KQED) etiquette list for those who may be dying, and for the soon-to-be survivors.

“Fire and Ice Cream” is from Brent Runyan’s book “The Burn Journals,” and Jay Allison’s Life Stories radio series. Brent’s nurse in the burn unit asks the 14-year-old out for ice cream… and a date?

In “Our Father” Brian Brophy documents his dad’s passing, with recordings of his family, the chaplain, the hospital and hospice staff, and the wake.

Carmen Delzell helps heal her “Grandmother’s Hip.”

And Nancy Updike watches patients pass the time with TV in “Channeling Health.”

Music by Pete Fountain, Brave Old World, Peter Ostroushko, Jimmy Smith, and Rotterdam Ska Jazz Foundation.