I spent most of my radio career as a producer, but on this day the Talent had a scheduling conflict so I went to Russell Orchards in Ipswich Massachusetts and did the whole thing myself. Aired on October 13th, 1999 on WBUR program 'Here and Now'.

Apple Picking on WBUR

Kathy Gunst is a talented cook book author whose recipes and ideas were perfect for our radio show. This story featured a Caribbean recipe and a tropical music theme to boot.

Banana Chutney With Kathy Gunst

Scott and I worked together for years producing food radio stories all over the world. In this story we visit the Super 88 market in Boston’s Chinatown and help prepare a New Year’s feast.

Chinese New Year With Scott Haas

This one is a little freaky. We dig into the story behind an album of recorded audio from a most imaginative sleep talker.

Dion McGregor Dreams Aloud

Jonathan Allen was a pioneer in synthesized speech and later became the director of MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics. I produced this story on a tight deadline and scrambled to find one of his contemporaries to tell his story; eventually I persuaded his wife to offer a story. A few days later I told my father about the challenge of producing the obituary and he told me “Oh I used to work with him! In the 1970s I was building an optical character recognition system and together we collaborated on a reading machine for the blind. You could have called me.”

Jonathan Allen Obituary

Sound essays were one of my favorite story formats. This story documents a community lantern lighting ceremony to honor the dead.

Jamaica Plain Lantern Ceremony

After the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl I took my microphone outside to record the celebration. It turned out that the Boston Police did a poor job in planning their shifts and didn’t have enough cops on the street to keep things calm. This scene played out a few more times over the next couple years as the Patriots and Red Sox won several championships, eventually escalating to full scale riots and leading to a handful of deaths.

Patriots Riot In Allston

My parents and a group of their friends started a dinner group in the early 1970s and kept it going for nearly 30 years. I joined them in the summer of 2000 to hear their stories of fine meals, friendship and the occasional recipe gone wrong.

Gourmet Group

In 1994 Bootsy Collins brought the funk to Ithaca, New York with the New Rubber Band. I put nearly as much effort into this 66 second would-be-masterpiece of an ad on WVBR as I did my senior thesis that year.

Bootsy Collins Ad

WVBR promo from the early 90s. Clip lifted from the promo for "Hey Love" album https://davesstrangeworld.com/2013/06/27/hey-love-album-commercial-from-the-1980s/

Buy Your Own WVBR Promo

In the early 90s I hosted a show on Sunday nights called 'Radio Free Ithaca' on 93.5 WVBR. It was the peak of the alternative era and I had fun with it, blasting Bachman Turner Overdrive out of the water with The Modern World.

marstonstudio

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