It's the end of the decade, I'm on skis and I feel fine
Don't fear 2020
It was at the start of this decade that I started skiing. And I spent this last week with family in Big White, Canada, skiing almost every day of the week. Skiing is really scary. I am not good on skis. I’m not sure I even like skiing. Plus the conditions were treacherous: Zero visibility, unfamiliar terrain, below-freezing conditions! It was bitterly cold, my hair froze! And that’s before you factor in having to carry all that gear and get to the darn ski lifts.
[Caption: Foggy glasses, numb fingers and frozen hair - yes, folks, skiing is fun!]
The first time I ever strapped on those clunky, lead-heavy, ski boots to my feet, I was incorrectly given boots two sizes bigger. When I set out on the snow and started to pizza (what they teach 4 year olds to do: shape skis like a triangle to slow down), I had no control, and went crashing straight into the red plastic barricade that surrounds the beginner ski area, where first lessons are taught: It’s a pen certainly designed more to keep the people outside safe from the careening novices inside. It seemed funny at the time but the terror of being carted off on a stretcher with a broken something has always petrified me.
When you start skiing in your 40s and sporadically one to three times a year or season, it is hard to improve, much rather perfect your en-piste skills. Unless, you’re a kid — like mine who are fearless cause they started skiing at 4 and 8. To my defense they are also a lot closer to the ground, if they do fall it hurts far less. I’ve decided the difference between youth and the experienced is when you’re young you never think anything ill will ever happen to you. When your old you think everything ill can happen you. Hence, you’re always taking extra precautions to avoid it.
As the kind lady at one of Big White’s summits said ‘skiing is a head game.’ Once you get it in your head that you can’t ski down a particularly daunting, steep slope, it’s paralyzing. But if you are overconfident, you can get cocky and the mountain can teach you a valuable lesson with a spectacular tumble. If you’re lucky, you get severe bruises, a bit of whiplash and horrific aches, nothing that some over-the-counter-grade painkillers won’t make better. Speaking from experience here.
If you’re not lucky, you severely pull a muscle, blow out your ACL, break a bone… the sort of accident that requires ski patrol and a stretcher, and unfortunately, this is not an uncommon sight on the mountain.
So why do I ski?
Yes there’s pressure from the family who all love to hit the slopes. But it’s a bit like life isn’t it? You have to go along for the ride and sometimes, just sometimes, when the conditions are right, you hit the moguls—let’s face it often by accident—your heart races as you rise, then fall, then rise again, your skis wobble but you stick with it, you tell yourself ‘you’re made of sterner mettle.’ You re-adjust your stance and keep going. Suddenly you realize that a goofy smile has crept across your face. Fuck, you’re actually having fun! And you think “I am going to do this again!”
Life in 2019 hasn’t been different to any other calendar year or ski holiday, in terms of its extreme highs and lows. I did have some remarkable work opportunities: producing two radio stories for KEXP and writing three pieces for The Red Bulletin. Doing the Transom workshop in Nashville at the start of the year was a highlight. And attending the Third Coast Radio Conference in Chicago towards the latter part of the year was another inspiring experience. But the news continues to get me down. I have had to turn off the radio. To step away from the non-stop barrage of bad news, and then the commentary on the bad news from all the different angles. It really is about practicing some self-care, to keep myself from raging, then sinking into a overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
The upside was that I got cosy with so many new podcasts. Things that made me smile, feel connected to other humans, educated me or just kept me company as I went about the everyday. So, instead of any Best Of List, I am going to share some of the things that stayed with me this year, the last of this decade.
1)S-Town
In 2019, is there anyone that has not listened to S-Town?
Well, I only listened to the series this year, but I did listen to it twice over. I’m pretty sure it won’t be my last too. And I’ve since told everyone I knew to listen too—my husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, friends, grocer, lyft drivers … and now you. But you’ve probably heard it already.
Last I heard, it had 80million downloads and is still counting. It debuted in the fall of 2017. This American Life producer Brian Reed took three years of reporting to put the seven-episode podcast together. It won a 2018 Peabody Award, and has been optioned for a film by Participant Media.
Tyler Goodson, the other key player in this story has told Reed he would be up to tell his version of the story once his case is settled. A film ever seeing the light of day has been complicated by a judge in June this year, allowing an S-Town lawsuit against the podcasts producers to proceed, in the courts. All these forks and turns will just make for a richer story when it eventually happens. And points at the great effect the story of John B McLemore has on anyone who listens to it.
It’s a story beautifully told about what it means to be human. It begins with McLemore’s email to Reed to come investigate: a murder he believes has taken place in Shit-Town, of a black kid, by a the son of a family with historical ties to the Klu Klux Klan.
But by the end of Episode 2 - there is a sharp turn and quickly becomes a story about McLemore - a complex character that unfolds with care and nuance. He is a horologist, full of heart, worried about climate change, with a deep distrust for institutions - he keeps his money away from banks, and he practices fire gilding - an ancient technique of gold plating.
I listened to the podcast without any idea what it was about - just that it was good. So I will not say anything more. Trust me, just go listen if you haven’t.
2)Homobile
Attending a Kitchen Sisters workshop at KCRW, I heard “Homobile” -- a sound-rich radio piece that made my brain pop and gave me ideas of how to proceed with my own story about The Blues Highway. The Kitchen Sisters are public radio heroes; spend some time on their website and listen to the many radio stories they have produced in their esteemed career. While there, please feel free to donate to them.
http://www.kitchensisters.org/fugitivewaves/episode-5/
3)Millennial Podcast
Yes, I am coming to it very late, two years after the podcast ended. But still Megan Tan’s voice has kept me company for the last three months. My favorite was episode 38. But of course, you should start at the very beginning. And don’t be put off by the term ‘millennial’ - her real-time experiences are universal.
http://www.millennialpodcast.org/season-iii-blog/38-we-grew-up-here
http://www.millennialpodcast.org/
4)Two Years With Franz
I first came across Bianca Giaever’s work in San Francisco at the screening of “The Scared is Scared.” It was at the 2013 Disposable Film Festival and it premiered at the Castro Theatre. It was such a charming short film that stayed with me. More recently, I heard her radio piece “Two Years With Franz,” on Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Franz Wright who died in 2015
The Organist: Two Years With Franz
5)If He Hollers Let Him Go
I’ve been a fan of Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, since reading her piece A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof for GQ Magazine. She also wrote this recent piece on comedian Dave Chapelle for The Believer Magazine.
In it she writes: “Besides race, three things make Dave Chappelle’s comedy innovative and universal: wit, self-deprecation, and toilet humor. This is the same triumvirate that makes Philip Roth’s writing so original. Woody Allen’s movies, too. Chappelle had a keen sense of the archetypal nature of race, and understood just as acutely how people work on a very basic level.”
I like her perspective, how she tackles race, and the way she crafts her stories; always illuminating and with an acute sense of the reveal.
https://believermag.com/if-he-hollers-let-him-go/
OK that’s it folks. Till next year...Happy 2020 to you and your family. Maybe, we’ll meet on the slopes?