The Wormlips Scrapbook

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The dreaded day is almost upon us, so it’s time to put up my Valentine’s Day program. I get so gloomy at this time of hear year that I find myself chanting my grandmother’s old poem: “Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I’m going to the garden to eat worms …”

Without further ado, here is Attachments, produced as part of the national, CPB-funded series I did with Adi Gevins which we called A Gathering of Days, and for which we commissioned suitably hokey theme music, which you’re about to hear…

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How did this happen? It can’t be Christmastime already. But I know it is because there was X-mas Muzak in the Hong Kong airport and now the house down the street has its illuminated holiday sign: “Ho Ho,” it says on the roof. “Ho” it says on the porch just below. So of course I always read it as “Hoho, ‘ho.”

Many years ago I produced a half-hour Christmas special for public radio. People tell me it’s still floating around out there on the airwaves, but I have no idea where or when. That’s okay. Here it is.

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T’is the Season begins with the divinely corny theme music written and performed by Hot Combo. Then you’ll hear a whole lot of me — unusual for my work, believe it or not — starting with a recording of Dad and me singing Silent Night when I was two. But there are lots of other great people in there, many of them (like Dad) dead now: A woman homesteader remembers brutal North Dakota winters in the 1920s, blues legend Brownie McGhee describes homemade Christmas presents, Adi’s father reveals that all New York Santas gain entry through the fire escape, and an Oroville grandfather tells about how he uses the snow machine to make his plastic Christmas tree even more realistic.

HO HO, HO!

To get you in the mood for Halloween, here’s a half-hour documentary I produced almost twenty years ago: The Time Between. It was one in the holiday series (A Gathering of Days: An American Holiday Sampler) that I did with Adi with funding from CPB.

As always, enjoy the opening theme music written and performed by Hot Combo, featuring the inimitable Sue Schardt.

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