Saturday morning now means time alone, enjoying the sunrise, writing, and often listening to The Vinyl Cafe, an hour-long radio variety show hosted by Stuart McLean. Sometimes the podcast isn't the whole show, but I'll take what I can get. Ironically, I could listen to the entire show on Jefferson Public Radio while we lived in Medford OR, but now that we are a scant 20 miles from Canada, I can't find it on the radio. Fortunately the podcast means I can listen to the show at my leisure, which usually means jammies, coffee and the occasional purring cat.
Stuart's melodic voice can make anyone feel good and listen attentively. I rank it right up there with Jimmy Stewart, Richard Burton, Orson Welles and Garrison Keillor. Each can grab your attention and drop you smack dab in the middle of the story they are telling, making you feel as if you are part of the tale.
In case you haven't figured it out, I am a fan of radio shows. I remember listening to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on KNX 1070 radio from Los Angeles, it's 50,000 watt clear-channel signal blazing across the airwaves and reaching places like June Lake in the Sierra, where at the end of a day of fishing, we would sit around the campfire and listen to sounds of a creaking door and E.G. Marshall inviting us join in the night's adventure.
A ravenous reader, radio theater helped feed my imagination, adding sounds and voices to the stories wound inside my head. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a movie as much as anyone. There are times, and I find them more often than before in my life, where I appreciate less visual bombardment and more thought-creating audio. Radio has the power to excite the imagination and involve the audience in the creative process, as we get to decide the design of the creaking door, the color of the speeding bus or the features of the main character.
Time for another cup of coffee.
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