Field and Life Recordings
At the end of our trip to Berkeley last year, we had a bit of time to kill before getting on our plane home. We drove around SF a bit and I really wanted to take the kids to see/hear the Wave Organ in the Marina District. I’d been before, but the seas were flat […]
Once he got bored with the elaborate, plastic, build-your-own marble tracks he’d received as gifts, he got his hands on the colander and started making noise with the marbles in there. It sounded pretty cool, so we recorded it.
A while back, we went on a camping trip with some friends to Wellesley Island, up in the 1000 Islands. Our annual Saranac Lake camping trip was coming up and our friends wanted to try sleeping in a tent with their three-year-old before committing to a boat-in only excursion. Along the way, we stopped for lunch […]
There was a period where Otis was very interested in making up songs and getting me to record them. I collected enough of them for an EP! That wasn’t that hard to do, though, considering how many of his songs are largely improvised and lasted more than ten minutes… Perhaps one of these days I’ll […]
Do all children notice the common ground between “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” “Twinkle Twinkle,” and the alphabet song? Otis sure did. And Juniper seems to have picked up on it too. Here’s JuJo mostly improvising, but with a noticeable amount of the familiar melody peppered in for good measure. (Real time commentary by Brother Otis.)
When Otis was born, our friends gave us a book called Moo Baa La La La. They said it was their daughter’s favorite when she was very young. The first time I read the book, I was a little skeptical. But over time it came to be an honored part of the bedtime rotation. When Otis […]
An unexpected challenge of having kids is that nap timing needs to be very precise. Sarah and I developed a habit of driving to Watertown for Chipotle burritos soon after moving to Potsdam. This was before Otis was born and aside from making sure we didn’t leave the dogs home alone too long, we could […]
In our old apartment, in West Stockholm, we had a washer and a dryer. The washer was fine, but the dryer caught fire. In retrospect, the warning signs were there. It used the squeak like a motherfucker. So much so that we would never do laundry if we were trying to watch TV. I guess […]
I’ve got a corner office in Schuette Hall. “The result of a quick climb up the corporate ladder!” I always joke. But the joke’s on me since despite having the corner, I still have just one window. (A generous student used one page of their color print quota to make me a second window with […]
The Village of Potsdam has recently (within the last few years) been putting a lot of effort into revitalizing Ives Park down by the river. They put in a nice, meandering, paved path. They installed a canoe dock (with EZ Launch®!). And they built a nice big swinging bench. A playground is in the works […]