Recording a Faculty Senate meeting back in November. Sure, it’s overkill.
That’s what I do…
Category: Work
Northeast Passage is a group of dedicated individuals at the University of New Hampshire “empowering individuals with disabilities to define, pursue, and achieve their Therapeutic Recreation and Adaptive Sports goals.” In late summer 2000, a group with NE Passage trekked to the newly renovated Galehead Hut in NH’s White Mountains.
Here’s a short story we made from that weekend:
If the embedded video is not displaying for you, try watching on Vimeo
The inspiration for the trek was the uproar over upgrades that were done to the rustic cabin located on Forest Service land, which required meeting current ADA spec. Many in the AMC community thought the ADA requirements were balderdash and poppycock (although they used less colorful language) and railed that the next step would be paving the pathway itself.
For Jill and the team at NE Passage: challenge accepted. Three wheelchair users and two crutchers completed the climb, and I was charged with documenting the event. In addition to recording much of the video you see (while hiking the trail myself), I also coordinated a 2nd unit and sound recordist – couldn’t have done this without Tom & Mark – plus a “sherpa” who brought fresh production supplies. Also embedded on the trek was a reporter and photographer for the New York Times, as well as another video crew. Almost a bit of a circus swirling around the actual hikers…
Heading down the mountain after two nights in the hut, the team was met by hikers coming up the trail with a copy of the day’s NYT – we were the first story from the University of NH to make the front page of the Old Gray Lady. (Below the fold – but still!)
This video is one of the stories we made from the footage – it ran during an intermission in NHPTV’s coverage of a UNH Hockey game…and that’s how I got an Emmy on my shelf. We also completed a half-hour feature on the trek commissioned by the UNH Foundation. (I sure wish I’d saved a copy of that one, as there is a ton more footage and fun.)
To my great surprise, I was less tired or sore after getting home than I expected I would be. Something in the work and the people I was with was keeping me going with ease. Working with Northeast Passage on this project and many others informed my thinking about life and how inclusive actions make us all better people with fuller experiences. I am grateful I got to know Jill and the others, and feel lucky to have tagged along.
Meanwhile… I recently discovered a 20-year retrospective video on the trek put together by my friends at Northeast Passage. Watching it, you can see what a difference the trek made to so many people – our teams, yes, but even folks who weren’t part of the challenge.
I can’t embed the video, but you can watch it on YouTube. That’s Jill Gravink, Founder and Director of Northeast Passage at the beginning.
To this day, I have yet to experience anything like this project. It was hard work, sure – even the day before the trek we climbed some supplies to the hut and did some test footage. During the hike up, I bounced between the lead and middle teams, and probably climbed the trail twice. On the way down, again I bounced, from the middle team to the last team, at one point, I ditched the camera to lend an extra set of hands and getting chair down Jacob’s Ladder.
Then I hiked back up to retrieve it, and hustle back to leapfrog those folks and find the group further down.
I have never worked so hard for a story before, let alone a story that meant so much to so many. Thanks, Jill (and everyone!) for having me along.
It’s been 628 days (but who counts these things, right?) since the last time I had a guest in my audio booth talking through the ether with distant broadcasters. The last time I fired up the microphones for real was February 27, 2020, to connect a faculty member from our Marine Mammal Institute with CBC’s Quirks and Quarks program to discuss whale skin care. A bit more than two weeks later, we were shut down by a pandemic.
A lot has changed over this time – 21 months! – and some of those changes are in our booth. Back then, our primary broadcast connection to radio stations was an ISDN line, a 1988 technology standard that allowed for high-quality audio connections. (The codec we used was retired in 2018.) Today, for the first time since we went into remote/lockdown/isolation, I’m staring at the controls of a new IP-based audio codec, watching the virtual meters bounce between my studio and the BBC.
The many technologies that supported our remote operations, Zoom being the 800-lb gorilla in our particular sandbox, transformed the way we did our work – all of us. With a Zoom, Teams, or Skype connection, or any manner of audio-over-IP solutions available to broadcasters, the need for a dedicated facility to provide “broadcast quality” audio became more or less moot. To a point.
It was frustrating to me as a listener during the COVID interregnum. Working from home, I had more opportunities to listen live to my favorite radio programs, and would hear sub-standard audio as a regular feature make it on the air. Even our campus had people on programs via cellphones who once would have been in my booth. At times, the way folks used Zoom to get on the radio made a cell connection seem like pristine audio – why producers would take a laptop computer’s shitty microphone in an echoey room over a cell phone baffled me.
But, as a nod to a step towards a return to what will be closer to normal (even if we don’t fully return to normal as we knew it), today I had someone in my booth talking with the BBC. I have another one booked in two weeks.
We’re back on the air, with our folks sounding like they are in a studio again, instead of at their kitchen table. For this, I am grateful.