Page 32 - Program Host News Today

Please?! I promise Ill only eat the Scroll Lock key! Photo: Mitch Teich Apr 10, 2021 — Our dog turned four months old this week.  She did not notice.  She doesn’t notice much, when it comes to existential issues.  Mostly what she notices is a category of things called Objects She Shouldn’t Eat.  And then she chews on them.  In some cases (dust molecules, string, leaves) she consumes them, while in other cases (hands, the sofa, this laptop), she does not.  What she does not notice ...

Seeing the world begin requires several pairs of reading glasses. Photo: Mitch Teich Mar 13, 2021 — Mitch TeichOut of sight There was a time when the first thing I reached for on my nightstand was the snooze bar.  That was before I decided eleven inches were too far to reach from my pillow, and I started using the alarm on my watch.  Also, my bedside clock is a blur.  Which is why the first thing I reach for on my nightstand these days is my reading glasses. It’s another drumbeat in the...

Some light reading. Photo: Mitch Teich Feb 06, 2021 — Mitch TeichReaders Digestion I hit a major pandemic milestone this week.  Let me write this as tastefully as I can.   I don’t know what your habits in the, um, water closet are.  I don’t especially want to know. And, I suppose, you probably didn’t want to know mine.  But here goes, anyway.  I have always kept an ample supply of reading material in my bathroom.  There was a period in my life, in fact, where my wife and I used ...

Clearly not my first cup of coffee this morning. Photo: Mitch Teich Jan 30, 2021 — Mitch TeichGood to the Last Metaphor When did you start drinking coffee?  I don’t mean this morning.  You may well have started at 6:30, if you’re like my wife and were already chasing a small dog around the house.  I mean, if you drink coffee, how old were you when you started? I’ll grant you, I don’t have a lot of what social scientists would call “hard data” to go on, but I believe there are ...

Will the ski vest fit? Will the dog wear it? If not, it fits the stuffed tiger pretty well. Photo: Mitch Teich Jan 23, 2021 — Mitch TeichThe Dog Days of January Tomorrow is the day.  We’re picking up our dog and bringing her home.  This will be the first time in my nearly 52 years that I have lived with a dog, so everything I am about to write is either hypothetical or about to be proven wrong. (This is actually an improvement from what I normally write.) Our dog is a schnoodle, which is...

Eric Hanson, on a hike in Quebec for "Epic Trails," the show he hosts. Photo by Lukasz Larsson, courtesy Epic Trails Jan 22, 2021 — Mitch Teich On the January edition of  First Person, we meet Eric Hanson, who is working to make our world a little wider in a time most of us are staying close to home.  Hes the host of  Epic Trails, a TV show produced by an Ottawa company, coming soon to PBS in the North Country.  Later, we learn about the life and times of John "Old Lard" Clemens, a logg...

The best way to operate a Wovel - have your daughter use it. Photo: Mitch Teich Jan 16, 2021 — Mitch TeichWinters White Noise It’s snowing pretty heavily outside the First Person International Command Center as I write this.  Maybe it’s snowing pretty heavily where you’re reading it. This is the perfect snowstorm scenario – a weekend, in the midst of a pandemic, before the imminent arrival of our dog.  In other words, we have nowhere to be, and no urgent need to shovel. If there’...

An early summer view of the closet recording studio. Since then, the bathrobe has moved to a hook. Photo: Mitch Teich Jan 02, 2021 — Our house turns 70 years old this year.  We have occupied it for exactly 1/70 th of its history.  I moved into the house a year ago this week.  (My family got here a few weeks later, but that’s a story for a different column.) We have gotten to know the house pretty well in that year, probably as well as we got to know our house in Wisconsin over the ent...

Jan 01, 2021 — Jessica LawrenceNorth Country Bookmarks: Turning Trauma into Art Mental Health can be a pretty difficult topic of conversation. It’s something I’ve struggled with since I was 15, and I have no shame in admitting that the 300 mgs of Wellbutirin I take daily is what makes me feel a little less stressed - or ready to cry at the drop of a hat. This months episode features books that cover a variety of potentially triggering topics, including drug abuse and sexual assault, and ...

"Hello, youre on the air..." Photo: Mitch Teich Dec 19, 2020 — This week, on the interview show that I host (the audio version of the First Person International Media Empire), I had a chance to chat about radio, with a man who used to work in radio, and has recently written a novel about radio.  It was a very meta moment. Ham Martin’s new novel is called Talk Radio, and it’s a pleasantly quirky read, written almost entirely in dialogue – calls to a small town radio station call-in s...