It took us 13 years to get here. In 2010 we began archiving podcasts of the program and when this particular one gets entered into our podcast archive it will become podcast #1000. That's a lot. I consider it to be a grand accomplishment. I'm so grateful to WYSO for airing this show for all these years and for maintaining and updating this podcast archive. Shout outs to Juliet and Desmond who have taken care of all our podcast updates over the years.
I have not taken the time to scroll through and count them all. I'm certain that if some intrepid listener did spend the time scrolling through to tabulate them all that there would not actually be a thousand shows still posted. Why is that? Well, I'm not an expert on websites but I do know that this site has been upgraded over time and that on occasion when I'm searching for the podcasts of certain shows that I have been unable to locate some of them. I have no idea what became of them, they have gotten absorbed into the internet ethers somehow?? I could go through and spend many hours matching up my own records with the archive to identify these missing programs. If I had the time to do that I would. But time is my one treasured luxury - and I have books to read, interviews to conduct, book reviews to write, meals to cook, firewood to split, cats to stroke, etc. Maybe some day? If you have the time and feel like going through and counting them all please let me know how many there are? I would love to know the actual count. With this one we have posted our first thousand and no doubt most of them are still on here. One can hope at least.
Since I was well aware of this numerical milestone I wanted to select a special interview to be the one that got us to this moment in time. By a strange coincidence not too long ago I submitted my 1000th weekly column for the Cox Ohio newspapers. 2023 has been quite a year for personal milestones. I hosted my first radio show on WYSO in June of 1993. Thirty years have gone by in a flash! So which interview did I choose and what makes it special? Peter Hayes handles all of our sound production on the program and I asked him to digitize a show I did 22 years ago with a man named Martin Murie. Martin had a book out and he was in Yellow Springs visiting his daughters when we got together to talk about his novel "Burt's Way." I had interviewed Martin before this and I interviewed him again, later. I always loved talking to him. Martin died on January 28, 2012.
Martin Murie was many things. He was an anti-war activist and and environmentalist, or in his distinctive terminology, a "varmentalist." 22 years later the impact of a rapidly changing climate is really altering our environment. I wish I could talk to Martin right now to hear his thoughts about that. "Burt's Way" was self-published. I went on-line to see if you can still obtain copies of the book and it is apparently rather rare. I did find one seller peddling a used copy of it that had been inscribed by the author. I could not even find the cover art for the book. So instead of the cover art I'm posting a photo I took of Martin marching in the Yellow Springs 4th of July parade many years ago. This photo captures is exuberant spirit.
I do have a couple of corrections to include with this podcast record. When I did my original interview with Martin we had a discussion about bird watchers. I mentioned that when I was in the fifth grade I had a teacher, Sister Eleanore Therese, who transformed me into an avid bird watcher, and that it then became a life long pursuit. As I listened to this recording for the first time, 22 years later, I realized I made an error. That wonderful nun was actually my seventh grade teacher. Throughout this interview we made it clear that "Burt's Way" is a work of fiction. When we put together this re-broadcast of the interview we had a little extra time to fill at the end so I read an excerpt from my favorite memoir of 2023, "Toy Fights," by Don Patterson. After I read that excerpt I was preparing to sign off when I once again mentioned "Burt's Way" by Martin Murie. I heard myself call the book his memoir. It isn't. The book is pure fiction. Although Burt was definitely a "varmentalist."
I hope you enjoy listening to this lovely conversation with the late Martin Murie.
