10 People I’d love to interview for a podcast.

~ roldaver ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking of doing a podcast for some time now. You could say I’ve been building up to it for years. When I was in junior high my friend Roger Johnson and I used to make 8 track tapes (google it) like we were on a radio show. I moved from 8tracks to cassettes in high school (but always said I could quit at anytime) and send them to friends. In college I actually volunteered at a campus radio station as a disc jockey, I had to provide my own music so I was frequently carrying 200 records and 100 cassettes across campus after my shift ended at 1am. When I lived in Russia , I would record letters to my friends and send them home. Over the past 30 years I have hosted a “radio” show that emanates from my head and broadcasts in my car when I am driving by myself. I also have have a vlog, Dave Out Loud, that as has almost as many viewers as my radio program has listeners.

Over the past few weeks, as I have been more seriously considering a podcast, I have been thinking about the components of such things. I started to think about who I might want to interview in a podcast. I started writing down a list of people whom I’d love to interview. The list quickly evolved to well over 10 people, so I had to do a bit of whittling to get to the list below. If I ever do host a podcast I do want to make a quick disclaimer on this list. It is not necessarily the top 10 people I’d like to interview for a podcast. It is just a list of 10 of the many people I’d like to interview. The 10 I ended up choosing I share some type of commonality with, that I’d love to explore in an interview. Some of these people you have heard of others are people I’ve met along the road on the journey that is my life. In no particular order here they are …

10 people I’d love to interview for a podcast

Vladimir Lebedev

Just to clarify when I say Vladimir Lebedev. I do not mean the illustrator or the skier I mean the pastor, musician, translator, student, driver, interpreter, missionary friend of mine from Russia. Vladimir was one of the first people I met when I went to Russia in 1992 and is the person who coined the phrase ministry of bad ideas for me. He is a dear friend who has a wonderful love for and understanding of God’s word.

Allen Levi

I met Allen Levi in 1995 in Irmo, South Carolina where he was doing a concert at the church I was attending. I connect to Allen on many levels, we both write songs, blog, have a passion for missions and youth ministry. We both have lost brothers to illness. Allen stopped practicing law to go into full time music ministry. A few years ago he left music ministry for a while and served one term as a judge in family court. In 2004 my wife booked him to play a concert for my 40th birthday. It was the last time I saw him in person and I would love to catch up with him and talk about his eclectic yet Christ centered life.

Steve West

1/2 my list is composed of people I’ve never met. Steve West is probably the least well known person on that side of the list. I must be drawn to the blogger lawyer type as Steve West is both those things. When I first started reading his blog, out walking, I didn’t even know what a blog was, let alone that I was reading one. Reading his blog over the last 12 years I have discovered movies like Once, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, and house concerts. The thing I like most about Steve is that although he blogs infrequently that his posts are always thoughtful, insightful, challenging and worth waiting for.

Weird Al Yankovic

The commonality I share with Weird Al, is strangely not the weirdness. Although I am extremely weird. I consider myself a bit of a parodist myself. My parodies are on a much smaller scale then Mr. Y, I once wrote a variation of Hakuna Matata cal led Hakuna Renatta for a girl from our college and career group who was moving from Illinois to Florida. I believe her name was Renatta. I also wrote this one for my my 500th post at a differnet blog.

Amy Roller

One of the nice things about being married to your best friend is being able to book her as a guest on your podcast. I mean I love our conversations why not share them with an audience?

Sheryl Ryan

Sheryl is an OT from California, a breast cancer survivor (like my wife), a facebook friend who is both insightful, funny and compassionate. I’ve known Sheryl since we were teenagers and even though I haven’t seen her since 1990 she is still one of my favorite people.

Gordy Jorian

Gordy is one of 2 friends who has an imdb page. Gordy is another friend I have not seen for decades but spending time with Gordy is always time at the fun table.

Steve Martin

Steve and Gordy have both worked with Kermit the Frog (who would definitely be on this list if it wasn’t limited to people). Steve Martin has been my favorite comedian since I was in middle school. If it wasn’t for Steve Martin, I’d be my favorite comedian ( I wouldn’t be as funny as I am now, as I have learned so much about comedy from him even without the benefit of his Masterclass).

Carlton Fisk

Some of you may be surprised that I went 8 people without mentioning a White Sox player. If I made this list 6 months ago prior to his death, I may have included Ed Farmer on this list. Carlton Fisk is also deserving of a spot here, as he was my favorite non white-sox player in 1980 when he signed as a free agent for my team. He continued and concluded his HOF career on the south side.

Michael Card

Michael Card is one of my favorite singer songwriters. He also an excellent author and makes a mean bowl of chili. Actually I don’t know about the chili part but he does make a mean bowl of podcast.

Well those are 10 people I’d love to interview for a podcast. I guess the next step would be figuring out how to go about making a podcast.

A to Z Roadtrip 2020

~ roldaver ~ 3 Comments

Every year, a few weeks after the A to Z challenge has ended, the A to Z road trip begins. The A to Z road trip is a challenge to go back and review all the particpating posts from the challwnge before the beginning of next year. Here is a link to the 374 blogs suitable to all ages that particpated in the challege this year. If you are stopping by from the challenge, I have constructed this post for you so you can link to all my a to z 2020 posts. I have also constructed a page that does the same thing.

My theme this year was Capitals, but that is somewhat misleading. While I have a few posts that give information about the capital itself, most of my submission are based on what pops in to my mind when I think of that capital. It was a crazy bumpy covid lock down ride. Some times more than one capital was listed in the same post, so don’t be confused if you link to the same post from different letters.

Most of my posts also include links to previous years a to z submissions form the same letter, so feel free to visit them as well.

Enjoy your visit and have a wonderful road trip. I will also try to visit all the participating blogs before 3.31.21 and hope to feauture some of my reactions to them in upcoming entries.

To go directly back to the a to z challenge page click here.

Albany, New York

Boston, Massachusetts

Columbia, South Carolina

Dover, Delaware

Edinburgh, Scotland

Frankfort, Kentucky

Georgetown, Guyana

Honolulu, Hawaii

Indianapolis, Indiana

Jerusalem, Israel

Kaskaskia*, Illinois

* Previous Capital

Lansing, Michigan

Madison, Wisconsin

Nashville, Tennessee

Olympia, Washington

Pierre, South Dakota

Quito, Ecuador

Raleigh, North Carolina

Springfield, Illinois

Tallahassee, Florida

Ulan-Ude, Buryatia*

*Russian republic

Victoria, British Columbia*

*Province of Canada

Washington D.C., USA

Xalapa, Vera Cruz*

*State of Mexico

Yucatan, Yucatan

*State of Mexico

Zanesville*, Ohio

* Previous Capital

Trip Over. To go directly to my a to z 2020 archive page click here. To go back to the a to z challenge page click here.

A to Z Challenge Reflections 2020

~ roldaver ~ 2 Comments

I hadn’t originally planned on participating in the A to Z challenge this year. I hadn’t really been blogging at all since midsummer and when the school years started I was working 60 to 70 hours a week at a movie theater and as a substitute teacher. And even though I had a week off school for Spring break our family had a number of activities planned for that week. Planning 26 entries for mu blog was probably the furthest thing from my mind.

Then in quick succession my spring break was lengthened to two weeks, the movie theater temporarily closed , and all the spring break activities we had planned were postponed or cancelled all due to pandemic concerns. Sometimes during those 2 weeks came a stay at home order and all of a sudden I had time on my hands.

During those weeks I did a lot of relaxing and even amid all the anxiety really enjoyed my family and my new found free time. I rediscovered reading blogs for pleasure and while I pondered whether I might be able to find work to replace my “nonessential” jobs, I decided not to look until March 30th, which would have been the Monday I was supposed to come back from Spring Break. It was at that point I decided to sign up for the A to Z challenge.

My theme for last years challenge was the movie music of the Sherman Brothers. It was a bit of a complex process as I would have a video of the song, the lyrics from the song and my reflections or remembrance from the movie. It was complex but each post had a very predictable pattern. I also had prepared many of the submissions in advance of April 1st. By choice or necessity that was all different this year.

I chose a topic Capitals and put my own Random twist on it. I chose New York’s capital Albany as my A entry and wrote about a visit to Baseball’s Hall of fame a few years back. The Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, not Albany. While my son and I did stay in Albany for a few days on the trip the articles main focus was not Albany.

Most every entry was like that. Quito is the capital of Ecuador. The missionaries Jim and Elisabeth Elliot were married in Quito, I’ll write about them. It was much less about capitals and more about free association derived from Capitals. I tried as much as I could to tell about myself and so you might not know anymore about Pierre, South Dakota than you did before, but hopefully you know a little more about me.

Going back to my sudden inclusion into the ranks of the unemployed for a moment, I actually viewed it as a bit of a sabbatical. I had set a date of March 30th to start looking for work, I expected that this could take quite a bit of time. The truth now was that on the 30th, I heard about a job, applied for that job, was interviewed and hired for that job in about a 6 hour period.

I thought the job would be restocking a grocery store on the over night shift 2 or 3 times a week. Which would give me plenty of time for my family, volunteer activities and the challenge. It turned out the job was 5 to 6 times a week giving me less time than I thought I would have had. Also changing my sleep patterns really did a bit of a number on my whole creative process and also got in the way of deadlines. On three different times I had to catch up on my posts after missing the natural deadline of the calendar.

Generally one of my favorite parts of the a to z challenge is how it involves me in the blog-o-sphere. I love reading and interacting with other peoples blogs. This year I did far less of that than I hoped to. Now that I am no longer obligated to post every day, I hope to catch up on some of that reading and commenting.

I will start by spending some time to look at some reflection posts. If you are interested in checking these out, click here. I am already looking forward to next years challenge. I have an idea that will be very time intensive and will take months of preparation. I thought of it last year, but by December , I knew there would be no way to implement it this year. This is what is known in the entermation (a synonym I just created for infotainment) field as a tease.

I’ll end this piece with a bit of an announcement. 11 years ago I began my blogging journey with a blog called Home School Dad. I did over 700 posts there from 2009 to 2012 another 100 from 2013 to 2016 and its essentially laid dormant for the last 3+ years. I recently decided to bring this blog out of mothballs. I will still be posting here as well, but I imagine that HSD will again become my flagship. I spent a few hours this evening adjusting the format. If you check it out by clicking here, you will always see a link to my most recent Random Acts of Roller entry, which of course will be this entry. Thanks for everyone stopping by from the challenge. I hope achieving a new normal after the challenge and in this crazy covid situation is fun and fulfilling.