A Day of Disasters

I awoke Friday morning thinking that everything was worked out and ready to go with the show entitled The Origins of Woodstock Public Access Television. I was going to spend the day writing my third book related to my experiences as an educator for 41 years. I have really gotten into that concept and have loads of memories and material from which to draw. At 11 AM I received a call from Tobe Carey telling me that his partner on the show Bart Friedman was not well and we would have to cancel the show. Bart and Tobe were among the early pioneers of videography and public access television, and that show had been weeks in the planning. I even had written a letter to the editor of the local paper indicating that the show would focus very much on the town and its public access TV. I told Tobe to tell Bart that we would reschedule the show and that Bart should just get better soon. I then went to my back up show on the town of Fiesole, just north of Florence. I always have a "back up". I place that in quotes, because the show has already been composed as an album with the appropriate photos, but other than that I have not really done much research, and yet if I had an emergency (such as this), it would be a possible backup. All I really needed would be perhaps an hour to get ready. A bit out of whack, I started to move things around in my iPhoto list, and accidentally mixed the Woodstock TV photos with the Fiesole ones, and not only were they combined. but completely mixed up and out of order. Now I panicked, not because I thought I wouldn't have enough time, because I did have 6 hrs to air time, but because I just have a hard time with change and confusion. Laura suggested I just skip that night and show an old show on video, but I just had to get this done, and spent the next several hours frantically getting ready. Finally I did, went to the studio, perhaps a little unprepared, and did the show. At the end of the show Ellen gave me the DVD and off I went. When I got home I realized the DVD didn't have any sound, and called Ellen. She said the DVD player must have malfunctioned, would try to have it repaired and we could do the show over again either the next day or whenever. I always back up a broadcast by DVRing it at home, so I tried to take the show off the TV to then download into my computer and then upload to Youtube. I had a miserable time with that and after 3 hrs gave up. I came to the conclusion that I would have to do the show at another time, perhaps Sunday or who knows when. I then called Dan, my technical expert, who walked me through the proper way to DVD a show off the TV, and after a long while getting right finally had everything going well. The show I subsequently uploaded to Youtube wound up being only slightly flawed. The broadcast was fine, but I saw that on air I had some difficulty with some of the details as my normal study time had been upset. Nonetheless, I did have a chance to talk about Florence a bit, and Fiesole, which is a really lovely town filled with Roman ruins, spectacular views, and we even did a video pastry demonstration with a master chef, Febo Ticci, the husband of someone we knew who lived in Fiesole. I would like to mention something I forgot on the broadcast. Febo was adopted by the owner of the shop Alcedo Falli, and took him on as an apprentice pastry chef. When Febo had I had spoken (translated by his wife, our acquaintance Loretta) about his adopted family, I indicated that my own father had been adopted back in the 1920's. The show about Fiesole was very satisfying. It reminded me of teaching school, when some lesson I had planned was hard to teach, because some equipment had malfunctioned. Although I was flummoxed and disoriented at first, the lesson itself was very good. Just get me in front of a class (or in front of a camera) and I am ok. Sorry to my followers for this slight delay. Buona sera ! E grazie !