Tempus is fugiting! -Walter the Seltzer man's favorite customer.

Before launching into my update, I want to share a great piece with you. Joe Richman, producer of “Radio Diaries” did a piece for the “NY Works” series, profiling those jobs that are being phased out by computers, changing tastes, automatic delivery, industrialization, and globalization (among other things). This one is about Walter the Seltzer man. It is a great ditty; short and sweet…something that definitely merits your five minutes.

Check it out at: http://www.radiodiaries.org/newyorkworks-home.html

In other news, my recording with the nuns of Waterville has come to a close. I am now writing and re-writing scripts (up to version eight at this point) and working hard to keep things suspenseful, interesting, yet tightly edited. Wooo! On my last day with the Sisters, I had two very intense interviews--Sister Mary Emmanuel Masson was one of them. The eldest of the nuns at age 91, she joined religious life in her early twenties. Sister Mary Emmanuel wakes up every morning and spends five minutes on the exercise bike in the convent’s basement. Then she sweeps the basement and walks off to early morning prayer. When I asked her about the 1996 double murder, she didn’t want to speak about the actual event.

“I was in the Chapel when it happened,” she remembered. “I hid in a pew.”

When prompted about forgiveness, the Sister looked at me. Her answer was simple yet incredibly poignant.

“How can we hate him if we love him?”

I responded in disbelief. “Sister: You feel like you must love him?”

She smiled, “I never met anyone I didn’t love.”

When I left the convent that day, she made the sign of the cross on my forehead (as she always does) and prayed that I should have a safe journey. The journey didn’t really end with my arrival back in Portland. I listen to the Sisters every day….editing and trimming, making painful decisions such as which quotes to exclude and which details to integrate. I’ve been given six minutes; I must try to do this group of women some serious justice in that space of time.

In the middle of this task, I must also begin work on my second story. I decided to focus on female truck drivers and found my subject in Debbie Seelow. Born in Farmington, Maine and living in Jay, Debbie has been driving for 19 years. A single mother of one daughter, her first haul was to New Hampshire. Now she travels as far as California. We leave this Monday morning and I’m already starting to mentally pack my bags. Besides many tapes and back-up batteries, I’ll need flip-flops for showering in truck stops, a pillow for my bunk in her cab, and serious fortitude for those long days on the interstate. I want to take the listener through her daily experiences but also want to focus on the women of this industry. What are their interactions like? Do men welcome them? Shun them? Harrass them on the CB-radio? Who knows, but after five days in an 18-wheeler, I should definitely have some answers.

That’s the latest from Maine….where it’s supposed to snow tonight. I’m looking forward to some sun and hope this long haul takes us south. Debbie asked me if I had a dream destination for the trip.

“Some place where it’s not winter,” I said.

Laughing over the phone, she said “Oh girl, I’ll try. I’ll definitely try.”