mavis j

History

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1 year 23 weeks

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Personal Information

Your website

http://www.xanga.com/carrieoakey12

State

IL

Bio

I am the product of the marriage of two diverse sets of genes. A forever line of farmers on my dad’s side; and as many eggheads on my mom’s. The eggheads are/were scientists, mathematicians and professors and the farmers are/were, well, farmers. I suppose my mother’s family would have expected her to marry into academia, a life she eschewed when she married my dad. I grew up in Nebraska and never really interacted with the eggheads. Still, there’s a little tugging from each side going on in my DNA.

From the farmers I got strong arms suited only for, well, farming, and making people feel guilty about not going to the gym. “It’s hereditary, I tell them, I don’t go either.”

From the eggheads I got the public radio listener gene and the unfortunate ability to contemplate what it means to be a softie trapped in the body of a throwback to the days of ‘yore.

In other words, I can’t throw or hit a softball to save my life so don’t ask. Try as I may, I will never be waifish but I am nowhere near as tough as I look.

I have always been in love with radio and recorded sound, where looks don’t count.

P.S. My current address says Chicago, but my heart still has out-of-state license plates. Should the contest require it, or should there be a dire shortage of squeaky-voiced-white-girls elsewhere, I am ready and willing to relocate.

What's your favorite public radio show?

That’s so hard. I would have to make a mash-up. I love This American Life and Next Big thing for the people in the stories; Garrison for his monologue; Terry for sticking it to more than one of “The-collective-Man;” On the Media because it is so smart; Tavis because he can turn an empty apartment into a home with just his voice; and Wait Wait because it makes me laugh my head off when the apartment goes back to being empty.

There's also a series, Out of My Way, on our local Eight-forty-eight that I think is most delightful, due mainly to delightfulness of its host, Gianofer Fields. If you haven't had the pleasure:
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/programs/848/series_features/848_oomw....

Now that's hostiness.

What's your secret talent?

Geesh, I've already told you more about myself than I've told anyone, ever, and now you want "secrets?" Well, I may have some secrets but I am not sure how many I would call “talents.” Ok, I can waterski with one foot holding the rope and no hands. Does that count?

What song is stuck in your head right now, you know, a music wedgie?

Oh an ohrwurm, you mean? An earworm? This is going to sound really self-centered or something, but the truth is that it is a song I just wrote with a friend for a band that we never seem to get around to forming.

The song is about a guy who pours his heart into making a mixtape for a girl but she just throws it out the window where it catches in the branches of a tree. I know it sounds a little too precious but it's not, really. It's just a song about the second life of garbage.

It's better than having the local jingle, "7-7-3--2-0h-2----Lun-aH" as an earworm for weeks on end.

What sound is most characteristic of where you live?

Where I live now the soundtrack is always The Racket's Greatest Hits. Garbage trucks. Shopping cart guys brawling. High school students coming and going. Sirens. Car alarms. Boisterous drunks.

Most amazingly though, the mating call of a mourning dove has crept into the mix. It floats above it all or waits for a solo in one of those strange sudden moments of quiet. Do you know it? That call? It is very plaintive. Ooohoooh-wooo-wooo-wooo. With volume swells, little crescendoes, over the wooos.

update: The pair of mourning doves alighted on my windowsill when I was at my computer yesterday and peeked in the window. They found each other. I haven't heard the call since.

What's your favorite sound memory?

The sound of punk rock music blasting from the speakers of a Honda Civic parked on a gravel road as my friends and I thrash danced between the rows of a tall cornfield on a summer night.

Which station do you listen to most?

WBEZ or WLUW

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