Peter Rukavina's Podcast

Recorded eight days ago (8 months in quarantine years) on the Charlottetown waterfront at the end of a drive in the countryside on a sunny Sunday.

On Thursday morning I was immersed in a video conference, with the personable Josh MacFadyen, when I got a text message: As Oliver was across the street, at home, and “five machine” sounds a lot like “fire machine,” which is something someone might say when the house is burning down and they are panicking, I immediately ran across the street to rescue Oliver. Oliver was fine. The buzzer on the clothes dryer had gone off, and Oliver was simply, helpfully, letting me know. Here’s how the text message got to me: Oliver was upstairs in bed. The dryer’s buzzer went off. Oliver has a Google Home in his bedroom, so he asked it to call me: OK Google, call Peter. The Google Home dutifully called my office number. But my officer number automatically goes to voicemail, so Oliver left a voicemail (the one you can listen to above). The voicemail went to my voicemail system, which is set to automatically speech-to-text transcribe voicemails and email them to me. Which is how I got the text message “Five mac

My friend Dave does a regular segment on CBC’s Island Morning called The Things We Do For Love, wherein he interviews people about their esoteric passions. Tuesday morning Dave dipped into Pen Night. Things don’t get much more esoteric than pen geeks talking about pens, inks and paper. I’ve attached the MP3 that aired this morning.

Oliver’s got the death of a cold, so I made my way to the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market by myself this morning. After a healthy amount of Duckduckgoing “how to cycle in the rain,” I decided I was not up for it, so I took the bus instead. It was a soggy walk from Subway to the market, but the passing cars were kind, and slowed down to prevent causing monsoons from driving headlong through the standing water. In addition to being Thanksgiving-busy, the market was also Elizabeth May-busy this morning, as she made a quick campaign stop en (Tesla) route from Pownal to Cape Breton that included a lunch of Claudia’s Mexican food. And a lot of chatting with a lot of people. It’s quite humbling to see May in action: her entourage is lean, and she is open. To everyone who approaches. It must be exhausting, and we all owe her a great debt for her tenacity. I escaped from the melee on to the loading dock of the market for some quiet reflection, and recorded 30 seconds of the suddenly-torrential rain falling on the me

Ten top simple field recording tips from Cities and Memory; includes: You might think that’s only a gentle breeze, and it can’t possibly do anything to your recording, but IT WILL. Even a light wind sounds like someone’s ripped your mic in half, and will render your recording unusable. Use wind shields, use shelter, avoid wind at all costs. The recording here is a classic example of it: riding our bicycles by the metal fence surrounding the Charlottetown Event Grounds on Saturday, I noticed the the gusty winds were making beautiful music through the slats. So I pulled out my phone and pressed “record,” trying to shield it from the wind. I failed. So you’ll have to take my word for it. See also diy (do it yourself) from Quiet American. Link provenance: William Denton to Radio Apogee to this exhortation to make field recordings of decent quality.

When booking a room at the lovely Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont, you can select a “mountain view” room (with windows looking out on Wantastiquet Mountain, just across the border in New Hampshire) or a less expensive “interior view” room (with a view of, well, not much at all). What they don’t tell you, however, is that an “interior view” room comes with a window that opens out on Whetstone Brook, which runs into the middle of town and into the Connecticut River. I left the window open last night and enjoyed the best sleep of my trip so far due its pleasant sound. I arrived here in Brattleboro last night, after a short drive from Dublin, NH. This stop has become a trusted airlock between Yankee life and home life (2015, 2013, 2010, 2002), and this weekend was no exception: I had supper at the co-op across the street, and saw Downton Abbey in the Latchis Theatre downstairs. Today I am heading north, stopping in Windsor at the American Precision Museum (it is Museum Day here in the U.S., so I was able

Oliver was dismayed to learn that the 2019 Island Fringe Festival wasn’t going to include any audience-participation activities in its launch event, as it had in previous years. “For every problem, there is a solution,” I am forever telling Oliver. So he reached out to Fringe officials and, to their eminent credit, the decided to correct this oversight, and added something: DRAMATIC READING OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONG Come on down and give a truly dramatic reading of your favourite song… channel your best Liam Neeson as you woo the audience with your rendition of Janelle Monáe’s ‘PYNK’… or pretend you’re Viola Davis as you wow the crowd reading the lyrics of Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’! Of course this parry required a thrust. And Oliver decided that I needed to participate too. So I gave a dramatic reading of Kim Mitchell’s iconic Patio Lanterns, and Oliver recited Blackbird, by The Beatles, in his take on a Liverpudlian accent. There is no extant recording of my performance. But I recorded Oliver’s.

There was a baby crow born in our back yard last week that’s been learning to fly this week. Its parents have been understandably protective, and so every time Ethan the Dog goes outside they go on high alert, cawing and swooping. It’s been very effective.

Manitoba fiddler Patti Kusturok accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Rusu at the National Fiddling Day celebration at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on May 18, 2019. Sound engineering in the hall was by Brent Chaisson; I plucked this sound from the back of the church with my phone.

St. Paul’s Anglican Church commemorated the beginning of its 250th year by ringing its bells 250 times at midnight tonight.

St. Paul’s Anglican Church participated in the Bells of Peace initiative today, ringing its bell 100 times to mark the centenary of the end of World War I. The church generously offered the opportunity to ring the bell to all comers, so Oliver and I lined up, at sunset, with a diverse group, parishioners and otherwise, for our chance. The stairway up the bell tower turned out to be far more civilized than I imagined, and it was an easy climb up the stairs. We were each given the chance to ring the bell twice; I recorded Oliver’s second go.

The final event of Oliver’s Birthday Season, a trip to Wolfville to bear witness to a live taping of Laurie Brown’s Pondercast podcast. So, of course, we recorded a podcast while waiting for the show to start.

The first time Oliver used the sink at our Malmö Airbnb, he emerged exclaiming “The sink sounds like a didgeridoo!” I asked him to record this, and he emailed me this sound. Which does, indeed, sound like a didgeridoo.

We are heading home, and recorded a quick podcast here in Schiphol Airport after going through security. Security passage, as you will hear, was greatly aided by advance planning: last week I contacted Condor, our “host” airline, requesting assistance for Oliver. They responded with a “DPNA” PDF file that I could print out that identified Oliver as a flyer-with-autism, and instructed me to print it out and show it along the way. With the aid of this very helpful blog post from a mother and son in our situation, we knew to go to the “Assistance Desk” upon arrival at the airport. So that’s what we did. They took a look at Oliver’s paperwork and asked us to wait in the nearby “elderly and disabled” waiting area. About 10 minutes later we were greeted by Pascal (pro tip: always ask assistants for their name; it instantly establishes a rapport) and I explained our situation. Pascal, it turns out, is an intern, halfway through his term at Schiphol, on the way to working in the air. He proved a useful aid, as h

Matt Rainnie produced this spot for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Island Morning that aired on Friday, August 10, 2018 after the 8:00 a.m. news. He interviewed me about the Charlottetown Boulder Park, and interviewed the proprietors of the new food trucks about their role in the park’s revivification.

You may recall my report that Archdeacon John Clarke, who leads the parish here at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, took a sabbatical this summer to learn to play the guitar. Well, his sabbatical is over, and he’s reflected on the experience on his blog, where he writes, in part: It has been a challenge, to say the least, but one that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Not being particularly good at something has never stopped me from trying. And have no fear, the guitar will not make it into every sermon. There were times when trying to accomplish some guitar related skill felt more like work than play, this time has been, overall, a great joy for me. The guitar will be a part of my daily life as long as my fingers will allow it. My hope is that I will continue to improve, add skills and play well with others. I am thankful for all the support I’ve had and am deeply touched by the interest so many people have shown. I hope too, that one day people will enjoy listening to me as much as I enjoy playing. I am so happy

For my old friend John Muir, who introduced me to BB Gabor 33 years ago, this lovely rendition of Big Yellow Taxi.

When Matt Rainnie was host of Mainstreet on CBC Radio we produced a couple of summer’s worth of eclectic radio pieces, like Everything You Wanted to Know About Ice Tea in 2004. Matt is inveterately curious and a great interviewer, so when I wanted to flush subscribers to The New Yorker out of the bushes I dropped him a line, and he quickly bit, coming along to the Reinventorium yesterday morning to tape a short piece that aired this morning. The awesome power of radio has resulted in a half dozen more subscribers outing themselves.

I have an Amazon Echo at home, and one at the office. Both are set to allow “drop in” calls: I can just say “Alexa, drop in on the Reinventorium” and I get a live microphone into the office, no questions asked. Tonight I had to get home for supper before my 3D printer was finished printing. I plan to go back to the office when it’s done to shut things down. But how will I know when it’s done? Turns out that I can hear the printer printing through my Echo-to-Echo connection. So I’ll simply “drop in” from time to time and head over when I can’t hear the printer any more.