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Blackwater Chronicle: THE INTERVIEW
Interviewing is sort of like riding a bike - if you haven’t conducted one in a while, you’re sort of wobbly until you get the hang of it again.
That’s the situation I was in when I drove to Morgantown this week and sat down in Dr. Timothy Sweet’s office.
I was sweating.
Not just because it was hot outside and I was dumb enough to wear a blue blazer that day, but also because I was a little nervous.
The Porte Crayon Applejack Society is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Sure, I’m a journalist - asking questions is what we do. But in my role as a radio newscaster, I have little reason to keep those old interviewing muscles in shape. The way our newsroom is organized, reporters and producers generally get the answers and then hand us the tape to use in newscasts.
In this case, though, I was getting my own tape. And I was sweatin’ it. My interviewing skills are a little wobbly these days.
Anyway, Dr. Sweet is an English professor at West Virginia University - has been for about 30 years. I wanted to talk to him because he wrote the preface to the 2002 WVU Press edition of The Blackwater Chronicle by Philip Pendleton Kennedy.
The Chronicle, of course, is a must read for anyone interested in the life of David Hunter Strother. It’s the first in the trilogy of mountain travelogues that includes Strother’s own The Virginian Canaan and DHS’s last major work, The Mountains.
Of course, Kennedy wrote the Chronicle, but the illustrations are Strother’s. The two were friends, after all. DHS also appears as a character in the book.
I tried to upload a better quality WAV file, but it kept getting hung up so I converted it to an MP3. Sounds a little muffled to me, but it’s the best I can do.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about the inclusion of audio. I might make it a more regular thing.
By the way, if your interviewing skills are a little wobbly, I recommend talking to Dr. Sweet.
He made it easy.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gilessnyder.substack.com
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By Giles SnyderInterviewing is sort of like riding a bike - if you haven’t conducted one in a while, you’re sort of wobbly until you get the hang of it again.
That’s the situation I was in when I drove to Morgantown this week and sat down in Dr. Timothy Sweet’s office.
I was sweating.
Not just because it was hot outside and I was dumb enough to wear a blue blazer that day, but also because I was a little nervous.
The Porte Crayon Applejack Society is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Sure, I’m a journalist - asking questions is what we do. But in my role as a radio newscaster, I have little reason to keep those old interviewing muscles in shape. The way our newsroom is organized, reporters and producers generally get the answers and then hand us the tape to use in newscasts.
In this case, though, I was getting my own tape. And I was sweatin’ it. My interviewing skills are a little wobbly these days.
Anyway, Dr. Sweet is an English professor at West Virginia University - has been for about 30 years. I wanted to talk to him because he wrote the preface to the 2002 WVU Press edition of The Blackwater Chronicle by Philip Pendleton Kennedy.
The Chronicle, of course, is a must read for anyone interested in the life of David Hunter Strother. It’s the first in the trilogy of mountain travelogues that includes Strother’s own The Virginian Canaan and DHS’s last major work, The Mountains.
Of course, Kennedy wrote the Chronicle, but the illustrations are Strother’s. The two were friends, after all. DHS also appears as a character in the book.
I tried to upload a better quality WAV file, but it kept getting hung up so I converted it to an MP3. Sounds a little muffled to me, but it’s the best I can do.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about the inclusion of audio. I might make it a more regular thing.
By the way, if your interviewing skills are a little wobbly, I recommend talking to Dr. Sweet.
He made it easy.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gilessnyder.substack.com