When Good Intentions Get Out of Control

By Susan Tweit

Last September, my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Although she was intellectually very much “still here” in her words, her short-term memory became increasingly unreliable and her body began to fail.

Mom was always a cheerful, good-natured sort, but with Alzheimer’s came agitation and apprehension. What seemed to help most was the sound of a familiar and loved voice, and the one she really craved was my voice.

A few weeks later, while I was closeted in my home recording studio narrating the audiobook version of my memoir, Walking Nature Home, I had a brainstorm: I’d collect some favorites from my twenty years of writing and producing a weekly radio commentary, and make a CD of them for my mom.

That way she could hear my voice whenever she wanted; it might be soothing as the terrain of her mind continued to shift. I browsed through over 700 scripts on my computer, made a short list of about 120 (four times as many as I needed), and then thought about organization.

By the time I’d decided on a journey through the seasons of the year, sorted by month, picked some that were local and some more far-flung; and sought a balance between science reporting, nature observation, and reflective, memoir-like pieces, I narrowed my list to to 28 scripts.

That’s when the project tipped from good intention to out-of-control: I decided I’d record all 28 over again so my voice would be consistent. The commentaries average about 4.5 minutes each, and it takes me about three times that to get a good read, and then half an hour to edit the audio track for each script …

Can you see where this is going? From a simple CD for my mom to a full-blown professionally produced recording project, that’s where!

Musician and composer friend and neighbor David Tipton graciously agreed to produce the CD and also to compose and perform original music for the background. Keeping things local and in our own ‘hood, artist friend (and David’s honey) Sherrie York agreed to design the jacket (made, of course, from recycled cardboard).

Before I knew it, I was listening to test tracks and proofing cover designs and ordering what seems like an enormous amount of CDs.

Which is why, as Terraphilia Productions, I am now the proud publisher of “WildLives: Celebrating the World Around Us,” a 150-minute MP3 CD including 28 favorite commentaries from my long-running radio program reporting on nature, the community of the land, and our relationship with the above. (The WildLives CD is available in Salida at The Book Haven, and online through CD Baby, iTunes, Audible and other online music outlets.)

Here’s the the irony in this story: After all that, I realized that my folks’ older-model bookshelf stereo wouldn’t play an MP3 CD. So I had to make Mom a special set …