RosetteRoyale.com

Tiptoe through the tipi

Posted: Oct. 11th, 2010 | Video

Not too long ago, I found myself in Idaho.

OK: It’s rare that you find yourself in Idaho, unless you live there. But I had ventured to the Gem State to do research for a project I’m working on.

What project, you say? True, I’ve spoken about it very little, but that’s about to change, since the time to share about some upcoming work draws nigh. But not yet. For now, suffice it to say I spent a few days in Idaho this past August.

While there, I hung out with Clyde Hall, a Shoshone-Metis elder, who lives on the reservation at Fort Hall. My visit coincided with the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival and, along with seeing some fancy dancing at the powwow and a eating buffalo burger at the Fort Hall Casino diner, I stopped by Clyde’s place. He had two tipis up in his yard, their folds rippling in the breeze. Another friend, Colby Wilk, happened to be in town too, and Clyde gave us both a tour of one tipi. It provided a great lesson in how every item you can name has a story, all you have to do is find it.

Check it out here…

Clyde Hall’s Tipi Tour from Rosette Royale on Vimeo.

My lunch date with the O-Man

Posted: Aug. 20th, 2010 | Video

Every so often it happens: you get to see a rock star. Or hear about one in the vicinity anyway.

The latter proved the case for me when Barack Obama — known to a select few as the “O-Man” — came to Seattle on Tues., Aug. 17. And, yes, I know: He ain’t no rock star. He’s our president. But really, brother got charisma, no matter what you think of his (in)actions as the prezzie.

By the luck of some mysterious draw, the O-Man happened to have a lunch convo with local business owners in a restaurant right across the street from where I work. And by that same draw, I happened to have brought my videocamera. Which means I got footage. Of what, exactly? Well, take a peep at this video and enter into the realm of hollering crowds, a noisy motorcade, gender dysphoria, a mystery bag and the new literary agent for author George Orwell’s. Enjoy.

My Lunch Date with Barack “O-Man” Obama from Rosette Royale on Vimeo.

The beauty of the creepy-crawlies, care of Dr. Bugs

Posted: Jul. 2nd, 2010 | Podcast

I’ve got a question for you: Did you know that virtually every ant you see is a female? And that even though male ants do exist, they’re pretty much useless? Chances are, you didn’t know this and that’s all right. But one person who knows a lot about ants is Mark Moffett.

A trained entomologist, Mark Moffett, sometimes called Dr. Bugs, knows a thing or two about ants, spiders, beetles and frogs. He loves the creepy-crawly things of our world. His passion for life’s little critters has taken him down into the deepest caves and high atop rainforest canopies. He usually travels with a camera, to document the small world most of us never get to see. The photos he brings back from his journeys can turn ants into giants. More than 500 of these images have appeared in National Geographic Magazine, and dozens more are featured in his book “Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions,” released in the spring of 2010.

But along with being a scientist, a photojournalist and an ecologist, Mark Moffett is a master storyteller. His way of spinning a tale allows people to feel emotionally connected to the creature with six legs that lives under a decaying log. This ability was in full effect when I interviewed Mark in February 2009. He was in Seattle then as part of a “National Geographic Live!” tour, to give two slide-show lectures. We met one afternoon in the swank Fairmont Olympic Hotel, where we were joined by a photographer and Mark’s media representative. But shortly after we sat all down, my chair broke. That broken chair started a lively and, at times, emotional conversation with Mark that touched upon termites, ants, coyotes and one of the world’s deadliest snakes. And now you get to hear what we talked about. In the background you may hear a woman laugh: that’s Mark’s media representative and you may hear the shutter of a camera. But, after a while, both the media rep and the camera go silent as Mark tells his story.

Get that Bunny

Posted: May. 11th, 2010 | Video

Sometimes, things take a little longer than you planned.

Way back in February, I made a trailer for a short film I was putting together, about Simone Lupson-Cook taking her red-tailed hawk — Chase — and European goshawk — Cricket — out to hunt rabbits. I had every intention of turning out a short film soon after. But that didn’t happen.

As my hard drive had less and less space to offer, my computer kept sloowwwinnngg dooowwwwnnnn; this caused my copy of iMovie HD to place a nasty, crackling hum over the audio; this, in turn, made the piece frustrating to edit. But that’s the past.

And this is the future, with the video — finally — edited. And a new video editing program to help other filmmaking efforts in the future. Which I plan to put to use.

But in the meantime, here’s “Get that Bunny,” where Simone takes Chase and Cricket out and they get busy with a rabbit. And let me warn you: There’s blood, guts and fur. Just prepare yourself.

And thanks Simone. And Chase. And Cricket. All of you are awesome…

Radio ahead

Posted: May. 8th, 2010

Sometimes, you never know what’s gonna happen.

In mid-April, I got a call from a man named Stephen Hoffman, who said he was a producer with Marketplace, a national radio program. Frankly, I’d never heard of it, but I played it cool and acted like I had. (When I looked it up, I learned that Marketplace, a program of American Public Media, gets 8 million listeners a week, which, well, is a lot of peeps.) Stephen said the program was coming to Seattle to do a special show on housing and he wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing a radio commentary. I was interested, but told him I’d never done one. He said he’d help me out, but to think it over and get back to him. So I thought, I got back and I said yes.

After a few suggestions from the production team, I decided to do a commentary on the people who, amidst the foreclosure crisis, have never had a house to lose in the first place. I planned to focus on this by telling the story of Isaac Chapiro, a man experiencing homelessness here in Seattle. I wrote up a script and after a few editing suggestions, I tightened it up and printed it out.

Usually, commentaries are recorded in a studio, but Stephen suggested, since I’d written about places outdoors, we record it outside. So, I met Stephen and the audio/tech producer, Josh Rogosin, on a cold, drizzly Seattle morning. I read from the printed script while the rain splattered the pages, with a microphone placed closed to my lip. And while I was nursing a back injury. Somehow, we pulled it off in a few takes.

So here it is, a link to my 2-plus minutes of incandescent, radio-centered fame. There are also some pix of me, looking like I just stepped out of a used clothing store in the woods. Just click under the first pic of me to give a listen to my commentary.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/23/mm-never-had-home-to-lose/

Everybody wants a piece of Tavis Smiley

Posted: Apr. 23rd, 2010 | Podcast

So, I’m gonna share a little bit of knowledge with you: Everybody wants a piece of Tavis Smiley. I’m serious. Everybody. From his days on the air in the 90s with “The Smiley Report,” to “The Tavis Smiley Show,” which aired on NPR until late 2004, to his current PBS talk show “Tavis Smiley,” the brother is in serious demand.

Tavis came to Seattle in March 2009, as part of a book tour for “Accountable: Making America as Good as its Promise.” He was scheduled for an event at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library at 6:30 p.m. By 5:50 p.m., the 200-seat auditorium was practically full. I was supposed to interview Tavis at 6, but he was late. 6:05, 6:10, 6:12, 6:17: and still no Tavis. He arrived at 6:20, 10 minutes before he was to meet the crowd that awaited. But before I could interview him, there were other people in the room who wanted a second of his time. Tavis shook everyone’s hand, saying to everybody he met: “Hi. I’m Tavis. What’s your name? … Nice to meet you,” before moving on. Then he posed for a group picture with about 10 people. Then some of those people have questions they want to ask him. And by the time he sat down to talk to me, it was 6:24.

So, with his tour manager nearby, who had a clipboard under an arm, trying to keep him on schedule, and a personal assistant answering a barrage of calls on a cell phone, Tavis was good to go.
Here, in a little more than seven minutes, Tavis holds forth on civic engagement, the difference between the people in the yacht and those in a dinghy and knowing what something is when you see it.

Oh. And one more thing. Listen closely, because Brother Smiley likes to talk fast.

Breakfast date with Max Blumenthal, liberal journalist

Posted: Apr. 21st, 2010 | Podcast

Hi there, this is Rosette Royale and you’re about to hear an interview with Max Blumenthal. Even if you’ve never heard of Max Blumenthal, you may have seen a video of his on YouTube. In 2007, he went to the College Republican National Convention, and filmed a whole cadre of young men and women, done up in business attire, waxing all poetical about why the Iraq War is necessary. He called the video “Generation Chickenhawk.”

But, really, it’s kind of hard to miss Max, since he’s about as multimedia as a man can get. An unapologetic, liberal journalist, Max can be seen on The Rachel Maddow Show, heard on NPR or read in The Nation, salon.com and The Huffington Post. In the fall of 2009, he published “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,” a narrative recounting of how the Religious Right’s emphasis on creating a theocracy based on a Christian G-O-D did a number on the G.O.P. During a book tour in September 2009, I had brunch with Max in a Seattle diner, where we talked about Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriages in California, the hottest bit of lesbian erotica ever written by a former Second Lady and, of course, the flower of Wasila, Alaska, herself, Sarah Palin.

Oh. And excuse the clattering plates and background chatter. But the diner we were in was a little loud…

Interview with Haiti quake survivor Jesse Hagopian

Posted: Apr. 15th, 2010 | Podcast

This is a podcast of an interview I conducted with a man named Jesse Hagopian. Jesse lives in Seattle, but on Jan. 12, 2010, Jesse, his wife, Sarah, and their one-year old son, Miles, were all in Haiti. That’s the day a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the tiny, impoverished country, killing at least 200,000 people. Jesse and his family escaped with their lives, but the trauma of what Jesse saw still haunts him. You can hear it in the subdued, almost flat tone of his voice.

Here he talks about the quake, how he became involved with emergency relief efforts and the victims he tried to help.

Buggin out

Posted: Mar. 31st, 2010

As a kid, I detested bugs. Really. They freaked me out. Any crawly, multiple-legged critter, one with wings that send it flying into my face: They all led to me shrieking like some banshee as I ran out the room or, if I was outside, running into the house to get away. But my most despised: the cricket. I loved the chirrup it made. But when I walked near one, it would always jump at me instead of away. It scared the hell out of me.

Then something happened. When I was almost 17, a brood of 17-year cicadas came to visit. I lived in Maryland and, over the course of three weeks, millions upon millions of them dug themselves out of the ground, crawled up trees, poles, legs — anything — and issued a piercing, ear-splitting call that drowned out any other sound around. Honestly. You couldn’t even hear planes fly overhead.

M. septendecim calling by Joe Green from Cicada Mania on Vimeo.

The cicadas (called magicicada septendecim) live a 17-year lifecycle. Once they mate, the females lay eggs in little slits they make in tree limbs with an ovipositor. The adults die away. The eggs, shortly after, hatch and the grubs fall to the ground. They burrow in the earth where they molt for 17 years, crawling back out of the ground to start the process anew.

These days, I’ve become a bug lover. Show me an insect — wolf spider, unicorn beetle, honeybee — and I’m likely to stop and talk to it. I find insects incredibly beautiful. Like these insects. Photographed with their bodies covered in dew, they’re a sight to behold. Enough so, it can turn “Ewww” into “Wow.”

A Snowball’s chance in heaven

Posted: Feb. 15th, 2010

As a kid, I got a pet rabbit, a fluffy, white little critter named, not surprisingly, Snowball. I was 7 and oh, did I love that rabbit. I used to take him out of his cage and place him on the rug, watching his little wrinkling, twitching nose, transfixed for hours. I mean, it was ridiculous.

Of course, Snowball being a rabbit and me being a kid with little thought about mortality, I gave little thought to what lay in our future. On day, after an enormous thunderstorm, I wandered down to his big outdoor cage in the backyard. There, inside the still dripping chain-link cage, lay Snowball, soggy, limp and undeniably deceased. I wailed and sobbed, overwhelmed by grief for a creature I loved.

My poor mother, seeing me distraught, said she’d buy me another rabbit. And she did. But I got two, instead of one. Soon enough, there were little bunnies and, as their famed propensity for producing offspring foretold, those rabbits did it like rabbits, till we had so many they were squeezing out between the chain links. That was in the mid-70s and to this day, my mother’s yard still has rabbits hopping here and there.

My mind only turned momentarily to those little hoppers about a month ago, when I went out with a friend, Simone Lupson-Cook. Simone is a general falconer and keeps two hawks — a red-tailed and a goshawk — and I’d contacted her a short while before about heading out with her and the red-tailed, named Chase, to film her hunting with him. She agreed and not only brought Chase, but Cricket, a young goshawk. The day was gorgeous and for a couple of hours, they soared from her glove to tree limbs, dove to the ground and caught a rabbit (or at least, Chase did). It was a stupendous day, truly.

I took a good amount of video of the morning. I’m planning to turn it into a short film, but here’s a trailer, to whet the appetite. When it’s done, I’ll make sure I’ll post it, with apologies to Snowball.