Thursday, January 8, 2009

A Coffee Chat On Class



Felice Yeskel — a co-founder of United for a Fair Economy and long-time educator and organizer on issues of class — is in town this week conducting a training on classism. We had a chance to get to know each other a bit this morning and then sat down for the Real Change interview.

When an hour-long interview gets edited down to 1,800 words or so for the paper, questions get cut to a few sentences and responses get reduced to pithy highlights. There's room for less than a fifth of what gets said. One really has enough after half an hour, but if you're having a good chat, why stop?

Felice was interested in a copy of the recording for a possible podcast from her website. I said sure. As a result, I think I've learned a few things.

First, if you're going to do a podcast, don't do the interview in a noisy coffee shop. The second thing is this: if one must record under these conditions, do not do so on a $30 micro-cassette recorder. While, I was able to filter out some of the background noise, this is not exactly a studio quality recording.

Still, if you're interested, have the hour, and don't mind wading through a little mud here and there or noticing how we occasionally get lost in our own thoughts, you're welcome to listen.