Dear Mister Ward Across The Pond
Dear Mister Ward featured on BBC Podcast
Just a quick note to let everyone know that the episode of the BBC 4 Radio show/podcast Short Cuts featuring Dear Mister Ward is available for your listening pleasure!
It’s pretty wild to think a box of letters my grandma saved on a whim have now been featured on a radio program based across the ocean.
The theme of the episode is “Constellations” which may seem kind of esoteric but I think the host explains the idea pretty well in her intro. Another way to think about it is connecting over distance. That couldn’t be more fitting considering the letters were sent from all over America to St Paul, then made their way to me in western Massachusetts where I was contacted by a journalist from the Netherlands about a podcast in the UK. That’s a lot of connections over a lot of distance and time.
They managed to cut down my usually rambling interview into something manageable and edited it together with some readings of the letters by actors and clips of the interview my uncle did with my grandma in 1981. The readings were done both by actors from the two staged readings and some other folks the journalist tracked down. All the performances and the episode as a whole turned out great.
I recommend listening to the whole episode (especially the NASA recordings) but if you want to skip ahead, the Dear Mister Ward segment starts around the 17 minute mark. You can get it from all the usual podcast apps and Spotify. If you aren’t a podcast person or have no idea what I’m talking about then you can listen on your computer here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022c3f
I hope you enjoy it and if you do please share it with anyone else who might be interested in the project.
Thanks for continuing to follow along with Dear Mister Ward. I know it’s been awhile since I’ve put together a really substantial post but hopefully I’ll get something together soon. Right now I’m taking some time to explore the feasibility of a big development next year. More on that eventually.