My Heart Belongs to Solvang!

We went to Solvang,CA for a night during a recent three day weekend. It was our third visit and Nova's first visit to the Danish capital of the US! Solvang, CA is a very quaint little village located about two hours from Los Angeles, slightly northeast of Santa Barbara. Solvang feels like a little movie set. The town comes complete with windmills, candy stores, toy stores, surrey rides, and jacuzzi cottages (if you are savvy enough to reserve in advance).

Some fun activities to enjoy while in Solvang: wine-tasting (the movie Sideways was filmed in and near Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley), eat fudge, shop for clogs, sample famous Danish Aebelskivers, or visit the beautiful historic Santa Ynez Mission. It is also a very child friendly destination (unless of course you want the wine-tasting angle). Just outside of Solvang is Buellton, CA which is home of the famous Pea Soup Andersen's restaurant.

Nova tasted chocolate fudge for the first time, I scored a pair of pink suede clogs on sale, and Aaron got to watch cable TV in bed. The scenery was majestic and peaceful, the people were warm and friendly, and the food was decadent. We had a great time and I will always love Solvang!

Love of Listening!

Happy Valentines Day! I am in love with this. It is one of the greatest documentary projects ever created! It is a traveling exhibit which allows you, through the marvels of modern technology, to interview a loved one in a private soundbooth, housed in nothing more perfectly swanky than a converted Airstream trailer. As if my love affair with Airstream wasn't enough. Now it has been combined with my love for documenting regular everyday human existence. StoryCorps allows you to interview anyone you want, an aging relative, a young child, your mother-in-law or best friend.

Love grows with listening. This project allows you to generate your own questions in hopes of invoking a candid insightful moment between you and your chosen loved one. It captures the small beautiful stories which live between everyday people. These stories air regularly on NPR, and so many times I have been touched by the intimate revelations of these interviews. Speak with the World War generation and find yourself being transported back to brightly-lit cherry-pie kitchens with Glen Miller playing on the radio. Hear couples speak of the successful ingredients to a happy marriage. Hear a midlife mother tell her ten-year-old son that she wouldn't change a thing about him. So many varied and beautiful slices of life! Each oral history interview also gets placed in the StoryCorp Archive at the Library of Congress.

I have been in love with sound recording for as long as I have been in love with picture recording. As a young girl I would carry around an old-style Montgomery Ward tape recorder with the plug-in microphone. In my mid-twenties as a film school geek, I often carried my handheld tape recorder around with me, recording bits of this or that. Cassette tape was so much cheaper than Super 8 film!! And I have always been a "Documentarian" at heart. What better way to show someone you love them, than a desire to document their life and to sit down and really, truly listen to their personal story?