Another Set Of Shows From The Archives

As many of you know, I’ve been very busy going through the archives and encoding past shows to digital format and up loading these to the blog. I’m uploading these to three different places on the web. They’re going to YouTube, Google Video and VEOH. So you can look there to see what I’ve got up. This is especially important for the shows I do that are longer than 30 minutes. This is important because many times, I will put a higher quality version up on both Google Video & VEOH because they have no upload size limitations as YouTube does.

So now here is the next set of shows from the archives.

First up is freelance photographer Daniel Smith. I had come across him in an article in the Fairfield Weekly about how he goes to places like Iraq to get photos of places that are in the news. This show dates back to 2005 and I’m attempting to reschedule him back on for another set of shows. His photos just as amazing as his experience there.



In this second part he talks about how he was basically kidnapped by Al Sadir’s people and brought to Al Sadir in person. He was set free once they knew that he was in fact just a freelance photographer and not military or CIA. In the program, we show the only known photograph taken by Al Sadir himself.



Next up is a show that originally aired in 2006 with guest Brigid Geurtin of the Danbury Historical Society. In this edition of the show we look at the written history of Danbury, CT through the official written records and books that have been written on the areas history. Mrs. Guertin is always an articulate and knowledgeable guest and is a regular on the program as a result.



Next up is a show that I did back in February of 2007 on Contra Dancing. In this show, we presented the music and dance of Contra Dancing. It was a fun show to do and happily I was able to fix the audio problem it had so now it both looks good and sounds good! The featured band that evening was “The Reel Thing” which features Julie Sorcek, a past guest on the show and has worked behind the scenes directing some of the other musical shows and all but the last election night show I did.



Over the years I’ve been doing the show, I have found that the most popular and most watched have been when I’ve had the former racecar drivers on from the Danbury Fair Racearena. This interview with track legend Don LaJoie is the one that started it all. What I found totally unbelievable was that this interview was done over 10 years ago in November 1997! I still remember doing this interview very clearly and it doesn’t seem as though it was done just over 10 years ago!!!

This is still one of my personally favorite interviews over the many years of doing the show. Mr. LaJoie talks about his experience at the track. Everything from his many victories to the death of flagman Ted Abbott at the track in 1980. When he spoke about the accident at the track that killed Mr. Abbott you can see how emotional he gets and anyone can see that for him it was just as real at the time of the interview as it was then when it happened.



In May of 2003 this gem aired with former racecar drivers Don LaJoie and Bones Stevens. Joining them was also track official Dan Evon to talk about their experience at the races. These have always been very lively with great interaction among the drivers. This show from 2003 was no exception.



A former workplace gave me several guests on my show over the years. One of these was with train enthusiast Dan Gallo to show many of the pictures of the local trains than run in the greater Danbury area. Also featured is video of the trains dating back to circa 1948. The video of the local trains I found to be really interesting, especially the color video of trains in Danbury. The video traces the railway from the Ridgefield – Cannondale stations to the Danbury rail yard. This is also covering much of the area when the TV show is seen on Comcast Community Access Channel 23.