CLOSE UP Video Interviews

WHAT WAS IT LIKE HAVING DANCERS PERFORM WITH YOU? Wonderful. We always love to do this for the kids. I’m not doing this to get rich. I enjoy playing at libraries and schools and things like that for young people to perpetuate music. And the energy I get from the kids is wonderful. They interact with the band. Their response is very pure, very honest. It’s a joy to behold to see them dancing like that so I love it. Walter Bell, jazz flutist of the Latin Jazs Unit, Northeast Regional Library, Free Library of Philadelphia. Watch video here.

Natalie Kempner says it is a gift to be living in Maine by a river (the Kennebec) at the age of 87. She cherishes the beauty, the constantly changing river,the ice that breaks and goes up and down with the winter tides, the constantly changing seasons.  She swam as a kid all the time and if she had had a wish, she says,  it would have been to be able to live and swim out her front yard. And now she’s had it for twenty years after she and husband Fritz moved from Conshohocken just outside Philadelphia. She enjoys the company of her children and grandchildren and friends and the bustle of visitors in the summer and the quiet time to catch up on things in the winter. A sparkle comes into her eyes as she describes  the wildlife all about - seals in the river, foxes and skunks on land, the coyotes walking atop the frozen winter river,and ospreys and eagles up above. Quoting the common Maine slogan, Natalie says it’s “life as it should be.” Watch video interview here.

Captain Travis Otis,30, sailing out Searsport Maine has been fishing these waters since he was 13. Otis also particpates in lobster boat races. Late one gray drizzly afternoon, after coming into port from a lobster catch with his Uncle and a helper on board, he sold us five beautiful 1-and-ahalf-pounders which became dinner at our destination - our friends' house in Woolwich, an hour or so down the coast. Here he shows off 2-1/2 to 3 pounders. Watch video here.