One of my big heroes, the extremely talented Joe Frank, had a kidney transplant in June.

Hope you feel better, Joe. Sending you warmth and healing and laughter. Maybe now you can get off the pea soup.

Please mail your cards and letters to:

Joe Frank
PO Box 491027
Los Angeles CA 90049

I credit Joe Frank with enabling me to complete an MA in philosophical theology and ethics with my sanity more or less intact. I listened to “Joe Frank: Work in Progress” every weekend on late-night National Public Radio when I lived in Iowa City. My then-boyfriend introduced me to the show, and I was hooked from the first time I ever heard it. I would actually set up the whole scene, just to listen to a radio program! Candles, pillows, refreshments – everything. I enjoyed it that much.

When I moved to Atlanta, I argued at length with the station manager at the Atlanta NPR station about their refusal to carry the show Work in Progress. The bit person I talked with had very clearly never listened to the show, and wasn’t willing to do so. She had this very strange idea that the only audience in the Atlanta market would be -get this- … truck drivers!

I’m pretty sure that was the moment that I gave up on Atlanta programming.

I have a few of Joe’s shows on CD and cassette… but it’s not the same as listening the way I used to. It was the highlight of my week, week after week. There is nothing (um, on the radio) that grabs my attention with that level of fascination now. In fact, now that Air America is gone from Atlanta, I’ve stopped listening to the radio. Passersby are now treated to the lovely experience of my in-transit singing.

Any capriciously generous wealthy readers out there who want something quirky to do can feel very free to get me the entire collection of all his shows on CD. Work in Progress, In the Dark, Somewhere Out There, The Other Side – all of them.

Lowly free members of the Joe Frank website (like me) can listen to the following content this month.

The OJ Chronicles
Dreamland: A Compilation
Great Lives
The Loved One
At the Dark End of the Bar (remix)
Jam
Mountain Rain

(I have a very brief bit in “The Loved One.”)