This Year, Crow’s Feet Invites You to Be Part of Our Holidays

Grab your microphones: We’re looking for input from YOU for a December podcast episode

What better way to celebrate and reflect on holiday celebrations than to feature you — our readers, writers, and listeners — in our Crow’s Feet Podcast? As a program about “Life As We Age,” we want to hear how your thoughts, feelings, and activities around all the doings of the holiday season have changed since you’ve grown older.

We’re inviting you to make a voice recording of your remarks that we can air as part of a podcast collage about the holidays. We also will accept written comments if you don’t want to record yourself and we will have a member of our team read it for you. You can add your comments right here in the comment section of this article.

We hope to have some fun with this, featuring stories about memorable holidays — from the food to the presents, and the friends and family that help you celebrate. And we just might add some sound effects!

Here’s How to Participate

We want you to answer one or more of these questions, record or write your answer, and send it to us by November 20, 2023. Your ideas are welcome if you have more interesting questions to answer.

• Do you do anything special in preparation for the holiday season?
• What has changed, what has stayed the same about celebrating the holidays for you?
• Are you usually alone for the holidays and, if so, do you celebrate alone or with friends?
• What is the best part of your celebration and has this changed as you’ve become older?
• If you feel the need to escape the holidays, how do you do it?
• Do you have a memorable holiday tradition or story to tell?
• Do you have physical or emotional limitations around holiday celebrations now that you are older?

Please keep recordings to 30–40 seconds and written pieces to one paragraph. We may or may not be able to use your response and reserve the right to edit it to fit into the episode as it evolves. Please include your name as you want it to be used in the show, your age, and the holiday you celebrate in December. (See below for more info on how to make the best recording.)

Podcasts are about the pleasure of listening, so if any particularly interesting sounds are part of your holidays, record them, too. Send us your recordings or written responses — or questions about any of this — by email to: [email protected]. Your recorded or written statement will serve as our permission to use your comments on the podcast or in our promotion of Crows Feet.

Recording Instructions from our Audio Pro, Rich Halten

Find a quiet space to record. Generally, softer surfaces like carpets make for better recording than hard surfaces like hardwood floors.

Instead of holding the phone, put it on a stack of books or something that makes it level between your face and the bottom of the phone (that’s where the mic is). Make sure your face is about a foot away from the bottom of the iPhone.

Then:

1. Go to Settings

2. Scroll down to the Voice Memos app and tap on it to open

3. Scroll down to Audio Quality and change the setting from Compressed to Lossless (most important for best results).

When you’re ready to record:

1. Open the Voice Memos app

2. Click the Red button to start recording (Remember to speak into the bottom end of the phone where the mic is, about a foot away from your face)

3. When done, click the Red button again

4. You’ll see the file you recorded labeled with the time and your address (that’s what mine says)

5. Tap the 3 dots in the circle on the right side of the labeled file

6. Tap “Share,” then copy and paste to send by email to [email protected]. You can contact us there as well for any technical or editorial issues.

We will eagerly await what great thoughts and memories you have to share! Remember the deadline is November 20, 2023.