Simon Pontin

For starters, Chris Van Hof plays trombone. Professionally.

Simon Pontin draws funky cartoons. Julia Figueras sews her kids' clothes for the first day of school and Halloween.

The deejays you hear on Classical 91.5 are incredibly artistic people on -- and off -- the air.

My friend, classical host Gerry Szymanski, entered his photographs in a public contest which ends in three days, and some of the shots are quite good. You'll have a chance to decide which of Gerry's pictures might be included in a future coffee table book if you click here.

Jack Ertle plays piano. Jeanne Fisher sings alto. Ruth Phinney crochets. I can play "Chopsticks" with my toes. I'm not sure what John Andres and Marianne Carberry do for fun, but it's bound to be something surprising. Music lovers tend to be especially creative people.

As you well know.

She does it once a week.

In her radio feature “What in the World is Music?” Eastman musicologist Ellen Koskoff takes listeners to some far-flung locale and listens to strange sounds humans make. They might be the yodels of a Bulgarian shepherd serenading the shepherdess babe in the field next door or a Balinese fisherman wailing a song about entrails. Sometimes the singers sound like cats. As the music plays, Ellen describes what’s happening in journalistic language.

For decades, classical DJ Simon Pontin worked in a radio studio with no window. He complained about it. On the air. So the last time WXXI’s radio studios were renovated, he got his window. It looks out onto the parking lot of the Kodak world headquarters.

It’s my privilege to fill in for Simon this week. My alarm goes off at 4:00 a.m. I love feeling ahead of the world, cozy in the dark with very little traffic and the office all to myself.

“So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” - Brenda Ueland

My colleague Simon and I slipped out for coffee the other day.

Heading out the back door, we nearly tripped over a tropical plant sticking out of a plastic bag.

Who would throw out that nice plant? I wondered to myself. Did someone get fired? Is it dead? Would it fit in my car? I should adopt that plant, no, wait, I kill houseplants. Maybe it’s still alive. I don’t want it, but it’ll die out here . . .

While I was running down this maternal track, Simon whipped out his camera phone.

“What a great shot,” he said.

He crouched down and snapped a picture.