Rumble Strip
Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman
Good conversation that takes its time, hosted by Erica Heilman.
2 Seconds of Peace
T.O. got out of prison in Rutland a couple weeks ago, after a six and a half year bid. I met T.O. through my private investigator friend Susan Randall. He’d been a client of hers in a federal public defender case. He’d just gotten out a couple days before and we drove down to a parking lot near the lake in Burlington and talked in my car about what it was like to start over after six years, with nothing. T.O.’s been in and out of jail his whole adult life, and it’s become a kind of tradition fo
What Now Sounds Like Episode 2
Here is episode 2 of What Now Sounds Like, a show I make that is entirely comprised of your recordings. Desperate times call for desperate show methods. I'm hoping that shows made up of all of us will help us all feel less alone. In this show you hear from: Blake in New York City, James in Sussex England, the Niagara Frontier Radio reading service (thank you Papageorgiou in Brussels...), River in Portland, Oregon, Alice in Fletcher, Virginia, Naomi Hodde in Middlebury, Vermont, Howard in Woodst
What Now Sounds Like
What Now Sounds Like is made by all of us. You send me recordings that sound like this time we're living in, and I make shows with them. It could be an argument, your thoughts in the middle of the night, your songs and hummings....a recording of being on hold with your insurance company...whatever. And tell your friends to send their recordings too. Just email me at rumblestripvermont@gmail.com. In this show, Leonie from South Africa, Alicia from Los Angeles, Michael from North Carolina, Deann
Diffuse Despair
The world is chaotic. Systems are failing, towns are burning. If you need to make an appointment with your doctor you may have to wait til July. So it's time to make a show about it all. I implore you to record moments of your day and send me the audio and I will try to make a show that sounds like RIGHT NOW. Email the recordings to me at rumblestripvermont@gmail.com.
What Class are you Tankhun?
What Class Are You? is a periodic series about the ways that socioeconomic class shapes our lives.Thankun Thongjunthoug’s parents each moved alone to the United States from Thailand in their early twenties to make a new life for themselves. They met in Los Angeles, and started a restaurant there, and a family. But Thankun’s father wanted a safer place for his family, so in 2008 they moved to Vermont, where they had to work their way back to owning a business. Their restaurant in Montpelier, Pho
What Class Are You Katrin?
What Class Are You? is a periodic series about the ways that socioeconomic class shapes our lives. Today, Episode 4.Katrin Tchana lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, right next to Dartmouth College. Katrin is a social worker, and currently works as a therapist. She grew up in the house where she currently lives, and in this show we talk about her childhood in Lyme, and how that area has changed in her lifetime.
What Class Are You Ingrid?
What Class Are You? is a periodic series about the ways that socioeconomic class shapes our lives. Today, Episode 3...Ingrid Jonas. I met Ingrid Jonas through my friend Marilyn. Ingrid is a retired Vermont state police trooper. She started on patrol, but worked as a detective for most of her career. I’m actually working on a longer story about her now that will come out soon, but at the end of our conversation, I asked her to talk about class in law enforcement, which she did.
What Class Are You Mark?
What Class Are You? is a periodic series about the ways that socioeconomic class shapes our lives, even though we don’t like to talk about it. I make this series for Vermont Public and I’ll be running the new shows on RS all this week. Mark LaRouche is the the Director of Shelters and Facilities at Good Samaritan Haven in Barre, which serves unhoused people in central Vermont. Mark has also had a lot of experience working with people with addiction issues, and he’s good at it. He understands it
What Class Are You Damian Renzello?
What Class Are You? is a periodic series about the ways that socioeconomic class shapes our lives, even though we don’t like to talk about it. I make this series for Vermont Public and I’ll be running the new shows on RS all this week. First up, Damian Renzello. Damian lives one town over from me and he’s the owner of and inventor of Porta Rinks, which is a portable ice rink kit. Damian is who you call if you want your own personal hockey rink, and everything that goes with it. He also happens
Thanks for Sharing
Forrest Foster found a new old truck, thanks to you listeners. We drove around and talked about the truck and about Forrest's new job and I complained about feeling old. Happy Holidays and thank you for your generosity. Happy Holidays to all!
Erika Bruner, Midwife for Pets at the End
Things have been pretty grim around here. I lost my cat Zu Zu and she was only two and a half and she left behind her brother Kenny and Kenny and I aren’t doing so great. So. I’m going to play a story I made for Vermont Public about Erika Bruner, a veterinarian who specializes in end of live care for pets. She does at-home euthanasia…in barns, in basements, in fields. I didn’t think I’d need her services so soon. But I did. She’s remarkable and she made a very difficult day a little less diffic
Thank you For the Best Birthday Present Ever
We raised ALL the money for Forrest's new old truck and we are so GRATEFUL!!!
Help Forrest Foster Get a New Old Truck
After the last show, a lot of people asked me how they might help Forrest Foster. So I called his friend Steve Gorelick and we set up a Go Fund Me....
Forrest Foster is getting done...for now.
Forrest Foster is a dairy farmer in Hardwick, Vermont. Two months ago he sold his cows. He didn't want to do it. But his barn doesn't meet code so he lost his license. He can't keep the wood furnace burning in the house while he's doing chores. And like so many families, he's dealing with the profound complications of drug addiction in his home.
Heartbreak Hotel. End of an Era
This summer, a one-in-a-thousand-year flood hit the village of Plainfield, Vermont. A local apartment building, which everyone called the Heartbreak Hotel, collapsed and washed away down the Great Brook. Twelve people were living there at the time, and they all survived. Most of their cats did not.We talk a lot about the importance of affordable housing and community and village revitalization. For over a century, the Heartbreak provided all three. This is a story about what was lost that night,
The World Under the World
This is a story about active drug addiction. Last year I made a story about my private investigator friend Susan Randall, after her office was robbed in the middle of the day in downtown Burlington by a woman with a heroin addiction. She walked into Susan’s office while people were working there and loaded a bag with electronics, and left. I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. Where was she coming from that day and where was she going? The world of active addiction is a kind of world under
Mark Utter Revisited
Mark Utter was born with a form of autism that makes it impossible for him to say what he's thinking. For the first thirty years of his life, Mark did not have access to the world of words, except as a listener. An observer. When he was thirty, he was introduced to supported typing, and for the first time in his life, with the help of a facilitator and a typing pad, Mark started his life as a writer of words. This is an interview about what it's like inside the life and mind of Mark Utter.
Allison after the Flood
On the one-year anniversary of a 100-year flood, Vermont experienced another devastating flood. This is the story of one Plainfield, Vermont resident, who lost everything. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me run this show on Rumble Strip.
The Aphasia Choir
There are about 15 million people in this world having thoughts and ideas that they can't put into words. People who have had had strokes or traumatic brain injuries often live with aphasia, or difficulty talking or using language. Their thoughts are intact, but the language gets stuck. But music mostly originates in the undamaged hemisphere of the brain. People with aphasia can often sing. This is a story about a choir comprised of people with aphasia, and what it's like to struggle for words.T
Tara
This is a follow-up show to Finn and the Bell. If you haven't heard that story, you might want to start there.At Bread and Puppet in Glover, Vermont, there is a magical pine forest full of small homemade buildings and shrines to memorialize dead puppeteers and friends. It’s a place where my friend Tara Reese’s sons Finn and Lyle spent a lot of time when they were little, running around in the woods in the summer. Now there is a memorial here for Finn in the pine forest, built by some of the kids
Will Staats, Hunting Biologist...Redux!
Will Staats worked for both Vermont and New Hampshire for forty years as a wildlife biologist. He’s also a passionate hunter. He knows the back country of the Kingdom right up through Maine and into Labrador. One day in October he took me bird hunting deep in the unorganized town of Ferdinand. We talked about birds. And we talked about the growing divide between traditional hunting culture and people who don't like certain kinds of hunting here in Vermont. But it was more interesting than that..
Sugaring with Forrest Foster
I hung out with Forrest Foster in his sugarhouse a few weeks ago. Sugarhouses are the best because they’re full of warm, sweet steam and there’s nothing to do but hang around and make sure the pan doesn’t burn. Also, if sugaring is happening it means that winter is almost over and that is a joyous time for me. I love the hell out of April. So here are a few happy minutes with Forrest in his sugarhouse.
Fifty: A Phoenix Moment. REDUX!
This is a show I made a few years ago that very significantly involves Total Eclipse of the Heart, which is my favorite song. I am playing it again now because it is ECLIPSE WEEK. I hope you enjoy it.
Kasey is Figuring it Out
Kasey Phipps is transgender and has always been transgender. But Kasey didn’t grow up in a place where the word transgender was well understood. Or understood at all. It’s only in the last four years that Kasey’s put a name to this lifelong experience of living life in the wrong gender. This is just one story about the experience of being trans. Credits:Linda Young plays the harp in this show, for which I am eternally grateful. Here is a link to her excellent TRIO.There is also a song in the sho
What Class Are You Ashley?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Ashton?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Kathleen?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.
Revisiting Isaac
Many of you got in touch with me after Isaac's story aired in the first week of What Class Are You. Isaac's on his way to Columbia in the fall, on a full scholarship, and you came up with amazing ideas for how you might be helpful, so I went back up to Newport to discuss it all with Isaac. And it turned into a really interesting conversation on a number of fronts.
What Class Are You Ethan?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Mike?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You John?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share this series with Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You? A Conversation with Garret Keizer
What Class is a periodic series I produce for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share this series with Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Kytreana?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share the stories with Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Kate?
What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share these stories with Rumble Strip.
What Class Are You Irfan?
Irfan Sehic and his family fled the war in Bosnia when he was seventeen, and landed in Barre, Vermont. Irfan did a lot of jobs when he got here, then went to college, and now runs an insurance company out of his house. I’ve interviewed Irfan for Rumble Strip before, about the war, which you can find on this site somewhere, but in this story, Irfan talks about the American class system as he sees it, starting with the middle class.This is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Ver
What Class Are You Isaac?
Isaac lives in Newport, Vermont, which is as far north as you get in Vermont. It’s a town in the Northeast Kingdom with a beautiful lake. It’s also a town with a state prison and a lot of drugs and poverty.I met Isaac at a writers group in town, which meets once a week in town at the amazing Nevermore Bookstore. Isaac is eighteen. He loves to read and write and this spring he’s graduating form Lake Region High School. I asked if he’d be willing to talk with me about class, and he was.What Class
What Class Are You Susan?
Today is the first episode of What Class Are You, a periodic series I make for VP. This series started as an experiment a few years ago. I wanted to have conversations with people about the terrible cultural divides that keep growing in our country, without ending up in boring conversations about politics…so I drove around asking strangers ‘what class are you’, which is a kind of stupid and offensive question, but it turns out people have a lot to say…about money, education, opportunity…power. T
What Class Are You? Susan.
Today is the first episode of What Class Are You. Most people think of money when they hear the word "class" and how much or little of it they’ve got. And we really don’t like to talk about it. I think we’re getting better at talking about things like race and gender identity, but it’s rude to talk about money, or point out that some people have a lot more of it, others a lot less. But when you ask people ‘what class are you?’, they have a lot to say…about money, education, opportunity, power.
Makeup For Special Occasion Valentines Day Redux!
This is a rerun of what could be called a VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL, and I hope you enjoy it.Last year on Hardwick's Front Porch Forum, someone called Tiana asked if there was anyone who could help her with her hair and makeup for an important date with her boyfriend. Front Porch Forum is an online, daily community forum, which is like a bulletin board at a local general store. You can find secondhand tires there. Or read complaints about the Selectboard. Every Vermont town’s got a Front Porch For
A 100 Year Flood
The Anair story was produced for Vermont Public.
Little League Playoffs
This is one of my all time favorite shows. I made it for Vermont Public in 2019 and I think about these guys all the time. It was the little league playoffs in St. Johnsbury in 2019, before the pandemic, recorded in a simpler time. Let's play some good D out there.
East Hill Tree Farm Please Buy Their Trees
East Hill Tree Farm is awesome. Honestly. It's just the best.
Forrest and I Sit in the Truck and Talk About Pain
I got in a car accident. For some reason I thought it would make me feel better to talk with Forrest Foster about all the accidents he’s had and how he thinks about pain.
John Rodgers Weed Farmer
Music for this show is by Justin LanderJohn's company is called Farmers Underground, based in West Glover, VT
Ode to Village Life
A lot of people in rural America live near small towns or villages. Here in Vermont, a lot of small village schools and general stores and post offices are closing for all kinds of reasons. And this isn’t unique to here. Small town centers are struggling all over the country. But when these little downtown areas lose a store, or a school, everything changes. Danny Sagan is an architect in Montpelier and I like to hear him talk about how buildings work on us, how they slow us down or speed us up.
Taylor Swift Music for the End
My friend Kelly Green is a defense attorney who represents people accused of murder. She spends a lot of time reading autopsies and driving around talking with witnesses and worrying. She’s got a lot going on at the moment. A couple weeks ago she asked me if I wanted to go to the opening of the new Taylor Swift movie in Barre. I did. This is a show about it.
Susan on the Train Tracks
Susan’s been a private investigator in Vermont for 24 years. She defends people who are accused of crimes, which often involve drugs in one way or another. This summer she was robbed by a person with a terrible heroin addiction, and it made her really angry, and really tired. This is that story. And if you haven't heard any of the Susan shows before, I recommend listening to some of the others first. There are at least four, and the very first one is called Vermont Private Eye.
Forrest Foster Lays Karen to Rest
Forrest Foster is a dairy farmer in Hardwick, Vermont and a friend of mine. This past spring, on Memorial Day, Forrest’s partner, Karen Shaw, died after a long illness. They were together 43 years. The day after she died, Forrest built her coffin with his friends Steve and Butch, and a couple days later Karen was buried in a field behind the barn under a maple tree, with a few family and friends present. As always with Forrest, I’m struck by the combination of pragmatism and love in everything h
The Homesteading Game
Music by Justin LanderOriginally produced for Vermont Public
The Civic Standard in the 100 Year Flood
Special Note: Hill Farmstead, the best beer in the world, just named a beer after the Civic Standard. Which is fricking VERY COOL. Here's a link to it.
The Civic Standard
Rose Friedman and Tara Reese were in the early stages of starting the Civic Standard, an organization that gives the people of Hardwick excuses to get together. Rose and Tara were explaining this idea to Brenda at a baseball game and Brenda said that what she really wanted was for them to make a mystery dinner theater show. Nobody really thought that this would happen.But Rose couldn't stop thinking about it. Most mystery dinner theater shows are a little like the game CLUE, which isn’t very int
Let's Talk about Guns
Thanks to Brave Little State and Vermont Public for letting me run this episode on Rumble Strip. You can find Brave Little State wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can read more about them by visiting Vermont Public, at vermontpublic.org. Thanks to Myra Flynn, who worked with me on this show, and the rest of the Brave Little State team: Angela Evancie, Mae Nuguskey and Josh Crane.
Nightwalking 1, from Constellation Prize
Credits: Music by Ishmael Ensemble, John Caroll Kirby, Riley Mulherkar and Elori SaxlEdited by Daniel Guillemette & Daniel GumbinerSound mix / sound design by John Delore
What Class are You?
For years I’ve been wanting to make a show about the terrible cultural divides growing in our country, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting into boring conversations about politics. So I backed into an experiment. I asked my editor at Vermont Public if I could drive around and ask people, ‘what class are you?’, just to see what would happen. And he said, ‘sure.’ So I did. This is the series that came of that experiment. And even though these conversations took place in rural
What Class are You?
For years I've been wanting to make a show about the terrible cultural divides growing in our country, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without getting into boring conversations about politics. So I backed into an experiment. I asked my editor at Vermont Public if I could drive around and ask people, 'what class are you?', just to see what would happen. And he said, 'uh...sure.' So I did. This is the series that came of that experiment. And even though these conversations took place in rur
Mary Lake Sheep Slaughterer
Mary Lake is a sheep farmer and sheep shearer and itinerant slaughterer. She is a tall, muscular woman in bib overalls and a baseball hat and dangly earrings she carved out of a ram’s horn. She wears a chain around her waist with a scabbard full of knives. And she loves sheep, which is one reason she participates in their slaughter. This is a story about where food comes from.
** The first version of this story aired on Vermont Public. I am grateful to Vermont Public for allowing me to share
Mary Lake Sheep Slaughterer
Mary Lake is a sheep farmer and sheep shearer and itinerant slaughterer. She is a tall, muscular woman in bib overalls and a baseball hat and dangly earrings she carved out of a ram’s horn. She wears a chain around her waist with a scabbard full of knives. And she loves sheep, which is one reason she participates in their slaughter. This is a story about where food comes from.** The first version of this story aired on Vermont Public. I am grateful to Vermont Public for allowing me to share this
It’s Town Meeting Again.
This is a re-run of a show but it’s TOWN MEETING DAY SO I’M RUNNING IT AGAIN! LONG LIVE TOWN MEETING!
In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves—this has a profound impact on a place, and what it means to be from a place.
Sometimes it’s conten
It's Town Meeting Again
It's town meeting day here in Vermont.In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves—this has a profound impact on a place, and what it means to be from a place.Sometimes it’s contentious. Sometimes it’s boring. But it’s always the most interesting
Winter's Bear
Sheila LaPoint wrote a post in Front Porch Forum asking if there was anyone in town who could turn her grandmother's fur coat into a teddy bear. She didn't want to spend a lot of money. She can't wear the coat anymore. But she wants something that will help her remember her German grandmother. My friend Clare Dolan lives down the road from Sheila, and when she read Sheila’s post about the teddy bear, it called to her. Clare is the maker of the Museum of Everyday Life, which celebrates the many
Winter’s Bear
Sheila LaPoint wrote a post in Front Porch Forum asking if there were anyone in town who could turn her grandmother’s fur coat into a teddy bear. She didn’t want to spend a lot of money. She can’t wear the coat anymore. But she wants something that will help her remember her German grandmother. My friend Clare Dolan lives down the road from Sheila, and when she read Sheila’s post about the teddy bear, it called to her. Clare is the maker of the Museum of Everyday Life, which celebrates the many
Speaking Whale
Tom Mustill is a conservation biologist and he makes beautiful films about where nature and people meet. He’s worked with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, he’s been shat on by bats in Mexico, and recently he finished a book called How to Speak Whale. It describes the very real possibility that someday, maybe even in my lifetime, we’ll begin to understand the complex language of whales–and all this would imply.
I interviewed Tom for hours and I didn’t want him to stop until he’d told me e
Speaking Whale
Tom Mustill is a conservation biologist and he makes beautiful films about where nature and people meet. He’s worked with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, he’s been shat on by bats in Mexico, and recently he finished a book called How to Speak Whale. It describes the very real possibility that someday, maybe even in my lifetime, we’ll begin to understand the complex language of whales--and all this would imply.I interviewed Tom for hours and I didn't want him to stop until he’d told me ev
Police Log: The Fanny Pack Edition
It’s been too long since I reported on some of the many crimes we’re facing here in central Vermont. I apologize for this lapse. It’s time for me to be honest about some of these challenges.
So here is a show about crime.
This important report was read by Scott Carrier, host of Home of the Brave.
Here are pictures of the tiny horses who have been entangled with The Law more than once here in Vermont.
Police Log: The Fanny Pack Edition
This show is about crime. Really crimey crime.
Fishing with Jay
Jay Allison makes the kind of radio that made me want to make radio. It isn’t news and it doesn’t really have a beginning middle and end but it’s personal and surprising and you get to fall in love with strangers and that’s what I wanted to do. We got together and talked about getting old and irrelevant, because that’s what I think about a lot. We also talked about what radio stories can do in a time when people are inclined to hate each other, or what we really hope stories can do.
Transom Bi
Fishing with Jay
Transom Bio: Jay Allison has been an independent public radio producer, journalist, and teacher since the 1970s. He is the founder of Transom. His work has won most of the major broadcasting awards, including six Peabodys. He produces The Moth Radio Hour and was the curator of This I Believe on NPR. He has also worked in print for the New York Times Magazine and as a solo-crew reporter for ABC News Nightline, and is a longtime proponent of building community through story. Through his non-profit
Nature’s Top Deck, with Forrest Foster
Forrest Foster was loading up the tractor with kindling for deer camp, two days before rifle season. I was over there visiting and helping him with his night chores. I like Forrest. I like being around him, and I always learn something from him. And on this day we rode the tractor down to the deer camp and sat and talked about hunting and caretaking and walking with goats and horses. And loneliness. Pretty much all the stuff people end up talking about at deer camp.
Nature's Top Deck, with Forrest Foster
Forrest Foster was loading up the tractor with kindling for deer camp. It was two days before deer season. I was over there visiting and helping him with his night chores. I like Forrest. I like being around him, and I always learn something from him. Like last week he told me that you should always plant your garlic with the long rounded side facing north and the flat side facing south. Anyway, I took my recorder over a couple days before rifle season and a couple hours before milking. This is
Nick Paley and a Shell with Shoes
Nick Paley is a writer, editor and director for film and TV, and a co-writer on the recent film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which stars an adorable one-inch tall shell who wears shoes and is looking for his long lost shell family. Nick is from Vermont, and he’s working on a new TV series set here, so when he was in town I dragged him to a matinee of Marcel the Shell…the same movie theater where he used to clean the bathrooms. And then afterwards he let me ask him ten million questions abo
Nick Paley and a Very Small Shell
Nick Paley is a writer, editor and director for film and TV, and a co-writer on the recent film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which stars an adorable one-inch tall shell who wears shoes and is looking for his long lost shell family. Nick is from Vermont, and he's working on a new TV series set here, so when he was in town I dragged him to a matinee of Marcel the Shell...the same movie theater where he used to clean the bathrooms. And then afterwards he let me ask him ten million questions abo
An American Life
Vaughn Hood was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War, and in Vaughn’s war, most men didn’t survive their first three-month tour. In honor of Veteran’s Day, here is the story of an extraordinary American life.
This story is co-produced by Larry Massett and Erica Heilman. It first ran in 2015. To read the comments on this story from over the years, click here.
An interview with Erica about the show, by the excellent people at The Third Coast
50 Best Podcasts of 2015, The At
An American Life
Vaughn Hood was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. And in Vaughn’s war, most men didn’t survive their first three-month tour. In honor of Veteran's Day, here is the story of an extraordinary American life.This story is co-produced by Larry Massett and Erica Heilman. It first ran in...I can't remember what year. About five years ago.
Armand’s Garden
Armand Patoine sat with me in his tea house, deep inside his garden, which leads down to a stream. He has been creating this garden for 49 years. We talked about gardening, and what God has to do with his gardening, which it turns out is everything.
Credits
Thank you Victor for introducing me to Armand
Thank you Willie Tobin for the beautiful bird and squirrel recordings. They are gifts that keep giving.
Thank you Armand for the daylilies. They’re in.
To visit the listing for Armand’s house, cl
Armand's Garden
Armand Patoine sat with me in his tea house, deep inside his garden, which leads down to a stream. He has been creating this garden for 49 years. We talked about gardening, and what God has to do with his gardening, which it turns out is everything.
The Neighborhood
My son is leaving for his freshman year of college and I am feeling maudlin. I listened to this show I made years ago and it made me feel better. So before August is really, really over, here are the kids of Hospital Hill.
Description: The kids of Randolph, Vermont describe their neighborhood as a place with three purple houses. They tell me there’s a shortcut through the woods down to Dunkin’ Donuts, and they say it’s pretty close to three graveyards. The kids run in twos and threes and sometim
The Neighborhood
My son is leaving for his freshman year of college in a week and I am feeling maudlin. I listened to this show I made years ago and it made me feel better. So before August is really, really over, here are the kids of Hospital Hill.Description: The kids of Randolph, Vermont describe their neighborhood as a place with three purple houses. They tell me there’s a shortcut through the woods down to Dunkin’ Donuts, and they say it’s pretty close to three graveyards. The kids run in twos and threes an
Leland is Moving On
Leland is my neighbor and for the last seven years, we’ve been getting together in the spring to talk about his year, and things like God and space and pork shortages. This year Leland graduated from high school and I figured it was time to hear pieces from all of the years with Leland, all together, and all at once.
Credits
Music for this show is by my friend and regular collaborator, Brian Clark and this show also features music from the remarkable and multi-talented Carla Kihlstedt.
Thank
Leland is Moving On
Leland is my neighbor and for the last seven years, we’ve been getting together in the spring to talk about his year, and things like God and space and pork shortages. This year Leland graduated from high school and I figured it was time to hear pieces from all of the years with Leland, all together, and all at once.
Makeup for Special Occasion
A couple weeks ago on Hardwick’s Front Porch Forum, someone called Tiana asked if there was anyone who could help her with her hair and makeup for an important date with her boyfriend. Front Porch Forum is an online, daily community forum, which is like a bulletin board at a local general store. You can find secondhand tires there. Or read complaints about the Selectboard. Every Vermont town’s got a Front Porch Forum and you have to be from that town to be on it.
Since Tiana’s new to town, she
Makeup for Special Occasion
A couple weeks ago on Hardwick's Front Porch Forum, someone called Tiana asked if there was anyone who could help her with her hair and makeup for an important date with her boyfriend. Front Porch Forum is an online, daily community forum, which is like a bulletin board at a local general store. You can find secondhand tires there. Or read complaints about the Selectboard. Every Vermont town’s got a Front Porch Forum and you have to be from that town to be on it.Since Tiana's new to town, she th
The Farm, from THE BIG PONDER
Ira Karp lives on a farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, surrounded by music, puppets, and a family of incredible storytellers. Over his brief lifetime, he has become a ‘story keeper’ himself, collecting epic tales from his everyday life.
This is a story I made for THE BIG PONDER, a podcast series produced by the Goethe-Institut. They work with radio stations and independent producers in the U.S. and Germany, and the programs reflect on abstract ideas and phenomena through hyper-l
The Farm from THE BIG PONDER
Ira Karp lives on a farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, surrounded by music, puppets, and a family of incredible storytellers. Over his brief lifetime, he has become a ‘story keeper’ himself, collecting epic tales from his everyday life.This is a story I made for THE BIG PONDER, a podcast series produced by the Goethe-Institut. They work with radio stations and independent producers in the U.S. and Germany, and the programs reflect on abstract ideas and phenomena through hyper-local stories. Th
Bell Rising
This show is a kind of coda to Finn and the Bell….
At long last, the bell is in its tower at Hazen Union High School. The final installation happened right before the Hardwick Memorial Day Parade. I stopped by and recorded some of the volunteers as they constructed the tower, hoisted the bell, and rang in its new life up on the hill over Hardwick.
Bell Rising
This show is a kind of coda to Finn and the Bell....At long last, the bell is in its tower at Hazen Union High School. The final installation happened right before the Hardwick Memorial Day Parade. I stopped by and recorded some of the volunteers as they constructed the tower, hoisted the bell, and rang in its new life up on the hill over Hardwick.
More than a Dog
Tara Wray is a photographer…and a dog person. Her pictures of dogs are haunting and beautiful and every bit as distinctive as pictures of individual people. I interviewed her shortly after the death of her beloved dog, Nighthawk. Then my friend Tobin’s dog died, and he told me that he sometimes felt ashamed for feeling so much about the death of a dog–a dog who had been his only companion throughout the pandemic.
It seems that a lot of people feel like they have to hide the amount of grief th
More than a Dog
Tara Wray is a photographer. And a dog person. She takes pictures of dogs which are haunting and beautiful, and every bit as distinctive as pictures of individual people. I interviewed her shortly after the death of her beloved dog, Nighthawk. Then my friend Tobin’s dog died, and he told me that he sometimes felt ashamed for feeling so much about the death of a dog--a dog who had been his only companion throughout the pandemic. It seems that a lot of people feel like they have to hide the amount
The Puppy Diaries
I’ve been thinking of getting a dog for years but even though I have an eighteen-year-old son, I’ve never felt mature enough to have a dog. So when my friend Chris told me he and his partner Beth were getting a puppy, I asked if he’d chronicle the event, and for the next seven months, he sent me recordings of what it was like to have a puppy. It was hilarious and weird and totally harrowing.
Here are the Puppy Diaries.
Thanks
Thanks SO MUCH to Christopher Attaway and Beth Lewis for making thes
Puppy Diaries
I've been thinking of getting a dog for years but even though I have an eighteen-year-old son, I've never felt mature enough to have a dog. So when my friend Chris told me he and his partner Beth were getting a puppy, I asked if he'd chronicle the event, and for the next seven months, he sent me recordings of what it was like to have a puppy. It was hilarious and weird and harrowing. Here are the Puppy Diaries.
Forrest Foster, Independent Dairyman
Forrest Foster is a farmer in Hardwick, Vermont. It’s an organic dairy farm, seventy cows total and about forty milking at any given time. I spent an afternoon following Forrest around the barn, his sugarshack, we took a long ride in his tractor, out past his deer camp. He took me to the place where he cuts cedar and hemlock boughs for deer in the winter, and dispatches his old animals to feed the bear and the deer and the coyotes and the ravens.
Forrest would rather trade services than exchang
Helena Becomes an American
Helena de Groot grew up in Belgium and is now a radio producer living in New York City. When I found out she was about to take her citizenship test, I asked if she’d be willing to record herself talking about what it feels like to become an American…and she agreed.
Helena is the host and producer of the Poetry Foundation podcast Poetry Off the Shelf and senior producer of The Paris Review Podcast, and she teaches at Columbia University and the University of Michigan. Once a year she goes home
It’s New Years. Remember Grant Owen.
I am home alone on New Years, cleaning and listening to music, and suddenly I remembered Grant Owen, a kid I interviewed at the beginning of the pandemic, and I realized he is exactly the company I needed. So as you’re getting ready for your dinner party or dance party or if you are stuck in a cab or a subway on the interminable trip to The New Years Place, I think you will find that Grant Owen is good company.
Awful Sisters Christmas. Pandemic Year Two.
It’s been another challenging year of the pandemic, and families across the nation are trying to figure out how to be together for the holidays. For some, this is hard. Really hard.
Welcome to Problems, a series about comfortable, upper middle class people who have a lot to complain about. This year, sisters Andrea and Amanda have managed to get to their childhood home in Massachusetts to spend Christmas with their parents, but sister Pam and her daughter River are unable to get there. This is
Will Staats, Hunting Biologist
Will Staats worked for both Vermont and New Hampshire for forty years as a wildlife biologist. He’s also a passionate hunter. He knows the back country of the Kingdom right up through Maine and into Labrador. One day in October he took me bird hunting deep in the unorganized town of Ferdinand. We talked about birds. And we talked about the growing divide between traditional hunting culture and people who don’t like certain kinds of hunting here in Vermont. But it was more interesting than tha
A Special Event, Finn and the Bell
Join us on Vermont Public Radio today, Dec 5, at 4:00 EST for a special airing and interview
Finn and the Bell
Finn Rooney killed himself on January 3, 2020 in the afternoon after school. No one predicted it. There were no signs. All that can be said for sure is that there was a flash of high emotion that comes with youth, and there was a gun nearby, and bullets.
This isn’t a story about suicide. It’s a story about a boy called Finn who loved to fish and play baseball and write poetry and embroider…and what happens to a small Vermont community as it staggers forward after an unspeakable tragedy.
Make co
Hill Farm. A Tribute to Peter Dunning
I heard recently that Peter Dunning died. I want to play this again, in tribute. He was an amazing man.
Peter Dunning’s farm was a Vermont hill farm. A hundred and thirty-six acres of forest and orchards and wet spots and steep, rocky pasture, picked over by farmers for hundreds of years.
Peter farmed here, mostly alone, for nearly forty years. When he was getting done, we spoke at his kitchen table, as the farm was growing up around him.
Credits
I learned of Peter Dunning from a document
The Defense.
In cases where a defendant seems unjustly accused, the defense attorney is our hero. But if they seem guilty…or if it’s an especially violent crime, we look at these lawyers and wonder…how can they do that?
This is a show about the people who stand with the accused.
You’ll hear five perspectives on the art of criminal defense, and you’ll hear some great stories. Which makes sense because telling great stories is part of the job description.
Hear the Full Interviews
Here are the (relatively) une
The Defense
In cases where a defendant seems unjustly accused, the defense attorney is our hero. But if they seem guilty…or if it’s an especially violent crime, we look at these lawyers and wonder…how can they do that?
This is a show about the people who stand with the accused.
You’ll hear five perspectives on the art of criminal defense, and you’ll hear some great stories. Which makes sense because telling great stories is part of the job description.
Hear the Full Interviews
Here are the (relatively) un
Susan Asks, For Who? For What?
Susan is a private investigator and I interview her a lot for my show. Last week she hit an owl with her car and it died. She didn’t want to leave it on the side of the road so she took it home and put it in the freezer and started calling around the state to see who could use a dead owl and it turned out the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury could. So she drove up. The owl joined its raptor brethren in the museum cooler and then Susan came over to my house to eat sandwiches and talk…mostly a
Virtual Justice
At the onset of Covid in March, 2020, the Vermont Supreme Court declared a judicial emergency, suspending all non-essential court hearings. Hearings have resumed, but many are still being held remotely, including arraignments, which are ground zero for all criminal cases. An arraignment is the first time that defendants appear in front of a judge. They’re informed of their charges and they enter a plea. And for defendants working with a public defender, it’s often the first time they meet th
Camp Zeno
Zeno Mountain Farm is a camp for people with and without disabilities, which is a super reductive way to describe it. Most other camps are places where people with disabilities are not. They’re missing. Zeno is a camp where everyone…is. And a camp that includes everybody is way more fun. Exponentially more fun. At Zeno, everyone is a camper and everyone is a counselor and nobody pays to be there and nobody gets paid. It’s just friends who come back year after year to this mountain in Lincoln
Chris and Beth Sing
Chris and Beth sing a lot. You’ve heard them before, if you listened to the show Sing your Job. They were the ones singing Game of Thrones, which I could not stop listening to. When I wrote to Chris to say that I couldn’t stop listening to them sing Game of Thrones, he told me that he and Beth sing a lot. They make up songs about whatever they’re doing at the moment, and lucky for us, they record themselves periodically.
Nobody really knows a marriage except for the two people in it. It’s a v
Herschel’s Song
Alexis Harte is out biking on a chilly afternoon last November when a new song pops into his head and mesmerizes him. It doesn’t seem strange at first — he’s a musician, after all. But when he discovers what was happening to a cherished relative at the moment the song sprang into his brain, he begins to wonder if he’s the target of a practical joke from the hereafter. Herschel’s Song is one part tribute to a dear friend, and to a life well-lived, and one part meditation on the songwriting/cr
Growing Up in a War
Irfan Sehic grew up in Bosnia and spent most of his childhood living in a civil war. One day the kids across the street were his best friends, the next day they were enemies. His father would fight in the war a few days a week and then be back for dinner. It was complicated. He told me I couldn’t understand war because I had not experienced it, which is true. But I kept asking him to explain it to me anyway.
Here’s a link to the Robby and Irfan show, wherein I admit that I do not know who Jo
Bird Man
My friend Bryan Pfeiffer is a writer, educator and field naturalist. He used to be a professional birding guide. He knows all about birds and dragonflies and moths. He knows where they live and what they eat and what it smells like where they live and eat. And even though we’ve been friends for a long time, Bryan has never taken me birding because I’ve never been interested in birds. Then I turned fifty and became interested in birds and I think that my sudden interest has more to do with my
An Interview About Interviewing with Jane Lindholm
Jane Lindholm recently left her position as host of Vermont Edition, VPR’s midday public affairs show. In her fourteen years on the show, Jane interviewed governors, senators, authors, wildlife biologists…she interviewed me once, which was awful because I couldn’t think fast enough. I have no idea how she does it, which is why I wanted to talk with her. What is it like to be live every day with a different person? And what is it like to be a regular fixture in the lives of Vermonters every da
Police Log: Don’t Park Too Close Edition
It’s been too long since I’ve reported on police activity here in Vermont and it’s been a challenging time for law enforcement. Calls to police are countless, and complex. I asked Scott Carrier to read from recent police logs, as reported in the Barre Montpelier Times Argus, and the Lamoille County News and Citizen.
Scott Carrier is the producer of my favorite podcast, Home of the Brave.
An American Life
Vaughn Hood was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. And in Vaughn’s war, most men didn’t survive their first three-month tour.
Now Vaughn Hood runs a hair salon in St. Johnsbury with his wife, Bev. For a couple days, I sat and talked with him in the back of his salon. We talked about war, about hard work, about survival, and hairdressing.
Here is the story of an extraordinary American life.
This story we featured here was co-produced by Erica Heilman and Larry Massett
Leland First Responder
I met Leland when he was in school with my son Henry at Calais Elementary. I interviewed him when he was over playing at our house when he was in fourth grade, and I’ve been interviewing him every spring ever since. We’ve talked about deep space, death, girls…sometimes we don’t talk much at all. Leland’s a junior in high school now. He spends most of his time at a technical school working on carpentry. He has his license and his own truck, which doesn’t have much of a muffler.
We sat and talked
Sing Your Job
Here is a little musical about the beautiful minutia of your lives. And I just keep adding to it because our lives just keep going on and on and on. So just keep sending songs and now and then I’ll add them to the Longest Song.
Will you Sing Your Job?
Sing about what you do every day.
Han’s Brain
The first time I meet Han MeiMei, we were standing on my deck in Vermont. She looked at the fields around my house and she said, ‘That’s a lot of fields. Have you ever thought of writing messages to airplanes?’ I had not thought of this.
Han is a brain scientist. She studies the nature of memory, and she’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She grew up in a state-run factory compound in Guilin, in southeast China’s Guangxi province. Everyone who worked there lived there, and shopped th
Free Soup. Come.
Rose Friedman and some friends decided to start making free meals on Wednesday nights for anyone who wants them. They set up outside the East Hardwick Grange Hall. A lot of people around here are making food for neighbors during Covid. But Rose isn’t making food because of Covid. Or not exactly. She wants to see what will happen. Who will come and get the food and what will it be like when they come to get the food and if a lot of really different kinds of people come to get the food, what wi
Marriage in the Time of Covid
We’re a year into Covid and in Vermont we’re almost into the last stretch of winter and I’ve been thinking a lot about married people, or people partnered with other people living in houses and apartments day after night for days and months and now a year. I wonder what goes on in those houses and what they talk about and how they get on day after day, night after night. I found a young couple willing to talk with me about how they’re doing. They live in an old farmhouse in central Vermont that
Town Meeting
In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves—this has a profound impact on a place, and what it means to be from a place.
Sometimes it’s contentious. Sometimes it’s boring. But it’s always the most interesting and authentic and civilized socia
Party is Everything
This is a FUN show to celebrate FRICKIN’ INAUGURATION DAY which we’ve been waiting for for 1000 years!!!!!! It’s from the Shaking Out the Numb, a series I made with Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso. The show is called Party Is Everything. It’s about being young and getting ready to go to parties and then going to parties. And all of the things you think about when you’re getting ready to go to a party and then when you’re at a party.
The song you hear is Ferris Wheel, from Sylvan
Problems: The Awful Sisters Christmas Special
It’s been a challenging year. Families are trying to figure out how to be together for the holidays when they can’t be together physically. Welcome to Problems, a Christmas special. Problems is a series about comfortable, upper middle class people who have a lot to complain about. This year, Pam and her two sisters, Andrea and Amanda, are planning a Christmas caroling zoom call to their parents. In a series of zoom calls they plan and practice.
But it’s just really hard.
Credits
Amanda is pla
Surviving COVID, a Fever Dream
Daniel Kirk is a children’s book author and illustrator and he lives with his wife in New Jersey, about twelve miles outside of Manhattan. They were both infected with COVID last March, before it had spread in the United States. They still don’t know where they got it. By now we know a lot more about COVID. We know the symptoms. We can recite the symptoms. But what does it actually feel like to struggle to breathe? And for those who become deathly ill–who slip into some state between waking a
A Talk About the F-Word, with Bill Schubart
Bill Schubart is a writer and a cultural and political commentator. He’s chaired a lot of important boards here in Vermont. He’s really smart and he talks a lot and a lot of people listen to him. What he talks less about is that he’s struggled with being fat his entire life. He’s not averse to talking about it. In fact he wrote a brilliant collection of stories called Fat People in 2010. But it’s not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation.
In this show, we talk about it.
For more abo
Shaking out the Numb
I first interviewed them when they played in Vermont in 2017 and we became friends. In fact Amelia is the only person with whom I have two-hour phone conversations that start like this:
‘Hey. What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
This podcast was an experiment. The interviews were all recorded over the phone during Covid….on back porches at night, by rivers, in fields, and sometimes in closets. Nick and Amelia weren’t interested in a standard set of questions about how
Officer Clemmons
François Clemmons was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1945 on the plantation where his great great grandmother Laura May’s family had been slaves, then he moved with his mother and siblings and aunts and cousins to Youngstown, Ohio during the Great Migration. Youngstown is where he started singing, and he never stopped singing. He sings in the middle of sentences, he sings on the way to the bathroom, he sings like the world depends on it, which maybe it does.
But you know him already. Or those
I Am In Here
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/230694656″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] Mark Utter was born with a form of autism that makes it impossible for him to say what he’s thinking. For the first thirty years of his life, Mark did not have access to the world of words, except as a listener. An observer. When he was thirty, he was introduced to supported typing, and for the first time in his life, with the
I Hate Google Meet
I’ve been doing a couple freelance jobs for extra money. One requires a great deal of video conferencing. I have learned that I do not excel at video conferencing and at the moment I knew this with certainty, my recorder was close by, so I recorded some thoughts on the subject. Then an audio producer in London heard it and did a remix version of it. So here is a short dip into my state of mind during this election season, this world burning, this age of video conferencing. There is some justi
Karl Hammer and the Donkeys
Karl Hammer is the founder and president of the Vermont Compost Company in East Montpelier, right up the hill from Montpelier, the state capital. I first heard about Karl from my friend Rosana, who used to be married to him. She told me about how they had puppies one winter, and Karl decided to compost their poop on the floor in the house, which he sweetened with donkey manure and hardwood bark and hay.
Karl started as a vegetable and dairy farmer on a hill farm in Vershire Vermont. He had a
Crossing Guard
A GUEST SHOW from one of my favorite radio producers….Bianca Giaever.
During a period of personal loneliness, radio-maker Bianca Giaever set out into New York City, hoping to connect with another lonely stranger. She began visiting Catholic churches, and eventually, she met Sophia — a school crossing guard. In this piece, Bianca documents Sophia’s life for many months… weaving between the ordinary life of a school crossing guard, and larger themes of loneliness, God, and the quest to live a me
Winnie
Winnie Wilkinson is originally from Jamaica but she spent half her life in New York City before moving up to St. Albans, Vermont, where black people make up 2.52 percent of the population. Winnie has family all over the country, and she has a lot of family members who’ve been harassed by the police, which is what I went to talk with her about. But it’s not what we talked about. Instead, we talked about God and about slavery–two things that have a profound impact on how Winnie thinks about every
Knots and Pandemics
Clare is the curator of the Museum Of Everyday Life, which lives in a barn on Route 16, about eight miles from Glover, Vermont, population 2000. Over the years, the Museum of Everyday Life has given us the toothbrush, the mirror, bells and whistles–celebrations of objects we use everyday in our unglamorous everyday lives. This year’s exhibit features the knot. It’s not quite finished, because as Clare was preparing the exhibit, she was also working her other job as a nurse at a small rural hosp
Leland in a Pandemic
I met my friend Leland when he was in first grade and he came over to play with my son Henry. For six years now, we’ve been having a yearly conversation about how he’s doing and what he’s thinking about. He just finished his sophomore year at the Central Vermont Career Center in Barre, which is a technical education school. He was never big on regular school, even though he knows more about geography than I’ll ever know. Leland lives in an old farmhouse on a dirt road looking down over Pekin
1900 Cars
Last month a friend of mine sent me a picture of miles and miles of cars lined up waiting for food that was being distributed by the National Guard here in Vermont. Nineteen hundred cars. I’d never seen anything like it, and it took me a minute to even believe it. And when I told a friend about it…a perfectly smart and thoughtful friend…he said, “Well, they probably don’t really need it. I mean, those are pretty nice cars…”
It turns out there are lot of ways to be food insecure, and they’re
Grant Owen
Kids know how to turn objects into living things. It's like magic...
Our Show Seven
Here’s our last show, which also happens to be show number seven.
In this show you heard
Cheering healthcare workers in Barcelona and Toronto
Greg’s son practicing trumpet on a rainy night in Plainfield, VT
Brooke in Denver Colorado
Rob on the accordian in Adamant, VT
Bianca in Brooklyn, NY
Gideon and his mother Kathryn in High Falls, NY
Liv singing in Los Angeles, CA
Toria in Boulder, CO
Edward and his daughter in Forth Worth, TX
Shane singing about dinosaurs in Minnesota
The 5pm one song c
Our Show Six
This is Our Show, number six. Your recordings about the pandemic.
In this show you heard from:
Alicia and Liv in Los Angeles, CA
Ada in Marfa, Texas
Anna in Bennington, Vermont
The sound of rain in a woodstove from Bruce in Montreal
Bill in New York City
Morten in Southampton, United Kingdom
Eli in Philadelphia, PA
Katz in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Shana in Auchterarder, Scotland
Samantha, somewhere in South Africa
Jen in East London
Bev and her mother Marj and her father Bill, in Toronto.
Our Show Five
Here’s Our Show, number five…your recordings about the pandemic.
In this show you hear from:
Niels in Copenhagen, Denmark
Thomas singing in El Cerrito, CA
Rachel in Olympia, Washington
Rob and his kids from Olympia, Washington
Louisa in Brittany, France
Another meditation from Cali in Florida
Tomas in Berlin, Germany
Molly’s bells in Las Cruces, NM
Esther in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Ada and Mathew in Marfa, TX
Carlos, in Bethesda, MD
The Associate Producer for this series is the excellent
Our Show Four
Here is Our Show 4, your recordings during the pandemic. Thank you for sending me remarkable recordings from all over the world, and the intense privilege of making shows with them.
In this show you hear from:
Bill in New York City
Clive in Toronto
Tim in Durango, Colorado
Bianca in New York City
Andrew’s son reading Pi in Northhampton, Mass.
Kelly in New Braunfels, Texas
Ralph in North Wolcott, Vermont
Amelia in Durham North Carolina
Music by hand habits and Amelia Meath.
Your Recordings!
Our Show Three
This is Our Show number three…made from your recordings during the pandemic.
Keep that tape coming. Let’s keep making damn shows.
In this show you hear from:
Elliott in Brooklyn and his mother Roberta who’s outside of Chicago
Carlos in Bethesda
Ryan in West Virginia
Katy in New York City
Darren in the middle of the south coast of England
Silvia in Barcelona
Jessica in Minneapolis
Alicia and Liv in Los Angeles
Scott in Streatham, London
Greta in Los Angeles
Karen on an island near Stockholm
S
Our Show Two
This is the second installment of Our Show, which is about all of us during this pandemic, and is made from all the recordings you’re sending to me from wherever you are in the world, in whatever isolated circumstance. I’m in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in a third floor walk-up, with my son Henry. I have plenty of time to edit. So keep sending your stories.
Here’s Show Two.
In this story you hear from:
Bianca and Matt in New York City
My sister Missy in Damariscotta, Maine
Craig and his wife an
Our Show One
It’s amazing. An entire planet of people living mostly in isolation…or those of us lucky enough to be well. It’s the darkest thing to happen in my lifetime, but also strangely the most unifying. We’re all experiencing the very same thing at the same time, but not together. Which is why I wanted to make this show.
I asked you to send me recordings from where you are so we could make a show about all of us. And you did. And they are remarkable, and there are too many to make just one show. So
Our Show
Send me some recordings. Let's make a show.
Announcement
Hi all,
My father died a couple weeks ago. He died peacefully at the UVM Medical Center in Burlington. My mother and sister and I spent six days and nights with him, the last 4.5 in comfort care. It was quiet. We had a room we could all camp out in together. The death was a surprise but not a shock.
I’m putting out this announcement because work on the show is going slowly at the moment. Also because the show is very personal and it would seem odd not to tell you all.
My father was a brilliant,
Susan on the Brown Couch
Susan Randall is a private investigator here in Vermont and she’s been my friend for twenty five years. If you listen to the show, you already know that I interview her periodically for Rumble Strip. We talk in her car, in her backyard…mostly we talk about her work as a private investigator, but lately we’ve been talking about all the complicated things that seem to start happening when you turn fifty. In our last conversation, she was just finishing treatments for breast cancer. And on New Yea
Joslyn House
People often assume the Joslyn House is a nursing home, probably because a lot of old people live there. But it’s not a nursing home. It’s not assisted living. There’s no anonymous art on the wall. It’s not licensed by the state. It’s a house. It’s a a place where up to twenty older people live independently together…in a huge, elegant house furnished with their own things. There’s socializing when you want it, silence when you don’t, there’s sociable silence… there are three beautiful meals
One more thing about Ben Kilham…
An outtake with bear biologist Ben Kilham, about living with dyslexia, and how it informs the way he thinks about bears.
Bear Man
Ben Kilham and his sister Phoebe are the only licensed bear rehabilitators in the state of New Hampshire. For over twenty-five years, the Kilham Bear Center has taken in orphaned or injured black bear cubs and successfully released them back into the wild. And Ben has conducted arguably the longest scientific study of black bear behavior in history.
Until Ben Kilham, black bears were studied mostly using tracking collars. But Ben has spent decades following bears in the woods, sometimes for n
Fifty. A Phoenix Moment.
For many years I have privately loved the song Total Eclipse of the Heart, by Bonnie Tyler. I started to love it when it came out in 1983, when I was fourteen.
This month I’m turning fifty. And for some reason, every time I think about turning fifty, I think about singing this song that I’ve loved for over over thirty years, and making other people listen to me sing it. I guess in a way it’s a kind of phoenix moment I’m hoping for. That I’ll burn up in some exquisite shame and then I’ll be bo
Truck Redux
This is a show about guys who love to talk about their trucks. I made it a few years ago and I think it needs a comeback. And my opinion about Dodge Rams has not changed.
Enjoy.
Bobcat Hunter
Patrick Soniera has been hunting and tracking bobcats in Vermont for fifty years, and he has a diary entry about every single hunt–the weather, the birds or the bears, the behavior of the cat tracks he followed–his diaries fill one whole wall of his office. And for the majority of those days out in the woods, Patrick never even saw a bobcat. You almost never see them, which is why Patrick is so fascinated by these cats.
Last year Patrick went out tracking cats with his hounds a hundred and fi
Problems, Episode 5: Vacation
This is the fifth episode of Problems, a radio drama about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems. In this episode, Joel’s just come back from a long vacation in British Colombia, where he had a lovely time mountain biking with friends. But…there were some problems.
This show is sponsored by Honey Road, my all time favorite restaurant in Vermont. Make a reservation. Go. Eat. Report back. And click on the image below for more information.
A Perfect Drive with Garret Keizer
Garret Keizer and I stood together in a field, in the late summer, in the Northeast Kingdom, and he read poems from his new book, The World Pushes Back.
I first heard of Garret a few years ago when I read his book, Getting Schooled, about his years as a high school teacher up here in the Kingdom. He described this place more honestly and more humanely…than anything I’d ever read about the place before. And his stories about his own experience teaching are almost brutally honest. I’ve never re
Summer Musical
It’s the summer musical in Randolph, Vermont…one day before showtime. It’s been an annual event at Chandler Music Hall for over twenty years, and this year they’re putting on Footloose. And honestly? It feels like the whole town is involved. Like it takes every last person in Randolph to pull this thing off…again. To put on a full musical with up to 120 kids, in three weeks? It’s a miracle.
I spent an afternoon talking with some of the kids backstage, about their lives in musical theater. And e
Leland Will Figure It Out
Leland lives over the hill from me in East Calais. We’ve been friends since he was in first grade, and every year around this time we get together and he tells me what he’s thinking about, worried about, what his plans are. He got his driver’s permit two weeks ago so he drove me over to Number 10 Pond and we sat and talked about the ups and downs of his first year of high school, about girls, about avocado toast…
Credits
Music for this show is by Vermont musician Brian Clark, who is the lead si
Logging By Hand
If you drive around rural Vermont, you see logging skidders parked in people’s dooryards. You see them working in smaller woodlots and residential woodlots, felling trees with a chainsaw at twenty below zero, dragging cables through waist deep snow. It’s dangerous work, and they’re a resilient lot. And they prefer logging by hand.
This story is about them.
Credits
This show is part of The Resilient Forest series produced by Northern Woodlands and first aired on NEXT, a weekly radio show and pod
Gamelan and Subjects of Consequence
Gamelan Sulukala is a group of fifteen people in central Vermont who come together at the dead end of a dirt road in the basement of the Goddard College library, to play Indonesian music on an ornate, court gamelan made on the island of Java. There is no harmony. Instead, each sound is part of an intricate layering of patterns. No one instrument, or musician stands alone.
Except the people in gamelan are people who very much stand alone. Writers and strawberry farmers and scientists and Renais
Senior
When I was in high school I remember being amazed by how much grownups seemed to forget about being young. But as it turns out….you do forget. A lot of it. And a lot of it’s important, and funny, and sometimes scary.
I do remember that I hated high school graduation. Not because I didn’t want to graduate, but because I knew I was supposed to be excited but I didn’t know how to be excited about a future that didn’t exist yet and that I couldn’t imagine.
So a couple weeks before graduation, I w
Victim Advocate
The criminal justice system is not designed to answer to the needs of crime victims. It’s designed to figure out if there’s enough evidence to bring a case. If there is, a defense attorney builds a case for the defendant and a prosecutor builds a case for the state of Vermont. The alleged victim in the case becomes a witness in their own story. They may have felt the impact of a crime, but they play no direct role in how the crime is adjudicated. For most people brand new to the system, this
Problems Episode 4: Coffee and Public School
Welcome to the fourth episode of Problems, a radio drama about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems…because no problem is too small to complain about.
In this episode, Joel pays a visit to Pam at her house and brings her a small gift. Joel’s daughter, Whitney, has started at public school. Pam’s daughter River had a harder time at public school, and now she’s back at the local private school.
Welcome.
Captain JP Sinclair
Captain JP Sinclair has been at the center of over five-hundred death investigations and a hundred-and-one homicides in the state of Vermont. He served as the state’s chief criminal investigator and he led the Vermont State Police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations. He was also instrumental in forming a major crime unit in the state of Vermont to handle the state’s most egregious cases.
And we used to play little league together.
JP and I went to Charlotte Central School together from Kinder
Brand New Life
I interviewed T.O. back in the summer of 2017. He’d just gotten out of prison, where he’s spent the majority of his adult life, and he was trying to figure out what to do next. After we met, he found employment and he enrolled at the Community College of Vermont. Things were going well. But what does it feel like to start a brand new life? It’s hard. And it’s complicated.
Credits
Music by Brian Clark
T.O.’s Poetry
Patience
Peep dis…
What’s patience??
What’s life w embracing trials and TRIBUL
Deer Camp
I spent the night before deer season at Jim Welch’s deer camp in Chelsea, Vermont. His camp is an old school bus, outfitted with a woodstove and a couple pallets in the back for sleeping. To get to it you have to drive through Mr. Bradshaw’s barnyard and then about a half mile across a field. The bus has been there for as long as Jim can remember and Mr. Bradshaw lets him use it.
So a bunch of Jim’s friends were coming out to the bus to do what they always do the night before deer season, whi
Susan and I Talk About Cancer
A lot of you who listen to the show regularly already know Susan Randall. She’s a private investigator and an old friend and I interview her now and then for the show. A couple months ago Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s important to say right off that I think Susan’s going to be fine. The cancer hasn’t spread. She doesn’t need chemotherapy, and she’s almost done with her radiation therapy. But the diagnosis has made her think differently about her life. We got together at the hos
Game Warden
I spent a day riding around with game warden, Jeff Whipple, on the second weekend of deer season…just when some hunters are getting frustrated they haven’t got their deer yet.
Exciting things happened.
Game wardens are like nature’s cops. They’re trained in law enforcement, but they’re also conservationists. Their job is to look after the wilderness areas and forests that make up 75 percent of Vermont. They’re spread thin across the state, so in order to respond quickly to calls, they have to
Christine
What most people outside Vermont know about Christine Hallquist is that she was the country’s first transgender gubernatorial candidate. But it’s not what she ran on–and it’s not even what was most interesting about her campaign.
The day before election day, Christine and her team had just finished a fourteen-county Road to Victory Tour, which involved going to places like Lunenburg, Vermont, population 1302. And this wasn’t her first visit to Lunenburg. Christine’s campaign focused on rural
Problems, Episode 3: A Celebrity Interview
Welcome to another episode of Problems–a series about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems. Because no problem is too small to complain about.
This is a special episode, featuring special celebrity guest, Steve McFadden. McFadden is an acclaimed performance artist from Chicago, and old friend of Pam’s. His work is extreme, and always dangerous. Pam was conducting the interview on behalf of her daughter River, who was uncomfortable conducting the intervie
They Are Us, Part 1: Sarah
Sarah Holland had no history of mental illness. She was a full-time R.N., she had three kids and a small farm. She was busy. Then suddenly she started to experience symptoms of depression. She didn’t have a name for it. No one in her world had ever talked about mental health. But pretty soon Sarah was having a hard time working, and parenting.
This is a story of one woman’s struggle with major depression, and her recovery.
This show is the first in a seven-part series I produced for Vermont Pub
They Are Us, Show 4: They Are Us
How should people live long-term in our state if they have a serious mental illness? The hope is that they’ll find ways to integrate into their communities with support, but that’s proven tough to accomplish. In this show we look at the challenges in our community mental health care system.
Featuring:
Ken Libertoff, former director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health
Anne Donahue, state representative from Northfield and Berlin, editor of Counterpoint
Greg Mairs, operational directo
They Are Us, Show 7: Work
Both Alexis and Steve were diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is the story about how meaningful, paid work plays a role in their recovery.
Featuring:
Paul Miller, co-coordinator of the Green Mountain Workforce, Washington County Mental Health
Louis Josephson, president and CEO of Brattleboro Retreat
Alexis Kyriak, artist
Steve, culinary worker
This show is part of a seven-part series I produced for Vermont Public Radio called They Are Us, which features personal stories from inside the stat
They Are Us, Show 6: I Could Be Well
Leslie Nelson has heard voices for as long as she can remember. She sees things other people don’t see. This is a conversation about what it’s like to be normal, from Leslie’s point of view, and the incredible power of finding people like herself to talk with about their normal lives with mental illness.
Featuring:
Leslie Nelson, START Team Leader, Howard Center
This show is part of a seven-part series I produced for Vermont Public Radio called They Are Us, which features personal stories f
They Are Us, Show 3: Parents
Connie’s son was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was nineteen, just as he was becoming independent. He didn’t believe there was anything wrong with him. He did not want to seek treatment. And since he was legally an adult, his parents stood by and watched his life fall apart.
Ron’s story was much the same.
One in 100 adults is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and for most, the onset is around this time, in late adolescence, and parents often play a critical role in their care. As caregivers
They Are Us, Part 2: Home
There are Vermonters who experience psychiatric crises for years — and repeated visits to emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals. Where do they go when they leave the hospital? And why do they keep coming back? This is a story about the role housing plays in mental health.
Featuring:
Ken Libertoff, former director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health
Louis Josephson, president and CEO of Brattleboro Retreat
Brian Lincourt, night charge nurse at Brattleboro Retreat
Connie Stabler,
They Are Us, Show 5: My Pad
A story about Vermont’s only permanent, supervised housing for people with serious mental illness.
Featuring:
Anne Donohue, state representative from Northfield and Berlin, editor of Counterpoint
Graham Parker, MyPad director
Connie Stabler, mother and Howard Center board member
This show is part of a seven-part series I produced for Vermont Public Radio called They Are Us, which features personal stories from inside the state’s mental healthcare system.
Comments: Please make a comment or s
Cheerleader
We didn’t have cheerleading at my school. Or pep rallies. I think we would’ve made fun of cheering and cheerleaders at my school. Because we were scared and cruel and had no idea what we were missing.
My son just started high school and I snuck into the gym for his first pep rally. I almost wept. Seeing all those kids—the freshmen and the seniors and the football players and the shy kids—kids at a stage in life that can be so self conscious and horrible—seeing them all clapping and cheering t
Graffiti Photographer
Steve Grody has dedicated his life to his passions. He’s an accomplished swing dance teacher. He’s a self defense instructor. And in the last twenty-eight years, he’s taken tens of thousands of photographs of graffiti in his hometown of Los Angeles. This is a conversation about the decades he’s spent wandering alleyways, climbing under bridges and through tunnels, documenting this ephemeral art.
This program is produced by Bianca Giaever. She’s a writer, filmmaker, artist and radio producer,
Let’s Pull the Damn Woman Card
This is a show about women running for office. It’s not about issues or policies. You won’t learn where these women stand on public education or healthcare. It’s just about being a woman…running for office.
The truth is I’m tired of hearing about women running for office. I think there’s a liberal assumption that I already understand why that’s a good thing. But we’re not really supposed to talk explicitly about how being a woman, and not being a man, can be a value in and of itself.
So I figu
One of Those Teachers
Daphne Kalmar was a school teacher for over twenty years. She taught in California, Massachusetts and then in a small school in Vermont. She was one of those teachers. One of the exciting and inspiring ones you never forget…one of the teachers who sees every kid.
Daphne is now a children’s book author and she’s just published her first book, A Stitch in Time. We sat in her kitchen by an open window. It had that late summer sound to it, the sound I associate with the beginning of school in Ver
Amelia Drives Around
I picked Amelia up at The Shelburne Museum the other day. It was a few hours before her soundcheck so she had some time to kill and we took a slow drive down by the lake. She drove. She’s a good driver.
Amelia is one half of the band Sylvan Esso. Nick Sanborn is the other half. I’m not great at music genres but I’ve heard their music described as ‘electro-pop’, as ‘glitchy metropolitan folk’ (what??). Anyway, their music is incredibly fun, bent, smart, and they can turn the end of the world int
Thomas Talks About Coming Out. Twice.
Thomas Caswell has autism. Which doesn’t tell you very much about him.
Autism doesn’t describe a person. If you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve met one person…with autism. But over the last couple years Thomas has been coming out of the closet, in stages. And along with the common difficulties of coming out, there are some special difficulties if you’re a person with a disability. In this show, Thomas talks about growing up with autism, and growing into his life as a gay man.
Credits
Leland. It’s a Porcupine!
It’s time again for another conversation with my neighbor Leland. He’s fourteen now. He just finished eighth grade. He’s got big plans for the summer.
This is the fourth year I’ve interviewed Leland about what he’s doing and what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind is always pretty interesting.
This year he took me out to his fort, in a pine forest about a half mile from his house. It’s a tarp held up by two beams, and covered with brush piles. There’s a firepit. We sat in a couple lawn chai
Problems, Episode 2: Open Mic
Welcome to the second episode of Problems, an occasional mini-series of Rumble Strip. Problems. Because no problem is too small to complain about.
Problems stars Pam and Joel, old friends who support each other through their problems. We left off with Joel, who was in the midst of a pretty inconvenient bathroom renovation in his house, and Pam, who’s been dealing with some issues with her daughter River. River’s been biting other kids at school.
Here is a very special addition to the song fr
Police Log, Gancy’s Cows Edition
It’s almost summer here in central Vermont, and as it gets hotter, it seems to get more dangerous. Law enforcement is working hard behind the scenes to keep people safe. Also to keep cows safe. Here’s the police log, read by Scott Carrier.
Shaggs’ Own Thing: The Story of the Wiggin Sisters
Depending on who you talk to, The Shaggs were either one of the best bands from the ’60s, or one of the worst bands of all time.
Helen, Betty and Dot Wiggin grew up in Fremont, New Hampshire. They had no interest in music, no natural talent for music, and in the late ’60s, their father forced them to drop out of school and start a rock band. In their living room. And then he forced them to record an album.
Decades later, The Shaggs became a cult classic….beloved by the likes of Frank Zappa, Son
Carl. A Different Breed of Cat
Directions to Carl Blaisdell’s house: Go about seven miles down this road. Then there’s a road that kind of goes up to a Jersey farm on the left and then there’s a pond. But there’s no sign to the pond. So after the pond, drive past the pull-off and Carl’s trailer sits way up in a field at the top of that hill. There’s a lot of pipes. And a lot of cars and trucks. And lots and lots of hounds.
But Carl wasn’t home. And so I went back the next day and we sat in his truck and talked. Carl’s traile
A Tribute to Greg Sharrow
This is a show I made back in 2008. I’m running it as a tribute to my friend Greg Sharrow. Greg was one of the first people I met when I came back to Vermont in 2003. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t have a job or really any plans, and it was the middle of winter. And then I met Greg at his office in the old Vermont Folklife Center building in Middelbury. It was crammed with books, and we sat down and talked for two hours, and it was that kind of talk where you’re almost gulping each other
Driving Around With Susan. Again!
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
–Rumi
This winter Susan Randall worked with the defense on a sentencing case for a high profile multiple-murder here in Vermont. A sentencing is the time for considering the pain caused by a crime. It’s also a time to ask, How did we get here? What happened in the life of this person that led her to do what she did?
For months, Susan worked closely with the woman who committed these murders, creating a prof
Problems, Episode 1: Grout and the Contra Dance
[Uhm…..satire. In case that wasn’t evident….]
Some of life’s inevitable problems are big and some are quite small. But no problems are too small to complain about.
Welcome to the first installment of Problems…a periodic radio drama about…problems. Joel and Pam’s problems.Pam and Joel, who you’ll hear from in this show, are old friends and they support each other through their problems, and even if you don’t think their problems are very problematic, for Pam and Joel…they are.
In this first epis
Son Lux
Son Lux is a band that doesn’t live comfortably in any genre. Their sound is massive, anthemic, but it’s also strangely intimate. The rhythms are incredibly complex, and it’s shot through with these bright details of sound. The project started in Ryan Lott’s brain in Cleveland, and then it grew by two–guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. They’re all composers and producers and improvisers. I think it’s fair to say they’re all wicked smart.
I interviewed Ryan Lott just two days before
Learning the Trade
The Northeast Kingdom is mostly small towns separated by miles and miles. Sometimes it’s featured in trout fishing magazines. It also has some of the highest unemployment and lowest wages in the state. Its beautiful place. And it’s a hard place to live.
I was up at the St. Johnsbury Academy a couple weeks ago, which is one of the gateways to the Kingdom. My sister and brother in law both work there. And I’ve always been curious about the career and technical classes at the school. They have th
Emergency
People having mental health crises are visiting emergency rooms in record numbers. But emergency room nurses are not trained to treat mental illnesses. This problem isn’t unique to Vermont. In fact it’s an acute problem all over the country.
For this show I interviewed nine nurses and one sheriff, in three settings around the state. This isn’t a show that explores where the problem came from, or where the solution lies. This show is about what it looks like right now in emergency rooms across t
Hitchhiker
This is another guest show from radio producer Scott Carrier, which he produced when he was twenty-six. He hitchhiked across the United States, interviewed people along the way, and ended up at the door of NPR in Washington, DC with an armful of tape. This is Scott’s first story.
Scott produces my favorite podcast. It’s called Home of the Brave.
Seasons Greetings From Liz and Jerry!
Here is our annual season’s greetings card, this year from Liz and Jerry Danforth. Fair warning…they had a pretty rough year.
Credits
Script by writer Tal McThenia
The show is a co-production of Rumble Strip and Pod Planet.
Music
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy • United States Navy Band
Clouds Pass Softly Deux • Podington Bear • Free Music Archive
I Am A Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor • Chris Zabriskie • Free Music Archive
Little Drummer Boy • Field recording of Christmas carolers.
A Good Death
My friend Tim Kasten died two weeks ago.
Ever since I met Tim, he’s been preparing for his own death. Partly because he had significant medical issues. But I think mostly he was preparing for his death because he wanted to. Thinking about the impermanence of life gave his life meaning. He was one of the most spiritually curious people I’ve ever met.
In this show, we hear from Tim, on death and dying. And we also chronicle the building of his casket…or his simple pine box…built by family and fri
Scott’s Nature
I’ve been reading the news too much. I read every version of the same story in every news outlet, and sometimes I forget I’ve read them and I read them again. I think a lot of people are feeling concerned and even scared. But I thought it would be good to remember some of the important things that are not the news.
I asked Scott Carrier to tell me about a place in the wilderness, in a high meadow, far, far away from the news.
It’s a musical.
Credits
Willie Tobin provided the nature sound for
Rowell
This fall my friend and I were going for a walk and as we walked past a small barn set down off the Upper Road in Calais, we heard someone from the barn call up to us and say, ‘You wanna come see some pigs?’
Of course we wanted to see some pigs.
John Rowell showed us his new piglets and I went back a few weeks later to hang out with John and his brother Eddie and record a conversation. Here’s a few minutes from that night.
The Museum of Everyday Life
The mission of The Museum of Everyday Life is “a heroic, slow-motion cataloguing of the quotidian–a detailed, theatrical expression of gratitude and love for the miniscule and unglamorous experience of daily life in all its forms.”
The museum’s home is in a barn on Route 16 in the Northeast Kingdom. It is my favorite museum. This is a show featuring the museum’s creator, Clare Dolan.
Credits
This show is co-produced by Erica Heilman and Mark Davis. Mark is my friend and a very good journalist a
Catastrophe and Grace
Rob Mermin had a career as a mime clown for forty years, then in 1987 he started a circus company here in Vermont called Circus Smirkus. Three years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
This is a story about movement, the loss of control of movement…catastrophe and grace.
About Rob
Rob Mermin trained in classical mime with Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau and has performed in European circus, theater, TV and film for forty years. He is an author, director, university lecturer, form
Hill Farm
Peter Dunning’s farm is a Vermont hill farm. It’s a hundred and thirty-six acres of forest and orchards and wet spots and steep, rocky pasture, picked over by farmers for hundreds of years. It’s the kind of place that does not lend itself to the industrial production of anything. Instead it lends itself to the production of…everything.
Peter has farmed here, mostly alone, for nearly forty years. Now he’s getting done. The animals are gone. The farm is growing up around him.
Here’s his story.
Cr
Waitress
My mother used to say that everyone should waitress at least once.
So I did. And I failed.
In this program, I talk with some of the finest waitstaff in central Vermont about life in the business of serving your food.
Appreciation:
Thanks to Jay at Sarducci’s and Brian at the Wayside Diner for lining up interviews in these two fine establishments. Additional interviews with Josh Larkin and Jodi DeGuzman.
Mind Windows
Mind Windows is a public radio program that gives your mind a chance to open its windows. Open them and then…see what happens!
Our guest today is Morgantha Prentiss, a director with New York’s off Broadway Lynx Throttle Theatre. Last year, she co-created and directed the musical, Lambs and Order, in which actors re-create the classic police procedural but as a musical, and with a cast wearing paper-mache lamb masks. The musical was a hit. It was extended several times, and transferred to New Yo
Plain Life
A few weeks ago I got a call from my friend Susan Randall, the private investigator you might remember from previous shows. She said that ‘T.O.’–a former client in a federal public defender case–had just been released from prison seven days before, after serving a six year bid. He was trying to figure out what to do next and also clearly trying to figure out how to manage the world outside prison. Where people are just walking around. Susan said she and T.O. were having lunch and she asked me
Sylvan Esso is a Good Band
The first time I learned of Amelia Meath was in an email exchange. She’d written me a nice note about Rumble Strip and at the end she wrote–in rather an understated way–‘P.S. I’m in a band. It’s called Sylvan Esso.’ And because I’m old, I’d never heard of Sylvan Esso.
So I looked her up online and I spent the rest of that night listening to every version of every Sylvan Esso song I could find, really loud and over and over. If there had been an album cover, I would have been clutching it to m
Police Log, Burning Lawn Chairs Edition
It’s been some time since we’ve heard reports from the police about criminal activity here in Vermont. And I’m sorry to say that so far this summer, it’s been…busy. There’s pretzel-related violence and lawnmower theft. And more trouble at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Here’s your summer report from Vermont police, reported by Scott Carrier, producer of Home of the Brave.
Crime and Punishment Under Trump
Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a memo to all federal prosecutors, with new directives for charging and sentencing in criminal cases. He’s directed federal prosecutors to charge defendants with the most severe penalties possible and pursue mandatory minimum sentences where they’re available. We’re headed back into the war on drugs from the 80s and 90s…a war that did not end drug use or make anyone safer. Instead it ripped apart families, packed American prisons and resulted in l
Leland is Almost Done Seventh Grade
It’s spring in Vermont, and it’s been a full year since we heard from my friend Leland. When we left him last year, he was just about to graduate from Calais elementary school and move up to the big union middle school.
Leland is my neighbor. And this will be my third year talking with him on tape…about what he’s doing, and what he’s thinking about. He talks about revolutionary war reenactments and friend groups and grief… he takes me around and shows me all the places I forgot about in the thi
We Are Sending You Light
The Eventide Singers are a volunteer hospice choir based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. They aim to comfort people who are ill, homebound, or actively dying. There are a number of these groups of bedside singers in Vermont and all over the world. They sing to be of service to people who are straddling the edges of life and death, or who are lonely and need a little light. They sing to comfort the caregivers and give them a little break from all they must attend to. They are intimate strangers pro
Robert Ford Last Ambassador
Robert Ford served as the last U.S. Ambassador to Syria. He arrived in the country right before the protests began there in 2011 and he was witness to the beginnings of the civil war. In 2012 he was pulled out over security concerns, but he continued to work on the crisis in Syria back in DC until 2014, when he left the Foreign Service. Robert Ford now lives with his wife Alison in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, which is about as far from the Middle East as you can get. We met in his livin
Hunger is Boring
This is a show about how the charitable food system works and how it’s not working.
The topic of hunger is not very exciting. Stories about problems that have always been problems are generally not very exciting. And since there’s enough food to feed everyone in this country ten times over, hunger is obviously a systems problem. So I think I’ve figured it would get solved any day now. By systems people.
But it’s not getting solved. In fact the lines at food shelves are getting longer while the
The Wildlife
In the concrete jungle, it all starts out innocently enough: especially if you live in a high-rise.
It was a blustery Tuesday morning, when two pigeons, named Cody and Megan, were house hunting on the balcony of my apartment.
As you’d expect, they put in an offer.
Beyond the holiday turkey or roast chicken here and there, I wasn’t fond of birds. When Cody and Megan appeared, I shooed them away, closed the balcony door and left for work.
When I came home, I was in for a surprise. Cody was dan
Judge Cashman
Ed Cashman spent twenty-five years on the bench, presiding over drunk driving cases and murders and everything in between. After a while, he started to question whether the American criminal justice system was actually achieving justice. The kinds of sentences that the public demanded and that lawyers accepted often felt more like vengeance than fairness. Judge Cashman tried to give defendants—even those charged with heinous of crimes—a chance to redeem themselves. It was a philosophy that some
Your Neighbor
For the last four and a half years, Victor’s been working on dairy farms in the Northeast. Like 11 million other people in this country, he’s undocumented. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve always assumed I knew this story already…like it was some kind of composite story of the ‘Mexican migrant farm worker experience’. The worst part is, I didn’t even know I was assuming this. I guess I didn’t really have to think about it. The story didn’t have a lot to do with me.
But last week President Tru
Deep Stealth Mode
When Marlo Mack’s son was three and just learning to talk, he informed his mother that he was not a boy. He said that something had gone wrong in her tummy that made him come out as a boy instead of a girl.
Today, a guest show from two of my favorite podcasts…
Marlo Mack’s podcast, How to Be a Girl, is a riveting, funny, sometimes heartbreaking account of her life raising a transgender daughter. It has some of the best interviewing with a child I’ve ever heard. It’s also one of the most interest
Dunkin’ Donuts
It’s really dark here in Vermont this time of year. And every year, by the third week in January, I feel like I’m seeing everything through the wrong end of a telescope. A dirty telescope. I stop wanting to answer the phone. I have a hard time picking out a cereal at the store. Most mornings it just seems easier to wear what I wore to bed.
After Trump’s first week in office, I feel worse than most years. And actually the whole world seems on edge. It seems like no one can decide how to help or w
Benedict Arnold’s Leg
Steve Sheinkin is an award-winning writer of stories for kids about American history. When he started out, he was a writer of boring textbooks for kids about American history. When he started, he was young and ambitious and he wanted to bring new energy to textbook writing, to mine American history for fresh new details and anecdotes that could capture the interest of fifth graders…!
This is an interview about how he failed.
And he shares stories about the awful push and pull of priorities f
Seasonal Update from the Keens!
Ho ho ho! It’s time again for the annual seasonal update from the Keen family!
In certain American subcultures, there’s a long holiday tradition of sending out end-of-year family update letters to far-flung relatives, friends and acquaintances. They can be wonderful. They can also be spectacularly bizarre. Could it be that this year the tradition comes to an end? Here is the Keen family report….
The Season Update is written by Tal McThenia. Tal is a writer of books and articles and screenplays.
Nicholas is Waiting
As some of you may remember, last year I did a pledge drive. It was called the Shwag Pledge Drive. I gave away a number of prizes to extremely lucky pledgers. There was a pair of boiled wool mittens that my sister made, a box of kindling that my boyfriend cut up, a VPR pledge drive mug, and one of the prizes was going to be an interview with me in my car in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot in Montpelier, Vermont. Nicholas won the interview, but he lives in London. So we did the interview by Skype
Lentils Suck
“That’s the thing about lentils, if they were going to soften, they would have already fucking softened. Honestly, you’d be better off waiting for someone who didn’t find you remotely attractive to fall in love with you.”
This show is from an article by writer Sarah Miller, and it appeared in FoodandWine.com. The title is self explanatory. Welcome.
Sarah Miller lives in Nevada City, California. She’s the author of Inside the mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl. She also has a series call
Hot Bird. Again.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Here is hunter Barry Forbes talking about turkey hunting again. I could listen to Barry Forbes talk about turkey hunting all day, but in this case he only talks about it for about three and a half minutes. Welcome.
Credits
I made that show with tape from the Vermont Folklife Center.
Charlie Hunter Paints Outside
Charlie Hunter is a plein air painter, which is a fancy way of saying he paints outside. His paintings of Vermont are stark and evocative and mostly the color of mud (Charlie calls it murk, which I think is a fancy way of saying mud). But his paintings capture the light and the feeling of this place in a way that’s totally uncanny and unique. He has a special love for painting trains and garages and industrial places in decline, and his hometown of Bellows Falls is his favorite subject. It’s
The Special Olympics Are Awesome
A couple weeks ago my son and I volunteered at the soccer Special Olympics in Northfield, VT. The athletes came from all over the state and the teams were all ages, and both sexes. So there were fifty-five year old women teaming up with thirteen year old boys and seventeen year old girls and you’ve never seen so much team spirit or felt such intense excitement. About all of it. Everything. The games, the cheering, the lunch…it was like the feeling of Christmas and birthdays and Chariots of Fi
Jim Rooney
Today, an interview with songwriter and Grammy winning record producer Jim Rooney. He and his wife Carol live in an old farmhouse in Sharon, Vermont, but Jim is still back and forth to Nashville, where he spent thirty years playing music, writing songs, and producing some of my all time favorite records with artists like John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Iris Dement, and Townes Van Zandt. Record producers are the people responsible for getting great performances from singers and session musicians in t
When the Food Runs Out
More and more Vermonters can’t afford groceries by the end of the month. The paycheck isn’t enough. The food stamps won’t stretch. And they’re looking to community meals and food shelves for regular help. The trouble is, food shelves weren’t designed to provide sustainable food. They were set up for emergencies. For fires, for floods. But every day, an army of volunteers–mostly women between the ages of 55 and 70–hustle food from area stores and local farmers and the Vermont Foodbank….to feed p
Jubal. Tail End of the Old School.
I met Jubal Durivage through my boyfriend, Gordon. Gordon and his two partners, Robby and Hilton, own a small hydroelectric plant way up near the Canadian border. It was pretty rundown when they bought it, and over the years they’ve hired a lot of people to work on it, mostly from the Northeast Kingdom. Crane operators, engineers, and Jubal Durivage, one of the few certified bridge welders in Vermont. I heard a lot about Jubal before I met him from Gordon and Robby. They respect his work and
Driving around with Susan
Last summer I interviewed my friend Susan Randall, a private investigator. Susan trained me as an investigator, and we’ve spent whole days driving around the state of Vermont, working on cases and talking. We never run out of things to talk about. So I figured it was time to do another show with her. In this conversation, we talked about the criminal justice system more generally than before, and we ended up talking a lot about parenting…single parenting in particular. Come drive around with us
Police Log, Bunk Bed Dispute Edition
It’s hot here in central Vermont, and there’s a whole lot of crime going down. Here’s a sampling of calls to the police, as reported in the Times Argus, the Stowe Reporter, and the Caledonian.
Read by Scott Carrier, producer of my favorite podcast, Home of the Brave.
Music from Joey Truman, a Brooklyn-based writer and musician. His two recent books, Killing the Math and Postal Child, are available from Whiskey Tit Press. His band is called Um, and they rock.
Peter Schumann, Advisor General
This is a conversation with Bread and Puppet founder and director, Peter Schumann…a conversation in which I ask him over and over again to answer questions that don’t really have answers, about what makes a great performance. And about what is a great performance…
Peter Schumann is a driven, prolific artist who makes huge outdoor theater performances with giant paintings and puppets and sculptures. There is music. There are people making animal sounds. Everything seems to be made of paper mache
The Neighborhood
The kids of Randolph, Vermont describe their neighborhood as a place with three purple houses. They tell me there’s a shortcut through the woods down to Dunkin’ Donuts, and they say it’s pretty close to three graveyards. The kids run in twos and threes and sometimes in one big pack for a game of hide and seek tag.
I spent an afternoon talking with them and following them around. This show is a little taste of that day. It’s a postcard from childhood, a place we remember but can’t visit anymore.
Last Chapter
Rob Mermin and Bill Morancy lived in neighboring apartments in Montpelier, Vermont. They were best friends. And when Bill was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he asked his best friend to help him die.
In 2013, Vermont passed the The Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act, or Act 39…our version of Death with Dignity. The legislation allows eligible Vermonters with terminal diseases the option to be prescribed medication that will hasten the end of their life. In 2015, Bill elected to us
Six Parents. Six DCF Stories
Last winter I made a show about working for the Department of Children and Families and I’d promised to make a show about what it’s like to be a parent whose had to work with this state agency, which is responsible for the safety of Vermont children. It’s no secret that DCF is currently understaffed and overworked. The opiate epidemic is one major factor in the growing number of kids taken into temporary custody by the state, and the growing number of TPR’S, or terminations of parental rights.
T
Aunties
Here’s another show from my friend Larry Massett’s brain. The story is called Aunties, and it’s from his soon-to-be-released podcast, Lick The Crickets. Lick the Crickets is a podcast that’s been coming soon for quite some time. The problem is, Larry can’t stop making shows for Lick the Crickets long enough to launch Lick the Crickets. But he will. Oh, he will. And it will be found at Lickthecrickets.com, and I will let you know when it’s up.
Aunties is performed by Paul Kiernan.
Art for this sh
Leland, the Almost Middle School Edition
Leland Kennedy lives one hill over from me in East Calais, Vermont. I interviewed Leland last year when he was ten, and I’ve received some letters from listeners wondering what he’s up to and what he’s been thinking about since then. Leland’s pretty busy in the afternoons after school. You can usually find him biking up and down the road or working on survival techniques in the woods, or watching television. But he agreed to come over and talk with me about what’s on his mind these days. We talk
Police Log, Stolen Pie Edition
I have been remiss in reporting on calls to the local police. I apologize. Here is a sampling of reports to the Barre and Montpelier police in the last few months. Reported by Scott Carrier.
Music by Peter Cressy of Plainfield, Vermont
Scott Carrier produces the excellent Home of the Brave.
Jesse
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For most of Jesse’s early childhood, her mother was addicted to crystal meth. She called it her ‘high functioning addict period’. She kept a spotless house, worked a regular job and had four well behaved kids. Then Jesse’s mom started using opiates, and everything changed. She lost the job, lost the money, and it became harder
Muskrat Trapper
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Barry Forbes lives on Route 116, five miles east of Middlebury and eight miles south of Bristol, Vermont. He says if you’re trying to find the place, just slow down and his hounds will let you know where he is. Barry lives in a double wide trailer directly behind the house where he spent his entire childhood, and he’s never bee
A Beer with Ben Hewitt
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249825433″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]Twenty years ago, Ben Hewitt and his wife Penny bought forty acres of land in Cabot, Vermont and started their first homestead. In Vermont, the word ‘homestead’ generally refers to people who build their own houses and live self sufficiently to one degree or another…with varying degrees of success. One of the most important cha
Berned in Reno
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249471566″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]In celebration of the day before Super Tuesday, here’s a story from writer Sarah Miller called Berned in Reno. It’s an account of her deep feelings for Bernie, and canvassing for his campaign in Nevada before the caucus.
Sarah Miller writes for theawl.com, newyorker.com, time.com, thecut.com and others. This story appeared last
The Test
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/245930720″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]This week, a special guest show from Scott Carrier, producer of Home of the Brave.
Years ago, Scott was hired to conduct interviews for a mental health research project. He drove around Utah administering a test to possible schizophrenics. The test was comprised of 100 questions, and took approximately an hour to complete. Thi
Inside DCF
It has been a very troubling few years at Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. In 2014 there was a string of child deaths in Vermont–children in families involved with DCF. These deaths prompted intense anger and at least four investigations into the department.
Then on August 7, 2015, Lara Sobel, a caseworker at DCF, was shot as she left the DCF offices in Barre, Vermont. She was shot and killed by a woman who was angry after losing custody of her daughter to DCF the month before.
The
Day Before Christmas Police Log
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/238953388″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] It’s the day before Christmas, and like a Christmas miracle, I received this report from Scott Carrier on recent police activity here in central Vermont. Here are a selection of calls to local police as reported in the Times Argus and Stowe Reporter.
Happy Holidays everyone.
Music by Hayvanlar Alemi. The song is titled Crossroa
Seasonal Update
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/237865316″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]How time flies! The holidays are such a nice time to catch up with friends and family. Here’s a waspy little roundup of highlights from a year in the Becht family. Happy Holidays!
Credits
Seasonal Update was written by Tal McThenia, a writer of books and articles and screenplays. To learn more about Tal, you can visit his websi
A Conversation with M.T. Anderson
M.T. Anderson is the author of Feed, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which won the National Book Award. Whether it’s crafting a dystopian future, writing vampire fiction, or, in the case of his latest book, Symphony for the City of the Dead, chronicling the life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, his books are meticulously researched and vividly told.
I first met Tobin (his middle name) when he came over with my friend Peter th
Hot Bird
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/234650376″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]Today…Hot Bird.
This is a short show in celebration of the season of turkeys, and catching them. Then eating them.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. And for those of you listening outside the United States, I hope you happen to have a really great meal planned with good friends. With or without a hot bird.
This show features Barry Fo
Our School
The recent school consolidation bill promised to lower our taxes. Then it promised equal opportunity for all kids. It’s unclear how it will deliver on either of these promises, but one thing is sure. It could radically change culture in small town Vermont. This is a show about some of the long-term political and cultural effects of Act 46.
Comments: To make a comment or to see comments, scroll to the bottom of this page.
THE SHOW: Click here to listen to the show.
THE OUTTAKES: For a more in
In Case of Emergency
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In Case of Emergency is another show from Larry Massett’s new podcast series, as yet unnamed. The series isn’t out yet, and I have no idea how to describe what it is. It’s not like any podcast series I’ve ever heard. And it’s gonna be good.
Here is….In Case of Emergency.
Credits (links to recordings below)
My Heart’s in the
The Schwag Raffle Draw!
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/231822021″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]The time has come to draw names for the Schwag Membership Pledging and Sustaining Campaign Event Raffle. This is the first consolidated shilling campaign I’ve done and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that you’re listening as far away as Arthur’s Pass in New Zealand and I’ve learned that there are listeners right here in my tow
The Green River Stories
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/229606253″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] It’s almost November. It’s getting cold here. The days are getting shorter. I’m already missing the colors and sounds of summer and fall. So today I’m going to play one of my all-time favorite stories, which just happens to be a story that’s filled with the sound of summer. It’s called Stories from the Green River, and it’s by
Schwag
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/228542605″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]Dear Listeners,
I love making this show and I am endlessly grateful to those of you have donated. These donations keep my car running and give me time to work on the show. So recently I was listening to the pledge drive on my local public radio station and I thought, I’m going to do that. Except my pledge drive will only be seve
Pretend You’re the Grownup
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/227656999″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]My friend Brett Berk got a very early start as a teacher, and by the time he was twenty-five, he was the director of a progressive preschool in the East Village in New York City. Blocks, clay, and instead of costumes, the kids had scraps of fabric they could adorn themselves with. There were occasional guest appearances from a g
Press 4
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/226435328″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]My friend Larry Massett sent me this weird story he wrote, which I’m hoping will be the beginning of a whole new weird podcast. It’s hard to say what it is, which in my book is a good thing.
Here’s Press 4.
Jessamyn West. Technology Lady.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/225531902″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]Jessamyn West is a library activist and computer technology savant who lives in central Vermont. She’s also kind of Internet famous. Jessamyn was one of the original moderators for the community blog MetaFilter—which is like the civilized version of Reddit. She was recently contacted by the White House for her thoughts on their
Farewell Mark Johnson
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/223397407″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]For twenty-five years Mark Johnson hosted The Mark Johnson Show, first up in Burlington at WKDR, then at WDEV here in central Vermont. Last month he retired from the show.
Mark kept us company on our commutes, in our kitchens and on job sites all over central Vermont. And if you live around here, you’ve either called the show,
Police Log Summer 2015
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Summer is coming to a close here in central Vermont. It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from the local police logs. This summer there were some problems with odors and stuck squirrels. A machete also was seen.
Here’s Scott Carrier reading a sampling from the last couple months’ reports to the Times Argus and the Stowe Reporter.
Love Life
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Steve Fugate roams the roads of America, walking thousands of miles with a sign stuck over his middle-aged head that reads “Love Life” — because of what happened to his son. This story was recorded by Mark Baldwin and produced by Larry Massett. It originally aired on NPR’s Hearing Voices.
You can follow Steve’s writing and walk
Fred Webster
If you throw a rock from Fred’s porch and you have a pretty good arm, you can almost hit Canada. He lives way up in Coventry, Vermont, and when I drove up to his place, I found him covered in paint, in one of his barns. He was just finishing building his fifth stage coach, parts of which he’d painted bright yellow and cherry red.
Most of his barns—and there are a lot of them—are filled with old farm equipment. He says he’s trying to show the evolution of farm machines in New England from as fa
Bison Selfies
This summer there have been five bison attacks in Yellowstone National Park, the result of visitors taking selfies with bison in the background. Today on Fresh Air, an interview with author Sarah Miller. Her recent book, Bison Selfies, is a brave exploration into this new phenomenon. In this interview we discuss selfies, bison, and the American consciousness.
Credits
This article originally appeared in Jezebel in July, 2015. Sarah Miller writes for theawl.com, newyorker.com, time.com, thecut.com
A Long Day on the Road
“In the cathedral, priests with long black beards and scarlet robes are gliding through the shadows…I feel faint. It’s the heat, the fatigue, frustration — whatever, but there’s a lump in my throat and my eyes are filling with tears. The cop is starting to make big signs of the cross in the air. If w don’t get out of here quick, we’re going to convert.”
This is a story from Larry Massett about a very, very long day in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in 2002.
This story aired originally on The S
Vermont Private Eye
This is an interview with a very old friend of mine, and the person who trained me as a private investigator. She taught me everything from basics like how to look up criminal records to the very advanced skills I learned. Susan Randall has been a PI in Vermont for fifteen years. She works on the some of the biggest cases in the state…and she’s really good. Susan can find anyone, and she can get them to talk about anything. And most of the time she’s working on fifty to seventy-five cases at t
Homeless
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Kevin DeMars estimates he’s been homeless ten times in his 58 years. I met with him in his apartment in Rutland, Vermont and we talked about why he’s been homeless so many times, and what it was like to live in the woods. It’s a difficult and raw conversation at times, and Kevin struggles with some mental health issues that he’
Kendall Wild, A Toast
kuKendall Wild worked for nearly half a century at the Rutland Herald and he’s a legend in Vermont journalism. He died on April 2, 2015. By all accounts he was eccentric, competitive, and utterly committed to getting the story…and getting it first. Wild was the paper’s managing editor all through the sixties and seventies. There was a whole generation of journalists who came up through the ranks under Kendall and they went on to become formidable journalists, writers and political heavies in the
Drag Out
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Here’s a show from Larry Massett about cars. And honor.
Larry owns two Porsches, and he talks about them a lot. In fact it’s almost all he ever talks about. His friend, Joe Frank, is a BMW man.
Which is the superior car? The Porsche? The BMW? Joe and Larry have agreed to decide this with a race. But in the meantime, they’re ju
Soccer Mom
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This was my first year as a soccer mom and I’m here to tell you, it’s harder than it looks. I never played team sports, I still don’t really understand soccer, and I spent an entire season screaming ‘GET IT IN THE BASKET!’
Being a soccer mom is weirdly emotional in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’ve experienced exultation and sham
Three Weeks
For the last couple years, in addition to producing this show, I’ve also been doing interviews for an organization called The Wake Up to Dying Project. The basic goal of the project is to encourage people to think and talk more about the fact that we die, and at the heart of the project is a sound exhibit that features audio stories–lots and lots of them. Last month I did an interview for this project with a mother who had lost a baby after three weeks of life. I was incredibly nervous about thi
Cats on Boats
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Here’s a story from Otto Trautz of Cabot, Vermont. It takes place in 1966 and starts with a phone call and a very compelling proposition.
This story was originally told at extempo, central Vermont’s live storytelling event produced by the wondrous Jen Dole. You can find more stories at: www.extempoVT.com.
Another Day Older
I was meeting a friend at a coffee shop and a song came on the radio that I hadn’t heard since I was in my late twenties. It reminded me of a time when I’d stay up all night long with friends, talking and drinking around bonfires. It was before children and spouses, and before everyone moved to wherever it is they went. It was a time when we had endless amounts of time.
So when I heard this song after so long, I remembered this time. And it hadn’t occurred to me until right then, twenty years la
Police Log, May 2015
It’s time again for a sampling from the Barre and Montpelier police logs, as reported in the Times Argus. This month there were a number of disturbing animal reports. Sick raccoons, catatonic woodchucks, and more. Also, a number of naked children. Come listen if you dare.
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Scott’s podcast, Home of the Brave, is great, and I high
Private Investigator
Radio production and private investigation have a lot in common. You ask questions, find out what happened, and try to figure out why. This is a show I made with Larry Massett for NPR’s Hearing Voices in 2011. None of the people you hear in this story were investigation clients of mine where they did pardons according to https://nationalpardon.org/pardons-canada/. They were all young men on furlough, putting their lives together after doing time in prison. Also, all of the case stories you hear
Three Things I Learned at School
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A commentary from Marc Estrin about the three things he learned in twenty-five years of school.
The only three things.
Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist, and political activist who lives in Burlington, Vermont. His most recent book, And Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing Fathers, features the ruminations of Tchaikovsky’s corpse. You c
A Night on Mount Shasta
Larry Massett was driving up through northern California toward Oregon and ended up spending a little more time at Mt. Shasta than he’d had in mind, thankfully he had his flashlight in his trunk. Was it coincidence? Was it fate that drew Larry to one of the country’s most famous destinations for the spiritually curious?
In this story you’ll hear from some naked meditators, UFO solicitors, and there’s some howling at the moon. Leave a comment if you’ve got one. It’s always nice to hear from you.
Michael Chorney, Music Inventor
Michael Chorney is a self taught musician, arranger and composer. If you asked me what genre of music he makes, I’d have no idea. All of them? None of them?
He spent years mastering different musical genres in both guitar and baritone sax. He’s played British Isles-inspired folk music, improvisational jazz, soul, rock. And over the years, in his own music, the lines between these genres have gotten really blurry. And that’s how he wants it, an ambiguous audio interface is a fun one, he says. M
After the Forgetting
This is a show about love, family and dementia. Part one features a show I made in 2008 about one family’s experience living with an elderly mother’s progressive dementia. Part two features an interview with one of the story’s main characters, Greg Sharrow, about what’s changed, and what he’s learned, in the five years since we made After the Forgetting.
After the Forgetting features Greg Sharrow, Bob Hooker, and Marjorie Sharrow. Greg did a lot of marvelous interviews with his mother for this s
Why Cooking Sucks
This is an essay about cooking and all the shame and rage and frustration that can accompany this art. Writer Sarah Miller describes her desire to be loved and appreciated for her fig galettes, and her decision to quit cooking altogether.
Sarah is the author of the novels Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl, and she contributed to the bestseller The Bitch in the House. She has written for Details, Lucky, Marie Claire, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.
A
Shannon
Today, a true story about two strangers who meet and talk very late one night on a northbound NYC subway. The story is from Otto Trautz, and was originally told live on stage at extempo, central Vermont’s totally excellent live storytelling event.
And if my name were Otto Trautz, I’d have great stories too.
Welcome.
To hear more true stories live onstage, visit extempo’s website here.
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Eyes on the Sky
Into Tuesday we’ll see gusty winds, an early morning cold front east of Route 2 and a massive low pressure system delivering winter-like temperatures and moderate rain east of the Greens. Here are Eyes on the Sky.
Eyes on the Sky was written by Montpelier resident Linda Coble.
And thank you to the brave meteorologists at Eye On the Sky, who have delivered so much bad news, so well, for so long. Winters wouldn’t be the same without you.
The Oligarchy of Participation
Welcome to The Mudroom. This is a commentary from Hilton Dier of Middlesex, Vermont. He proposes that much of Vermont politics is really about who has enough time and money to…show up.
Please fling us your comments at the bottom of this page! We love to hear from you.
Hilton is a renewable energy consultant and author of the incomparable blog, Minor Heresies using Advance Systems.
The Mudroom is a joint commentary series by Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
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Ed Epstein, A Life in Art
Ed Epstein is a portrait artist of some renown in these parts. But painting has comprised only a fraction of Ed’s artistic life. As a kid in the fifties he hitch hiked across the country with only a banjo and a few bucks. He fell in love with the Bach cello suites and spent the next twenty years mastering the cello so he could play them. Ed has designed and built woodstoves, houses, and when his son showed interest in fishing, Ed built a boat so they could get out to that stand of reeds…where t
Here’s a Song For You
Tonight I was driving home from Montpelier with my son, and we were both happy because today really did feel like maybe spring will come this year, and we were listening to Miriam Bernardo sing. It was a recording I made of a house show a couple years ago. There’s something so beautiful to me about this live recording, and I figured I’d share one of the songs with you. Here’s Miriam, and Michael Chorney on guitar and Rob Morse on bass. This is Love Came Here, by Lhasa de Sela.
Welcome to spring
Police Log, March 2015
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The sock went missing in November, was encased in ice in someone’s driveway, and yesterday it was released. The end of winter is nigh everyone. This is for real.
It’s time again for a sampling from the Barre and Montpelier police logs, as reported in the Times Argus. This month saw a disproportionate number of shovel incident
More Poopy Old People
A couple months ago I ran a commentary by Marc Estrin called Poopy Old Man. In this commentary, he talks about feeling increasingly invisible to the people around him as he gets older. It’s a rather dark perspective on aging.
This is a response to that commentary, and offers a somewhat different perspective on getting older. Here’s a conversation between Larry Massett and Marianne Ross of Washington DC.
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Object of My Affection
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This is a conversation about love and objects. It’s from a late night conversation with my friend Clare Dolan. In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, we sat on my couch and talked about a special kind of love that exists between people and objects. The conversation starts with Clare’s first friend in childhood…a small stuff
Police Log
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You can learn a lot about a place from the local police log. A couple weeks ago I was reading the Times Argus, and I read a police log that I was sure held some kind of message for me. There was a lost key, a found wallet, and a woman in yoga pants seen walking down Sumner Street. There was a dead deer missed by a car and a liv
Leland
From my house, if you take a left through the woods, then a right up a dirt road, and then another right up another dirt road, you come to a really old farmhouse. That’s where Leland lives, and where he’s thinking things over. Last week he agreed to talk with me about some of these things. Death, deep space, and Revolutionary War reenactments. Welcome.
The music in this show is from the remarkable Carla Kihlstedt. Learn more about her HERE.
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec reenactment. Three ge
Piano Practice
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Here’s a short story about my son and piano practice and parental rage.
Solidod, An Apache Original
This is a show produced by Larry Massett, for NPR’s Hearing Voices. It features remarkable stories from Solidod, the last remaining member of her village of Mescalero Apache who lived on the edge of Death Valley. Here’s Larry’s introduction….
“When I first met Solidod she was living alone in a tiny room in a rather depressing subsidized-income apartment complex in Florida. She herself was anything but depressing, though. A few minutes after we met she showed me the little knife she carries with
Big Job
This week’s episode is about one of life’s hardest and most humbling jobs. Parenting. You’ll hear stories about potty training, power struggles, living with teenagers, character-driven parenting, and negotiating new relationships with grown children. Plus some stories about beaches and dead birds.
The hour features two interviews. Melissa Burroughs is a mother and teacher, and has worked extensively with families. The show also features an interview with a mother of two grown daughters. She talk
Truck
We live in a place where trucks are a kind of passion. It’s not overt. It’s an understated, Vermont kind of passion. According to TheCarStarter.com, Vermonters sometimes heat up when you get them talking about Ford vs. Chevy vs. Dodge. So I drove around and talked with some guys about trucks. Here’s what they said.
Leave a comment or story at the bottom of this show page! We love to hear from you.
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Poopy Old Man
We are all busy getting older, for better and for worse. Here is an unvarnished perspective on aging by author Marc Estrin.
Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist and political activist who lives in Burlington, Vermont. His most recent book, And Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing Fathers, features the ruminations of Tchaikovsky’s corpse. You can find it on Amazon here, or order it from a local bookstore.
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Buy Nothing Day
Welcome to The Mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
In time for the holidays, we bring you a commentary about Buy Nothing Day, an annual day of protest against buying stuff.
Jessamyn West is a writer, blogger, librarian, and knower of many things technological and digital. She lives in Randolph, Vermont, and here she is standing on a bed.
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A Vermonter’s Lament
I don’t know what you’d call this. A commentary? A riff? An agricultural lament?
This is how Alan LePage started his show a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share it with you all.
Alan LePage is a legend around here in central Vermont. He’s a fourth generation Vermont farmer, mentor to many up and coming market gardeners, and he’s the host of one of WGDR’s most popular shows, The Curse of the Golden Turnip. For the past few months, we’ve been working on getting his show out into the world as a pod
The Eyes of Sibiu
This is a story produced by my friend Larry Massett. A few years ago Larry took a trip with public radio personality Andre Codrescu. Andre grew up in Romania in times of hardship. After twenty years as an American citizen, he feels he’s lost the local taste of the land where he spent his youth. Larry Massett records the story of a man now in the role of “tourist” in his radically changed native land.
THANKS TO HEARING VOICES
This program originally aired on Hearing Voices, and airs on Rumble Str
Gold, Frankenstein and Myrrh
From the Saviour’s conception to offerings of gold, Frankenstein and myrrh, six year old Erin Magill of Moretown, Vermont tells her version of the Christmas story, with help from her creche figures.
I made this story some years ago. NOW Erin Magill is a COMPOSER, and you can hear her work HERE. Go Erin!!!
Magic: The Gathering
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This is a show about a game my son loves that I don’t understand. At all. It’s called Magic: The Gathering, and it’s a card game that’s sort of a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and chess. It involves spells and enchantments and creatures and math and strategy. The game was born in 1993, and millions of people play it ar
Rock Lottery
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When my son was four I joined a temporary rock band. It was humiliating and terrible and I was middle aged and didn’t know what to do with my arms. I wanted to quit. This is a commentary about why I didn’t quit, and why it’s important to risk failure as an example for our kids.
Raw Tape
This is an unedited interview I did with a young man in Barre, Vermont in 2011. He gave me permission to use this tape, but I’ve chosen not to use his name in order to protect his privacy. I’ll call him ‘O’.
I had interviewed O once before, when he was on furlough and living in Barre. About a year after that first interview I interviewed him again. I was curious about how he was doing after having maxed out his jail sentence. We met at the apartment he was living in with his girlfriend and dau
Peace, Love and Occupation?
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Welcome to the Mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
Israel has been a substantial recipient of US foreign aid since the state’s inception. According to Mark Hage, Israel is also the recipient of some of Vermont’s finest ice cream, which is sold in Israeli settlements. Do we have a social
Jamie Cope in Black and White
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Jamie Cope’s house is filled with pictures of people…pictures so beautiful you practically want to lick them. Or at least I do. They are all black and white, and all printed with exquisite attention to light and shadow. There is an amazing intimacy in her portraits, as though she’s looking INTO the people she’s photographing,
Town
Town is a sound exhibit that I produced for the Kent Museum in Calais, Vermont. It weaves together personal stories and memories about growing up in Calais, and natural sounds recorded around town.
There’s no start or finish to these stories. It’s meant to be a kind of sonic wallpaper. In this audio, you hear reference to the former owner of the Kent Museum building, Louise Andrews Kent, and you hear her granddaughters talk about concerts once held upstairs in the ballroom, and her creation of t
My Son Teaches Me a Game
This is a raw recording of my son teaching me how to play a card game called Magic. Does anyone know what he’s talking about? Please advise.
And featuring a picture of a cruel pinata in Hancock, Vermont, crafted by my friend Stacey at The Dooryard.
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The Taxidermists
Rodney and Theresa Elmer are a taxidermy power duo in Northfield, Vermont. In this interview, they talk about the art and psychology of mounting animals, and why they hunt.
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Credits:
Photos by Josh Larkin.
Music for this show from Katie Trautz and Julia Wayne of the Vermont duo Mayfly. Links to more of their work below.
Link to
Strange Days
The farther you go from home, the stranger things get.
Here is a story by Larry Massett about the life and work of Paul Bowles.
This program originally aired on Hearing Voices, home to some of the best radio anywhere….
Vermont Health Disconnect
Jessamyn West studies and writes about the digital divide and she solves technology problems for a living. This summer she found herself unemployed, and forced to use some of the same state agency websites she’d been helping others to use–namely, Vermont Health Connect, and the Department of Labor.
The results were not pretty. Here’s a commentary about it.
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Thunder Road
For generations of Vermonters, Thursday nights in the summer have meant one thing….Thunder Road.
This quarter mile short track opened in 1960 and it’s home to some of the most passionate drivers and fans you’re likely to find anywhere. In these shows and outtakes, you’ll hear from some of the drivers and from Thunder Road co-owners and ring leaders, Ken Squier and Tom Curley. There are thrills and heartbreaks and heated coils and a lot of history. There’s even some opera. Welcome.
Shows (in the
Night Dreams of Another Life
Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary series from Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
A late night shopping cart reminds Marc Estrin of a song from Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey).
Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist and political activist who lives in Burlington, Vermont.
Marc Estrin’s Novels
The Prison Notebooks of Alan Krieger (Terrorist)
When the Gods Come Home to Roost
Tsim-tsum
The Good Doctor Guillotin
The Annotated Nose
Skulk
The Lamentations of Julius Marant
A Man of Wealth and Taste
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Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary series from Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
This is A Man of Wealth and Taste, a commentary in response to Dick Cheney’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal on June 17, 2014. It is written by Robby Porter. Robby is a woodworker and hydro plant operator and lives in Adamant, Ve
The 17 Dollar Tomato
Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary project of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard.
In this first commentary we bring you Walt Amses, a writer and former educator in North Calais, Vermont. The essay is called The 17 Dollar Tomato, and it welcomes us to the special tyranny of gardening season in Vermont.
Send us your tired and poor
We want to hear your stories of gardens past and present. Your failed attempts, your bolted greens. Tell us about your woodchuck problems, your canning bur
The Milk Bowl
For generations of Vermonters, Thursday nights in the summer have meant one thing….Thunder Road.
This quarter mile short track opened in 1960 and it’s home to some of the most passionate drivers and fans you’re likely to find anywhere. In this show, owner Tom Curley talks about the culminating race of the season, the Milk Bowl.
Boring Man
Everyone’s heard about Burning Man, the counter-cultural festival held every summer in Black Rock City Nevada. Sex, drugs, monumental installations….you know all about it. But you may not know about Boring Man, the counter-counter-cultural festival that’s sort of a mirror image of Burning Man. Here’s Larry Massett with a report from last year’s Boring Man.
Woodstove
I went to a friend’s house the other night and she led me into her den where her best wood stove was and she sighed and said, ‘And this is where I live.’
It’s been a long winter and a lot of us have spent the better part of four months huddled around our stoves. I walked around Calais and asked people to talk about their firebuilding methods, their stoves, and their moods.
Dry Wall
A dry wall is built with no mortar. The stones are carefully selected and they interlock and gravity holds them in place. The Great Wall of China was built this way. Scott Carrier’s wall was built this way too. Here is his story.
Mortality Tales
For the last year I’ve been conducting interviews about death and dying for The Wake Up to Dying Project–a project that encourages people to think, and talk about death and dying. The goal is to help people be a little more prepared, both practically and emotionally, for our own deaths, and the deaths of loved ones. Today’s show features segments from an interview with Tim Kasten of Middlesex, VT. Tim has experienced more death in his family than many of us and he has significant medical cond
Jack’s Buck
Here is one final deer story, recorded this year after youth hunting weekend. Jack Fannon, 12, went out hunting on his parents’ land in Calais, with friend, mentor, and hunter safety instructor Bob Raskevitz. Here’s what happened….
Alan LePage
Alan LePage has been an organic vegetable gardener in central Vermont for over thirty years–long before anyone cared much about organic farming–long, long before words like ‘sustainable’, ‘local’, ‘artisinal’ started being used, ad nauseam. His family has farmed the same piece of land since the civil war. Alan is also an expert mushroom forager, mentor, activist and philosopher. He has a voracious mind and he’s impossible to categorize, except perhaps as an event. I had to interview him twice. I
Geof Hewitt
An interview with poet, teacher, and reigning Vermont poetry slam champion, Geof Hewitt. In this interview, Geof talks about a lifetime of writing and what it means, to him, to be successful. He talks about his early years as a Vermont homesteader from New Jersery, and slowly becoming a Vermonter. And of course we hear lots of poetry.
Geof has published three books for teachers and four collections of poetry. His books are available at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, in libraries, and online.
That Song
This is a show about songs, and stories about songs. You’ll hear about sack races, summer camp, love lost and found–and the songs that marked these events. There is some Meat Loaf this hour. There is brave singing and humming. There is blood and there are guitar solos. It’s an hour of music you’re sure to love and hate, and I encourage you to dance.
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Prisoner of Zion
This week features radio producer and writer Scott Carrier, reading from his book, Prisoner of Zion. This program was produced by Larry Massett for Hearing Voices, and ran nationally in 2011. The great folks there have given me permission to air it on Rumble Strip Vermont.
Shortly after the World Trade Center fell in autumn 2001, it became clear the United States would invade Afghanistan. Producer Scott Carrier decided he ought to go there too. Why? To see for himself: that’s what writers do. Wh
Prisoners of War
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/140254783″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]This hour features four Vermont soldiers captured at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The program weaves together their stories of capture, internment, and the challenges of returning to civilian life.
Credits:
This program features Vermont veterans Cliff Austin, Harrison Burney, Bill Busier, and Robert Norton.
It has a
Road Scholars
This week’s episode of Rumble Strip is about the high art of Vermont road maintenance, and the diplomacy required to (almost) please everyone. It features interviews with East Montpelier road foreman Mike Garand and retired state highway dispatcher Ray Burke.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU HAVE ONE! Also, if you subscribe to the site, you’ll receive automatic announcements on upcoming shows. Thanks!
My thanks to Andy Kolovos of the Vermont Folklife Center for his help with archival material for
Miriam Bernardo
Singer Miriam Bernardo talks about what can go right, and wrong—onstage. She talks about how she puts a life together as a musician in central Vermont, and what it feels like to sing, and live—wide open. And? We get to hear her sing.
The show also features radio documentary producer Larry Massett, reading from the Barre police log.
Photographs of Miriam by Josh Larkin
Show music credits:
Ribbon Bow: Writer unknown. Performed by Foley Artist
Secret Words: Paul Bowles. Performed by Foley Artis
Colin McCaffrey Talks Shop
In the maiden voyage of Rumble Strip Vermont, musician and producer Colin McCaffrey discusses the expectation of inspiration in a cup of tea, music as a career, and mushroom foraging… Photo by Will Forest