Rumble Strip (Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman)

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 organization, Atlantic Public Media, he is a founder of The Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org, and WCAI, the public radio service for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. More about Jay, more than you'd reasonably need to know, is available at www.jayallison.org.b. 

This show is about crime. Really crimey crime.

Music by Justin Lander

Originally produced for Vermont Public 

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. 

Music for this show is by Justin Lander

John's company is called Farmers Underground, based in West Glover, VT

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.

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. 

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 every last thing he’s learned about whale behavior and every story he could remember. He was polite about it. I don’t know why I felt this insatiable need to hear every story. Maybe it seems that if we could understand whale culture a little bit, everything would make a little more sense? Anyway I recorded Tom for as long as he'd let me.

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. 

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....

Credits: Music by Ishmael Ensemble, John Caroll Kirby, Riley Mulherkar and Elori Saxl

Edited by Daniel Guillemette & Daniel Gumbiner

Sound mix / sound design by John Delore

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 and authentic and civilized social event of the year. Always.

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.

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? 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 to be exactly  my age. So Damian and I sat in his shop at Porta Rinx headquarters behind his house, and we compared notes on class. 

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 Forum and you have to be from that town to be on it.

Since Tiana's new to town, she thought she might have luck finding someone to help her get ready for her date through the Forum. And she did.

Here is her original posting:

Makeup for Special Occasion Tiana • Hardwick 

I'm looking for someone who'd be willing to do my makeup (and possibly hair?) on the 23rd of this month. Just something simple with my eyes and something to hide some red spots. Is there a way to make an illusion of a skinner face? I think thats a thing, right? I understand it's a long shot and I don't have much money. I usually don't like anything thats considered "girly". However I want to surprise my boyfriend for our first anniversary. I have a nice dress picked out with matching press on nails. The issue is I have no clue how to do makeup. YouTube tutorials have never done me any good considering I don't own any makeup and I have a very round, chubby face.

Thank you for reading!

Credits

Music by Brian Clark

Thanks to Tara Reese for finding the posting

Thanks to Tobin and Mike and Rose

Welcome the Civic Standard!

Thanks to Aubrie St. Louis at the Rehair Shop

We raised ALL the money for Forrest's new old truck and we are so GRATEFUL!!! 

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.

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.

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 critical and underappreciated objects we use in our daily lives. Clare loves well used and long loved objects, so it seemed like a good idea to help Sheila turn one loved object into a new object to love.  

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House was intentionally built to straddle two nations and two communities. Three quarters of the building is in Stanstead, Quebec and one quarter is in Derby Line Vermont, and it's been the local library for both communities for over a century.  The main entrance to the library is in the U.S., and for as long as anyone can remember, Canadians have been allowed to walk the 70 feet of sidewalk around the building to that front entrance.

But in late January of this year, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem paid a surprise visit to the library while she was up touring some of the Vermont border crossings, and she did a little show for everyone there. And starting in October, Canadians will no longer be able to visit their local library without passing through a border crossing.

This is a show about it. 

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 Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public, and I want to thank them for letting me share these stories on Rumble Strip.

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. 

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 rural Vermont, I think they are indicative of what people are thinking and feeling all over the country. And maybe we should all be having these conversations? I don't know. You tell me. And here is the series,  What Class Are You?

This series was produced for Vermont Public, and I am grateful to them for allowing me to share it with the Rumble Strip audience.

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.

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. 

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. A couple weeks ago I asked him if he’d drive around with me and talk about what villages ARE. What makes them feel like they do. And what happens if they disappear.

Credits:

A shorter version of this story was produce for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to air the story here!

Danny Sagan's design firm, DS Architects

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 is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share these stories with Rumble Strip.

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 he does. Burying Karen was no different. 

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 Vermont Public for letting me share the shows with Rumble Strip. 

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.

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 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, Deanna in Vermont, Arthur and Jeff Sharlet on the Swannanoa River, Amelia in Los Angeles, Anna in Toronto, Susan in Houston, Ben from Nebraska, and my mom, Barbara, on my couch. 

Music: This is the Northern New England Ensemble, thanks to Tim Garrity. 

Thank you to EVERYONE who sent recordings. I really do want to use all of them but these shows fit together like puzzles so i need more recordings to make more shows and make more puzzles. So if you’re out there listening, pull out your phone and record something and send it to me, and I’ll make shows as the puzzle pieces come together. You can send them to me at rumblestripvermont@gmail.com. Also, tell me where you are, and if you can send me a picture that seems to go with the recording in some way, that would be great. 

I also want to thank Tobin and Chelsea and Vermont Public and I especially want to thank my mom for all her help this week. 

East Hill Tree Farm is awesome. Honestly. It's just the best.  

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.

The Aphasia Choir of Vermont

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 story with Rumble Strip Listeners!

Mary Lake's business is Can-Do Shearing in Tunbridge, Vermont

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.

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 Woodstock Vermont, bells recorded by Melanie in Merida, Mexico, and a fricking amazing recording James made at a professional wrestling even in London. 

Send me more recordings as they occur to you. You can send them to my email at rumblestripvermont@gmail.com

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 of grief they experience when their dogs die. But the death of a dog can be just as painful--sometimes more painful--than the death of a human family member. This is a show about dog love...and grief at their loss. And there is absurd singing.

More about These People

Learn more about Tara Wray and her beautiful work.

Learn more about Tobin Anderson

Learn more about musician Brian Clark's band, The Anachronist

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 Thai Express, has been open since 2015. In this episode of What Class are You?, we talk about what it was like to grow up in an immigrant family, and how Tankhun experienced the undercurrents of the American class system.

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 thought she might have luck finding someone to help her get ready for her date through the Forum. And she did.

Here is her original posting:

Makeup for Special Occasion

Tiana• Hardwick

I'm looking for someone who'd be willing to do my makeup (and possibly hair?) on the 23rd of this month.

Just something simple with my eyes and something to hide some red spots. Is there a way to make an illusion of a skinner face? I think thats a thing, right?

I understand it's a long shot and I don't have much money.

I usually don't like anything thats considered "girly". However I want to surprise my boyfriend for our first anniversary.

I have a nice dress picked out with matching press on nails.

The issue is I have no clue how to do makeup. YouTube tutorials have never done me any good considering I don't own any makeup and I have a very round, chubby face.

Thank you for reading!

Credits

Music by Brian Clark

Thanks to Tara Reese for finding the posting

Thanks to Tobin and Mike and Rose

Welcome the Civic Standard!

Thanks to Aubrie St. Louis at the Rehair Shop

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. They also explore dynamics between the the United States and Germany. I loved working with them, and I encourage you to subscribe to the show. You can find THE BIG PONDER wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information about this show, and a transcript, visit THE BIG PONDER.

Recordings: In this show you hear from Carolyn and her neighbors on Coits Gore Road in Vermont, Amanda in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, dogs in Atlanta, Jeff Sharlet interviewing Pastor Pete in Holiday City, Ohio, Heather’s kids in Washington DC, Jarod in West Philly, Susan and Stella in Pittsburgh, a xylophone on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma. You heard my  mom Barbara on my couch, Devon in Gladstone Missouri, the train in Melbourne Australia, Aaron in Shediac New Brunswick, night insects in South Africa, Zack in Lafayette, Indiana, Beverly and her mom in Toronto, Alice in Los Angeles, Mathhew in Glasgow, Scotland, Christina breastfeeding her one week old daughter in Lostine Oregon, Kelly and Dan in Randolph Vermont, basketball dribbling in East Montpelier Elementary in Vermont, and Miles, Stan and Deirdre in New Mexico playing the ngombi and talking about Johannesburg.

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 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.

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.

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. Mark lived with severe addiction from his early teens through his late thirties. He was in and out of jail in those years, and we talked about how addiction is its own sort of class. 

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. 

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 some sound from that day.

The Anair story was produced for Vermont Public.

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 difficult

To learn more about Erika, click here.

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 interesting. But then Rose had an idea. What if the murder mystery was set in Hardwick? Actually, what if it was set at a really boring development review board meeting in Hardwick, which is the sort of meeting everyone around here feels totally at home in, including people who have never been to a play?

This is a show about the making of Developed to Death, a play that was written by people around Hardwick, about the community of Hardwick, and for the people of Hardwick. It is part theater, part social science project, and in it someone gets murdered.

And special bonus…right after the show is a followup interview with Civic Standard co-founders Rose Friedman and Tara Reese.

Credits

This story was supported in part by the Vermont Humanities Council. This story is also a Transom Radio Special, which has support from the National Endowment for the  Arts. You can read about the making of the show at: https://transom.org/2022/the-civic-standard/

This show was mixed by Jay Allison

Music for this show is by Justin Lander and Charlie Lander

Special thanks to these people for their advice and patience: Amelia Meath, Tobin Anderson, Chelsea Edgar, Jay Allison, Howard Norman, Gordon Grunder, my family, and of course Rose and Tara.

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.

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.

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.

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 he used to play with here. Finn died by suicide on January 3rd, 2020. In 2021, Tara and I made a story about him called Finn and the Bell. People all over the world listened, and we received hundreds of emails and texts and artwork and poetry. Tara received letters that were addressed to ‘Finn’s Mom, Hardwick’, with no address.

But this is a story just about Tara, and about her evolution of grief. About what happens after the worst thing happens.

We recorded this conversation on Mother’s Day, at Finn’s memorial in the pine forest.

This show ends with a song. The Bell was written by Jim Terry of Napa, California. He plays music with his sons, Graham and Clark and they’re called The Terry Family Band. Jim wrote this song after listening to Finn and the Bell. Thank you so much Jim!

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.

This is a show about the challenges of getting health insurance and understanding health insurance and paying for health insurance and using health insurance…even for those of us without major medical challenges. It stars my friends Justin Lander and Kaye.

The show is sponsored by East Hill Tree Farm, a tree nursery in Plainfield, Vermont.  The nursery opens on April 18th with bare-root trees and shrubs for sale. They're awesome. Go there. 

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 show from one of my favorite artists, Carla Kihlstedt and the Tin Hat Trio. Here is a link to them performing this song, little i.

My thanks to Amelia Meath, Tobin Anderson, Chelsea Edgar and Serena Matt.

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.

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 about what it's like to work in the film industry. This show is a bit of both.

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, and what it might suggest about how we move forward.

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.

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.

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!

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 underneath the world, with its own rules and relentless demands. But to most people it’s invisible.  

All four of the people in this story are in recovery, but they spent years in the world of active drug addiction. They’re aware of it in ways that most of us are not, and they agreed to describe it to me—what it feels like day to day, and its endless demands.

Warning: This story contains explicit descriptions of active addiction. It might not be for everyone.

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.

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 in May, 2017. He’d been a client of hers in a federal public defender case. T.O.’s been in and out of jail his whole adult life, and it’s become a kind of tradition for us to get together and talk when he gets out of jail. We don’t talk about his crimes. Mostly we talk about what it’s like to start over…over and over. Now T.O. is in his mid forties, and this time he was released in the middle of a Vermont winter. 

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. 

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...it was also about how people harden against each other then alienate each other...something we do a lot of these days.

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. 

The very first shows I made about class I already ran on RS as a single show…you can find it on my website….but these next episodes in the series I’ll run one at a time, every couple days, for a few weeks. 

We’re going to start the series with my old friend Susan Randall, the private investigator I interview a lot for Rumble Strip. She talks about what it was like to grow up upper-middle class. 

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 box above)
Thunder Road: Features Donny Yates, Tommy Thunder, Dave Campbell, Dave Pembroke, Ken Squier, and Tom Curley
Milk Bowl: Tom Curley talks about the culminating race of the season, the Milk Bowl.
An Interview with Tom Curley: I thought he’d give me five minutes. Turns out he let me stay longer and he said some remarkable things…about his work, his co-conspirator Ken Squier, and lots more. Plus there’s sound recorded from the booth during the Milk Bowl, 2013. This is the conversation from which I pulled tape for the other stories, so you’ll hear some familiar riffs, but I figured folks might like to hear Tom’s full interview.

Outtakes (in the box below)
Great segments from the interviews, and sounds recorded at Thunder Road. Enjoy!

Thanks:
A big thanks to Larry Massett. He was the editor for both Thunder Road and Milk Bowl and he is the greatest.

Also big thanks to Colin McCaffrey, who mixed these shows so expertly. And to Tread Hunter for best tires. And patiently…..

Thanks to you both.

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

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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Photo by Josh Larkin

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 the small dioramas downstairs. You also hear stories about mill fires, walking barefoot in summer, marriage proposals and God…

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THANKS: I’d like to thank the Calais area residents who shared their time and stories with me. They are: Geraldine Gilman, Don Singleton, Erlene Leonard, Janet Ancel, Olivia Gay, Stanley Fitch, Elaine Fitch and Elliott Morse.

The photos of the Kent you see here are provided by Nel Emlen. Thank you Nel!

And finally, all praise to the People of Kent! Over the past seven years, a team of hugely dedicated folks have brought art to this old, historical tavern and general store in the heart of our town. There’s a magic about that building. Ghosts and brilliant late afternoon light. Exposed lath and old plaster, weird pink closets and teal floors and bowls of plastic grapes in tucked away places, notes to self written on the wall from 1921, ancient wallpaper and lots and lots of clip lamps to light the art. (I’m a special fan of the clip lamps…)

The love these folks at the Kent feel for the building comes through in the way they present the artwork, and it’s palpable…which just makes the whole experience more fun than most art exhibits. So thank you People of Kent. We’ll see you next year.

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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, and they’re letting her. I couldn’t help wondering how she did it. What were they talking about? How did she catch them being so much…themselves?

We sat on her couch one long, sunny fall day in Montpelier and talked for the better part of an afternoon–about photography, marriage, and eating tacos on Olvera Street in Los Angeles. Come listen…

The photographs we talk about in the interview are all featured below, in the order in which we speak about them.

Thank you!

A very special thanks to John Snell and Jamie Cope for allowing me to feature these photographs! Thank you also to Rob Spring.

This program is brought to you in part by a grant from WGDR, Goddard College and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Also big thanks to David Schulman for allowing me to feature a track from his new album, Raise It Up, which you can find here.

Maud Morgan, artist

Harold Edgerton, Scientist, inventor of the strobe, MIT

Giselle

President of Raytheon

Wisconsin Friends

Jamie Cope

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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 responsibility to rally against Ben & Jerry’s presence in the Israeli occupied territories?

Mark Hage is a Palestine solidarity activist with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont. You can learn more about VTJP and its Ben & Jerry’s campaign, click on the link below.

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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.

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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 around the world.

And even though I don’t understand the game, I appreciate that it happens between real people, in person. Hugely enthusiastic players, ranging in age from around seven to forty-five, get together and battle it out, trade cards, and talk about creature powers. I’ve been taking my son to a Friday night game in Montpelier, Vermont–held at the Book Garden. Last time we went, instead of sitting in a foldout chair for 3 hours, I recorded interviews with some of the players.

This show won’t explain the game. That is a task far beyond my skill. Instead, it will introduce you to some of the culture around this game, and the passion of its players. Game. ON.

Thanks

Big thanks to the Book Garden in Montpelier, and to Keith McCusker for setting me up in a comfortable room to do some interviews. And thanks to all the generous players who shared their stories with me.

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 show.

Bob and Marj

Greg and Marj

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 Strip Vermont with permission by Larry Massett and Barrett Golding. Thank you both for letting me share this. It’s one of my favorite stories and it’s one I listen to over and over.

And over.

And over.

Larry wearing a hat in Montana

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 podcast. This means I’ve been editing a two hour show down to one hour, which is no easy task. I’m either cutting a fascinating bit about the history of broccoli in North America, or some offhand advice about how to build a cold frame out of junk in your garage. Alan gets great guests and the show is always packed with great information and stories. If you’re at all interested in gardening, I encourage you to tune in. And if you want to be apprised of our podcast progress, join the show’s Facebook page and we’ll let you know when the podcast becomes available.

Be confident in your decisions by checking out your provider’s top areas of care, education, patient reviews and more. Look for Dr. Matthew Galumbeck for more details.

You can also listen to an interview I did with Alan last year.

The beautiful photo you see above is by Josh Larkin.

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 Wiki link to Jessamyn…

A link to other links about Jessamyn

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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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 Marantz
Golem Song
The Education of Arnold Hitler
Insect Dreams, the Half Life of Gregor Samsa

Marc Estrin’s Memoir
Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer)

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 her in her buckskin purse. “But Solidod,” I said, “that’s kind of a dangerous knife, isn’t it?” I said- meaning, dangerous for an 80-year woman. “Yeah, it’s sharp, it came with a good knife sharpener” she laughed, “but it would be better if it was rusty. So the cut would get infected in case I stab somebody.”

Wow, tough lady. Tough, but also funny, curious, brimming with energy, and a world-class storyteller. As she told me about the adventures of her life I realized she’s been everywhere and done just about everything: horse-trainer, bodyguard, trans-Atlantic sailor, carpenter, gardener, artist, you name it. And she’s busy. She spends her days zipping around town selling the t-shirts she paints and the jewelry she makes, checking on old friends and chatting up new ones. Most people her age seem to be winding down; Solidod’s just getting started…”

Thank you Hearing Voices for allowing me to air this show. It’s a favorite.

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Here is a link to Solidod’s book.

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. Michael has been the bandleader of some of the most lush, uncategorizable music in this state. Bands like viperHouse, Magic City, Orchid, the So Called Jazz Sextet, and Hollar General.

I talked with him at his house, a renovated goose coop in Lincoln Vermont, and one of the quietest places on earth—or so he says. We talk about his music and growing up in Buffalo and driving to gigs with a blownout muffler. He talks about his collaboration with Anais Mitchell on the 2010 folk opera, Hadestown.

And he sings. You’ll hear a lot of music this hour, some of it from his upcoming album with Hollar General.

The photo here by Jay Sansome. Black and white photo of Michael is by John M Moyers.

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Here’s a short story about my son and piano practice and parental rage.

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 generations of Kennedys.

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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 living deer hit. What could it mean?

I’m going to start running periodic police log shows. If you know of small newspapers around the state that run good police logs, leave a message at the bottom of the show page here. I’d love to hear about them.

This police log comes to you from the Barre Police, as published in the Times Argus. It is read by writer and radio producer Scott Carrier. Scott is coming out with a podcast of his own pretty soon, which is very good news. I will let you know when and where you can find it when it starts.

Here is a picture of Scott in sunglasses.

Music by Hayvanlar Alemi. The song is titled Crossroad Metamorphosis

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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 stuffed creature called Binny.

Clare is the curator at The Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, Vermont. It is a self-service museum located in her barn, and it ‘dedicates itself to deteriorating objects of no monetary value, but of immense ordinary-life consequence.’ The current exhibit is called Toothbrush from Twig to Bristle In All Its Expedient Beauty. Clare recently got so mad at her broken snowblower that she was moved to create a small, impromptu exhibit called Broken and Useless Snow Removal Devices of the Northeast Kingdom. I am including a couple pictures of the exhibit here, and some other pictures I like. If you have not been to the museum, do not dally. Do not wait. Put it on your bucket list. It will make you happy. Directions and more exhibit pictures are on her website.

Clare and her donkey, Nikolai

Raggedy Ann and Binny

One of my favorite exhibits in the toothbrush show.

A large, stabbed bear in the museum

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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Who are they?

Larry Massett is one of the world’s most interesting radio producers. He lives in Cabin John, MD.

Marianne Ross is the director of a multimedia company called Concerts in the Country, in Washington DC. She spends much of each summer in the Northeast Kingdom, working with Bread and Puppet Theater. Here’s Marianne:

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 the bass are. Ed Epstein’s whole life has been an art project.

In this hour, we talk about the mysterious process of portrait painting…it’s difficulties and occasional satisfactions. But mostly in this hour, we talk about boats. Building them, sailing them for years, and what became of Ed’s beloved thirty foot schooner, Ruby.

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The beautiful photograph of Ed Epstein was taken by photographer Andrew Kline. More of his work can be seen here.

More of Ed Epstein’s work can be seen here.

Music this hour: The Cello Suites, by J.S. Bach, performed by Jan Vogler.

Unedited audio from the interview

There is a whole section of our interview that is not in this show, but well worth listening to, particularly if you’re interested in folk music. In it, Ed talks about his first forays out of New York City, and hitchhiking across the country in the early fifties with his banjo and I realized if I want my kid to have any sort of musical interests, my kid needs that, to see a few real live music legends himself, in person. Here it is:

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Self portrait from a picture taken of Ed in the early fifties.

The Sally Rubin

Jimmy the Iceman De Piro

Pan Trio

The Juniper Island, an 18′ standing lug yawl

Ed and Aryeh on the Sally Rubin, @1988

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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 incidents. There were keys lost and found. A juvenile was out of control on Crest Street. Come listen.

The police log is read by radio producer Scott Carrier. Scott’s new podcast, Home of the Brave, has LAUNCHED, and I highly recommend you subscribe to it. He’s one of the most interesting radio producers anywhere. I’ve spent whole days binge-listening to his shows. It’s  time well spent.

Music by Hayvanlar Alemi. The song is titled Crossroad Metamorphosis

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.

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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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 talks about how parenting changes when the kids have grown and gone. She prefers to go unnamed.

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 everyone.

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Upcoming Miriam shows:

April 4, Steady Betty at the lamp shop, Burlington. 9pm
April 17, Magic City at the Haybarn. 8-10pm
May 1, Waking Windows music festival in Winooski. Steady Betty 7:30pm
May 9, Betty Brew fest  at the big picture in Waitsfield. 10pm steady b.
June 4,6,7, Soloing with the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra. Unitarian Church. 7pm.

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.

Thanks to Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices for letting me run this show, and also for spending time on the audio before sending it to me.

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