March 31-April 4 Programs

Dear Here-on-Earthlings,

Before launching into the line-up for next week, I just want to thank all of you who've been calling in to make our programming come alive this week. I particularly enjoyed your contributions to Thursday’s conversation "Against Happiness" and "Tastes Like Cuba," Friday’s food show.

We’ll start next week with two programs about education:

Monday: They listen to heavy metal, don’t have much homework, dye their hair and waste hours online, so…..American educators are trying to figure out What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

Tuesday: A Sustainable Education: Parker Palmer says American higher education gives people the skills to manipulate the world but very little in the way of self-knowledge. We’ve teamed him up with the director of the Schumacher School in the UK where people attend seminars in ecological and spirituality.

Wednesday: In progress: We’re working with the BBC on a program about the Tibetan struggle for independence.

Thursday: Isabel Allende joins us to talk about her latest book, The Sum of Our Days, a sequel to her elegiac memoir about her daughter, Paula. “We lived as a tribe, Chilean style; we were almost always together” she tells us, writing about her close-knit family.

Friday: To celebrate the start of National Poetry Month, we’ll mix in a little poetry with our Friday food program this week: Jewish-American poet Barbara Goldberg just won the Felix Pollak Award for her latest collection, The Royal Baker’s Daughter. Her poems read like “A Gourmand’s Prayer” – dumplings, head-cheese, pickled beets, mutton and leeks - all this food and I’m starving.

I’m heading north this weekend. I’ll be reading from I Hear Voices and signing books at The Loft in Green Bay at 6:00 on Saturday, and at LaDeDa Books in Manitowoc at 2:00 on Sunday. I’m hoping I’ll see some of you there!

Jean