Nov 16-20 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Wandering Souls: The Ghosts of Vietnam. What a powerful metaphor for vets suffering from PTSD on both sides of the Vietnam War. If you still need to be convinced that remembering the personal costs of war is the best way to heal from its wounds, just listen to the clarity and alacrity in Homer Steedley’s voice when he tells the story of killing the man whose ghost he brought back home (and check out the video for my reading of one of the most hair-raising stories in the book).



Monday: The Language of Cancer: I’m not really fond of cancer memoirs which have become so commonplace (like the diagnosis itself) that they constitute a genre of their own. But Mary Cappello’s Called Back is in a class all by itself. Well, she’s a writer after all, and she uses her own clear-sighted intelligence and razor-sharp sense of language to scrutinize the culture of breast cancer and to blaze right through it, port scar and all.

Tuesday: Global Competence: it’s one of those vague slippery terms that might mean almost anything. Why is it suddenly so important to have it? President Obama is said to have it; President Bush did not. You can’t get it just by carrying around a passport. You have to be willing to leave your comfort zone, and become a stranger in a strange land.

Wednesday: Responding to Fort Hood: What bothers you most about the killings at Fort Hood? The Muslim faith of the psychiatrist, the alleged gunman at Fort Hood, is a central piece of the picture in this unfolding tragedy. We’ll talk about our national, personal, and media reactions to Nidal Hasan’s Muslim identity.

Thursday: Inside Islam: The Hajj: One of the world's longest-lived religious rites, the hajj to Mecca is even older than Islam. It’s been described as a universal journey for transcendence and peace, but will that change this year given the fear surrounding H1N1? To find out what it means to 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, check out www.insideislam.wisc.edu and join us live at 3:00.

Friday: The Wonder in Wonder Bread: One in seven people in the world doesn’t have enough to eat. What’s the key to eliminating world hunger? According to Louise Fresco, the answer may lie in mass-produced white bread.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Jean