Friday, May 28, 2010

May 31 - June 4 Programs

Friday, May 28, 2010

Pick of the Week: It's Pig: King of the Southern Table! Lori talks about this week and shares why she chooses Friday's show as her favorite. Check out the video below.



Monday: Wandering Souls: Join us on Memorial Day for an encore broadcast of our memorable Veterans Day program, “Wandering Souls.” Writer and Vietnam War veteran Wayne Karlin publishes stories about Vietnam from vets on both sides. His recent book, Wandering Souls, tells the story of Homer Steedly, one veteran who returned to Vietnam to meet the family of a man he killed.

Tuesday: Female Nomad and Friends: In 1987, Rita Golden Gelman set out to live her dream. She sold all her possessions and became a nomad. She wrote a book about her ongoing journey and, in 2001, insisted on putting her personal e-mail address in the last chapter—against all advice. She presents some of the stories her readers sent to her in the anthology Female Nomad and Friends and joins us to talk about the golden rules of breaking free.

Wednesday: New York City: Endangered Language Sanctuary: We’ll talk with linguist Daniel Kaufman, co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, about finding and preserving the many endangered languages represented in New York City. Some languages, he says, have more speakers living in New York City than in the area of the world they came from!

Thursday: Courage and Light: As a photographer for the National Geographic, Jim Brandenburg took hundreds of pictures every day – until he burnt out. In an effort to rediscover his passion for photography, he set out to take just one picture a day for 90 days. He joins us with Parker Palmer to talk about their Courage & Light Project, aimed at helping people to rediscover their passion and creativity at work.

Friday: Cakewalk: Growing up with capricious and perpetually embattled parents, Kate Moses found refuge in the kitchen, where she taught herself to bake and finally found the one realm where she felt she had control. She joins us to talk about her new memoir-with-recipes, Cakewalk.

Friday, May 21, 2010

May 24 - 28 Programs

Friday, May 21, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: China’s Green People Power: It was heartening in the midst of all the bad news coming out of China to discover that there’s a genuine grassroots environmental movement underway, with courageous leaders such as former journalist Mu Jian leading the charge, accruing lots of successes. Would that it were so here in the U.S.!
P.S.: Jean changed her mind after our Food Friday show and talks about 52 Loaves as her favourite for our Pick of the Week Video!



Monday: It’s an encore presentation of Einstein's God with Minnesota Public Radio’s Krista Tippett. Science and religion are often portrayed as being in conflict, but Tippett’s new book brings together the many scientists she’s interviewed who find spiritual enlightenment on their way to proving scientific truth.

Tuesday: Crying Over Spilt Milk: We'll discuss the fight to protect access to raw or fresh food in this country and beyond.

Wednesday: Pakistan’s Dilemma: With the recent attention to Fajsal Shahzad’s failed terrorist attack in New York City’s Time Square, Pakistan has become the cornerstone of the debate about the war on terrorism. We’ll talk to Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University and a former government official in Pakistan, and with Tariq Ali, journalist and author of three books about Pakistan’s history and political landscape.

Thursday: Bonobo Handshake: In 2005, Vanessa Woods accepted a marriage proposal from a man she barely knew and agreed to join him on a trip to war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to study Bonobos, a human relative far less aggressive than our other cousin, the Chimpanzee. In working with Bonobos she learned a few lessons about life and love that all humans can take to heart.

Friday: Pig: King of the Southern Table: If pig is indeed king, then there is trouble at the castle. James Villas, author of 13 cookbooks and winner of two James Beard awards, has stormed the gates and had at him, leaving no sweetbread, shoulder, or chop untasted. We’ll talk with him about his new book: Pig: King of Southern Tables.

I’ll be tromping around the southwest next week, leaving Lori Skelton in the driver’s seat.

Happy Memorial Day a week early!

Jean

Here On Earth in Bayfield!

Many of us trooped over to Wild Rice Restaurant in Bayfield after our live broadcast of Here on Earth last Friday, where I gave a reading and signed copies of my memoir, I Hear Voices. It was a spectacular setting at the end of a perfect spring day, looking out over Lake Superior and the Northwoods in bloom. Since I spotted so many people in the audience holding wine glasses, I decided to read an excerpt from the chapter in the book entitled “Get Thee to a Winery.” It wasn’t until later that I discovered that people in the back rows had a hard time hearing me. Al Chechik, who owns Artesian House, complained that the only words he heard were “purple bikini.” I left him a book with the inscription, “Going beyond purple bikini.”




Friday, May 14, 2010

May 17 - 21 Programs

Friday, May 14, 2010

Jean's Pick of the Week: Why The Prophet Muhammad Matters. See our video below!



Monday: Haiti's Artisans: The Comité Artisanal Haitien has been supporting the artisans behind Haitian handicrafts since 1973. Today, the CAH is hoping to rebuild the workshops that were destroyed by the January earthquake and to offer new artisanal products, placing Haitian art at the center of Haiti's recovery. Gisèle Fleurant, CAH Director since 1980, joins us, as does Cheryl Musch, director of international development for SERRV, one of CAH's partner organizations.

Tuesday: Growing Chinese Environmentalism: China’s hunger for energy to power its runaway industrialization has dammed every major river in the country — almost. The Chinese Government has put a moratorium on damming the Nu, or Angry, River after an uproar from China’s burgeoning environmental movement. We’ll talk about what we can and can’t expect from a growing Chinese environmentalism.

Wednesday: Care of the Soul in Medicine: Few experiences throw a person into crisis as illness does, affecting not only the body but the spirit and soul. Yet the current health care system is not structured around these considerations. We'll talk to Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul in Medicine, about his vision for improving health care.

Thursday: Through African Eyes: For centuries, Westerners have created mostly negative images of the African continent and its inhabitants. But we rarely seem to be aware that during all that time, Africans have been looking back at us, producing their own depictions of Europeans. We'll talk to Nii Quarcoopome, curator of the Detroit Institute of Art's current exhibition, Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present.

Friday: 52 Loaves: How far would you travel for the perfect load of bread? William Alexander tracked the aroma of freshly baked bread from Morocco and France to yeast factories and the New York State Fair, even going so far as to grow his own wheat, all on a quest for the perfect loaf.

We were live in Bayfield, WI today for our Food Friday show - it was a lot of fun!

Jean

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Hidden Lives of Vermont's Mexican Immigrants

Being a third-generation immigrant from an Italian-American family, and raised with a strong ethnic identity, I find myself in sympathy with all new immigrants, but especially those Mexicans who risk their lives and shoulder their losses all because they’re desperate for work. And work is what America has always been about. The jobs the migrant workers do, as we have heard over and over again, are the jobs Americans shun – sixteen hour days mucking out the barns on dairy farms, or picking crops under a blazing sun. My grandfather arrived with a pick and a shovel and became one of the immigrant builders of the great city of New York. B. Amore’s grandfather helped excavate the foundations of Harvard University. They were prepared to make great personal sacrifices for the benefit of their children and future generations of new Americans. Why do we deny the same right and privilege to those who follow in their footsteps?

B. Amore in front of one or her pieces

Friday, May 07, 2010

May 10 - 14 Programs

Friday, May 7, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Two Photographers: I loved exploring the fascinating, if not so obvious, connections between two photographers who are pushing the boundaries of portraiture: Alan Luft, the German American whose Berlin Portfolio reveals the otherwise overlooked lives of the city’s newest immigrants, and Paul Baker Prindle, whose series Mementi Mori, honors the lives of gay men by photographing the otherwise banal American landscapes where they were murdered.



Monday: The Hidden Lives of Vermont’s Mexican Immigrants: Italian-American artist B. Amore, whose involvement in immigration issues has been life-long, coaxed her Mexican neighbors to tell their hidden stories in the form of dioramas.

Tuesday: Muck Raking the Meat Industry: If you didn’t catch Michael Moss’s extensive report in the New York Times back in October detailing the systemic problem of E. coli contamination rampant within the beef processing industry, you won’t want to miss today’s show. His report just won a Pulitzer Prize and Michael Moss will join us to discuss the changes it has already brought about.

Wednesday: Why The Prophet Muhammad Matters: We’ve found the perfect guest to round out our Inside Islam series this semester: he is Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at UNC whose highly readable biography of Muhammad treats him in all his aspects, as a mystic, a political leader, and a cultural revolutionary, and explains why Muslims today look to the Prophet primarily as a hero and a nation builder.

Thursday: While I’m on the road to Bayfield, we’ve chosen to repeat one of our most popular shows: Crime Literature, Scandinavian Style. The film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the first part of Stieg Larsson's widely successful crime trilogy, is playing in U.S theaters now.

Friday: Bayfield in Bloom: Larry Meillor and I will be broadcasting live from the Bayfield Lakeside Pavilion. I’ll be talking with Bayfield notables: Jerry Phillips, proprietor of The Old Rittenhouse Inn, and Jim Webster, chef at the famed Wild Rice Restaurant, about the way they create exquisite regional cuisine.

I’ll be reading from my memoir, I Hear Voices, and signing books at Wild Rice starting at 5:00pm on Friday. Hope to see you there!

And all you moms - Happy Mother’s Day!

Jean