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.....
May 06, 2024•25 min•Ep. 270
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.
Apr 25, 2024•11 min•Ep. 269
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.
Apr 10, 2024•21 min•Ep. 268
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 s...
Mar 26, 2024•34 min•Ep. 267
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.
Mar 15, 2024•8 min•Ep. 266
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.
Mar 13, 2024•8 min•Ep. 265
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.
Mar 11, 2024•6 min•Ep. 264
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.
Mar 10, 2024•20 min•Ep. 263
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.
Mar 08, 2024•10 min•Ep. 262
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.
Mar 06, 2024•8 min•Ep. 261
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.
Mar 04, 2024•8 min•Ep. 260
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.
Mar 01, 2024•22 min•Ep. 259
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.
Feb 28, 2024•10 min•Ep. 258
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.
Feb 26, 2024•8 min•Ep. 257
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 Ve...
Feb 23, 2024•7 min•Ep. 256
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 Cla...
Feb 21, 2024•12 min•Ep. 255
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...
Feb 19, 2024•7 min•Ep. 254
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 Fo...
Feb 13, 2024•9 min•Ep. 253
The Anair story was produced for Vermont Public.
Jan 25, 2024•12 min•Ep. 252
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.
Jan 11, 2024•8 min•Ep. 251
East Hill Tree Farm is awesome. Honestly. It's just the best.
Dec 15, 2023•4 min•Ep. 250
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.
Dec 10, 2023•13 min•Ep. 249
Music for this show is by Justin Lander John's company is called Farmers Underground, based in West Glover, VT
Nov 30, 2023•24 min•Ep. 248
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....
Oct 30, 2023•11 min•Ep. 247
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.
Oct 20, 2023•11 min•Ep. 246
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.
Oct 04, 2023•16 min•Ep. 245
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...
Sep 04, 2023•24 min•Ep. 244
Music by Justin Lander Originally produced for Vermont Public
Aug 16, 2023•13 min•Ep. 243
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.
Jul 27, 2023•15 min•Ep. 242
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 in...
Jul 06, 2023•58 min•Ep. 241
