Avsnitt
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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.
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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.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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We raised ALL the money for Forrest's new old truck and we are so GRATEFUL!!!
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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....
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
- Visa fler