Rumble Strip

A GUEST SHOW from one of my favorite radio producers….Bianca Giaever. During a period of personal loneliness, radio-maker Bianca Giaever set out into New York City, hoping to connect with another lonely stranger. She began visiting Catholic churches, and eventually, she met Sophia — a school crossing guard. In this piece, Bianca documents Sophia’s life for many months… weaving between the ordinary...

Winnie Wilkinson is originally from Jamaica but she spent half her life in New York City before moving up to St. Albans, Vermont, where black people make up 2.52 percent of the population. Winnie has family all over the country, and she has a lot of family members who’ve been harassed by the police, which is what I went to talk with her about. But it’s not what we talked about. Instead, we talked...

Clare is the curator of the Museum Of Everyday Life, which lives in a barn on Route 16, about eight miles from Glover, Vermont, population 2000. Over the years, the Museum of Everyday Life has given us the toothbrush, the mirror, bells and whistles–celebrations of objects we use everyday in our unglamorous everyday lives. This year’s exhibit features the knot. It’s not quite finished, because as C...

I met my friend Leland when he was in first grade and he came over to play with my son Henry. For six years now, we’ve been having a yearly conversation about how he’s doing and what he’s thinking about. He just finished his sophomore year at the Central Vermont Career Center in Barre, which is a technical education school. He was never big on regular school, even though he knows more about geogra...

Last month a friend of mine sent me a picture of miles and miles of cars lined up waiting for food that was being distributed by the National Guard here in Vermont. Nineteen hundred cars . I’d never seen anything like it, and it took me a minute to even believe it. And when I told a friend about it…a perfectly smart and thoughtful friend…he said,  “Well, they probably don’t really need it. I mean,...

Here’s our last show, which also happens to be show number seven. In this show you heard Cheering healthcare workers in Barcelona and Toronto Greg’s son practicing trumpet on a rainy night in Plainfield, VT Brooke in Denver Colorado Rob on the accordian in Adamant, VT Bianca in Brooklyn, NY Gideon and his mother Kathryn in High Falls, NY Liv singing in Los Angeles, CA Toria in Boulder, CO Edward a...

This is Our Show, number six. Your recordings about the pandemic. In this show you heard from: Alicia and Liv in Los Angeles, CA Ada in Marfa, Texas Anna in Bennington, Vermont The sound of rain in a woodstove from Bruce in Montreal Bill in New York City Morten in Southampton, United Kingdom Eli in Philadelphia, PA Katz in Amsterdam, The Netherlands Shana in Auchterarder, Scotland Samantha, somewh...

Here’s Our Show, number five…your recordings about the pandemic. In this show you hear from: Niels in Copenhagen, Denmark Thomas singing in El Cerrito, CA Rachel in Olympia, Washington Rob and his kids from Olympia, Washington Louisa in Brittany, France Another meditation from Cali in Florida Tomas in Berlin, Germany Molly’s bells in Las Cruces, NM Esther in Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ada and Math...

Here is Our Show 4, your recordings during the pandemic. Thank you for sending me remarkable recordings from all over the world, and the intense privilege of making shows with them. In this show you hear from: Bill in New York City Clive in Toronto Tim in Durango, Colorado Bianca in New York City Andrew’s son reading Pi in Northhampton, Mass. Kelly in New Braunfels, Texas Ralph in North Wolcott, V...

This is Our Show number three…made from your recordings during the pandemic. Keep that tape coming. Let’s keep making damn shows. In this show you hear from: Elliott in Brooklyn and his mother Roberta who’s outside of Chicago Carlos in Bethesda Ryan in West Virginia Katy in New York City Darren in the middle of the south coast of England Silvia in Barcelona Jessica in Minneapolis Alicia and Liv in...

This is the second installment of Our Show, which is about all of us during this pandemic, and is made from all the recordings you’re sending to me from wherever you are in the world, in whatever isolated circumstance. I’m in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in a third floor walk-up, with my son Henry. I have plenty of time to edit. So keep sending your stories. Here’s Show Two. In this story you hear from...

It’s amazing. An entire planet of people living mostly in isolation…or those of us lucky enough to be well. It’s the darkest thing to happen in my lifetime, but also strangely the most unifying. We’re all experiencing the very same thing at the same time, but not together. Which is why I wanted to make this show. I asked you to send me recordings from where you are so we could make a show about al...

Hi all, My father died a couple weeks ago. He died peacefully at the UVM Medical Center in Burlington. My mother and sister and I spent six days and nights with him, the last 4.5 in comfort care. It was quiet. We had a room we could all camp out in together. The death was a surprise but not a shock. I’m putting out this announcement because work on the show is going slowly at the moment. Also beca...

Susan Randall is a private investigator here in Vermont and she’s been my friend for twenty five years. If you listen to the show, you already know that I interview her periodically for Rumble Strip. We talk in her car, in her backyard…mostly we talk about her work as a private investigator, but lately we’ve been talking about all the complicated things that seem to start happening when you turn f...

People often assume the Joslyn House is a nursing home, probably because a lot of old people live there. But it’s not a nursing home. It’s not assisted living. There’s no anonymous art on the wall. It’s not licensed by the state. It’s a house. It’s a a place where up to twenty older people live independently together …in a huge, elegant house furnished with their own things. There’s socializing wh...

An outtake with bear biologist Ben Kilham, about living with dyslexia, and how it informs the way he thinks about bears.

Ben Kilham and his sister Phoebe are the only licensed bear rehabilitators in the state of New Hampshire. For over twenty-five years, the Kilham Bear Center has taken in orphaned or injured black bear cubs and successfully released them back into the wild. And Ben has conducted arguably the longest scientific study of black bear behavior in history. Until Ben Kilham, black bears were studied mostl...

For many years I have privately loved the song Total Eclipse of the Heart, by Bonnie Tyler. I started to love it when it came out in 1983, when I was fourteen. This month I’m turning fifty. And for some reason, every time I think about turning fifty, I think about singing this song that I’ve loved for over over thirty years, and making other people listen to me sing it. I guess in a way it’s a kin...

Patrick Soniera has been hunting and tracking bobcats in Vermont for fifty years, and he has a diary entry about every single hunt–the weather, the birds or the bears, the behavior of the cat tracks he followed–his diaries fill one whole wall of his office. And for the majority of those days out in the woods, Patrick never even saw a bobcat. You almost never see them, which is why Patrick is so fa...

This is the fifth episode of Problems , a radio drama about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems. In this episode, Joel’s just come back from a long vacation in British Colombia, where he had a lovely time mountain biking with friends. But…there were some problems. This show is sponsored by Honey Road , my all time favorite restaurant in Vermont. Make a reser...

Garret Keizer and I stood together in a field, in the late summer, in the Northeast Kingdom, and he read poems from his new book, The World Pushes Back . I first heard of Garret a few years ago when I read his book, Getting Schooled , about his years as a high school teacher up here in the Kingdom. He described this place more honestly and more humanely …than anything I’d ever read about the place...

It’s the summer musical in Randolph, Vermont…one day before showtime. It’s been an annual event at Chandler Music Hall for over twenty years, and this year they’re putting on Footloose. And honestly? It feels like the whole town is involved. Like it takes every last person in Randolph to pull this thing off…again. To put on a full musical with up to 120 kids, in three weeks? It’s a miracle. I spen...

Leland lives over the hill from me in East Calais. We’ve been friends since he was in first grade, and every year around this time we get together and he tells me what he’s thinking about, worried about, what his plans are. He got his driver’s permit two weeks ago so he drove me over to Number 10 Pond and we sat and talked about the ups and downs of his first year of high school, about girls, abou...

If you drive around rural Vermont, you see logging skidders parked in people’s dooryards. You see them working in smaller woodlots and residential woodlots, felling trees with a chainsaw at twenty below zero, dragging cables through waist deep snow. It’s dangerous work, and they’re a resilient lot. And they prefer logging by hand. This story is about them. Credits This show is part of The Resilien...

Gamelan Sulukala is a group of fifteen people in central Vermont who come together at the dead end of a dirt road in the basement of the Goddard College library, to play Indonesian music on an ornate, court gamelan made on the island of Java.  There is no harmony. Instead, each sound is part of an intricate layering of patterns. No one instrument, or musician stands alone. Except the people in gam...