At Your Service(formerly RadioRotary)

RadioRotary host Jonah Triebwasser interviews Maureen Roche, Program Director for 4-H Youth Development at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Dutchess County. The 4-H organization officially set up by the US Department of Agriculture in 1914, although built on a number of youth organizations from around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th. The name stands for Head – Hearth – Hands – Health. A...

RadioRotary interviews four members of Rhinebeck Rotary at the historic Beekman Arms during the Club’s regular Monday lunch: David Albahary, Nat Charny, Club President Phil Meltzer, and Barbara Markell. One of the main projects sponsored by the Club is improving a school near León, Nicaragua. The main workers in Nicaragua each year are about 20 Interact students from the local high school, aided b...

Once again Rotarian Lou Trapani (Rhinebeck), Artistic and Managing Director of The Center for the Performing Arts at Rhinebeck, returns to RadioRotary to discuss some of the upcoming performances at this hub for theater and related events, including the summer arts day camp, which brings many courses in theater-arts taught by the professionals who put on the shows in Rhinebeck. Trapani tells how h...

This series of interviews from the RI Convention in Sydney begins with the young—two Youth Exchange students who are having the adventure of their lives as they spend a year in Australia, away from homes in Finland and Denmark. Then we learn about the versatile Backpack Bed, which becomes a fireproof mattress with screens and a hidden, lockable pocket; these are distributed to homeless people who...

Every day it seems we are learning more and more about the dangers of distracted driving. Michael Weitzman in this RadioRotary interview tell about his efforts to make people more aware of the problem and its remedy, which he abbreviates as EMH for “Anytime you do not have your Eyes on the road, your Mind on your driving, and your Hands on the wheel” you are in danger of causing an accident lime t...

Here are five more fascinating interviews recorded by Jonah Triebwasser at the 2014 Rotary International Convention. Dr. Peter Linz, Chief International Medical Officer at Mercy Ships, tells about how their large hospital ship—6 operating rooms, 25 beds—travels from country to country in West Africa, bringing modern surgery of all kinds to people who would have no other access. Rotary Internationa...

This week’s show was broadcast from the regular meeting of the Highland Rotary Club, sponsors of the Tenth Annual Hudson Valley Ribfest, a three-day event at the Ulster Country Fairgrounds in New Paltz, NY, featuring barbecue (and many other foods) as well as a number of country-music concerts and a stage in the national contest for best Barbecue. Highland Rotary President Steve Laubach and Highla...

Jonah Triebwasser interviews five people who are working to do good in the world in different ways. Jenny Da Rin, Assistant Director General for the Education and Health Branch of AusAID, an Australian government program with many of the same goals as the Rotary Foundation. Rotarian Tam Mustapha (Kinderhook Tri-Village Clun, NY), attending the convention, tells Jonah about the expansion of the Rot...

Jonah Triebwasser interviews seven Rotarians from Australia, England, the United States, and Papua New Guinea about international projects that include Our Rainbow House, which educated orphans and other vulnerable children in Zambia; the Guilford Eye Project, which helps prevent and cure eye diseases in India and Nigeria; the Asia-Pacific Center for Neuromodulation, which employs deep-brain stimu...

The guest on this week’s show was Pleasant Valley Rotary President and RN Kathy Kruger, who describes Rotaplast (Rotary + Plastic Surgery), a program that heals children with cleft palate or cleft lip around the world. Cleft palate is literally a hole in the roof of the mouth and cleft lip is one or two splits in the lip, which may extend all the way up a child’s face. A Rotaplast team of usually...

Past Rotary International President Bill Boyd tells Radio Rotary Co-Host Jonah Triebwasser about WASRAG, the Water and Sanitation Rotary Action Group. Securing an adequate supply of drinkable water is one of six Rotary areas of focus that affects all the rest—fighting disease, saving mothers and children, growing local economies, promoting peace (wars have been fought over water), even literacy, s...

The RadioRotary co-hosts interview Hudson Solar Project Manager Christina Bagen about home solar-power installations. Solar panels used today capture energy from the sun and convert it to direct-current electricity; a device called an inverter then changes the power to alternating current for household or commercial use. Today solar panels are relatively inexpensive because of government grants an...

Co-Host, Jonah Triebwasser traveled to Sydney, Australia, for the Rotary International Annual Convention, where he taped many interesting interviews. For a starter, here are five of the subjects: Rotarian D. Bob Scott, chair of Rotary’s, describes how this campaign, in conjunction with WHO, UNICEF, the CDC, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has reduced the number of countries where polio...

Jackie Rose, executive director of Dutchess County SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) describes the facilities and activities of this nonprofit corporation. Located in Hyde Park, the DCSPCA provides humane law enforcement for the Country and a shelter for about 250 pets, including not only dogs and cats but also “pocket pets” such as hamsters, guinea pigs, or ferrets. The shel...

RadioRotary co-host Sarah O’Connell interviews Attorney Kyle Steller of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley and Kathy Sheehan, a social worker from the Mediation Center of Dutchess County about the Coalition on Elder Abuse in Dutchess County. The Mediation Center started the Coalition, which melds social services, local churches, Country law enforcement and health services, other law enforcement a...

Authors Bryan Bunch (Millbrook Rotary), Jim Holmgren, and Evan Pritchard discuss the sixth Millbrook Literary Festival with host Jonah Triebwasser. Holmgren, a novelist whose future fiction novel describes the world in 2076, will host a panel of mystery writers under the heading “Who Did It? We did it!” Even Pritichard, poet and historian, who has been declared “king of the poets” for the Festival...

Dr. Frank Bourke, executive director of the PTSD Research and Recognition Project, explains the diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a curable mental illness that is best known for affecting veterans of brutal wars, but also can change the lives of people who experience any kind of serious trauma from sources such as auto accidents or crimes. The principal symptoms are...

Rotarian Lou Trapani (Rhinebeck), Artistic and Managing Director of The Center for the Performing Arts, located a short distance east of Rhinebeck, NY, is interviewed by co-hosts Jonah Triebwasser and Sarah O’Connell, both former performers themselves. The Center began as a project of the Rhinebeck Theater Society and was first (1994) housed in a tent, with the permanent building, known as “the Ba...

Author and columnist Anthony Musso returns to the RadioRotary microphones to discuss volume 2 of his Hidden Treasures of the Hudson Valley, a treasury of 55 sites in the 8-country mid-Hudson region. Here are a few of the sites covered: The Beekman Arms, oldest continuing restaurant; the world’s largest church pipe organ at the Cadet Chapel at West Point; St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Amenia, with...

Rotarian Colleen Mountford (Kingston Sunrise Club) describes the Patriot’s Project that will house homeless veterans in a renovated mansion in Kingston starting in July. Both the Kingston Sunrise and Kingston Noontime clubs as well as contributions from all Rotary clubs in Ulster County have supported the project. It began in 2012 when Ulster County Executive Mike Hein proposed turning a former gr...

RadioRotary co-hosts interview incoming District Governor Penny Byron (Rotary Year 2014-15), who describes her work with District 7210, which includes 62 clubs at various locations in the eight Mid-Hudson counties that make up the District—Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Ulster. District 7210 actually extends beyond the Mid-Hudson, however, for one of the 62 clu...

Terry Laibach, an environmental specialist concerned largely with solid waste who works with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, discusses the economics and environmental impact of the 3Rs—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. While the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population, it produces 25% of the world’s solid waste. At one time, the solution to this waste burden was to...

Dr. David A Crenshaw, a child psychologist who is Clinical Director of the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie, explains why children often need aid in getting though such emotional difficulties as psychosomatic symptoms, depression, difficulty controlling impulses, and behavioral problems in school; frequently intellectual or cognitive maturity precedes emotional maturity. Young children may lack lan...

The RadioRotary co-hosts interview Jody Miller, Executive Director of the Mediation Center of Dutchess Country, and Registered Nurse Carolynn Frankell, who, along with Lindsey Goldstein, chairs the third annual Anti-Bullying Walkathon. Since 1981 New York State has had a program of Alternative Dispute Resolution, which includes mediation and arbitration, with centers in every county. Mediation is...

Libraries today are far more than places to borrow books for a couple of weeks according to Red Hook Public Library Director Erica Freudenberger and Mid-Hudson Library System Assistant Director Merribeth Advocate. Libraries are an important local source in obtaining jobs or improving skills, using the public-access computers in libraries or access to library information from home computers. And, w...