Correct me if I'm Norm

Norm welcomes his Rhinebeck neighbor Father Jeffrey Maurer, pastor of Good Shepherd in Rhinebeck and St. Christopher's in Red Hook, for a conversation about faith and vocation. Maurer traces his German and Irish Catholic roots to 1880s Kingston, his eight years of seminary formation between Manhattan College and priestly studies, and the moment as a teenager when he first grasped the Eucharist as...

Norm welcomes sisters Patty Hill and Susie Hendren for a chat that starts with Yuengling and ends with astrology. The two, raised between Brooklyn and Long Island with Scottish, Italian, and Irish roots, trace a musical education that runs from seeing The Beatles at Forest Hills Stadium as young girls to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and the New York Dolls scene at Max's Kansas City. Susie fronted a...

Norm welcomes Sue Sie, a longtime Rhinecliff resident who arrived via an ex-husband, a Bard professor's house, and a lot of determination. She stayed; he did not. That was 1989, and she has been one of the most quietly essential figures in the local environmental landscape ever since. Sue is an architect by training. She designed Gigi Trattoria, Terrapin, and Gabby's, among others, but has not pra...

Norm sits down with Richard Marr, a Rhinebeck-based artist and Merrill Lynch financial advisor whose two careers have more in common than you might think. Richard's paintings are spare, reverent studies of water and light that grew out of his deep engagement with environmental issues, which also drives his investment work and his membership in the Citizens' Climate Lobby, where he helps lobby Cong...

Norm is joined by Dr. Greg Tumolo of Rhinebeck Animal Hospital, a born-and-raised Rhinebecker who followed his father into veterinary medicine and never really left, except for 15 years in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he went to vet school, skied as much as possible, and eventually realized he wanted to come home. The cover the practical to the philosophical: how Dr. Tumolo thinks about euthanasi...

Norm sits with Dana Polan, the Martin Scorsese Professor and Chair of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch. The chat ranges across a lifetime of thinking seriously about American film. Dana grew up in New York and Westchester, did his doctorate in France, and was later knighted by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts. He explains how cinema s...

Norm sits down with Tate and Ola Rubinstein, the husband-and-wife team behind Quail Hollow Events and the 45th annual Woodstock-New Paltz Art and Crafts Fair, returning to the Ulster County Fairgrounds Memorial Day weekend, Tate grew up at the shows his father Neil and uncle Scott founded in 1982, and Ola, an art historian by training, took over day-to-day direction after the couple moved back fro...

Norm welcomes singer-songwriter Terence Boylan, who lives just down the road in Rhinebeck. Boona shows up with homemade margaritas and a lifetime of stories. He talks about the night he and his buddy stole a 1961 Corvette and drove from Buffalo to Greenwich Village at 15 to find Bob Dylan, and ended up lighting Dylan's cigarette outside the Gaslight. The next afternoon they were swapping songs at...

Norm sits down with longtime New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly for a conversation about her more than four decades in cartooning. Liza talks about tracing James Thurber cartoons as a kid in Watergate-era Washington, the two years she spent submitting to The New Yorker before Lee Lorenz bought her first drawing in 1979, and her parallel life as a digital live-drawing journalist for CBS News, CNN,...

Norm sits with Elliott Malkin, a parrot lover, artist (Graffiti for Butterflies), writer, podcaster, comb-over aficionado, and father who has taught cool shit at Bard, NYU, and Columbia and done cool shit for Google and so many others. Elliott takes Norm from a Chicago suburb bordering the famously targeted town of Skokie to a Brooklyn-to-Rhinebeck COVID migration that, like a lot in his life, he...

Norm chats with David Scheer, a long-time pro in healthcare and employer health plan implementation and management, an analytical mastermind and conversational gem. As a senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson, David spends his days helping enormous employers untangle the financial and strategic mess of providing health benefits to tens of thousands of workers, and he makes the whole thing genui...

his week's guests are husband and wife: one helps youth who are just starting in life and the other helps those who are further along life's path. One is boss of his own company and the other is boss of Rhinebeck Rotary. Norm welcomes Erika and Mark Murphy. Mark is the founder of Grip Tape (griptape.org), a nonprofit that helps teenagers find purpose and agency by handing them the keys. No applica...

Norm chats with filmmaker Andy Tennant, a dancer turned writer turned director who studied under the legendary John Houseman at USC, about moving from Chicago and Los Angeles to Rhinebeck, influenced by his wife, daughter, East Coast kids, and the Los Angeles fires. Tennant discusses raising triplets plus a fourth child while working internationally, then recounts the turbulent production of Anna...

Norm sits down with Alex Hannaford, a London-born, dual U.S.-U.K. citizen journalist who covers America for foreign publications and whose writing has taken him from the death rows of Texas to the pubs of east London. Rhinebeck's own, Hannaford traces his path into journalism through a gap year teaching sailing and an internship at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where he found his voic...

On Norm's birthday episode, guest David Hoffman looks back on a life shaped by curiosity and reinvention. He recalls early radio days in high school, studying engineering at Case Western, earning a third-class FCC license in Detroit, and landing at Vassar, where he fell in love with both '60s music and the college's carrier-current station. From there, Hoffman found his way into filmmaking, includ...

This week's guest is coming up on her 25 year anniverary at the helm of one of my favorite restaurants, Gigi Trattoria, which she co-founded in 2001. She's a dietician/ entrepreneur an absolute delight: Laura Pensiero. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits down with Charles Derbyshire, who shares the story behind pronouncing his surname, his upbringing in Huntington, West Virginia, and reflections on the region’s hardship, opioids, and shifting economy centered on education and healthcare. He talks about Marshall University family ties, Appalachian identity, Hatfield lineage, and how his accent changed after years of acting training. The c...

Norm welcomes back Monique Segarra, a Bard Center for Environmental Policy professor just returned from Oaxaca, to share a mezcal from a small-batch palenque as they dig into agave's long growth cycles, industrial production, and what sustainability actually means for Oaxacan producers. Segarra, who has spent a decade doing field-based work with graduate students in the region, discusses water man...

Norm welcomes Dr. Amy Novatt, OB-GYN, and Marybeth Cale, a national board certified health and wellness coach, to discuss integrative approaches to midlife health, with a focus on perimenopause and menopause. They explore how coaching complements conventional medicine by addressing whole-person wellbeing across life domains, using tools like a "wellness wheel" to support self-discovery and actiona...

Norm sits down with Rhinebeck's own Jaime Ransome, an educator, former adjunct professor, gallery manager, and one of the most compelling curators working in the Hudson Valley today. They talk family, feminism, and a life in the art world. Jaime explains her middle name (Ernestina), shares stories about her grandparents, and traces the through-line connecting spirituality, the moon, and feminist t...

This Valentine's Day, Norm welcomed the cutest couple in Rhinebeck to "Correct Me If I'm Norm": Ally and John Traver, who've been part of each other's lives since kindergarten. They dated in middle and high school, lost touch for years, then found each other again on Facebook in college. Married now for 16 years, they have two sons, Charlie (6) and Dave (2.5). They chat about growing up in Rhinebe...

In this episode of 'Correct Me If I'm Norm,' host Norm sits down with author Emma Tourtelot to discuss her latest book, 'No One, You Know.' They delve into Emma's book tour experiences, the inspiration behind her mother-daughter narrative, her creative process, and the role of grief and consciousness explored in her novel. Emma also shares stories from her past as a sex and relationship columnist...

n this episode of 'Correct Me If I'm Norm,' host Norm sits down with Victor Britton, a retired teacher with a fascinating journey from engineering to teaching physics. They discuss Victor's early career, his transition into education, and life growing up. Victor shares personal stories, including his struggles and triumphs, and the support from his wife Diane that helped him find his passion for t...

Norm sits down with the one and only Misty Decker - singer, mother of two, tireless booster of Rhinebeck schools, beer aficionado, COBOL evangelist, and mainframe modernization expert known as "Darth Misty the Mainframe Sith." They kick things off with a cocktail recipe from Cooper's Daughter distillery, then dive into Misty's journey from math major to her current role at Kyndryl, where she consu...

Join Norm in conversation with Joan Berland, a former teacher with over three decades of experience, including at CLS in Rhinebeck. Together with her husband Warren, they discuss Joan's unique teaching methods, her work inspired by the book 'Brain Gym,' and a transformational classroom experience that reached global recognition. Joan also shares stories from her varied teaching career—from Charlot...