Main Street Moxie

Send us Fan Mail It takes a particular kind of moxie to show up every day for someone you love, while watching them decline and diminish, and your life takes on new responsibilities and roles. CB and his wife, Kathy Wismar, were living a full life on their family farm in rural Northwest Connecticut — she painting and throwing ceramics, he writing and producing, both of them deep into a rich second...

Send us Fan Mail Silda’s moxie comes from a lifetime of engagement, a willingness to evolve, creativity, and a deep trust in the power of people to catalyze change when they are seen, supported, and brought together. She has a strategic approach to moxie that is purpose and service-driven. Silda Wall Spitzer has spent her life working at the intersection of civic responsibility, community, and con...

Send us Fan Mail Tracy whips up moxie every time she steps into her kitchen. A Ballymaloe-educated chef, organic farmer, and food educator, she is passionate about mixing those ingredients to create meaningful experiences for people through her new adventure, Undermountain Pantry Cooking School and Microbakery . Tracy is a creative local food systems entrepreneur evolving her work by owning and ma...

Send us Fan Mail What do you get when you combine two moxie-fueled individuals? Moxie synergy that’s off the charts! Mimi Madden and Susan Wheeler are the driving forces behind Good News Girls, a social collective for women over 50 in northwest Connecticut.  The Good News Girls started as a musing in an English pub after a long ramble in the countryside. It has evolved into a dynamic and active or...

Send us Fan Mail Happiness is a moxie job!  To kick off the 4th Moxie season, Mary O’Neill, co-creator and co-host of Main Street Moxie, explores the connection between happiness and moxie.  Happiness is a topic on which Mary is well-versed. She has immersed herself in the topic through the lens of multiple disciplines, and it underpins her work as an educator and life design and career coach.  Fo...

Send us Fan Mail Got holidays? Then you need moxie to get through them. The expectations, the standards, and the idealized version of the season can wear us down. Not anymore! This episode of Main Street Moxie with Sara Cousins is here to help you celebrate the holidays in line with your values and priorities, leaving you saner and less depleted as you enter 2025. Sara shares strategies and techni...

Send us Fan Mail Olivia finds and expresses her moxie through stand-up comedy. In this episode, Olivia explores how she grew her comedy moxie, describes her comedic process, and reflects on the challenges of leaving a highly structured, results-oriented career to dive into the unpredictable world of stand-up comedy. Olivia started her comic explorations by testing the waters at countless open mics...

Send us Fan Mail Elaine’s moxie is exuberant and engaging. Her humor and encouragement make you feel like you got this–you got moxie! Elaine has put in the time and miles to discern who she is and how she wants to show up in the world in each season of her life. That unshakeable belief in herself is the foundation of her energy and zest for a successful life, as she defines it. Elaine is an award-...

Send us Fan Mail We all want peace, but the road toward it can be elusive. Our perceived differences loom large and seem insurmountable. Yet, some individuals like Lisa Worth Huber labor tirelessly to educate people about the self-work required to build peace and understand how the creative arts are a vehicle to express our stories, heal, and begin to bridge with others. This work takes moxie! It’...

Send us Fan Mail Traveling both takes moxie and builds moxie. Just ask the Housatonic Valley Regional High School International Travel Club. Reinvigorated by Club faculty advisor Social Studies teacher John Lizzi, the club has taken students, faculty, staff, and parents to destinations such as the Galapagos, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, and the Mediterranean coast. In this Moxie episode, John and s...

Send us Fan Mail Fifty years ago, a human vs. beast thriller set in a summer beach town was published and devoured by readers. That book was Jaws , a best-selling novel that spawned a blockbuster movie the following year. Between the book and the film, we were all afraid to go back in the water. Peter Benchley, an established journalist and speechwriter, was instantly catapulted to fame as an auth...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Main Street Moxie, Keith Moon shares stories about his longstanding involvement with Special Olympics, an organization with moxie built into its DNA. Keith’s secret moxie sauce is recognizing a need and then finding a way to use his talents and skills to make a difference. He enjoys bringing people and organizations together to accomplish a larger goal. Keith&ap...

Send us Fan Mail Bill Johnson believes moxie is essential for pursuing purpose, which he defines as becoming one's best self in service of at least one thing larger than oneself. This self-knowledge and action directed outward are why we’re here—and why he’s here, too. Known as the “ Dream Dean ,” Bill continues to refine his Life Design Catalyst   program, immersing himself in it to gain dee...

Send us Fan Mail Pieter Lefferts is a visual artist, author, and musician who draws deeply from the natural world for creative inspiration and moxie. Over the years he has sought deeper communion with Nature to find balance and better understand himself and the world around him. In this work, he eschews perfection and instead embraces authenticity and intentionality, wherein perfection unfolds as...

Send us Fan Mail In this Moxie by Proxy episode, we discuss the moxie of the women of Iceland through the camera lens of Pamela Hogan , Emmy award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and media executive. In her latest documentary, The Day Iceland Stood Still , Pamela, and her collaborator, acclaimed Icelandic filmmaker Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, take us back to October 24, 1975, and the months leading...

Send us Fan Mail Craig Peterson’s moxie is a well-conditioned muscle, one of the many that he’s developed as a professional athlete in the Arena Football League (AFL), Indoor Football League (IFL), and the National Arena League (NAL). Craig’s moxie has been built by long hours of doing the work and responding to setbacks with a can-do mindset, mental toughness, consistency, adhering to his routine...

Send us Fan Mail Another moxie-filled year has passed with fascinating guests from all walks of life. In our monthly episodes, our guests joined the ranks of Honorary Agents of Moxie. We hope you found their stories as interesting and inspiring as we did. We are incredibly grateful to you, our listeners, for tuning in to hear the inspiring and honest stories of our guests--people like you who have...

Send us Fan Mail  Pano believes that we earn moxie through putting in the work and paying the price, not instant gratification. As a lover of the outdoors and wild places, he finds opportunities to cultivate moxie and apply the lessons of nature to his life and the lives of those he encounters through his work, teaching, and volunteer commitments. Pano is the director of Emergency Management and E...

Send us Fan Mail Simon Critchley's curiosity is on steroids, and that curiosity, love of learning, and genuine interest in other people fuel his moxie. In this episode, we explore with Simon the role of philosophy in creating moxie. He shares his wisdom on how we have more in common than we think and how forming alliances and relationships based on those commonalities allows us to learn from...

Send us Fan Mail Janine has been flexing her moxie muscle throughout her life. In every phase of her career, she has identified her strengths and pursued roles that would build on them. Her path has been a moxie mix of serendipity and strategy and an openness to embrace the opportunities presented to her. Janine also sees connections between people and the organizations she serves throughout her i...

Send us Fan Mail Chef Faye Hess has the winning recipe for moxie. She mixes love, joy, curiosity, fearlessness, resilience, and gratitude to produce a moxie souffle that won’t collapse. In this episode, Faye explores how she came to her love affair with food and how cooking for herself and others has been a foundation for her happiness and growth. She embraces failure as an opportunity to learn an...

Send us Fan Mail Michael oozes moxie and uses his passion for the stage to help others cultivate their own. He believes educating people of all ages in the theater arts is empowering, cathartic, and fosters empathy—and moxie. He loves drama—on the stage. And he loves the community that surrounds it. He has found his bliss at this intersection of community and theater and derives energy and inspira...

Send us Fan Mail For Kelley, moxie involves seeing the gaps and finding ways to fill them. She strategically uses her considerable skills to create something that adds value and beauty to the world. Then she goes for it, bringing others along to develop collaborations and community. When Kelley moved to the Berkshires over 20 years ago, she decided the area needed a film festival. A huge film fan...

Send us Fan Mail Clem’s moxie starts with his mother’s efforts to keep him alive and safe from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. As a child, Clem witnessed his mother’s fierce bravery and moxie in the face of Nazi atrocities, alongside the kindness of Catholic nuns in the convent where he was hidden for two years. After the war, Clem and his mother immigrated to the United States to start a...

Send us Fan Mail Jenny’s moxie is like a snowball that keeps getting bigger! She adds a bit more moxie with every opportunity and experience she encounters. She has worked to improve the lives of others in ways that use her skills and talents while also getting out of her comfort zone and building her own capacities as well as those of the organizations and communities she serves. Having amassed a...