Rumble Strip

Welcome to The Mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard . In time for the holidays, we bring you a commentary about Buy Nothing Day, an annual day of protest against buying stuff. Jessamyn West is a writer, blogger, librarian, and knower of many things technological and digital. She lives in Randolph, Vermont, and here she is standing on a bed. [soundcloud url=”h...

I don’t know what you’d call this. A commentary? A riff? An agricultural lament? This is how Alan LePage started his show a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share it with you all. Alan LePage is a legend around here in central Vermont. He’s a fourth generation Vermont farmer, mentor to many up and coming market gardeners, and he’s the host of one of WGDR’s most popular shows, The Curse of the Golden...

This is a story produced by my friend Larry Massett. A few years ago Larry took a trip with public radio personality Andre Codrescu. Andre grew up in Romania in times of hardship. After twenty years as an American citizen, he feels he’s lost the local taste of the land where he spent his youth. Larry Massett records the story of a man now in the role of “tourist” in his radically changed native la...

From the Saviour’s conception to offerings of gold, Frankenstein and myrrh, six year old Erin Magill of Moretown, Vermont tells her version of the Christmas story, with help from her creche figures. I made this story some years ago. NOW Erin Magill is a COMPOSER, and you can hear her work HERE . Go Erin!!!

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/179849504″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] This is a show about a game my son loves that I don’t understand. At all. It’s called Magic: The Gathering, and it’s a card game that’s sort of a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and chess. It involves spells and enchantments a...

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/176331320″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] When my son was four I joined a temporary rock band. It was humiliating and terrible and I was middle aged and didn’t know what to do with my arms. I wanted to quit. This is a commentary about why I didn’t quit, and why it’s impo...

This is an unedited interview I did with a young man in Barre, Vermont in 2011. He gave me permission to use this tape, but I’ve chosen not to use his name in order to protect his privacy. I’ll call him ‘O’. I had interviewed O once before, when he was on furlough and living in Barre. About a year after that first interview I interviewed him again. I was curious about how he was doing after having...

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/175689933″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] Welcome to the Mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard . Israel has been a substantial recipient of US foreign aid since the state’s inception. According to Mark Hage, Israel is also the recipi...

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173664668″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] Jamie Cope’s house is filled with pictures of people…pictures so beautiful you practically want to lick them. Or at least I do. They are all black and white, and all printed with exquisite attention to light and shadow. There is...

Town is a sound exhibit that I produced for the Kent Museum in Calais, Vermont. It weaves together personal stories and memories about growing up in Calais, and natural sounds recorded around town. There’s no start or finish to these stories. It’s meant to be a kind of sonic wallpaper. In this audio, you hear reference to the former owner of the Kent Museum building, Louise Andrews Kent, and you h...

This is a raw recording of my son teaching me how to play a card game called Magic. Does anyone know what he’s talking about? Please advise. And featuring a picture of a cruel pinata in Hancock, Vermont, crafted by my friend Stacey at The Dooryard. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/167881968″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”2...

Rodney and Theresa Elmer are a taxidermy power duo in Northfield, Vermont. In this interview, they talk about the art and psychology of mounting animals, and why they hunt. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/167267083″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] Credits: Photos by Josh Larkin . Music for this show fro...

The farther you go from home, the stranger things get. Here is a story by Larry Massett about the life and work of Paul Bowles. This program originally aired on Hearing Voices , home to some of the best radio anywhere….

Jessamyn West studies and writes about the digital divide and she solves technology problems for a living. This summer she found herself unemployed, and forced to use some of the same state agency websites she’d been helping others to use–namely, Vermont Health Connect, and the Department of Labor. The results were not pretty. Here’s a commentary about it. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.c...

For generations of Vermonters, Thursday nights in the summer have meant one thing….Thunder Road. This quarter mile short track opened in 1960 and it’s home to some of the most passionate drivers and fans you’re likely to find anywhere. In these shows and outtakes, you’ll hear from some of the drivers and from Thunder Road co-owners and ring leaders, Ken Squier and Tom Curley. There are thrills and...

Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary series from Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard . A late night shopping cart reminds Marc Estrin of a song from Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey). Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist and political activist who lives in Burlington, Vermont. Marc Estrin’s Novels The Prison Notebooks of Alan Krieger (Terrorist) When the Gods Come Home to Ro...

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/158099219″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /] Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary series from Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard . This is A Man of Wealth and Taste , a commentary in response to Dick Cheney’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal on June 17, 2014....

Welcome to The Mud Room, a joint commentary project of Rumble Strip Vermont and The Dooryard . In this first commentary we bring you Walt Amses, a writer and former educator in North Calais, Vermont. The essay is called The 17 Dollar Tomato , and it welcomes us to the special tyranny of gardening season in Vermont. Send us  your tired and poor We want to hear your stories of gardens past and prese...

For generations of Vermonters, Thursday nights in the summer have meant one thing….Thunder Road. This quarter mile short track opened in 1960 and it’s home to some of the most passionate drivers and fans you’re likely to find anywhere. In this show, owner Tom Curley talks about the culminating race of the season, the Milk Bowl.

Everyone’s heard about Burning Man, the counter-cultural festival held every summer in Black Rock City Nevada. Sex, drugs, monumental installations….you know all about it. But you may not know about Boring Man, the counter-counter-cultural festival that’s sort of a mirror image of Burning Man. Here’s Larry Massett with a report from last year’s Boring Man.

I went to a friend’s house the other night and she led me into her den where her best wood stove was and she sighed and said, ‘And this is where I live.’ It’s been a long winter and a lot of us have spent the better part of four months huddled around our stoves. I walked around Calais and asked people to talk about their firebuilding methods, their stoves, and their moods.

A dry wall is built with no mortar. The stones are carefully selected and they interlock and gravity holds them in place. The Great Wall of China was built this way. Scott Carrier’s wall was built this way too. Here is his story.

For the last year I’ve been conducting interviews about death and dying for The Wake Up to Dying Project –a project that encourages people to think, and talk about death and dying.  The goal is to help people be a little more prepared, both practically and emotionally, for our own deaths, and the deaths of loved ones.  Today’s show features segments from an interview with Tim Kasten of Middlesex,...

Here is one final deer story, recorded this year after youth hunting weekend. Jack Fannon, 12, went out hunting on his parents’ land in Calais, with friend, mentor, and hunter safety instructor Bob Raskevitz. Here’s what happened….

Alan LePage has been an organic vegetable gardener in central Vermont for over thirty years–long before anyone cared much about organic farming–long, long before words like ‘sustainable’, ‘local’, ‘artisinal’ started being used, ad nauseam. His family has farmed the same piece of land since the civil war. Alan is also an expert mushroom forager, mentor, activist and philosopher. He has a voracious...