Rumble Strip

I spent the night before deer season at Jim Welch’s deer camp in Chelsea, Vermont. His camp is an old school bus, outfitted with a woodstove and a couple pallets in the back for sleeping. To get to it you have to drive through Mr. Bradshaw’s barnyard and then about a half mile across a field. The bus has been there for as long as Jim can remember and Mr. Bradshaw lets him use it. So a bunch of Jim...

A lot of you who listen to the show regularly already know Susan Randall. She’s a private investigator and an old friend and I interview her now and then for the show. A couple months ago Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s important to say right off that I think Susan’s going to be fine. The cancer hasn’t spread. She doesn’t need chemotherapy, and she’s almost done with her radiation the...

I spent a day riding around with game warden, Jeff Whipple, on the second weekend of deer season…just when some hunters are getting frustrated they haven’t got their deer yet. Exciting things happened. Game wardens are like nature’s cops. They’re trained in law enforcement, but they’re also conservationists. Their job is to look after the wilderness areas and forests that make up 75 percent of Ver...

What most people outside Vermont know about Christine Hallquist is that she was the country’s first transgender gubernatorial candidate. But it’s not what she ran on–and it’s not even what was most interesting about her campaign. The day before election day, Christine and her team had just finished a fourteen-county Road to Victory Tour ,  which involved going to places like Lunenburg, Vermont, po...

Welcome to another episode of Problems–a series about Pam and Joel, two old friends who support each other through their problems. Because no problem is too small to complain about. This is a special episode, featuring special celebrity guest, Steve McFadden. McFadden is an acclaimed performance artist from Chicago, and old friend of Pam’s. His work is extreme, and always dangerous. Pam was conduc...

Sarah Holland had no history of mental illness. She was a full-time R.N., she had three kids and a small farm. She was busy. Then suddenly she started to experience symptoms of depression. She didn’t have a name for it. No one in her world had ever talked about mental health. But pretty soon Sarah was having a hard time working, and parenting. This is a story of one woman’s struggle with major dep...

How should people live long-term in our state if they have a serious mental illness? The hope is that they’ll find ways to integrate into their communities with support, but that’s proven tough to accomplish. In this show we look at the challenges in our community mental health care system. Featuring: Ken Libertoff, former director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health Anne Donahue, state r...

Both Alexis and Steve were diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is the story about how meaningful, paid work plays a role in their recovery. Featuring: Paul Miller, co-coordinator of the Green Mountain Workforce, Washington County Mental Health Louis Josephson, president and CEO of Brattleboro Retreat Alexis Kyriak , artist Steve, culinary worker This show is part of a seven-part series I produced f...

Leslie Nelson has heard voices for as long as she can remember. She sees things other people don’t see. This is a conversation about what it’s like to be normal, from Leslie’s point of view, and the incredible power of finding people like herself to talk with about their normal lives with mental illness. Featuring: Leslie Nelson, START Team Leader, Howard Center This show is part of a seven-part s...

Connie’s son was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was nineteen, just as he was becoming independent. He didn’t believe there was anything wrong with him. He did not want to seek treatment. And since he was legally an adult, his parents stood by and watched his life fall apart. Ron’s story was much the same. One in 100 adults is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and for most, the onset is around th...

There are Vermonters who experience psychiatric crises for years — and repeated visits to emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals. Where do they go when they leave the hospital? And why do they keep coming back? This is a story about the role housing plays in mental health. Featuring: Ken Libertoff, former director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health Louis Josephson, president and CEO o...

A story about Vermont’s only permanent, supervised housing for people with serious mental illness. Featuring: Anne Donohue, state representative from Northfield and Berlin, editor of Counterpoint Graham Parker, MyPad director Connie Stabler, mother and Howard Center board member This show is part of a seven-part series I produced for Vermont Public Radio called They Are Us, which features personal...

We didn’t have cheerleading at my school. Or pep rallies. I think we would’ve made fun of cheering and cheerleaders at my school. Because we were scared and cruel and had no idea what we were missing. My son just started high school and I snuck into the gym for his first pep rally. I almost wept. Seeing all those kids—the freshmen and the seniors and the football players and the shy kids—kids at a...

Steve Grody has dedicated his life to his passions. He’s an accomplished swing dance teacher. He’s a self defense instructor. And in the last twenty-eight years, he’s taken tens of thousands of photographs of graffiti in his hometown of Los Angeles. This is a conversation about the decades he’s spent wandering alleyways, climbing under bridges and through tunnels,  documenting this ephemeral art....

This is a show about women running for office. It’s not about issues or policies. You won’t learn where these women stand on public education or healthcare. It’s just about being a woman…running for office. The truth is I’m tired of hearing about women running for office. I think there’s a liberal assumption that I already understand why that’s a good thing. But we’re not really supposed to talk e...

Daphne Kalmar was a school teacher for over twenty years. She taught in California, Massachusetts and then in a small school in Vermont. She was one of those teachers. One of the exciting and inspiring ones you never forget…one of the teachers who sees every kid. Daphne is now a children’s book author and she’s just published her first book, A Stitch in Time . We sat in her kitchen by an open wind...

I picked Amelia up at The Shelburne Museum the other day. It was a few hours before her soundcheck so she had some time to kill and we took a slow drive down by the lake. She drove. She’s a good driver. Amelia is one half of the band Sylvan Esso. Nick Sanborn is the other half. I’m not great at music genres but I’ve heard their music described as ‘electro-pop’, as ‘glitchy metropolitan folk’ ( wha...

Thomas Caswell has autism. Which doesn’t tell you very much about him. Autism doesn’t describe a person. If you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve met one person…with autism. But over the last couple years Thomas has been coming out of the closet, in stages. And along with the common difficulties of coming out, there are some special difficulties if you’re a person with a disability. In th...

It’s time again for another conversation with my neighbor Leland. He’s fourteen now. He just finished eighth grade. He’s got big plans for the summer. This is the fourth year I’ve interviewed Leland about what he’s doing and what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind is always pretty interesting. This year he took me out to his fort, in a pine forest about a half mile from his house. It’s a tarp h...

Welcome to the second episode of Problems, an occasional mini-series of  Rumble Strip. Problems. Because no problem is too small to complain about. Problems stars Pam and Joel, old friends who support each other through their problems. We left off with Joel, who was in the midst of a pretty inconvenient bathroom renovation in his house, and Pam, who’s been dealing with some issues with her daughte...

It’s almost summer here in central Vermont, and as it gets hotter, it seems to get more dangerous. Law enforcement is working hard behind the scenes to keep people safe. Also to keep cows safe. Here’s the police log, read by Scott Carrier.

Depending on who you talk to, The Shaggs were either one of the best bands from the ’60s, or one of the worst bands of all time. Helen, Betty and Dot Wiggin grew up in Fremont, New Hampshire. They had no interest in music, no natural talent for music, and in the late ’60s, their father forced them to drop out of school and start a rock band. In their living room. And then he forced them to record...

Directions to Carl Blaisdell’s house: Go about seven miles down this road. Then there’s a road that kind of goes up to a Jersey farm on the left and then there’s a pond. But there’s no sign to the pond. So after the pond, drive past the pull-off and Carl’s trailer sits way up in a field at the top of that hill. There’s a lot of pipes. And a lot of cars and trucks. And lots and lots of hounds. But...

This is a show I made back in 2008. I’m running it as a tribute to my friend Greg Sharrow. Greg was one of the first people I met when I came back to Vermont in 2003. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t have a job or really any plans, and it was the middle of winter. And then I met Greg at his office in the old Vermont Folklife Center building in Middelbury. It was crammed with books, and we sat...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. –Rumi This winter Susan Randall worked with the defense on a sentencing case for a high profile multiple-murder here in Vermont. A sentencing is the time for considering the pain caused by a crime. It’s also a time to ask, How did we get here? What happened in the life of this person that led her to do what she di...