The Holden Village Podcast

"For so many people, the heart of this village is the constant flow of guests and volunteer staff that contribute to daily upkeep, fascinating conversations, and holy hilarity. The big question is do we have anything up here without that?" ~ Eleanor Sherry Eleanor is a sophomore in the Holden School. As a culminating project, she interviewed villagers about their experiences over the yea...

"The people that are suffering first and foremost from climate change are predominantly not the ones who are causing it... My colleagues very gently taught me to see climate change as climate colonialism. The high consuming societies and sectors are colonizing the atmosphere with their emissions." Cynthia Moe-Lobeda has lectured or consulted in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Austra...

This podcast is part of a series called Food for Thought. The meal table is a place of gathering, conversation, connection, and nourishment. During the slower months, Food For Thought is a weekly practice at Holden Village promoting dialogue in the dining hall. It is grassroots led and infused by the curiosities and passions of the people present in the Valley, inviting Villagers to engage our sha...

"The goal of each movement is to communicate an impression of some aspect of life in the remote wilderness setting and unique community experience that Holden Village provides." Cooper Sherry wrote the Holden Piano Suite, a series of reflections in seven movements, during a six-month stay at Holden Village from August to February 2020 - 2021. At home, Cooper is a church music director li...

Holden seeks a Trail Crew Coordinator for the upcoming summer! Visit the following link for more information: http://www.holdenvillage.org/volunteer/short-term-volunteers/ Jonah Jensen-Young currently serves as the podcast author and audio archive assistant. He has lived at Holden the past three years. Beyond the audio work, he helps every summer with trail crews and joining Forest Service project...

"I spent a lot of years skiing near Leavenworth and now, in the past decade, in the Methow Valley. Railroad Creek Valley is a blend of those two snowscapes. The climate here is not quite as cold as the Twisp River, but the snowpack is deeper, and tends to be more consistent than Icicle Creek Canyon." - Drew Lovell  Drew Lovell is a ski guide and avalanche forecaster in the North Cascades...

Kathie Caemmerer-Bach, Mark Bach, and Stacy Kitahata serve as Holden Village Executive Directors. Listen to how they first came to know Holden, what sharing the work of directors is like, as well as hearing about this coming summer's theme, "The Samaritan Traveler - Encounter, Embrace, Embark - Luke 10". In their shared leadership vision, Kathie, Mark, and Stacy contemplate a Holden...

"The basic idea and why we argue that its more carbon neutral to get our heat from wood rather than diesel, is the distinction between what's called short-cycle and long-cycle carbon. Wood is considered short-cycle carbon because trees are pulling CO2 out of the air. When you burn wood its functioning on a much shorter timescale in regards to circulating CO2. The time scale on which carb...

Deborah Adams Doering received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her individual works focus on the relationship of keywords Nature and Technology. Glenn N. Doering received his MS in Biology from Loyola University of Chicago. His individual works explore keywords Biology, Body, and Fashion. He creates unique wearable objects. Both Deborah and Glenn are founders and lead arti...

This podcast is part of a series called Food for Thought. The meal table is a place of gathering, conversation, connection, and nourishment. During the slower winter months, Food For Thought is a weekly practice at Holden Village promoting dialogue in the dining hall. It is grassroots led and infused by the curiosities and passions of the people present in the Valley, inviting Villagers to engage...

Content warning: colonialism, violence against Indigenous peoples, and themes of traumaThis podcast is part of a series called Food for Thought. The meal table is a place of gathering, conversation, connection, and nourishment. During the slower winter months, Food For Thought is a weekly practice at Holden Village promoting dialogue in the dining hall. It is grassroots led and infused by the curi...

"Holden is still very much a place apart in part because of the satellite link - the very thin and slow thread to the outside world. Nonetheless, the goal here for computer technology is to facilitate business and give people more time to enjoy the environment, not to make people stare at a device all the time. The pandemic prompted adaptation. Technology is integrated into the Holden way and...

This podcast is part of a series called Food for Thought. The meal table is a place of gathering, conversation, connection, and nourishment. During the slower winter months, Food For Thought is a weekly practice at Holden Village promoting dialogue in the dining hall. It is grassroots led and infused by the curiosities and passions of the people present in the Valley, inviting Villagers to engage...

Amy Tongue worked as head of Lawns and Gardens and is the Naturalist for the coming summer. Steve Tongue is currently Operations Manager. They're from Alpena, Michigan on beautiful Thunder Bay of Lake Huron. They first lived at Holden Village in the early 1990s. The Jesse Tree is an Advent tradition during the days leading up to Christmas. It is meant to be done as a daily family devotional,...

This podcast marks the start of a series called Food for Thought. The meal table is a place of gathering, conversation, connection, and nourishment. During the slower winter months, Food For Thought is a weekly practice at Holden Village promoting dialogue in the dining hall. It is grassroots led and infused by the curiosities and passions of the people present in the Valley, inviting Villagers to...

In the spring of 2015, volunteer fire marshall Jeff Pierce said, "I looked at the Holden leadership and said, we are not going into fire season in a drought year and record temperatures with a 80 percent complete system that's just waiting for a water source...the timing was phenomenal, because we had a functioning system a month before the lightning strike" (that started the Wolver...

"There is something about the written word that makes people feel comfortable putting parts of themselves out there that might not come out in small talk or in a conversation in a normal busy summer. Especially with the Village being a safe and intimate community, as we have all gone through the pandemic together. There has been a sense that you can put things out there and know that they wil...

"We use stories to connect, bridge divides, and build community. Watch and listen to these stories and use them as a lever towards important conversations. Loving one another comes from listening, engagement, and treating every person with respect. This is how we find ways to live better together." A gifted storyteller, Noltner has worked on four continents, gathering stories of human co...

"Whiteness perpetuates itself by denying it's existence. That is one of the biggest hurdles to try and overcome. Continue to name whiteness, even when we're uncomfortable talking about it. Avoid the temptation to spin off into generalizations about society or political agendas and own that part of ourselves." ~ Claire Smith Starting September 2020, Stacy Kitahata (she/her) is C...

"Take care of your spirit because you're in a world where spirits get eaten. It's easy to drown in day to day monotony and hate. When I got off the boat at Lucerne, I could tell Holden was a place I didn't have to worry. Part of that is the view. The beauty gives everyone a bit of a serene feeling." Intricate, graceful, thought provoking and prolific – these are all words...

"These were the best 10 years of my life. I loved living here and never felt isolated. Raising children, it was a relief not having to worry about them. We left in 1956. I'm glad Holden lives on, instead of having been wiped out or becoming a ghost town."  Betty Frye worked as a waitress in the dining hall and lived at Holden, with her family between the years of 1945 and 1956. In t...

"When I'm at the correctional facility, it's hard to know who's the teacher and who's the student. One inmate, convicted of murder at age fifteen, had never been involved in gang activity or violence. One year prior to his crime, he was shot eight times outside his house and a police officer, instead of rushing to his aide was standing over him, as he was bleeding on the g...

"A congregation decided to stop calling the police, saying that is an act of justice on their part. Things go south, if the people you're calling the police on are African American. There's a tendency to be more afraid and to call the police in unwarranted situations, but also a tendency if those situations involve police that they become violent." Jason DeRose is Western Burea...

Remembering Glenn Jordan by the Corrymeela Community https://www.corrymeela.org/news/184/remembering-glenn-jordan "In every situation we find ourselves, particularly at the margins of life, we need to evaluate each time in the light of compassion. Stories help us do that by forcing us to think broader, wider, and differently about situations. Stories establish a principle that compassion trum...

"The biblical passage: what men intend for evil, God uses for good, is exactly what has happened in this situation but, I believe there is a lot more good that can be done. There are a lot of other connections and relationships that need to happen. That will only happen when people who are not used to talking to each other begin to connect to one another." Michael Coffey is the Pastor of...