November 16, 2023: A study in corn and moving feet

The March for the Food Bank 14 begins this coming Monday, Nov 20th. One person who has been on nearly all of those marches is our weekly conduit to Capitol Hill: Rep. Jim McGovern. So this week, we’re talking frankly about hunger, how we combat it, and how that drives him to walk all 43 miles from Springfield to Greenfield to raise not just local, but national awareness to the issue of hunger. Because the facts are that many are going hungry right beneath our noses. One of those populations is students at public colleges and universities. We speak with Grace Cippolone, a current junior at Umass working with Students for Anti-Hunger, and Laura Sylvester, Public Policy Manager for the Food Bank of Western Mass who has been helping the students in their multiple endeavors including the re-opening of the UMass campus food pantry, which was closed at the beginning of the pandemic. They explain the insideous nature of hunger on campus, some solutions they are pursuing including with their swipe program, and some initiatives they’d like to see the school take in order to address the growing problem. And because we all need a little more music and lightness, we chat from afar with Corn Mo, who’ll take the stage at The Divine Theater on Friday, November 17th. A multi-instrumentalist who covers a plethora of genres from Hair metal, to classical, we talk to him about his musical journey, from accordion, to Tragedy, and the musicals he’s made along the way.