Correct me if I'm Norm

Norm welcomes Sue Sie, a longtime Rhinecliff resident who arrived via an ex-husband, a Bard professor's house, and a lot of determination. She stayed; he did not. That was 1989, and she has been one of the most quietly essential figures in the local environmental landscape ever since. Sue is an architect by training. She designed Gigi Trattoria, Terrapin, and Gabby's, among others, but has not practiced in about 20 years. These days she channels her energy into Dirty Gaia (dirtygaia.org), the environmental education nonprofit she founded to reconnect people with the natural world. The conversation covers the organization's seed library at Morton Library, this summer's Farm and Garden Ramble expanding into Red Hook, the upcoming Threshfest, and her ongoing work with Pollinate HV to promote native plants and protect at-risk pollinators. They also get into: how to save tomato seeds (ferment, rinse, dry), the Berkeley Hot Composting method, the bokashi fermentation technique for composting meat and cheese, the appalling self-regulatory framework for pesticide testing, and why the American lawn is an ecological wasteland. Sue is also a diver, certified in murky New Jersey Atlantic waters and polished in Bonaire, and a devoted cook who dreams in dishes and makes a mean Swiss chard with chickpeas and fennel. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Richard Marr, a Rhinebeck-based artist and Merrill Lynch financial advisor whose two careers have more in common than you might think. Richard's paintings are spare, reverent studies of water and light that grew out of his deep engagement with environmental issues, which also drives his investment work and his membership in the Citizens' Climate Lobby, where he helps lobby Congress for climate solutions each year in Washington. They chat about the OVO Gallery he and his wife Carol ran in South Orange; how a visit to Dia Beacon set them on the path to Rhinebeck; kayaking the Hudson with a sail attached; the ESG investing movement and why Republicans helped kill the acronym; his Antioch College work-study years and the greaser friends he grew up clamming with in Bellport, Long Island; a deep dive into Tai Chi and the influence of John Cage and Alan Watts; and his current show Near and Far at Type Gallery in Millbrook. Richard also previews a new performance piece built around interviews about the Hudson River, with proceeds going to Riverkeeper. Throughout, he returns to a single conviction: that art, like a long-term investment, is not finished until someone else receives it. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm is joined by Dr. Greg Tumolo of Rhinebeck Animal Hospital, a born-and-raised Rhinebecker who followed his father into veterinary medicine and never really left, except for 15 years in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he went to vet school, skied as much as possible, and eventually realized he wanted to come home. The cover the practical to the philosophical: how Dr. Tumolo thinks about euthanasia as a gift rather than a burden; why he got certified in animal acupuncture; the corporate consolidation sweeping through the veterinary industry; his 25-foot sailboat Blue Mae (named for his daughters' middle names) at Norrie Point; and a famous patient: Rockefeller the owl, plucked from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and brought to Rhinebeck Animal Hospital for X-rays. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits with Dana Polan, the Martin Scorsese Professor and Chair of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch. The chat ranges across a lifetime of thinking seriously about American film. Dana grew up in New York and Westchester, did his doctorate in France, and was later knighted by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts. He explains how cinema studies emerged from English departments in the 70s, why USC made its production students take film history (and why they usually came back grateful), and how a young teaching assistant named Martin Scorsese could remember individual shots from films he'd seen years earlier. Dana explains the difference between a movie and a film, with Spielberg's own quote about Close Encounters as a starting point. Dana lays out the case for Scorsese as artist and Lucas as entertainer, the 80s backlash of hard-bodied masculinity in Die Hard and Rambo, the femme fatale in Double Indemnity and The Killers, and the way recent films like Barbie and Everything Everywhere All At Once try to have it every way at once. He makes the case for The Florida Project and the first Die Hard, pushes back gently on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as accidental pedagogy, and explains why Strangers on a Train was the film that made him realize movies were made on purpose, shot by shot. Dana is currently co-writing Hoboken to Hollywood: The American Places of Frank Sinatra with Chuck Granata for Reaktion Books' Reverb series, and he shares stories from his Sinatra odysseys, including a tour of the Twin Palms bachelor pad in Palm Springs and a sobering evening in Las Vegas watching Sinatra's grandson perform in a no-gambling lounge. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Tate and Ola Rubinstein, the husband-and-wife team behind Quail Hollow Events and the 45th annual Woodstock-New Paltz Art and Crafts Fair, returning to the Ulster County Fairgrounds Memorial Day weekend, Tate grew up at the shows his father Neil and uncle Scott founded in 1982, and Ola, an art historian by training, took over day-to-day direction after the couple moved back from New Mexico in 2017. They talk about the road back to the Hudson Valley, life in Placitas under the Sandia Mountains, raising two daughters who are serious gymnasts, and the meditative pull of tennis (with a few words about Jim Morrison's on-court personality for good measure). Norm gets to what it actually takes to put on a fair this size: 220 juried exhibitors, a 30-person staff drawn largely from SUNY New Paltz, the puzzle of laying out the grounds without putting two jewelers next to each other, and the diligence required to make sure every maker is really making their own work. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm welcomes singer-songwriter Terence Boylan, who lives just down the road in Rhinebeck. Boona shows up with homemade margaritas and a lifetime of stories. He talks about the night he and his buddy stole a 1961 Corvette and drove from Buffalo to Greenwich Village at 15 to find Bob Dylan, and ended up lighting Dylan's cigarette outside the Gaslight. The next afternoon they were swapping songs at Izzy Young's Folklore Center. He played the New Folks Concert at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival on the same bill as Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Ian and Sylvia, hugged Joan Baez through her stage fright, and loaned Dylan his harmonica. He talks about getting signed to MGM at 17 by walking into the A and R office unannounced with his guitar, recording his first album Alias Boona with Bard classmates Donald Fagen and Walter Becker before they were Steely Dan, and the comedy and music album Playback under the name Appletree Theatre that John Lennon named one of his favorite records of the year. There are stories about his older brother John, who put together the band that backed Linda Ronstadt and went on to become the Eagles, and was just inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame. There are stories from Albert Grossman's kitchen with George Harrison and Paul Butterfield, hanging out at Adolph's near Bard with Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth, a David Geffen contract with more zeros than he had ever seen, and the chance turn that landed him in the house on River Road. Plus some songwriting advice from the muse, a new EP in progress, an invitation to tour Japan, and three Boylan songs: Who Do I Think I Am, Tell Me, and County Fair. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with longtime New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly for a conversation about her more than four decades in cartooning. Liza talks about tracing James Thurber cartoons as a kid in Watergate-era Washington, the two years she spent submitting to The New Yorker before Lee Lorenz bought her first drawing in 1979, and her parallel life as a digital live-drawing journalist for CBS News, CNN, and The New Yorker, covering everything from the Oscar red carpet to the second E. Jean Carroll trial. She also gets into Cartooning for Peace, her research for Funny Ladies and Very Funny Ladies, and her new documentary Women Laughing, co-directed with Kathleen Hughes. For upcoming screenings check https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/screenings Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits with Elliott Malkin, a parrot lover, artist (Graffiti for Butterflies), writer, podcaster, comb-over aficionado, and father who has taught cool shit at Bard, NYU, and Columbia and done cool shit for Google and so many others. Elliott takes Norm from a Chicago suburb bordering the famously targeted town of Skokie to a Brooklyn-to-Rhinebeck COVID migration that, like a lot in his life, he came to understand only later as part of a much bigger wave. They get into Lose Your Religion in Five Easy Steps, his genealogical art project tracing his family's path from a Hasidic ancestor to unaffiliated descendant, his stints at the New York Times and Google designing the productivity software you stare at all day, and what it was like to walk away from corporate tech this fall after nine years. Elliott also opens up about being diagnosed with autism at fifty, the relief of finally getting dialed down from eleven to eight, and raising kids in a neurodivergence-friendly household. Figuring out what's next, he's volunteering with Rhinebeck's College Connect, writing short stories nobody has read yet, and quietly working out what an artist becomes when he's not making art anymore. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm chats with David Scheer, a long-time pro in healthcare and employer health plan implementation and management, an analytical mastermind and conversational gem. As a senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson, David spends his days helping enormous employers untangle the financial and strategic mess of providing health benefits to tens of thousands of workers, and he makes the whole thing genuinely fun to listen to. He and Norm get into why healthcare costs are climbing faster than they have in twenty years, what the Affordable Care Act really did, why the lapse of expanded subsidies is about to hit everyone in the wallet, and the curious tale of how his firm quietly bought naming rights to the Sears Tower. Off the clock, David talks scuba diving, his ever-growing Brooklyn wine fridge, the perfect fish taco, and life as kid brother to RFR's own producer extraordinaire Jen Hammoud. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

his week's guests are husband and wife: one helps youth who are just starting in life and the other helps those who are further along life's path. One is boss of his own company and the other is boss of Rhinebeck Rotary. Norm welcomes Erika and Mark Murphy. Mark is the founder of Grip Tape (griptape.org), a nonprofit that helps teenagers find purpose and agency by handing them the keys. No application, no gatekeeper, no adult telling them what to learn. Just a 10-week challenge, a small pot of funding, and a champion who believes in them. He explains how a former Delaware Secretary of Education ended up rebuilding learning from scratch with 10 teenagers in 2015, and what happens when a 16-year-old in Montrose, Colorado decides to 3D print his own fly fishing reel. Nearly 5,000 young people across all 50 states later, the model just launched in India. Erika is a 25-year veteran teacher and school administrator turned in-home caregiver and end-of-life doula, currently certifying through INELDA. She tells the story of her Aunt Joan, the Manhattan delivered to the nursing home, and why she calls holding someone's hand as they pass the most intimate moment of her life. She also runs the Rhinebeck Rotary Club, where she got drafted by Gary Bassett over a coat drive. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]