Rumble Strip

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 Carl wasn’t home. And so I went back the next day and we sat in his truck and talked. Carl’s trailer looks out over the farm he ran for most of his life, then sold. After farming, Carl seemed to make a smooth transition to being a mountain man, which is how he described himself, and the name pretty much fits. He’s private. He only goes to town to get something he needs. His life is close to the ground, to his dogs, and to the outside.

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 down and talked for two hours, and it was that kind of talk where you’re almost gulping each other down. And he became one of the funnest, and maybe one of the most important friends of my life. Greg Sharrow died two days ago at his home in North Carolina, with Bob and their dear friend Brian at his bedside. This is a story about Greg, and his husband Bob, and Greg’s mother, Marjory. Marjory had dementia in the years before her death. This is a show about what remained for them, after the forgetting. Welcome.

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 did? For months, Susan worked closely with the woman who committed these murders, creating a profile of her life, her history, and her family. It’s a story of almost unimaginable, multi-generational abuse…abuse which started two generations before her birth. In the end, the perpetrator received a sentence of life without parole. I’m not going to name her here because it’s a very sensitive case in Vermont, and this story is not about her. It’s about what it’s like to work closely on cases like these as a private investigator, and what happens after the cases are closed.

Son Lux is a band that doesn’t live comfortably in any genre. Their sound is massive, anthemic, but it’s also strangely intimate. The rhythms are incredibly complex, and it’s shot through with bright details of sound. The project started in Ryan Lott’s brain in Cleveland, and then it grew by two–guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. They’re all composers and producers and improvisers. I think it’s fair to say they’re all wicked smart. I interviewed Ryan Lott just two days before he went out on tour for their new album, Brighter Wounds. We had a really interesting conversation about where music comes from, and how he makes it. Or where he finds it…

The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is mostly small towns separated by miles and miles. Sometimes it’s featured in trout fishing magazines. It also has some of the highest unemployment and lowest wages in the state. Its beautiful place. And it’s a hard place to live. I was up at the St. Johnsbury Academy a couple weeks ago, which is one of the gateways to the Kingdom. My sister and brother in law both work there. And I’ve always been curious about the career and technical classes at the school. They have the most incredible CTE facilities I’ve ever seen (pictures below), and what makes them really special is they’re all on campus. In a lot of places, ‘tech kids’ are bused off to other campuses…which, when you’re in high school, can’t help but send the message that kids in English class don’t need to know what those tech kids are doing, and the tech kids don’t need to bother much with English classes. But at the Academy, it’s all in one place, and 80% of the general school population takes CTE classes at least once in their high school careers. After spending some time with students and teachers, I had that rare experience when you know you’re seeing something important…something that’s so obvious and right, that it’s almost hiding in plain sight. If you listen to Rumble Strip, you know that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about problems. Big, complicated problems. So when I watched 19 kids in hard hats rewiring a building on their own school campus, I didn’t think, ‘well isn’t that nice?’ Instead, I felt like I was looking way upstream of all the problems, and seeing a solution. Not the only solution. Just…a solution. One solution. This show is a kind of valentine to all the people learning to work in the world and learning to make things. And the people who are helping them to get there….

Beth is from Orange, Vermont. She’s 38, she’s got four jobs, and like a lot of Vermonters, in fact a lot of Americans, she’s not making enough money. There's not enough money for food, and there's certainly not enough for her own place. How can a person have four jobs and not enough money? And what does it actually feel like to never have enough? This is a segment produced for a Vermont Public Radio podcast called Brave Little State, an awesome monthly podcast where you ask the questions, you decide what VPR investigates, and then you work with us to find the answers. To hear the full show that includes this segment, go here: http://digital.vpr.net/post/vermont-hustle-what-its-work-3-jobs Music for this show is from Brian Clark and Mike Donofrio.

There’s been a huge spike in the number of people with mental health crises visiting emergency rooms. People who are suicidal, homicidal, psychotic. But ER nurses are not trained to treat mental illnesses and the departments are not designed to comfort, to calm or to keep people safe from themselves or others. And though most people suffering from a mental health crisis are not dangerous or disruptive, some are. Nurses are being punched, bitten, spat at. Medical patients are being treated in the hallways because there isn’t enough room to accomodate them. And mental health patients are spending days, and sometimes weeks or months in emergency rooms, without treatment…waiting for placement at inpatient care facilities. Here’s an up-close look inside the mental healthcare crisis in our emergency rooms.

My friend Tim Kasten died two weeks ago. Ever since I met Tim, he's been preparing for his own death. Partly because he had significant medical issues. But I think mostly he was preparing for his death because he wanted to. Thinking about the impermanence of life gave his life meaning. He was one of the most spiritually curious people I've ever met. In this show, we hear from Tim, on death and dying. And we also chronicle the building of his casket...or his simple pine box, built by family and friends. Vermont style. This show is sponsored by The Alchemist Brewery in Stowe and Waterbury, Vermont. Some of the world's best beer. You can click on the logo to check out this stellar brewery, and please crack one for me. You won't be sorry.

The first time I learned of Amelia Meath was in an email exchange. She’d written me a nice note about Rumble Strip and at the end she wrote--in rather an understated way--'P.S. I’m in a band. It's called Sylvan Esso.' And because I'm old, I'd never heard of Sylvan Esso. So I looked her up online and I spent the rest of that night listening to every version of every Sylvan Esso song I could find, really loud and over and over. If there had been an album cover, I would have been clutching it to my breast. Ever since their first single in 2013, Sylvan Esso has gotten famous pretty fast, and they tour all over he world. Last month they played in Burlington, and I spent a rainy day talking with Amelia and Nick in their tour bus before the show. We talked about their music, touring, and the complexities of success. And there's a lot of music in the show. It's like a musical.

I’ve been reading the news too much. I read every version of the same story in every news outlet, and sometimes I forget I’ve read them and I read them again. I think a lot of people are feeling concerned and even scared. But I thought it would be good to remember some of the important things that are not the news. I asked Scott Carrier to tell me about a place in the wilderness, in a high meadow, far, far away from the news. It's a musical.

It’s been some time since we’ve heard reports from the police about criminal activity here in Vermont. And I’m sorry to say that so far this summer, it’s been…busy. There’s pretzel-related violence and lawnmower theft. And more trouble at Dunkin’ Donuts. Here’s your summer report from Vermont police, reported by Scott Carrier, producer of Home of the Brave.

Summer is coming to a close here in central Vermont. It's been awhile since we've heard from the local police logs. This summer there were some problems with odors. A machete also was seen. Here's Scott Carrier reading a sampling from the last couple months' reports to the Times Argus and the Stowe Reporter. Music by Hayvanlar Alemi. The song is titled Crossroad Metamorphosis