Alphie McCourt

Thomas J Rice

Thomas Rice tells us about FAR FROM THE LAND: AN IRISH MEMOIR. He left his beautiful but hardscrabble family farm to emigrate to America in 1959. Also, we hear excerpts from a 2008 interview with Alphie McCourt about his memoir, A LONG STONE’S THROW.

Americans like to honor Saint Patrick’s Day by downing green beer and watching the colleens high step Irish jigs on the parade floats passing by. But it’s a good time to remember that it wasn’t all sweetness and light back in the old country. There was a reason why so many of Ireland’s young men and women had to leave their verdant homeland and make their way to the gritty streets of America. The brutal British rule over Ireland impoverished their families and their nation, forcing the families apart in a quest for survival.

Thomas Rice was one of those young men. He grew up in a remote farming community, Ballinvalley, Ireland, near the foothills of Mt. Leinster. He left his family farm at the age of 16, coming to the U.S. Rice eventually made the transition from barely educated Irish farm boy to professor of sociology. But, as with all emigrants, the bittersweet memories of his youth continued to percolate through his mind for the next fifty years. Now he’s come out with his memoir of his Irish youth, FAR FROM THE LAND.

Correction: The “video montage” mentioned in the audio is not of Thomas Rice’s homestead in Ireland.

Alphie McCourt isn’t as famous a writer as his two older brothers, Malachi and the late Frank McCourt. In fact, until he wrote his 2008 memoir, A LONG STONE’S THROW, he wasn’t a writer at all. He was a restauranteur and then a building manager in New York City. But he’s got the same talent for memoir as his more celebrated siblings. In A LONG STONE’S THROW, he writes about growing up in Limerick, Ireland and, after emigrating, his life here in the U.S. I visited him in his apartment in New York in 2008, where I recorded an interview we aired that year.

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Peter Vickery

Mason Tvert

Marijuana policy activist Mason Tvert talks with host Francesca Rheannon about the book he co-wrote, MARIJUANA IS SAFER: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? It says marijuana should be treated legally no different than alcohol. And Peter Vickery tells us about his historical thriller, MADISON HOPPER AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD. It’s the first in a mystery series about the struggle for civil rights in the early years of the 20th century.

Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

About 50% of Americans report using marijuana at least once — and the true figure is probably higher. When President Obama asked Americans to go on his Open Government Initiative web page to tell him what problems they thought he should address, legalizing marijuana was one of the top items on the list.

Mason Tvert is a warrior in the trenches of the marijuana legalization movement. In his new book, he says the war on pot is driving people to a much more dangerous drug — alcohol. Tvert says marijuana is not only safer than alcohol, it has real medical benefits. He asks the question: Why do we punish adults who make the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol? And he says legalizing pot would help cash-strapped state budgets.

Tvert is cofounder and executive director of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) and the SAFER Voter Education Fund. His book, co-written with Steve Fox and Paul Armentano, is MARIJUANA IS SAFER: SO WHY ARE WE DRIVING PEOPLE TO DRINK?

[sniplet amazon search]

Peter Vickery

Peter Vickery is better known as a politician than a writer: He was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council in 2004. He served a term as a progressive voice on the council. Politics is one love of Vickery’s; the law is another — he’s an attorney — and writing is a third. Putting the last two interests together, he’s taught legal writing at the University of Connecticut. But lately he’s turned his pen to another kind of writing: historical thrillers that bring together all his interests. He’s completed one of a series about the struggle for civil rights in the early years of the 20th century. It’s called MADISON HOPPER AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN BLOOD BROTHERHOOD.

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SJ Parris

Mark Lamster

Mark Lamster talks with host Francesca Rheannon about the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens’ career as an unofficial diplomat for the Spanish Crown. And mystery writer S.J. Parris tells us about Renaissance scientist Giordano Bruno’s visit to Oxford in 1583. She spins a murder mystery around the visit and around Bruno’s mission as a spy for the English Crown.

Mark Lamster

In his time, Peter Paul Rubens was the most sought after painter for the major and minor royalty of Europe. He was a shrewd businessman who levered his career as an artist into fabulous wealth. But he also had a hidden career as a secret diplomat for the Spanish Crown. His home town was Antwerp in Flanders. Along with Holland, it was part of the Low Countries, which at that time were colonies of Spain. And while Flanders was a docile colony, Holland was in the throes of a revolt against colonial rule. When the Dutch blockaded Antwerp, they choked off the vital artery of commerce that fed Flanders’ prosperity.

Rubens wanted peace and spent years trying to broker a peace deal for Spain with the European powers. He didn’t live to see it come to fruition, but the story of his efforts affords a fascinating window into the history of his time and the character of Rubens: a charismatic, pragmatic, artistic genius. Mark Lamster has written that story in a new book, MASTER OF SHADOWS: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Peter Paul Rubens.

Lamster writes on arts and culture for Design Observer and the Los Angeles Times, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He’s also the author of SPALDING’S WORLD TOUR.

Web Extra: Mark Lamster reads an excerpt from MASTER OF SHADOWS.

S.J. Parris

In the previous segment, we traveled to the 17th century to talk about Peter Paul Rubens. Now we go a little further back in time with another story about an historical figure who also had a hidden career: Giordano Bruno. Sixteenth century Europe was a battleground between old ways of thought and new, between the narrow dogmas of the medieval period and the birth of science in the Renaissance. The great Renaissance thinker Giordano Bruno was an emblematic figure of that conflict, as well as one of its victims.

After being excommunicated by the Church for reading banned books, he wandered Europe teaching philosophy, mathematics, dabbling in magic, developing a philosophy of universal love, and writing a best seller how-to book on memory tricks. He also was a pioneer in astronomy, perhaps the first European to understand that the universe was infinite. He was ultimately burned at the stake for his heretical, free thinking views.

[sniplet amazon bookstore widget]

In 1583 Bruno landed in England, where Queen Elizabeth ruled over a Protestant land roiled by Catholic plots to bring England back into the Papal fold. There’s some indication that he worked as a spy for the Queen, reporting back on Catholic subversion. But he also went to Oxford in the hopes of getting a teaching job at the university. S.J. Parris has written a murder mystery built around Bruno’s visit to Oxford, HERESY.

S.J. Parris is also the author (under her real name, Stephanie Merritt), of the memoir, THE DEVIL WITHIN and the novels REAL and GAVESTON.

Richard Wilbur

In a subplot of HERESY, Giordano Bruno searches for the “lost volume” of the works of the mythical ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. He was said to have written 50,000 books, and to have been both a god and a mortal. We hear poet Richard Wilbur reading his poem about Trismegistus, recorded when we visited him at his home in Cummington, MA.

Read Wilbur’s poem, Hermes Trismegistus.

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Kim John Payne

Rafe Esquith

Celebrated elementary school teacher Rafe Esquith talks about his book, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up World. And we talk with educator and therapist Kim John Payne about Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids.

Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up World

At a time when charter schools are taking over public schools, and public schools in poor communities sink ever deeper into crisis, there’s at least one classroom in one school in central Los Angeles that’s bucking the tide.

The school is Hobart Elementary and the classroom belongs to teacher Rafe Esquith. His kids come from homes where English is not the native language; where parents struggle to put food on the table and pay the rent. But his students excel against the odds, not only on standardized tests, but also in their dedication to hard work and learning. And some great literature. Some of you may have seen the PBS documentary about Esquith and his school project, The Hobart Shakespeareans. But his work with kids goes far beyond putting on great plays. He uses music, literature, and sports to teach his kids the basics: not just reading and math, but character and decency.

Rafe Esquith is the author of several books, including the best sellers written for teachers,  and . His new book for parents is LIGHTING THEIR FIRES. Rafe Esquith is the only teacher ever awarded the National Medal of the Arts.

The Hobart Shakespeareans in Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice.

Simplicity Parenting

Kim John Payne says kids are being traumatized by what he calls the four pillars of too much: too much stuff, information, too many choices, and lives that are moving too fast. He says every kid has their quirks, but if you add constant and cumulative stress to a child’s life, their quirks become disorders. Disorders like ADHD or obsessive compulsive disorder. His book, , shows how parents can bring their kids back to a more balanced, less disordered way of being that honors their individual personalities.

Kim John Payne has been counseling teachers, parents and children for 24 years about behavior at home and school. He’s the Director of the Waldorf Collaborative Counseling program at Antioch University New England. www.antiochne.edu He’s also a founding member of the Alliance for Childhood.

Web-only extra: Listen to the full interview with Kim John Payne.

Kim John Payne on information overload:

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Raj Patel

Samba Gadjigo

Raj Patel talks about his best-seller, THE VALUE OF NOTHING. It’s about reshaping market society and redefining democracy. Mount Holyoke College film prof Samba Gadjigo tells us about his community-based learning project, Africa Through African Eyes. And we hear a clip from next week’s show: Kim John Payne on SIMPLICITY PARENTING.

Raj Patel

In an interview during the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared: “I am a pro-growth, free market guy. I love the market. I think it is the best invention to allocate resources and produce enormous prosperity for America or the world that’s ever been designed.” Well, with over a year of double digit unemployment (give or take a percentage), the great sucking sound of US taxpayer dollars being allocated to the Wall Street banks who got us into this mess, maybe it’s time to take another look at the market. At least as we know it under modern U.S. style capitalism.

That’s what my guest Raj Patel does in his latest book, . He says we’re actually operating under a kind of anti-market now, where nothing is important beyond the short term bottom line of those who own and control society’s financial resources. He says our idea that the market turns individual greed and selfishness into social good is misplaced. Instead This distorted market is destroying the value of human capital, our democracy, our environment and our future.

But, Patel says there’s hope: reshaping the market into another mold that recognizes cooperation, more local control over resources, and the balancing of human needs with economic gain.

Raj Patel has worked for the World Bank and World Trade Organization — and protested against them around the world. He’s currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at Food First. His first book was . The Value of Nothing is on the New York Times best-seller list.

Hear an interview Francesca did with Raj Patel about Stuffed and Starved.

Samba Gadjigo

Samba Gadjigo is a filmmaker, an expert on African film, and a professor at Mt Holyoke College. He’s long been disturbed by the popular images of Africa we get in the American media: images dominated by disaster and suffering on a continent-wide scale. He says that while Africa has challenges, it also has everyday heros who are working to meet them. Heroes like the market women who join microfinance networks to build their small businesses, or other women who are working to end female genital mutilation in their communities.

[sniplet amazon search]

He’s spearheaded a what he calls a community based model of learning to show American Africa through Africa Eyes. It combines talks, films, music and art exhibits, all based at or near the Westfield State College campus in Massachusetts. The project is running through February and you can find out more by calling Dr. Elise Young of the history department at 413-572-8237.

Coming Attractions: Next week, we’ll talk about how parents can help their kids become happier, calmer and more moral human beings. Master teacher Rafe Esquith will tell us about his book for parents: LIGHTING THEIR FIRES: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World. He’s the force behind the world renowned Hobart Shakespeareans, a troupe of young actors from poor schools in Los Angeles. And Kim John Payne tells us about his book, SIMPLICITY PARENTING.

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Chris Brogan

Dom Sagolla

Twitter founder Dom Sagolla talks about his style guide to Twitter, 140 CHARACTERS. And social media expert Chris Brogan tells us about his book, TRUST AGENTS. It’s about how to use the Web to build your influence, improve your reputation and create trust.

Dom Sagolla

Dom Sagolla (Twitter handle: @dom)was one of the moving forces behind the creation of social media: he was part of the team that invented Twitter. About 20% of Americans have twitter or Facebook accounts, with thousands adding new ones every day. Twitter is used for communicating just about anything to any one, from the cute thing your dog did this morning to telling the world that a young woman was just shot down by Iranian paramilitary forces during an antigovernment demonstration. You can even keep track on Twitter of the food you eat or exercise you’ve done during the week.

“Jack and the engineering team put a limit on there of 140 characters so they could allow space for the username. And there was an uproar and Jack, being the lead engineer sort of took charge and said. ‘Hey look, there’s actually a lot of space. You could change the world in a 140 characters’.”

But it didn’t start out to be like that. It started out when a software engineer named Jack Dorsey approached the podcasting company Odeo, the company Dom Sagolla worked at. Dorsey wanted Odeo’s help in creating a program that could send text messages between phones and computers so Dorsey could keep in touch with his friends.

Over the some six years since Twitter was invented, Sagolla’s been thinking a lot about how to use the 140 character platform — what he calls “the short form” — to communicate as effectively as possible. Now he’s written a style guide to Twitter: .

Web only extra: Dom Sagolla talks about how Twitter’s role during the antigovernment demonstrations in Iran started him thinking about how to protect one’s identity on Twitter.

Chris Brogan

On February 6, people in Western New England came together for a “PodCamp” held at Westfield State College. It was all about social media and podcasting. Back in 2006, Writer’s Voice webmaster Bill Weye and I went to PodCamp Boston, the first of its kind in the U.S.

One of its organizers was Chris Brogan (Twitter handle: @chrisbrogan). He’s gone on to become an expert in the area of social media. He says over 70% of people polled will trust an opinion that they read online whether or not they know the author of the opinion. He wants to make sure their trust isn’t misplaced. So he’s written the book, . Bill Weye and Francesca Rheannon interviewed Chris Brogan.

Web Only Extra: Chris Brogan talks about personal communication on the Web.

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Dr. James Hansen

Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen talks about STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN. It’s about climate catastrophe and how we must — and can — prevent it. Richard Wilbur reads “Advice To A Prophet”. And we pay homage to Robert Parker and Howard Zinn, who both died in late January, 2010.

Dr. James Hansen

NASA recently reported that 2009 was the second warmest year on record, capping the warmest decade recorded. Dr. James Hansen is the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He taught Al Gore about climate change. The Bush administration tried to muzzle him when the then head of NASA tried to keep him from saying that humans were the cause behind global warming. And he was one of the first to sound the alarm that climate change is real, it’s happening, and threatens life as we know it on Planet Earth. One of the leading climatologists in the world today, Hansen was named in 2006 by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

His new book, , calls global warming a generational crime. Hansen says that we can get off fossil fuels and must phase out coal by 2020 lest the earth warm to a level it hasn’t seen for 55 million years, when the ice sheets were gone and crocodiles frolicked at the North Pole. And he says it could get even worse — runaway climate change could lead to an Earth as hot and lifeless as Venus. But, we can get off our fossil fuel addiction without breaking the bank for the average person if we can tax carbon and return the proceeds to you and me and to support renewable energy.

[sniplet amazon bookstore widget]

James Hansen received the Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility from the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for his quote courageous and steadfast advocacy in support of scientists’ responsibilities to communicate their scientific opinions and findings openly and honestly on matters of public importance.”

Richard Wilbur, Advice to A Prophet.

WV Interview with mystery novelist Robert Parker.

WV Interview with historian Howard Zinn.

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Tracy Kidder

Laurie Hazleton

Journalist Lesley Hazleton talks about AFTER THE PROPHET. It’s about the wars of succession after Mohammed’s death that led to the split between Shia and Sunni. And author Tracy Kidder talks about Haiti, Dr. Paul Farmer, and the organization Farmer founded, Partners in Health. Kidder’s book is MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS, published in 2003.

After the Prophet

As the prophet Mohammed lay on his death bed in 632 AD, the plotting about who would succeed him swirled around his prostrate form. The wars of succession that ensued are still going on today, in the split between Shia and Sunni. Yet Islam was a religion founded on an ideal of unity — unity that, my guest Lesley Hazleton says, was undermined by human folly. Her fascinating book,  chronicles the bloody history of this folly — the tensions, jealousies and power plays that followed on the heels of Mohammed’s death.

Hazleton is a psychologist and journalist who writes about the intertwining of religion and politics in the Middle East. In addition to AFTER THE PROPHET, she’s the author of  and CORRECTION: In the audio, Lesley Hazleton is mis-named “Laurie” by host Francesca Rheannon.

Partners In Health in Haiti

Partners In Health

The heartrending scenes out of Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake are spurring Americans to open their pocketbooks and give to the relief effort. One of the best places to give is to the organization Partners In Health, which has been bringing health services to the poorest people in Haiti for more than 20 years. It does this by training local doctors and medical workers, and by listening to the people it serves to find out what they need and how best to give it. P.I.H. serves some 1.5 million people in Haiti’s rural areas.

It has so gained the trust and respect of Haitians and the international community alike, that it has been tasked with leading one of the largest medical operations for earthquake victims, at Port au Prince’s Central Hospital. It is coordinating care of critically injured Haitians with the US Navy hospital ship Comfort and running 24 different operating rooms round the clock.

Partners in Health was founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-educated anthropologist who traveled to Haiti to write his thesis in anthropology and ended up deciding to become a doctor to serve the people he had come to know in that desperately poor country. Farmer and Partners in Health are the subject of Tracy Kidder’s 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Farmer has been named the UN’s Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti and is expected to be instrumental in Haiti’s reconstruction efforts.

Tracy Kidder is the author of numerous books, including Among Schoolchildren. He’s spoken to Writers Voice about his memoir, My Detachment, and his most recent book, Strength in What Remains.

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Richard Michelson

Richard Benjamin

Richard Benjamin talks about SEARCHING FOR WHITOPIA: An Improbable Journey To The Heart Of White America. It’s about his odyssey to discover the hearts and minds of those living in the overwhelmingly white enclaves that are some of the fastest growing communities in the country. And poet and children’s book author Richard Michelson talks about AS GOOD AS ANYBODY. It’s about the friendship between Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Searching for Whitopia

On the day this show was produced the eyes of the nation were on the special election in to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy. Democrat Martha Coakley faced an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Republican Scott Brown. One group of voters supporting Brown against Coakley is Americans for Legal Immigration, which claims there is an “illegal immigration crisis” that is threatening Our nation’s very survival and identity.

Although the group claims to be diverse and multiethnic, the vast majority of anti-immigrant activists are white. They are part of a right wing political wave sweeping a segment of white America that fears losing its privileged status as the population becomes more diverse. Many are holing up in enclaves that have found ways to keep out the dreaded “other”, communities Richard Benjamin calls “Whitopias”. Between 2007 and 2009, he went on a 26,000-mile journey throughout America, visiting some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation to find out what was going on in the minds and hearts of their residents.

Benjamin found that immigration has supplanted race as the hot button issue for whites. In fact, he said, we can no longer talk about race as a predominantly black/white issue in America. And, he says, we have to factor in issues of class, as well as race.

Richard Benjamin is a Senior Fellow at the progressive think tank, Demos, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Richard Michelson

Richard Michelson’s book for children, , recounts the story of the friendship between Rev. Martin Luther King Jr and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Both men of religion and victims of discrimination, they worked together for peace and justice. They were together at the famous civil rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

Michelson is a poet and children’s book author in Northampton, MA. This interview first aired last year.

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Sue Barry

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader talks about his latest book, ONLY THE SUPERRICH CAN SAVE US! It’s a “utopian fantasy” about a cadre of billionaires under the leadership of Warren Buffet who take on corporate America to save democracy and the planet. And neuroscientist Sue Barry talks about conquering a visual disability and training her brain to see normally. Her memoir is FIXING MY GAZE.

Saved by the super rich

What do Phil Donahue, Warren Buffet, Yoko Ono and Ted Turner have in common? Well, they’re all billionaires – and they’re all characters in Ralph Nader’s new book  Nader brings them together with 13 others like themselves to wage class warfare on corporate control and bring democracy back to America. It’s fiction, but Nader doesn’t call it a novel. He calls it “a fictional vision that could become a new reality.”

Ralph Nader was named by Time and Life magazines as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the twentieth century. We drive safer cars, breathe better air, and work in safer environments because of his crusades to protect consumers, citizens and workers. He was the force that got Congress to mandate better car safety, including seat belts, among many other consumer protection laws. But he tells WV Host Francesca Rheannon that he could never accomplish now what he did then, because corporate control of government and media is too great: ordinary citizens don’t have the clout anymore to get their concerns addressed, whether on health care, jobs or the environment.

It’s takes money, Nader says, the kind of money only the superrich have, to move the levers of power. His book, ONLY THE SUPERRICH CAN SAVE US!, is a call to action to progressive minded billionaires to leave a lasting legacy to their grandchildren: saving the planet.

Fixing my gaze

This past week, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was all over the news.

The biggest new thing there was 3D TV. If you’ve ever seen a film in 3D, you know how amazingly different it is from regular movies. That experience was what it was like for neuroscientist Sue Barry when, for the first time in her life, she was able to see the world in three dimensions.

Born with her eyes misaligned – one eye crossed inward – her brain compensated by seeing only through the perspective of the other eye. She lacked the stereoscopic vision that gives our sight depth. Barry’s memoir, , recounts how she learned she didn’t have normal vision and the remarkable path she took to get it.

Sue Barry is professor of neurobiology at Mount Holyoke College.

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Dan Chaon

Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips of Project Censored talks about the Project’s latest yearbook of the top censored news stories of 2009, CENSORED 2010. And novelist Dan Chaon talks about his thriller, AWAIT YOUR REPLY. It examines the truth and lies about identity.

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

When celebrity scandals and murders dominate the news, the stories that really affect our lives often go underreported: stories about nuclear waste that could contaminate large swathes of the US or how global corporations foster the conditions for piracy in places like Somalia. Between media consolidation and the dominance of news as entertainment, the American media consumer is often left with poor information about why things are the way they are.

For the last 34 years, Project Censored has been swimming against the tide of media-ocrity, bringing to light the big stories that have been too often ignored by the mainstream media. Walter Cronkite, one of that media’s leading lights from its better days, called Project Censored “one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”

Based at Sonoma State University in California, the Project brings academics and students from nine campuses together to find, review, and fact check the stories that media either didn’t cover or covered poorly. Out of these it picks the top 25 each year and publishes them in a book, Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News. I spoke with sociology professor Peter Phillips, former director of the Project in December.

Dan Chaon

Dan Chaon’s novel  opens with a shocker: a young man who is being rushed to the hospital with his severed hand next to him in a cooler. He’s with his father, or at least someone who claims to be his father. And his dad isn’t the only character whose identity is in doubt. The novel is all about identity — shifting identities, re-inventing oneself, finding out one’s own identity, and the identity theft. It follows three apparently separate stories, bringing them together only in the end. And if genre is the literary version of identity, Chaon’s book itself has multiple personalities: moving from philosophical speculation to thriller with shapeshifting ease.

Chaon is also the author of ,  and .

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Anne C Heller

Anne C. Heller talks about her biography, AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE and we play clips from our list of WV Best of 2009, including creative nonfiction writer Tracy Kidder, poet Richard Wilbur, novelist Nicholson Baker, psychologist Gail Hornstein and journalist David Grann.

Ayn Rand And the World She Made

Ayn Rand

Although Ayn Rand has been dead for almost thirty years, her books are still phenomenal best sellers. The two most famous, ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE FOUNTAINHEAD have sold more than 12 million copies in the US alone.

Rand has been the object of adulation by conservatives for her advocacy of limited government and unfettered individual rights. The reaction to her by progressives has been equally fierce: repulsion against her elevation of selfishness to the highest good. She was charismatic, controversial, idiosyncratic and egomaniacal.

Anne C. Heller has written a fascinating biography of this influential figure, . She doesn’t agree with her subject’s philosophy, but has been fascinated by her since working as an executive editor at Conde Nast Publications, with a special emphasis on money and finance.

Watch 1959 Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand: Part One

A Selection of Clips from the WV Best of 2009

It’s that time of year to reflect on all the great guests we had on WV this year and pick the Top Ten. This year on WV, it was really tough to choose, because there were so many show episodes I could have included. But we managed. We play some clips from the top five from that list:

1. Poet Richard Wilbur
2. Tracy Kidder, STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS
3. Nicholsen Baker, THE ANTHOLOGIST
4. Gail Hornstein, AGNES’ JACKET
5. David Grann, LOST CITY OF Z

Read about and listen to any or all of the WV Ten Best of 2009.

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Matthew Rose

Artist and writer Matthew Rose talks about the unbound book of art postcards he curated, A BOOK ABOUT DEATH. It’s a collection of 500 limited edition postcards on the theme of death, each one created by an artist for the exhibition. And George Monbiot and Bill McKibben talk about climate change.

Soho and artists

The Soho district in Manhattan is known today as one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods – a place where you can drop $2 or 3$ million dollars to buy a loft. But before the mid-1960’s it was a decaying industrial district, with lofts emptied out by the exodus of manufacturing to the South and eventually oversees.

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Soho’s renaissance was due to one man, the artist George Maciunas. He began buying up the old lofts in the 1960’s to create artists cooperatives, especially for friends of his, like videographer Nam Jun Paik and filmmaker Jonas Meekas. Maciunas was a leader of the avant-garde art movement, Fluxus, which, in addition to Paik and Mekas, included musician John Cage and artist Yoko Ono. Maciunas called the artists’ lofts, Flux Boxes.

Host Francesca Rheannon’s mother, a mixed media modern dancer and choreographer, bought a loft from George Maciunas. One of her fellow coop members was Emily Harvey, muse and art dealer to the Fluxus movement. Harvey, who died in 2004, set up a foundation which still has a gallery in the building.

In October, when Rheannon was staying at her mother’s loft, she happened to pass by the gallery’s open door and heard some commotion inside. She popped in and found a singular exhibition being mounted. It was an unbound book of postcards sent in by nearly 500 artists from around the world on the theme of death. The cards, each having 500 copies, were stacked in piles on the floor, with an array of them on the wall. It’s called A BOOK ABOUT DEATH and the exhibition’s curator is artist and writer, Matthew Rose.

Matthew Rose is an American artist and writer living and working in Paris, France. He also writes for newspapers and magazines (Art & Antiques, The Wall Street Journal, Art & Auction, theartblog.org) on art, culture, business and wine.

A BOOK ABOUT DEATH Video

Break Music by Christian Marclay, Toshio Kajiwara, & DJ Olive from the album djTRIO, Pittsburgh, July 5, 2002

Climate change

The climate talks in Copenhagen came to an end this week, not with a bang, but a whimper. Some have tried to put a good face on it, but many of those who care about saving the planet from climate catastrophe were sorely disappointed by the non-outcome of the talks in Copenhagen.

One of them was Bill McKibben. He is the force behind 350.org, a global movement to bring atmospheric carbon dioxide down to 350 ppm. Writers Voice spoke with Bill McKibben in 2007 about his book . In it, he says we need to build living local economies that build durability into our economic system, for us and for the future.

George Monbiot

Another writer on climate change is British environmental journalist, George Monbiot. We spoke with him in 2007, while earlier climate talks were going on in Bali. He’s author of .

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Suzan Colon

Kenneth Turan

Guest host Chris Rohmann interviews Los Angles Times drama critic Kenneth Turan about FREE FOR ALL: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told. It’s about the how Joseph Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater. Then Suzan Colon tells us about her memoir, CHERRIES IN WINTER: My Family’s Recipe for Hope in Hard Times. Finally, we talk about THE HEALTHY COLLEGE COOKBOOK with editor Rachel Holcomb.

Theater for the People

The great impresario Joseph Papp was a revolutionary force in American theater. He brought Shakespeare to the masses on the streets of New York and finally, after winning out over the resistance of Robert Moses, to Central Park. Brilliant, contentious, single-minded and passionate, Papp showed an intuitive genius for picking hits from obscure sources. The script for Hair was handed to him by two unknowns on a commuter train. A Chorus Line came from taped interviews of dancers’ reminiscences.

As told by theater critic Kenneth Turan, brings together the recollections of many great actors, including George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, and James Earl Jones, as well as those of Papp himself.

Guest host Chris Rohmann is author of A World of Ideas: The Dictionary of Important Ideas and Thinkers.

Recipe for Hope in Hard Times

Last year, Suzan Colon found herself unemployed, like many Americans these days. When she got laid off from her job at a magazine, at first she felt a great loss of identity. But then she found a silver lining in form of recipes handed down to her from her grandmother and her mother — good, cheap, stick to the ribs recipes that had held her family together in hard times as well as good. She found solace and recovery in them and the memories they brought — and the material for her memoir, .

Watch Suzan Colon makes butter cookies and meatloaf.

The Healthy College Cookbook

Are you wondering what to give your son or daughter when they come home for the holidays after a semester away at college? How about the ? Revised and updated from the first edition, published ten years ago, it brings together a slew of cheap, easy and yummy recipes that are written and tested by college students. Host Francesca Rheannon invited editor Rachel Holcomb into the WMUA studio. She’s a student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and former chef in the bake shop of the one of the on-campus dining commons.

Some recipes from the HEALTHY COLLEGE COOKBOOK.

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Amy Seidl

Harvey Wasserman

Harvey Wasserman tells us about SOLARTOPIA, his vision of 2030’s clean energy world. And ecologist Amy Seidl tells us how we can adapt to climate change while trying to control it. Her book is EARLY SPRING.

Harvey Wasserman

This week, the world’s nations are meeting at the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen. Hopefully, they will be able to hammer out an agreement that will keep climate change within safe limits. Despite a few holdouts on the margins — “climategate” notwithstanding — the world’s scientists agree that climate change is real and it’s already happening. And the science says time is running out: we have to cut CO2 emissions drastically over the next decade or so. Recently top German scientists reported hertsgaard that the US had to cut emissions 100% by 2020; Europe, China and India by 2030; and the rest of the world by 2050. Otherwise, global temperatures will rise by more than 2 degrees centigrade — and climate change will be out of control.

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Cutting emissions that drastically isn’t as hard as you might think. Harvey Wasserman says we could have a “Solartopia”. It’s a world run on clean, renewable energy using just the technology we have today. Nobody starves, there are no more wars for oil, all education is free, agriculture is based on sustainable small farms, schools grow their own lunch and produce their own power, everything produced is recycled, mass transit is abundant, and solar housing is available to all. Our big cities are squeaky clean and grow much of their own food. And all this is possible by 2030.

Links to Stuff Mentioned on the Show:

• Solaire Building
• Conde Nast Building
• C-Bed Community-based Energy Development

Amy Seidl

We also air this archived interview with Amy Seidl about EARLY SPRING: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World.

Do Something About Climate Change

Tell COP15 leaders to create a binding climate treaty

Join 350.org events

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Terry Tempest Williams

Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder talks about STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS. It’s the story of a young Tutsi refugee from the genocide in Rwanda & civil war in Burundi who comes to the US and creates a new life. He’s helped along the way by others — and eventually is able to bring his own considerable gifts and passion back to his homeland to help others. And Terry Tempest Williams talks about her visit to Rwanda in an excerpt from our interview with about her book, MOSAIC, in 2008.

Tracy Kidder

Deogratias Niyizonkiza’s life has spanned unimaginable extremes: from genocide in Rwanda to homelessness in New York, to Harvard University, and on to a dream job. He was helped all along the way by a remarkable series of benefactors: a Hutu mother in Rwanda, a baggage handler at JFK airport, a retired nun, and a couple in Soho.

As a young man, Deo was ripped from his life as a doctor in training by the civil war in Burundi. He escaped to Rwanda, only to find himself out of the frying pan and into the fire of the Rwandan genocide. Miraculously, he made it to New York — but condemned, it seemed, to life as a homeless refugee delivering groceries for fifteen dollars a day and sleeping in Central Park at night. How he went from that to graduating from Columbia, going to Harvard, and getting a job doing exactly what he always wanted — bringing health care to the poor — is a fascinating tale told by one of America’s best storytellers, Tracy Kidder.

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Kidder’s last book was about Deo’s boss, Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, an organization bringing health care to poor people around the globe. That book was called . After joining Partners In Health, Deo founded Village Health Works, a project of PIH, which built a clinic in the village where his parents settled after the war. Although they are Tutsi, most of the village inhabitants are Hutu. The health clinic was built with the labor of villagers of both ethnicities.

Read an excerpt from Strength In What Remains

Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams has also written about Rwanda. Her book is about using art to heal the human soul after great trauma. She took a workshop to learn the art of mosaic as a way to deal with the horror of 9/11 and its aftermath. She put that learning to use later in Rwanda, working with survivors in a small village to build a memorial to victims of the genocide. Here’s an except from our conversation. You can listen to the entire interview here.

Terry Tempest Williams writes about nature and our place in it. In addition to Mosaic, her books include Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, The Open Space of Democracy and Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert.

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JFK Cuban Missile Crisis address

James W. Douglass

Christian theologian and peace activist James W. Douglass tells us why he thinks JFK was assassinated. He says it was because Kennedy went up against the military-industrial complex and the national security state. His carefully researched book is JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE.

For many young Americans 9/11 was the defining moment of their generation, after which the world would never be the same. For older generations, the assassination of John F. Kennedy changed their world. Then, in short succession, came the murders of Malcom X, JFK’s brother Robert, and then Martin Luther King. All four assassinations happened within a period of five years.

James W. Douglass thinks the murders were connected by a common thread — the threat the victims had posed, while alive, to what Dwight Eisenhower called the Military-Industrial complex. In his meticulously researched book, , Douglass turns his attention to the first assassination of the four.

“This is the story…of a person who turned against a way that was destructive toward a way that is peaceful and just — and from that point on he and his enemy, Nikita Khrushchev, begin to work togetherm and that’s the beginning of the end of John Kennedy.”

The book explores the covert forces behind the assassination, including the CIA. But even more fascinating, it examines Kennedy’s turn toward peace, what he learned from the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, his internal conflict over Vietnam, and his confrontation with the power of Big Steel over government military contracts. In doing so, Douglas gives not just the how of JFK’s murder, but the why: JFK’s growing determination to break up what he saw as the greatest threat to peace in the world and democracy at home: the national security state.

Oliver Stone, who made the film JFK, wrote the forward to James Douglass’ book. He says it’s “one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it.”

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James Douglass is a long time peace activist and Christian theologian. He co-founded the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action http://www.gzcenter.org/ in Washington state. In 1997 he and his wife received the Pacem in Terris Award for their work on behalf of peace.

Web Extra: James Douglass tells Writers Voice more about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Links

• JFK’s American University speech on peace
• YouTube video of JFK speech on Big Steel
• JFK movie excerpt with Dwight Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex

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Dahr Jamail

“Unembedded journalist” Dahr Jamail tells us about the profound impact on veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and how they are fighting back. We also talk with mystery novelist Lisa Kleinholz, cookbook author Lora Brody and journalism prof and blogger B.J. Roche – they’re all panelists on the upcoming Write Angles writers conference taking place Nov 21, 2009 at Mount Holyoke College.

An Unembedded Journalist

Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq when he took the lives of thirteen people at Fort Hood earlier this month. He’d seen the effects of the war firsthand counseling veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Rather than go to Iraq, he planned to die along with those he murdered Fort Hood suspect said his goodbyes before rampage. Though some suspect a Muslim extremist motive for the shootings, it’s telling that eighteen U.S. war veterans commit suicide every day. The toll is even higher for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dahr Jamail’s first book, , looked at the devastation of the war in Iraq on Iraqi civilians. Now this unembedded journalist has come out with . The book is about how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are affecting veterans who have come back home. They suffer from PTSD from battle, but also from sexual violence (against women soldiers), the failures of the veteran’s system, and continual redeployments. As a result, he says more soldiers are dying by suicide than are killed in combat.

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Some soldiers are fighting back – not through violence, but through political resistance, by talking with fellow soldiers, and even by fleeing the country. They’re also trying to make sure that other troops don’t have to go through what they did. Dahr Jamail writes of their courageous opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His book gives us insight into how the horrors of war can affect the human soul.

Write Angles

For the last 22 years our region has played host to Write Angles, a terrific writers conference. Francesca caught up with a few of the panelists to give you a preview.

Lora Brody is the bestselling author of 18 cookbooks, among them and, . She’s even got a cookbook about broccoli, which takes certain amount of courage. I caught up with her by phone in France’s beautiful southwestern region, the Dordogne, where she was leading her annual cooking tour.

Links

• Lora Brody’s Rugelach
• Lora Brody’s Christmas Stollen

Mystery writer Lisa Kleinholz is author of the Zoe Szabo mysteries, about a punk-rock journalist sleuth in rural New England. She started out by wanting to write regular fiction, but found it difficult to sell her first book. So she tried her hand at mystery writing and her career took off.

Links

• Read an excerpt from Lisa Kleinholz’ Exiles on Main Street.
• Read an excerpt from Lisa Kleinholz’ Dancing With Mr. D.

Our last Write Angles conference panelist is UMass journalism professor, BJ Roche. She was a correspondent and columnist for the Boston Globe before becoming a journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an online publisher. We invited her on to talk about online publishing. Her own blog, fiftyshift.com, is for, by and about women over 40.

Find out about the fiftyshift.com booklet Friends Indeed.

Lora Brody, Lisa Kleinholz and B.J. Roche will be speaking on their respective genre panels at the WA conference at the Willits Hallowell Center on the campus of MHC, November 21.

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Amira Hass

Francine Prose

Francine Prose talks about her terrific new book, ANNE FRANK: THE BOOK, THE LIFE, THE AFTERLIFE. It shines a writer’s lens on Frank’s diary and on its postwar reception in the U.S. and elsewhere. And Israeli journalist Amira Hass tells us about her mother’s DIARY OF BERGEN BELSEN, a searing account of moral courage in the face of unrelenting brutality.

Most years at this time I air a program commemorating the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht. That was the anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria that took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. For those Jews who had tried to convince themselves that the Nazis were more bark than bite, the pogrom was a wake-up call — but one that came too late for most. By 1938, it was difficult to get a visa to a safe country of refuge.

Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, was much more farsighted than most German Jews. Already by 1933, he had moved himself and his wife and two daughters to Holland. But in 1940, the Germans overran the Netherlands and Otto knew he had to once again plan for his family’s safety. The story of their move to the Annex – a hidden wing over Frank’s business on one of Amsterdam’s oldest canals – has come to us through the words of his gifted and doomed daughter, Anne. Otto was the only one of the four to survive deportation to the camps.

Francine Prose is a writer’s writer. In addition to fiction, she’s written about other writers, most notably in her book , which we interviewed her about on this show. Now she’s turned her attention to the diary of Anne Frank and how it has been seen since it was published. She says over the course of her time in the Annex, Anne became an extraordinarily accomplished writer, using literary devices like addressing the diary to an imaginary friend, Kitty, and reworking earlier passages to make them tighter and more compelling. Francine Prose’s new book is .

Listen to Francine Prose’s other interviews on Writer’s Voice:

• on READING LIKE A WRITER
• on her novel GOLDENGROVE

When Israeli journalist Amira Hass was growing up, there were a few stories her mother told her about her experience in the Nazi concentration camp Bergen Belsen — like the one about how her mother, Hannah Levy-Hass, helped organize the women in her barracks to demand an equal sharing out of the meager portions of watery soup they were allotted. Designed to break the grip of the kapos, or prisoner deputies of the Nazi authorities, the strike won its objective and no doubt saved the lives of some of the women inmates.

“When we speak about suffering…my parent’s experience made them very vulnerable to any suffering, very attentive to the suffering of the Palestinians.”

But Hass never learned the whole story of her mother’s internment until she read her Hannah Ley-Hass’s diary of Bergen Belsen. Published now in English, the book has a forward and afterword written by her daughter. It’s a searing tale of extreme deprivation, starvation and brutality. But also of the undaunted courage of one young woman who kept faith with her moral convictions in spite of soul-crushing circumstances.

Amira Hass is renowned for her newspaper columns on the conditions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. She works for the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz and lives in Gaza. Both her parents are Holocaust survivors – and both were longtime activists in opposing Israeli government policy toward Palestinians.

Amira Hass is the recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award for her bravery in being an Israeli citizen who lives and reports from Gaza.

Links

• Listen to and read Amira Hass’s acceptance speech
• Read Amira Hass on the Goldstone Report

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Thad Carhart

We hear excerpts from a dramatic reading of Ernest J. Gaines’ novel, A LESSON BEFORE DYING by Enchanted Circle Theater actors. It’s about a young black man in Jim Crow Louisiana who is condemned to death. And we interview Thad Carhart about his new historical novel, ACROSS THE ENDLESS RIVER. It’s about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea who was a guide on the Lewis and Clark expedition and who lived both in the United States and Europe.

A Dramatic Reading

One in seven people sentenced to die are later proven innocent, according to studies cited by the ACLU. This terrible injustice is one of the themes of Ernest J. Gaines powerful novel, . Another is the dignity of all human beings, no matter what their situation is. Gaines, who is probably best known as the author of DRIVING MISS DAISY, explores these themes through the story of Jefferson, a young black man who is sentenced to death for his role in a botched robbery, even though he is not the killer. The action takes place in rural Louisiana during the 1950’s, when Jim Crow was still alive and well.

Published in 1997–and an Oprah favorite–”A Lesson Before Dying” was chosen as this year’s selection for One Book Holyoke, a community project based on the idea of the Big Read, a program by the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage reading. When I interviewed the founder of the Big Read, Dana Gioia, back in 2005, he asked me why there were no Big Read programs in Massachusetts. There are some now, and One Book Holyoke has gotten support from the Big Read. The idea is simple, Holyoke residents read a selected book during a set period of time. They then get together for a variety of activities planned around the book.

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One activity was a dramatic reading by the Holyoke based company, Enchanted Circle Theater. They compressed the action of the book into a dramatic script of about an hour and a half. Writers Voice went to a reading at Holyoke City Hall for an audience of local high school students.

You can listen to the entire reading on the Web Extra, but we air excerpts on the show.

The actors are Gilbert McCauley as Jefferson, James Lightfoot as Grant Wiggins, L’Kuicha Parks as Jefferson’s godmother Miss Emma, and James Emery in the roles of the book’s white characters, the defense lawyer and Mr. Henri Pichot.

You can get the Oprah Book Club edition of the audio book on Audible.com

The son of Sacagawea

Thad Carhart’s first book was the memoir, , in which he chronicled finding a piano shop tucked away on a little street that helped him rediscover his love of playing the piano. An American citizen with an Irish passport who lives in Paris, Carhart is an expatriate like the protagonist of his new book, . It’s an historical novel about the fascinating life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

“you had this extraordinary story of survival and determination and…by anybody’s lights and in anybody’s culture that’s a remarkable life’s beginning.”

Charbonneau was the son of the Indian Sacagawea and a French Canadian voyageur. He was born while his parents were accompanying the explorers Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition of 1804 to 1806, was adopted by William Clark after his mother died, and lived for years in Europe as the assistant of Duke Friedrich Paul Wilhelm von Württemberg before returning to his native land.

Read an Excerpt from ACROSS THE ENDLESS RIVER

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