Category: HV/Archives

Hearing Voices- Audio, Web, Video, News

HV107- Strange Days

Paul Bowles sittingHearing Voices from NPR®
107 Strange Days: Paul Bowles, Coyle & Sharp, Ayahuasca
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-12-29

“Strange Days” (52:00 mp3):

Way beyond the norm:

“Paul Bowles” (21:03)

Host Larry Massett has an audio essay on the life and literature of Paul Bowles (December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) on his 100th birthday.

Includes the ZBS 1967 conversation “A Time in Tangier,” readings of The Sheltering Sky by Paul Kiernan (IMDb | “A Slight Discomfort” for stage & HV radio), “The Hyena” (Collected Stories) by Erica Heilman (VT Folklife Ctr | HV), and PB himself from his 1992 album Black Star at the Point of Darkness.

More…

HV106- Courage to Create II

Washington National Cathedral window, by Rowan LeCompteHearing Voices from NPR®
106 Courage to Create II: Interviews with Artists
Host: Russ Germain of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Airs week of: 2010-12-15

“Courage to Create II” (52:00 mp3):

The conclusion of this 1978 NPR/CBC radio classic, featuring interviews with artists on the origins of the creative impulse (part one). Interviewees include:

“Courage to Create II” (52:00) Carolyn Jensen Chadwick & Tom Steward

Psychologist Rollo May (author of The Courage to Create), scupltor Ernst Neizvestny (translation read by Mike Waters), jazz violinist Joe Venuti, composer Harry Somers, classical guitarist Larry Snitzler, dancer Francesca Corkle (Joffrey Ballet), actor/director Jeanne Moreau, stained glass artist Rowan LeCompte, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Produced by Carolyn Jensen Chadwick and Tom Steward; narrator: Russ Germain; technicians: Jim Anderson, Jan Stewart; executive producer: Digby Piers.

In HV’s not-so-humble opinion, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick was NPR’s best producer. She died August 2010; a few remembrances: All Things Considered | The Atlantic | Hearing Voices | LA Observed | Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Morning Edition.

HV105- Courage to Create I

Harold Town painting Mechanical Forest Sound, oil on masonite, 1953, photo: farm1.static.flickr.comHearing Voices from NPR®
105 Courage to Create I: Interviews with Artists
Host: Russ Germain of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Airs week of: 2010-12-08

“Courage to Create I” (52:00 mp3):

Interviews with artists on the origins of the creative impulse (part one of two):

“Courage to Create I” (52:00) Carolyn Jensen Chadwick & Tom Steward

A 1978 NPR/CBC radio classic, featuring interviews with artists on the origins of the creative impulse. This first of two hours includes:

Psychologist Rollo May (author of The Courage to Create), classical guitarist Larry Snitzler, actor/director Jeanne Moreau, pianist Lorin Hollander, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, stained glass artist Rowan LeCompte, mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, painter Harold Town (CBC), novelist Marie-Claire Blais, flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, folk guitarist Leo Kottke.

Produced by Carolyn Jensen Chadwick and Tom Steward; narrator: Russ Germain; technicians: Jim Anderson, Jan Stewart; executive producer: Digby Piers.

In HV’s not-so-humble opinion, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick was NPR’s best producer. She died August 2010; a few remembrances: All Things Considered | The Atlantic | Hearing Voices | LA Observed | Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Morning Edition.

HV104- Vet Vox

US Army troops pose in front of Iraqi palaceHearing Voices from NPR®
104 Vet Vox: Voices of Veterans
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-11-10

“Vet Vox” (52:00 mp3):

For Veterans Day, Vietnam, Korean, and World War Two vets, recorded by StoryCorps, along with a Marine Sergeant’s recent “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” discharge. And we plug into the iPods of active-duty troops in Iraq (photo gallery), asking them what they’re listening to, and what their lives are like:

“Specialist “Laser” Lawrence” (2:08) Jake Warga

Soldier Soundtrack, Iraq- Song: “Indestructible” by Disturbed from Indestructible. “You got to show people that soldiers aren’t just war fighters, they’re peace keepers too…”

“Bob and Carol Harllee” (1:34) StoryCorps

Bob Harlee served as an Army Chaplain for 18 years. In 1965, Harllee was sent to Vietnam, and he had to leave his wife and three children behind. One of those children, Carol, now 47, recently asked her father about his life in those days. As part of the 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, Ky., Harllee had to reconcile his role as a spiritual guide within a unit whose job it was to destroy the enemy. Still, Harllee says, his task was clear: “to encourage everybody to keep their faith strong, even though they’re in the midst of the most terrible thing that mankind can bring upon itself.” Bob Harllee died in Charlottesville, Va., several months after his interview session. He was 73.

“Staff Sergeant Treen” (3:12) Jake Warga

Soldier Soundtrack, Iraq- Song: “Send in the Clowns” by Barbara Streisand from The Broadway Album. “They’re not really geared towards a democratic or republic sort of society… the biggest issue will be trying to keep Iran or Syria from moving into the power vacuum when we leave…”

“Army-Navy Classic” (0:26) Firesign Theatre

From. their series of of Jack Poet Volkswagon ads

More…

HV103- Political Party

SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson on-stage debating FOX News host Sean HannityHearing Voices from NPR®
103 Political Party: For Election Season
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-10-27

“Political Party” (52:00 mp3):

Let’s rev-up this election process with a cross-county Political Party:

“Salt Lake City Debate” (2007 / 15:52) Scott Carrier

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson publicly debates FOX News host Sean Hannity. The spectacle took place inside a chasm called Us versus Them. Produced in 2007 for This American Life; music: Rickie Lee Jones, “Nobody Knows My Name” from Sermon On Exposition Boulevard.

“Yeagh” (2004 / 1:08) James Lileks

Politics can be frustrating. It can make you scream — which made one Presidential candidate became famous for. Here’s Howard Dean’s scream put to music (more mixes at James Lileks’ Bleatophony).

“Kids on Constitution” (1986 / 3:01) Dmae Roberts

From the 1980s archives, we present this pre-teen perspective on our government’s founding document.

More…

HV102- Lost Critters

Australian racing camelHearing Voices from NPR®
102 Lost Critters: Dogs, Cats, a Pig, & 1M Camels
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-10-20

“Lost Critters” (52:00 mp3):

Some Dogs, Some Cats, One Pig, and a Million Camels:

“Camels in the Outback” (2006 / 5:10) Larry Massett & Jake Warga

On the race track and on the grill, competing and eating wild camels in the Northern Australia Territories. (Camel photo: Jake Warga)

“Cross my Path” (1988 / 7:56) Jay Allison

Leo Grillo locates lost pets in Los Angeles. He cares for animals, thousands of them. Today, his organization, D.E.L.T.A Rescue (Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals), is the world’s largest animal rescue shelter.

Produced by Jay Allison with Cristina Egloff for their series Animals and Other Stories; funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Piggles” (2010 / 8:00) Larry Massett

A pig is spared the butcher block but lost in the wilds of Washington DC. Blame the Air Force?

“Mama Chaos, the Wild Dog of Los Alamos” (1995 / 24:15) Larry Massett & Scott Carrier

A mid-90s visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Everyone knows this one of the places where the government developed the first atom bomb during World War II. But our host was interested in Chaos Theory, an elaborate mathematical description of turbulent systems like the weather, and possibly the stock market, and who knows what all else. Chaos Theory was all the rage in Los Alamos then. Along with the theory, it turned out there was also real chaos in Los Alamos. It was slinking up and down the streets late at night in the form of a feral dog. Produced for the radio series SoundPrint.

Lost Pig reward poster

HV101- John Ono Lennon

Hearing Voices from NPR®
101 John Ono Lennon: A Memorial and Celebration
Host: Lynn Neary of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-10-06

“John Ono Lennon” (52:00 mp3):

Born: John Winston Lennon, October 9 1940
Died: John Ono Lennon, December 8 1980

On Saturday, October 9 2010, John Lennon would have turned 70 years old. This is our public-radio party, memorial and celebration:

“On Ed Sullivan” (4:16) Lynn Neary

Our host recalls how the Beatles changed everything, and John lead the charge; an audio essay, sprinked with live performances and 1963-64 Fan-Flub flexi-disk Christmas messages.

“All We Are Saying” (25:00) Barrett Golding

Lennon’s life, in own words, from his hundreds of interviews. Accompanied by music, outtakes, antics and poetics — singing, talking, and testifying about peace, family, and art.

Produced at KGLT-Bozeman with mix help from Colter Langan. Archive recordings are courtesy of Yoko Ono, the BBC, the CBC, Chicago’s Museum Of Broadcast Communications, Group W Productions, Rolling Stone Magazine, Apple, Capital, EMI, and Polydor Records.

A Family Tree: Lennon drawing of he and Yoko under a treeWONSAPONATIME there was two Ballons called Jock and Yono. They were strictly in love-bound to happen in a million years. They were together man. Unfortunatimetable they both seemed to have previous experience — which kept calling them one way oranother (you know howitis). But they battled on against overwhelming oddites, includo some of there beast friends. Being in love they cloong even more together man — but some of the poisonessmonster of outrated buslodedshithrowers did stick slightly and tey occaasionaly had to resort to the drycleaners. Luckily this did not kill them and they werent banned from the olympic games. They lived hopefully every after, and who could blame them… —Lennon, Skywriting By Word of Mouth

“NYC/LA Radio” (2:00) The Professor

Scanning the radio dial the night Lennon died. The Prof presents more audio of and info on this found-sound recording at WFMU.

“The Day John Lennon Died” (8:50) Paul Ingles

Members of the generation jolted by Lennon’s death recall how they heard the news and how deeply this ex-Beatle’s life affected theirs (where were you when you heard?)

Voices: Scott MacNichol, Daniel Callis, Martin Goldsmith, Jane Blume, Mark Weber, Jim Palmer, John Scariano, Bonnie Renfro, Mary Oishi, Rob Raucci, and Emily Zambello. Produced at Cedar Creek Studios and KUNM-Albuquerque. PRX has a half-hour version of “The Day John Lennon Died.”

More…

HV100- Stories of Transformation

Miles/Megan as a little girlHearing Voices from NPR®
100 Stories of Transformation: Character and Change
Host: Jay Allison of Transom
Airs week of: 2010-09-29

“Stories of Transformation” (52:00 mp3):

Two audio diaries of people documenting their own personal transformation, a Transom Radio special:

“Finding Miles” (27:11) Sarah Reynolds

Miles has the wrong body. He was born a woman, Megan. After 15 years of serious depression and confusion about his place in the world, at age 28, he decided to make a change. He chose the name Miles and began his slow, difficult transition into manhood. All along the way, he carried an audio recorder with him. This is his story. Produced for Transom (available at PRX); edited by Jay Allison.

“Running From Myself” (17:50) Louis & Anthony Mascorro

For most of his high school career, Louis robbed people: for money, and for thrills. He never got caught. Then, in his senior year, he decided to stop. Louis talks to friends and family, and to himself, about why he was a criminal, and why he needs to change. Produced for Transom (also at PRX) and the 826NYC writing center.

HV099- Polk Street Stories

Polk Street sign, photo by Thomas HawkHearing Voices from NPR®
099 Polk Street Stories: San Francisco USA
Host: Joey Plaster of Transom
Airs week of: 2012-01-04 (Originally: 2010-09-22)

“Polk Street Stories” (52:00 mp3):

An oral history of San Francisco’s premiere queer neighborhood, told by those who’ve called it home:

“Polk Street Stories” (52:00) Joey Plaster

Public Historian Joey Plaster spent a year gathering 70+ interviews from people experiencing Polk Street’s transition from a working class queer neighborhood to an upscale entertainment district. Polk Street’s scene predates the modern gay rights movement. It was a world unto itself, ten blocks of low rent hotels, bars and liquor stores, all sandwiched in between the gritty Tenderloin, City Hall, and the ritzy Nob Hill: a home invented by people who had no other home.

For decades, the street had been a national destination for queer youth and transgender women, many of them fleeing abusive or unwelcoming homes. But by the mid-1990s, the last of the working class bars that formed the backbone of the Polk community were being replaced by a new bloc of mid-income businesses and residents.

Long-term Polk residents were incredibly emotional about these changes. Many considered the neighborhood to be their first real home. Now they saw their family’s gathering places evaporating. The conflict was sometimes dramatic: owners of one gay bar claimed that the new business association forced them off the street. A gay activist group made national news when they plastered the street with “wanted” posters featuring a photo of the new association’s president.

These intense reactions suggested a rich history, but I found that it had not been recorded. I feared it would be lost with the scene. I had prior experience as an oral historian. This was my first effort to find overlap with radio, which I’ve long felt is the best medium for broadcasting intimate, personal stories from “marginal” populations.
—Joey Plaster

This hour is a Transom radio special (PRX), produced with Jay Allison and Viki Merrick. It’s part of GLBT History Polk Street: Lives in Transition exhibition.

Photo © Thomas Hawk.

HV098- Working Class

Joe Regis (Mohawk, Kahnawake) and an unidentified ironworker erecting the Chase Manhattan Bank Building in New York, ca. 1960Hearing Voices from NPR®
098 Working Class: For Labor Day
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-08-31 (Originally: 2010-09-01)

“Working Class” (52:00 mp3):

Our Labor Day weekend welcome to the work week looks at what we do for a living:

“Office Yoga” (2:10) Rebecca Flowers

Exercises for existential overworked, undervalued employees: a more realistic approach to yogic spiritual awareness for the cubically encased.

Produced by Rebecca Flowers, author of Nice to Come Home To.

“Pasquale Spensieri, Grinder” (5:49) Radio Diaries

Pasquale Spensieri spends his days driving around Brooklyn looking for dull blades. When he rings the bell on his truck, the owners of upholstery shops, restaurants and pizza parlors come out with knives and scissors to sharpen. Pasquale’s father first started sharpening knives during the Depression, with a pedal-operated grinding machine strapped to his back. At that time, there were hundreds of door-to-door grinders in New York. Today, at the age of 71, Pasquale is one of the last. Produced by Joe Richman and Emily Botein (WNYC) for their series New York Works.

“Walking High Steel” (12:15) Jamie York and the Kitchen Sisters

Since the 1880s, Mohawk Indian ironworkers have been known for their ability to work high steel. From the Empire State Building to the the World Trade Center, generations of Mohawks have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Each week, they commute to Manhattan from their reservation in Canada, framing the city’s skyscrapers and bridges. In September 2001, after the fall of the Trade Center Towers, the sons and nephews of these men returned to the site to dismantle what their elders had helped to build.

More…

HV097- Crow Fair II

Crow DancersHearing Voices from NPR®
097 Crow Fair II: Apsaalooke Nation Celebration
Host: Scott Simon of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-08-25

“Crow Fair II” (52:00 mp3):

“Crow Fair II: A Portrait in Sound” (52:00) Steve Rathe

This is the final hour of a two-hour special on the annual Crow Fair in southeastern Montana, recorded in 1977 by NPR. For all the info, see part one: HV096- Crow Fair I.

Crow Fair- Dancer
Crow Fair- Dancer, © Allen Russell

Crow women in dance dresses on horseback
Crow Fair, © Donnie Sexton, Montana Office of Tourism

Men pose for photo at 1926 Crow Fair, photo by Elsa Spear Byron
Brady Locks, Little Wolf, Black Crane, and Big Beaver,
ca. 1926, Crow Agency, MT, photo by Elsa Spear Byron

Photo Gallery (in Crow Fair I)…

HV096- Crow Fair I

Crow DancersHearing Voices from NPR®
096 Crow Fair I: Gathering the Tribes
Host: Scott Simon of NPR
Airs week of: 2011-08-10 (Originally: 2010-08-18)

“Crow Fair I” (52:00 mp3):

“Crow Fair: A Portrait in Sound” (52:00) Steve Rathe

Crow Fair logo

A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. Every third weekend of August the Crow Fair honors that tradition in a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Five days of celebration in southeastern Montana, with a parade, Pow Wow, rodeo, and traditional and fancy dancing.

In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event. This early ambient sound-portrait breathes with the arts and activities of the Crow people: the Apsaalooke Nation.

This is part one of a two-hour radio special which ran originally on NPR Folk Festival USA. Producer: Steve Rathe. Interviewers: Scott Simon, Frank Ray Harjo. Mix: David Rapkin. Engineering Supervisor: Jim McEachern. Recordists: David Harris, Ralph Woods. Thanks: Willy Stewart & the Crow Fair Board and the Crow Tribe for their hospitality. For the final hour, listen to part one: HV097- Crow Fair II.

Carolyn Jensen Chadwick

CJC Photos:
Elephant sealElephant seal, California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

humpback whaleHumpback whale near Maui, Hawaii.

Mali camel herder “On the Edge, Timbuktu.”

Roy Sesana, Bushman elder (Kalahari Desert, Botswana), on a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, “From the Kalahari to Malibu.”


CJC, EP of Radio Expeditions, on the Rio Tiputini (photo: Flawn Williams).

Splendid with Sound: The audio world lost a great producer today, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick. With her husband Alex she co-founded NPR’s Radio Expeditions (article in Current) and produced the Interviews 50 Cents films.

Carolyn was Maya Lin’s sound consultant for “What is Missing?” She produced scores of sound-drenched, audio-intense stories for NPR — we’ve run several, with more coming.

We hope you’ll spend an hour soaking in her sonics below. Hubby Alex once described a jungle as “splendid with sound.” That phrase also does justice to CJC’s enveloping, enrapturing, sometimes ecstatic, and always engaging work.

Master-engineer Skip Pizzi (NPR, Microsoft) would play this first piece at workshops to illustrate how a simple story can be superb, when elegantly enhanced with stereo sound. David Molpus narrates a portrait of “Equestrian Olympian: Bruce Davidson” (1984 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 12:39 mp3):

Radio Expeditions often recorded those who recorded sound, such as Rex Cocroft on “A Journey to the Edge of the Amazon(2006 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 8:54 mp3):

Among the natural sounds CJC captured were those of human nature, as when her husband Alex pitted wits with the regulars at a small-town casino, playing “Poker at the Ox” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 9:55 mp3):

The Chadwicks spent time in India charting the Geography of Heaven: Vrindavan. In this first of three-parts, they walked “The Streets of a Holy Hindu City(2005 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Flawn Williams, engineer / 8:57 mp3):

And in the mountains of Payette National Forest, it’s all guns, guitars, guts, and wild game, inside an “Idaho Hunting Camp” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 12:57 mp3):

We’ll miss you, Carolyn.

Carolyn's Memorial notice in LA

HV095- Inside the Adoption Circle

Jackie Lantry with her sonHearing Voices from NPR®
095 Inside the Adoption Circle: Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Families
Host: Samantha Broun of Transom
Airs week of: 2011-11-23 (Originally: 2010-08-11)

“Inside the Adoption Circle” (52:00 mp3):

First-person voices accounts from adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families:

“Inside the Adoption Circle” (52:00) Samantha Broun & Transom

Voices from all sides of adoption. Stories about living with questions and searching for answers. We hear from birth families (mothers, siblings and a father), adoptees (both kids and adults), and various adoptive families including open adoption and international adoption (China).

Produced for Transom.org by Samantha Broun and Viki Merrick (also on PRX ), with help from Jay Allison. Photo above: Jackie Lantry and her son; © 2006 Nubar Alexanian.

HV094- Working with Studs

Studs smoking cigarHearing Voices from NPR®
094 : America’s Greatest Listener
Host: Sydney Lewis of Transom
Airs week of: 2011-07-27 (Originally: 2010-08-04)

“Working with Studs” (52:00 mp3):

A Transom.org tribute to the great broadcaster and author Studs Terkel (1912-2008):

“Working with Studs” (52:00) Sydney Lewis & Transom

For many years, Transom.org editor, Sydney Lewis, worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this remembrance, a blend of documentary and reminiscence, she brings together a crew of Stud’s co-workers. They share great stories and wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself. Sydney Lewis co-authored Studs’ book Touch and Go: A Memoir.

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America

Studs @ Transom: Special Guest | Radio Special | PRX Piece

Broken trucks and broken hearts

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell

This time alone living in the luxury of Martha’s house has helped me relax enough to see myself and my circumstances a little more clearly.

I’m sick of Mexico. Sick of living in fear, of poverty, of the (mostly) assholes I know there and most of all sick of loneliness.

So tonight I’ve decided to head out into the night with my digital recorder and start doing a story on loneliness. You know, loneliness is probably the hardest thing to admit and for sure the hardest thing to bear.

I was inspired last weekend by a singer songwriter named Steve, who is sadly, dead.

#1 Bar Noise at a place called Buttons.

So here I am again alone in a bar waiting for this Dave Millsap to come on stage and sing the songs of Steve Bruton whose life was loosely depicted in Crazy Heart, the movie with Jeff Bridges.

I actually cried when I saw his beat up old truck drive down one of these breath-taking New Mexico highways because God Damn It that’s me driving up from the Matehuala Desert towards Saltillo, Coahuila in my beat-up Jeep and whatever it is that’s sent me down those lonely Mexican and New Mexican roads, I’m pretty sure it has something to do with movies like this.

The difference is that I’m a woman and don’t play the guitar or paint or anything except live and write about being alienated and sad and, yes, lonely. More…

Sleep Food Gas

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell

Just imagine, if you can being an old (and you know I don’t feel all that old) woman with less than a hundred dollars to her name driving north on Hwy 57 between San Luis Potosi and Matehuala as the sun goes down.

A motel costs 400 pesos. So does a tank of gas.

Children stand by the side of the road holding out live rattle snakes for sale or a wild eagle dangled by its feet.

It’s getting dark.

The empty light comes on the dash board. There are no gas stations anywhere.

Food is out of the question till you get to the border; and when you do get there it’ll be another six hours to your friend’s house where you can sleep for a couple of nights.

Moving Away

[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s another post in her: Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet…]

By Carmen Delzell (Written in 1988 just before I became homeless.)

I never intended to live the way I have.

I thought—in that hazy hopeful time right after graduation and before my foolish marriage that I could be a bohemian, a colorful avant-garde part of the late 1960s and then (I’m not sure when I thought it would actually be) I expected to have a house, go to graduate school and eventually teach at some small liberal arts college somewhere.

I guess I got a lot of these notions from biographies and magazine articles that fell into my hands from my mother’s casual (and probably mundane) choice of reading material.

She herself had fancied a similar life and she too found the shock of turning middle aged without it too much to bear.

She died.

I’m hoping I won’t have to.

Certainly not yet and hopefully not ever. More…

HV093- Lewis & Clark Trail II

Hearing Voices from NPR®
093 Lewis & Clark Trail II: The Columbia River
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-06-23

“Lewis & Clark Trail II” (52:00 mp3):

Biking & Mic-ing the Lewis & Clark Trail; part 2 (of 2), from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean:

“Lewis & Clark: Down the Columbia” (2003 / 23:00) Barrett Golding

Chief Mountain Hotshots, Nicole Meeso and Aldon Wells, Powell Campground ID — Getting ready for a day’s work in the Clearwater Forest with the Blackfeet wildland firefighters, known as some of the best in the world.

Sister Carol Ann and the Bendictine Sisters, St. Gertrude Monastery, Cottonwood ID — Land stewardship is a matter of faith in these sisters’ rural Catholic perspective. We walk thru the woods of the monastery; 800 acres which the sisters have had to learn how to manage.

Horace Axtell, Nez Perce leader, Lewiston ID — Nez Perce Bones: tribal elder, spiritual leader, and the last fluent speaker of the Nez Perce language. Co-author of A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations With a Nez Perce Elder.

Lois & Betty, Patterson Restaurant, Patterson WA — Sipping coffee and surveying farm life from the breakfast tables of a small town cafe.

Louis Butler and family, Walla Walla River WA — Four Generations Fishing: A retiree from Hanford Nuclear Reservation goes catfishing with his daughter, grand-daughter and great-grandsons.

Ken Karzmiski, Archeologist, Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, The Dalles WA — Looking for lost Lewis & Clark legacy, and the artifacts and languages of native cultures drowned by the Columbia River dams.

USCG Duty Surfman Kyle Betts, now Chief Boatswain’s Mate and Executive Petty Officer, Cape Disappointment U.S. Coast Guard Station WA — The USCG Search and Rescue team pulls boats and people out of treacherous West coast waters along the Columbia River bar, where the river meets the ocean: “the graveyard of the Pacific.”

“On the Trail of Lewis & Clark” (1994 / 27:00) Larry Massett

An earlier pedal over the same route, from the Rocky Mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, interviewing whoever crosses our path: wind surfers, church organists, forest service employees, and “we’ve been talking to as many loggers as we can, to try and find out if they don’t see bicyclists, or they just hate us.”

“First Reading & Cruzatte’s Fiddle” (1999 / 2:00 excerpt) Daniel Bukvich

The first movement in From the Journals of Lewis and Clark, a symphonic work for orchestra and choir based on the expedition’s journals. Montana’s Great Falls Symphony commissioned University of Idaho music professor Dan Bukvitch as the composer. The text is President Jeffersons’s instructions to Captain Lewis in 1803.

Listen to Part One. And read more on the Lewis & Clark Trail and our bike trip.

HV092- Lewis & Clark Trail I

Lewis and Clark with sunglassesHearing Voices from NPR®
092 Lewis & Clark Trail I: The Missouri River
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-06-16

“Lewis & Clark Trail I” (52:00 mp3):

Biking & Mic-ing the Modern Lewis & Clark Trail; part one of two, up the Missouri River into the Rocky Mountains. Barrett Golding and Josef Verbanac, a radio producer and an English professor, a Jew and a Souix, bicycle from Missouri to Montana, enduring floods, war, worms, mud, and myriad Lewis & Clark festivals:

“Lewis & Clark: Up the Missouri” (52:00) Barrett Golding

Prep: Cross-country preparations, then and now, from Penis syringes and Indian presents, to AAA and GPS. “Your observations are to be taken with great pains and accuracy, for others as well as yourself” –Jefferson’s Instructions to Lewis, 1803.

Flood: Missouri floodwaterss, a frog symphony, a million worms, bowfishing a beanfield, and in Marthasville MI little league it’s Lemke Trenching and Excavating vs. Miller Funeral Homes. Don Sherman, a retired Chrysler worker, who now volunteers his time taking care of the city park in the flood-prone landmark rural town — which, in Lewis & Clark’s time, was the last outpost of white society. And we go bow-fishing for in a bean field.

Rendezvous: Biking and mic-ing the Missouri River. Captain Lewis’ Aria, surveyor-stalking cougars, black powder bursts, cave wall Manitous, and Edens lost. Explorers express emotions and the Expedition breaks into song, in “Corps of Discovery: An Opera in Three Acts” produced by music professor Eric Dillner and the University of Missouri’s Show-Me Opera. Geographer James Harlan maps the Two Missouris, the Missouri Territory now and two centuries ago, using an 1815 Land Office survey and Clark’s field-notes. James Denny, Historic Interpreter, for Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, points out where pictografs on a cliff were a landmark of the Lower Missouri, until the railroad blew ’em up; we tour through the tunnel of the ex-Manitous.

Wars: No Home on the Range, Chief Joseph’s Race Track, and Brothers Buddha and Brahma. Farrell Adkins, Campground Host at Arrow Rock MO sings the little known second verse of “Home on the Range.” Matt Nowak, Natural Resources Director at Fort Leavenworth Army Base KA describes this places part in the death and desctrution of the Nez Perce people.

Indian County: Daily pow-wows, casino economies, and Lewis’ birthday gloom. Neil Phillips, Penobscot tribal member and former canoe racer paddles from Maine to Montana, experiencing life on the river, a little-seen view of America. Joe Verbancec Sr. tours us thru the Standing Rock reservation.

The Strenuous Life: Bruce Kaye, Chief Naturalist at Theodore Roosevelt National Park recounts Teddy Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota. His ideas about conservation developed in the badlands, then get expressed in the acts of the President of the United States and the start of the National Park system.

Re-enaction: At Coal Banks Landing, on Missouri River “Breaks” in Montana, we encounters the re-reactors, traveling up-river using the boats, clothes, food, guns and knifes of the Lewis & Clark era.

Camp: Lewis and Clark made 600 campsites on their expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. So far, the exact location of only one has been identified. For 13 years, archaeologist Ken Karsmizki has been digging at Lower Portage camp of the Great Falls, on the Missouri River in Central Montana, and finding fire pits, butchered bones, wooden stakes and other artifacts, all dating to Lewis and Clark’s time.

Orchestration:From the Journals of Lewis and Clark” is a symphonic work for orchestra and choir based on the expedition’s journals. Montana’s Great Falls Symphony commissioned University of Idaho music professor Daniel Bukvich as the composer, whose job was to make Art imitate History.

Listen to Part Two. And read more on the Lewis & Clark Trail and our bike trip.