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Climate Change, Mental Health, The Arctic, & Storytelling


Longing for Belonging, 'Druther Have No Other

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Bias & prejudice are hard-wired in us, we've got the studies to prove it, so what can we do about bias, hate, & division? In Our Search For Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart by Howard J. Ross we explore the mind, our behavior, & our possibility of acting better than we're programmed for.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Eastern, Jewish, Non-affiliated

How Corporations are Remaking America

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One of the most informative & persuasive writers ever, Gordon Lafer is author of The One Percent Solution: How Corporations are Remaking America One State At A Time. Both empowering & maddening, the piercing exposé of the destruction of labor & the middle class by moneyed interests is essential to mounting an effective reply. Gordon Lafer is a political economist and Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center of the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:

Jewish

Recovery

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The impact of addiction can shape our lives in unexpected ways. Spencer T. and his guests on The Recovery Show podcast carry the message of healing for those affected by addiction and alcoholism. We explore the 12-steps of Al-Anon and see how working the steps can offer solutions to personal challenges we all face.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
12 Step Spirituality


Another good resource is Recovered Podcast

Featured Music:
Black Dog - by Anastasia Vishnevsky
A Small Flashlight - by Carrie Newcomer

Preventing the Next Genocide

Billie Holiday's World

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Billie Holiday still looms larger than life even close to 60 years after her death. At the nexus of complicated subjects like race, drugs, sexuality, & music, she acts as a compelling subject for those seeking to understand our society's trajectory, especially when religion is added as a layer to the experience. The Religion Around series seeks to look deeply into the relationships around our most evocative individuals, so it is no surprise that Penn State University Press asked Tracy Fessenden, interim director of the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, to write Religion Around Billie Holiday, or that the scrutiny yields Strange Fruit.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Catholic 

Featured Music:
Strange Fruit - by Billie Holiday

Back In Iraq With Sami Rasouli

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Sami Rasouli came to the USA in 1976, returning to Iraq after the US invasion, where he was founder of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams. Sami shares a very different perspective of the cause and effect of the US invasion of Iraq, due to his vantage point on the ground in the country, and has put his life at the service of peace and healing for his country of birth.

They are looking for volunteers who want to spend time in Iraq, hosted free, to increase mutual understanding. Check out their Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project (IARP).

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Muslim

 

Conversations with the Other

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J.E. McNeil has powerful points of view, but she also has a profound devotion to communication and unity, skills and attributes fostered by the Conversations with the Other trainings she presents widely. If you're interested in making it possible for all the family to gather together at holidays, or for our dysfunctional national family to once again be united, J.E. can help all of us to learn to communicate without arguing, understand without capitulating.


Gender Bending in the Bible

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Peterson Toscano is an amazing and innovative thinker whose acting talent reaps revolutionary insights with his video, Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible. With humor, drama, and insight, Peterson unearths a wide range of non-gender compliant people & passages hidden in plain sight in the Bible, for LGBTQI and Straight to see.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:

Catholic, Quaker

Rape Hurts Uganda

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Hellen Lunkuse Waiswa Tanyinga is a women's (and human) rights pioneer in Uganda and the founder of the Rape Hurts Foundation. At the age of 11 she was raped while doing the tradtionally female job of hauling water, and she transformed that pain into healing & power for herself, women, and all abused people. As the 1st female graduate of the prestigious East African Makerere University in Kampala, she's on the cutting edge and a hero to women and to many men in Uganda.

Pam Follows the Manure

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Pam Taylor's work with Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan is an inspiring example of citizen-driven environmentalism which informs & guides govt with feet firmly rooted in both agrarian living & scientific scrutiny. NoCAFOs is her goal, sustainable agriculture is her means, and good neighbor living her ethic. She's a big fan of Wendall Berry agrarian living, She received the 2016 Petoskey Prize from the Michigan Environmental Council

Additional related resources: Sierra Club video Follow the Manure, and A Watershed Moment: Michigan CAFO Mapping Report.

Featured Music:
Four Lane Highways & Mobile Homes - by Tom Neilson

Hiking Naked

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Iris Graville is an author, book artist, and a former nurse. Her memoir, Hiking Naked: A Quaker Woman's Search for Balance shares her quest for meaningful & life-balancing work. The journey took Iris & her family far off the grid, radically exploring simplified living, freeing her to find her own answers to the big questions, less controlled by society's prompting.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker 

Common Chords

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Robert B. Jones, Sr works joyfully to build bridges of understanding through music in an organization & project called Common Chords. Using tools of music, story-telling, history, & inspiration, Robert brings pleasure and insight to diverse audiences. Part of his richness is that he is also pastor of Sweet Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church of inner-city Detroit, where he seeks to inspire & heal the world in other ways.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Baptist 

Featured Music, all performed by Robert B. Jones, Sr:
Deportee - written by Woody Guthrie
One Dime Blues - written by Blind Lemon Jefferson
Will Cunningham - written by Robert B. Jones, Sr
Change Gonna Come - written by Sam Cooke

Climate Humor, Racism, Poetry, & More

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Peterson Toscano of Citizen's Climate Radio visits with 5 guests, on topics including climate comedy with Brian Ettling, climate-coping lessons from the Netherlands with Edgar Westerhof of Arcadis North America, environmental racism with Brentin Mock, and poetry from River Hymns by Tyree Daye.

Extended Notes: Conversations about climate change can get downright dire and dreary. But isn’t there room for comedy? Brian Ettling is a comic who is not ashamed to pull out a rubber chicken for a gag. He joins Peterson Toscano for a lively conversation about climate comedy.

Superstorm Sandy shocked the New York Metropolitan area in 2012. By some freak coincidence, right before this epic storm hit, Edgar Westerhof moved to New York City from the Netherlands. Not only does he come from a country that knows a lot about flooding, but Edgar is also an expert in integrated urban water management. Since Sandy, Edgar has become the National Director for Flood Risk and Resiliency for Arcadis North America.

After 10 years of reporting on race, culture, and civil rights, Brentin Mock embraced environmental issues as his new beat. He has since become a leading voice highlighting environmental racism in America. He speaks with Peterson Toscano about pollution, segregation, asthma, and mobility. Brentin also speaks candidly about failures of predominantly white environmental organizations that attempt to reach out to people of color. He shares why these attempts fail and what climate advocates can do to build a more diverse coalition.

Also joining the discussion is Dr. Natasha DeJarnett, environmental health policy analyst from the American Public Health Association. She outlines statistics on historical and contemporary pollution. She highlights how air and water pollution pose severe health risks for everyone, but especially people of color in the U.S.

Joining us in the Art House is poet Tyree Daye. As an African-American man living in the U.S. South, Tyree weaves together stories and voices from his family. He artistically expresses the collective trauma they have experienced and the deep insights passed down. Rivers, water, and flooding continually come up in his book of poetry called River Hymns. Tyree talks about his poetry and reads pieces from the book and new poetry.

Earth-Community Values & Money Dilemmas

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Hayley Hathaway is passionate about the relationships between ecology, economy, and faith. She is publications director for Quaker Earthcare Witness and lives as part of the South of Monadnock Community, after having spent 6 years with Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City. She wrote about her search for intentional community in a Friends Journal article about the Twin Oaks community.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Catholic Worker, Church of the Savior, Congregational, Quaker 

Featured Music:
Circle of Friends - by Susan Grace
Somos El Barco - performed by Sue Kranz, on Cambridgeport School's Greatest Hits


Love Thy Neighbor Advocacy

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Government of, by, & for the People is built by the kind of Spirit that Christine Ashley & Katie Breslin draw on to make flourish the work of FCNL, as Quaker Field Secretary & Young Adult Program Manager, respectively. They make advocacy rewarding & lively from their offices facing the Hart Senate Office Building in D.C. with the banner proclaiming Love Thy Neighbor - No Exceptions.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Catholic, Quaker

Christian Slavery

Wobbly Quaker

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Brad Laird is a Wobbly Quaker, official member of the Michiana IWW and a Quaker in good standing. That’s not all he is, by any means - he’s a Girl Scout Troop Leader, passionate husband, father, and grandfather, Chair of the board of directors of South Bend, Indiana’s Community for Peace & Nonviolence. And one more item that makes him particularly interesting to us, he was once destined to be a Lutheran Minister, he considers himself to be a post-theist, post-atheist, deeply committed to his work for the nurture and healing of the world, both in practical and spiritual ways.

Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Lutheran, Quaker, Unitarian Universalist 

Featured Music:
Joe Hill - performed by Joe Jencks on Links in the Chain

Wise Energy & Electric Cars

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Bob Bruninga is near the end of his work as an aerospace engineer at the US Naval Academy and is passionate about electric cars and solar energy. He built his first electric car way back in 1970, led his neighborhood’s implimentation of alternative energy, and helped Annapolis Friends Meeting in their installation of net zero energy solar panels. He’s the lead author of a new book, Energy Choices: Opportunities to Make Wise Decisions for a Sustainable Future, and he knows whereof he writes - lots to be learned here, even for the well-informed. Check out Bob's Ham Radio website - with links to his solar/electric pages.

Preventing the Next Genocide

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