Radio Curious

A former dump site at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Ft. Bragg, California, is part of the story in this edition of Radio Curious.

Captain Cass Forrington, creator and owner of the Glass Beach Museum, and the author of “Beaches Of Glass, a History & Tour of the Glass Beaches of Fort Bragg, California,” is our guest.   He is also a Master Mariner, holder of an unlimited Master’s Certificate, allowing him to be the captain of any size sea going vessel.  He has many stories to tell.

Captain Cass and I sat on Glass Beach No. Two in Ft. Bragg, on a windy afternoon, June 2, 2012, with the waves lapping ten feet away.  We began when I asked him to describe Glass Beach.  But keep listening to hear his story about putting his hands in acid 40 years ago.

Captain Cass Forrington’s website is: captcass.com

Capt. Cass Forrington recommends a movie and a book. The book is “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” by Ray Kurzweil.  And the movie is “What the Bleep Do We Know?”

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Pushing limits in music and thought is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious as we visit with Trimpin, a man who makes music from unusual instruments.  He is the star of documentary film about his life’s work Trimpin, who uses a single word for his name received a Mac Arthur Genius Grant 1997.

He asserts that he is trying to “go beyond human physical limitations to play instruments in such a way that no matter how complex the composition or the timing, it can be pushed over the limits.”  The music, he said, starts with a sound in his head.  He then transforms that notion for us to hear.  The film Trimpin will be show at the Mendocino Film Festival the first weekend of June 2012, in Mendocino California.

I spoke with Trimpin from his studio in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2012, and asked him to comment on the characterization where he is described as a mad-scientist, a magician, or possibly a tour guide.

Rather than recommending a book, Trimpin said that he gave up reading sometime ago and replaced it with thinking.  He’d “rather think than read,” he said.

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Sean, a four year old child living with his parents in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco in 1969 was the star of a short film about his life. He spoke openly his free-spirited parents, his crash pad home, watching cops bust head, and smoking pot.  Ralph Arlyck made the film while a student at San Francisco State University.

Thirty years later he located Sean and his family, and created the film Following Sean. Ralph Arlyck, our guest on this edition of Radio Curious has produced and directed more than a dozen prizewinning films.  Following Sean, is a film as much about Ralph Arlyck’s life as it is about Sean’s.  It will be shown at the Mendocino Film Festival, held in Mendocino, California, the first weekend of June, 2012, where Arlyck will receive the Albert Maysles Award for Excellence in Documentary Film Filmmaking.

Ralph Arlyck and I visited by phone from his home in Poughkeepsie, New York, on May 14, 2012, and began when I asked him how Following Sean also became a story of Arlyck’s own life.

The film Ralph Arlyck recommends is “Patience (After Sebald,)” a British Film by Grant Gee.

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As we all know every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The reaction, however is not necessarily equal in time or unity.  It’s often spread over time with serial impacts.

In this edition of Radio Curious we focus on the treatment of workers in the automobile industry in the United States beginning in the early years of the 20^th century.  The story is portrayed in “Brothers on the Line,” a film about Walter, Ray and Victor Reuther, three brothers from West Virginia who organized the United Auto Workers Union beginning in the 1920s.  With access to the National Archives, the Wayne State University Labor History Library and family records, Sasha Reuther, Victor’s grandson, directed the film.  It chronicles the working conditions and the successful strikes at the big three auto plants in Michigan; the political power of the United Auto Workers Union, and its involvement in the civil rights movement.  It also explains why Detroit, Michigan became the richest city in the United States in the 1950s.

“Brothers On The Line” will be shown June 3, 2012 at the Mendocino Film Festival, in Mendocino, California.

Sasha Reuther and I visited by phone from his office in New York City on May 7, 2012.  We began when I asked him what happened once the automobile became a useful, if not necessary tool of life.

The book that Sasha Reuther recommends is “U.A.W. and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945 -1968,” by Kevin Boyle.

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Standing in the knee-high, flowing waters of Gibson Creek in Ukiah, California we visit with some of the 35 Volunteers from Watershed Stewards Project, The Friends of Gibson Creek and The California Department of Fish and Game, in this edition of Radio Curious.  The project, organized by Chelsea Neill, an Americorps Volunteer is meant to stop the erosion of a cliff at a bend in the creek that was ruptured by a falling tree.

We visited on April 14, 2012.  First I spoke with Chelsea Neill who describes the work being done, then with Linda Sanders of The Friends of Gibson Creek and finally with Chelsea’s mentor Dan Resnick of the California Department of Fish and Game.

You can hear the water running under our feet and the snapping sounds of volunteers working to build a barrier made of willow branches to retain the cliff.   We begin our conversation with Chelsea Neill explaining why this area was chosen for creek restoration.

The book Chelsea Neill recommends is “Deep Survival:  Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why,” by Laurence Gonzales.  You can listen to a Radio Curious interview with Gonzales about the book here.

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In 1990 Earth First! activists from Mendocino County were on a road trip to rally support for a summer effort to help protect old growth redwoods in Northern California. For years prior, logging practices took well over 90% of the original redwood growth in the area. Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari, the organizers, were in their car in Oakland, California, in May 1990 when a bomb exploded underneath the driver’s seat where Judi Bari sat.  She and Darryl Cherney were immediately arrested and suspected of bombing themselves. Although charges were never filed against the two, authorities have yet to locate the bombers.  Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari sued and won a jury award of four million dollars against the Oakland Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for violating their 1st and 4th amendment rights.

The film, “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” produced by Darryl Cherney, attempts to answer the question posed in the title; it examines their struggle with law enforcement in finding the real bomber and chronicles the history of the local environmental movement here in Northern California.

Christina Aanestad, the Radio Curious assistant producer spoke with Darryl Cherney about the film he produced and his experiences resulting from the bombing. They visited on March 29, 2011, at the studios of KMEC radio, inside the Mendocino Environmental Center, which has a long history of supporting social and environmental movements, including Earth First! They began when Christina asked Darryl Cherney to describe the attempted assassination against him and Judi Bari.

The website for Darryl Cherney’s film is www.whobombedjudibari.com.

The book he recommends is, “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” by Alan Shlain.

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Radio Curious Assistant Producer, Christina Aanestad speaks with performance artist and poet, La Tigresa about art and activism. La Tigresa made national headlines in 2000 for blockading a logging truck bare breasted while reciting poems of the Goddess, to save old growth redwood trees in Northern California.

The book La Tigresa recommends is “Pronoia is the Antidote to Paranoia,” by Rob Brezsny.

La Tigresa’s website is www.latigresa.net.

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Radio Curious brings you an archived interview with Maria Stewart, as portrayed by Sandra Kamusukiri.  Maria W. Stewart, was a free black woman who lived in Boston, MA, from the 1820s to the early 1840s. She was the first American born woman to lecture in public on political themes and likely the first African-American to speak out in defense of women’s rights.

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The decision of the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Citizen’s United v. Federal Elections Commission in January 2010, substantially changed the political process in the United States. That decision held that corporations have the same constitutional rights as have individual people. Four of the nine Supreme Court Justices believe the Citizen’s United was wrong. So many other American’s share that belief that a nationwide grass roots effort called Move to Amend has been organized to promote the 29th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This new amendment would change the result of the Citizen’s United decide and declare:

“The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only. Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.”

An amendment to the Constitution requires a two thirds vote of approval in both the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. It then must be adopted by three-fourths, or thirty-eight, of the fifty states to become the law of the land.

Many city councils including those of Los Angeles, New York, and Portland, Oregon, have passed resolutions urging their congressional representatives to support this amendment. Listeners in Mendocino County, the home of Radio Curious, may soon sign petitions to put a similar resolution on the November 2012 ballot.

Our guest in this edition of Radio Curious is David Cobb, an attorney from Texas, on leave from his trial practice to promote the adoption of this constitutional amendment. David Cobb visited the studios of Radio Curious on February 13, 2012, to talk about Move To Amend. We began our conversation when I asked him to explain why the constitution should be amended to repeal the effect of the Citizen’s United decision.

The books David Cobb recommends are “Gangs of America, The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy,” by Ted Nace, and ”Corporations Are Not People: Why The Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About it,” by Jeff D. Clements.

The Move To Amend website is www.movetoamend.org.

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