The knees of a peaceful leviathan

06/08/23 • 49 min

1 Listener

The Fabulous 413

We explore language today!

What's that? We explore language every Wednesday because of The Word Nerd?

To that we rebut: indeed. But how is this Wednesday different from any other Wednesday?

Perhaps it's because we had a great listener question from a listener about the origins of certain English phrases (inspired by our look at the origins of the language in a previous show). So Emily Brewster, resident wordster and senior editor at Merriam-Webster, dives right into the Middle-English of things to show us how some common phrases have evolved, and giving us more food for thought in the process.

Or perhaps it is because we spent time with Polly Byers of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding. Their Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism in Schools (or the BRAVE Schools) program seeks to help middle and high school students, as well as the staff in those institutions, in using dialogue to deescalate instances of violence and hate. This weekend, they host "Bringing the Lessons Home:The Power of Dialogue, Locally and Globally" at the Amherst Women's Center to help folx see the applicability of the word to help everyone near and far.

But mostly we're thinking it's because we have a bonus Live Music Wednesday. On tour from Boston, and making a stop at the Jewish Community of Amherst, is Levyosn. With their name taken from the Ashkenazi Hebrew for “Leviathan”, the group specializes in Yiddish song and klezmer, but they also sing in Hebrew, Ladino, and English and draw from adjacent Eastern European folk traditions, all of which you can hear on their brand new album "Lullabye". Lucky for us, they dropped by the studio to give us a taste of that new album in person.

We explore language today!

What's that? We explore language every Wednesday because of The Word Nerd?

To that we rebut: indeed. But how is this Wednesday different from any other Wednesday?

Previous Episode

The banning of strawberry murals

Today is all about participation!

It's exactly what we want to do in strawberry season! and since that has just started, we head to the pick-your-own fields of Pie In The Sky Farm in Northampton. There, proprietors Kristen Sykes and Fred Beddall walk us through their many different varieties (some ready and some not), show us some of their other PYO crops that are just getting started, and speak to how their particular land stewardship helps all their crops and the area itself do better.

It's what we want to do with our neighborhoods too. And what better way to participate than making art! Britt Ruhe of Common Wealth Murals swings through the studios to talk about all of the murals her organization has been bringing to Springfield. We discover how Common Wealth Murals helps to train more muralists, how they got involved in the Nelson Stevens restorations, and how the second organization that CWA founded,Fresh Paint Springfield, truly gets the community involved while continuing to do bigger and better things (some this week even!)

And speaking of cities, we participate in the civic process. NEPM reporter Jill Kaufman has been reporting on a motion to censor books in Ludlow school libraries. She, and author Jarret J. Krosoczka who has had his books banned before, sit with us to un-tease the Gordian knot of how we got here before the meeting next week that may put the sanctions into place.

Next Episode

The rules for saving fashionable theater

Isn't it lovely when community comes together to make art? We think so!

It's why we speak with The Greenfield Players, who for the next two weekends will bring the bard to Energy Park for their presentation of Twelfth Night. With company members Rachel Cronen-Townsend, Daniel Greycloud-Jacob, Steve Cronen-Townsend, Cassie Wood-Triplet, we get into the appeal of taking your Shakespeare outside for a little Vitamin D, and why this particular work continues to resonate.

And it's in manner that we all wear ourselves, the hidden talents that bubble forth. Those talents are a thing that FAB Fashion Passion Week is actively seeking right now. This collaboration between Make It Springfield and FAB Fashion of Turners Falls is seeking to highlight local designers and hobbyists as well as global designers. Both groups are very much looking for folx in the community to participate! We chat with organizers Richie Richardson of Fab Fashion and Roberta Wilmore of Make It Springfield about the power and importance of globalizing our arts communities through collaborations like these on big and small scales.

It's in the way we come together to preserve these spaces as well. There is currently a campaign to save the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, which shut it's doors on June 5th. And some big names have come out in support of keeping this small but vital art-house theater operating, including Gregory Crewdson, who through June 9th is offering prints of one of his previously unreleased works as part of this fundraising effort. We chat with him about how cinematic sensibilities bleed into his work, and how he got involved in the preservation efforts.

And if we're honest, making good legislature is an art as well. Which may be why Rep. Jim McGovern has a bit of ennui today. For today's mcgoverning with McGovern, we dig into his discontent with the Rules Committee, a board for which he was chair when the democrats had a majority in the House.