Dirk Wierenga and Paul Sturgul, Route 2 Elsewhere Documentary

03/16/22 • 24 min

This episode features Dirk Wierenga, director of Route 2 Elsewhere, a documentary which “tells the story of challenges that face rural America communities adapting to a changing economy, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Montana” and his colleague Paul Sturgul who helped promote the film.
In this episode, David talks with Dirk and Paul about the documentary, their backgrounds, and aspects of rural culture and rural living as it pertains to the Upper Peninsula.

Previous Episode

Elise Bur, Director of NMU Center for Rural Health

David Haynes sits down with Elise Bur, who was selected to be the first director of the NMU Center for Rural Health after the program received a $100,000 grant in 2020. The NMU Center for Rural Health is a collaborating center for the Michigan Center for Rural Health aiming to create an integrated health care network that better serves U.P. residents and improves their health outcomes, as well as to identify related academic programs to meet regional demand.
In this episode, David and Elise discuss what the NMU Center for Rural Health does, the things it's responsible for, and ways they are helping people right now. They also discuss how the Center is working with local healthcare organizations, working to improve food insecurity in the U.P., and the efforts to impact healthcare-related legislation both in the state and in Washington DC.

Next Episode

Karen Kovacs, City Manager of Marquette, Michigan

David Haynes sits down with Karen Kovacs, the new City Manager for Marquette. Kovacs was officially appointed as the Marquette City Manager on May 24, 2021 and took office on June 7. The City Manager is the chief administrator for the city government and has a variety of duties including administering city departments, enforcing all laws and ordinances adopted by the City Commission, recommending an annual budget, implementing the final budget, and advising the Commission.

In this podcast, Karen discusses her background, women in public administration and available resources for women looking to get into that field, the difficulty of finding housing in Marquette and what she's doing to help address this issue, and Marquette's revenue situation and what's being done and being planned to increase revenue.

The Rural Insights Podcast - Dirk Wierenga and Paul Sturgul, Route 2 Elsewhere Documentary

Transcript

David Haynes:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another session of the Rural Insights podcast and video series and today we're really excited to have two guys with us who are doing some really exciting things with film, and documentaries, and I want to ask them about, but first let me introduce Dirk [Weirenga 00:00:24] and his colleague, Paul [Sturgul 00:00:28], and welcome guys. Glad you're joining us today and they've been working on a... They have a film that you've got to