Rural Remix

We welcome Lyndsie Bourgon, author of "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods" to Everywhere Radio.   Bourgon wanted to know more about how tree poaching affects forests like the one in her front yard. Her research led her to stories about our human quest for dignity and identity in the face of displacement and poverty.  (Find the transcript and more on our episode page.)  Lyndsie Bourgon is a writer, researcher, oral historian, and 2018 National Geographic Explorer. She writes about the environment and its entanglement with history, culture, and identity, and her features have been published in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, the Guardian, the Oxford American,  Aeon, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her first book, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods, came out in June 2022.    Everywhere Radio is a production of The Rural Assembly. Get this podcast in your inbox, along with stories and news from rural leaders, allies, and their communities in our weekly Rural Assembly newsletter: https://www.ruralassembly.org/newsletters-subscribe.

We're taking a short break for the summer. Everywhere Radio will be back in August with more of the good, scrappy, joyful ways rural people are building a more inclusive nation. Until then, keep following The Rural Assembly's other work at https://www.ruralassembly.org. A new episode of our video series Everywhere Extra drops next week. It explores Native American representation in the media. We’ve got clips and interviews with some searing voices including writer and actor Bobby Wilson of Rutherford Falls and the hit series Reservation Dogs.  You'll find that, plus video episodes of this season's podcasts, on our Youtube Channel. See you in August!  Transcript Hi everyone, it’s Whitney, checking in to let you know that Everywhere Radio is taking a summer break. You know what I’m talking about—we’re pausing our program in June, July, and early August to catch our breath, lean into new projects, travel to conferences and events and hopefully score some vacation time, too. I hope all of you are getting the same opportunities to reconnect, recreate, and maybe recalibrate your work a little. Our staff also plans to use these summer months to reflect upon the work we’re doing in the world. We’re setting aside time to wrestle with questions like “What is ours to do in this season?” and “Why do we think building an inclusive nation is essential to the future of rural and urban places?” It feels important to sit with these big questions every so often, to make sure that everything we put out into the world—from Everywhere Radio to our virtual events to our email newsletters is responsive and true to the spirit of our call to be caring and courageous right now. Just because we’re not in the recording studio however does not mean we aren’t creating spaces and content for you: There are lots of things to look forward to on the Rural Assembly platform this summer, especially, the premier of our newest episode of Everywhere Extra. The latest video drops the week of June 27. It’s a sort of mini documentary that explores Native American representation in the media. We’ve got clips and interviews with some searing voices including writer and actor Bobby Wilson of Rutherford Falls and the hit series Reservation Dogs.  We’ll also continue sending the latest news, stories and rural advocacy opportunities that you’ve come to expect via our email newsletters. If you’re not yet signed up, head over to ruralassembly.org and click the subscribe button. If you’re looking for more video content, you can access all the videos from Rural Assembly Everywhere on our YouTube channel. There are hours there of  programming featuring artists and poets, civic leaders and experts. If you are looking for another podcast, check out The Yonder Report, a weekly podcast rounding up the latest rural news, produced by The Daily Yonder and public news service. You can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

On this episode, we talk with Neema Avashia, author of "Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place," about her memoir, identity, finding your people, and growing up in West Virginia.  This interview was first recorded at Rural Assembly Everywhere, a virtual gathering of the Rural Assembly in May 2022. Avashia is interviewed by Skylar Baker-Jordan, Contributing Editor for Community Engagement at 100 Days in Appalachia.   For more rural content, subscribe to Rural Assembly newsletter: https://ruralassembly.org/newsletter-subscribe  The Rural Assembly is a movement of people and organizations devoted to building a stronger, more vibrant rural America. This interview was first aired at Rural Assembly Everywhere, our virtual festival for rural advocates and the rural-curious, listeners and leaders, neighbors and admirers.

On this episode of Everywhere Radio, a group of neighbors from McMinn County, Tennessee, discuss book banning and how it played out in their own community when the school board pulled Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Maus" from the 8th grade curriculum. They talk about the book ban in McMinn as indicative of a broader national trend, how their community is addressing it, and what they feel is truly at stake in this moment. Join Whitney Kimball-Coe, Vice President of National Programs Center for Rural Strategies, and her McMinn County, Tenn., neighbors: Stephen Dick, Austin Sauerbrei, Alex Sharp, Liv Cook, Cynthia McCowan and Dr. Patricia Waters. Everywhere Radio, hosted by Whitney Kimball Coe, features rural leaders and allies and spotlights the good, scrappy, joyful ways rural people are building a more inclusive nation. New episodes of the podcast release every other Thursday. Everywhere Radio is a production of the Rural Assembly, a program of the nonprofit Center for Rural Strategies, which also publishes the Daily Yonder. Everywhere Radio: https://www.ruralassembly.org/podcasts Subscribe to Rural Assembly: https://www.ruralassembly.org/newsletter-subscribe #rural #bookbans #libraries #bookchallenges #ALA #rurallibraries #Maus #McMinn #ruralassembly #everywhereradio #ruralpodcasts #schoollibraries #publiclibraries #artSpiegelman #books

This week on Everywhere Radio, Xandr Brown, multimedia producer at the Daily Yonder, speaks with Beau of the Fifth Column. A portion of this conversation first aired as part of the Rural Assembly Everywhere virtual festival that took place on May 10 and 11, 2022. We are pleased to bring you the full conversation in podcast form here on Everywhere Radio. Since starting his channel three years ago, Beau of the Fifth Column has grown his YouTube audience to more than half a million subscribers, connecting with folks from all walks of life and political identities. It isn't surprising given that he doesn't shy away from most any topic, whether it's his almost hourly updates about the Ukraine and Russian conflict to more general sociopolitical topics like political polarization, the misappropriated words of George Orwell, or gun rights and law enforcement in the United States. When you're watching Beau of the Fifth Column, you know you're not just watching to hear what you already know. You're watching to see him illuminate a topic through his variety of experiences. You're there for his voice. In that spirit, if you're already familiar with his channel or this is your first time hearing about it, we hope you enjoy this conversation between Xandr and Beau. 

The Rural Assembly's Whitney Kimball Coe and Tracy Staley talk all things Rural Assembly Everywhere — the Assembly's virtual gathering coming May 10 and 11th. Learn what we're looking forward to, you can connect with other rural advocates during the conference, and more during this special episode of Everywhere Radio.  ⭐️ Register for Rural Assembly Everywhere at https://www.crowdcast.io/e/rural-assembly-2022

We talk with Anthony Flaccavento about his work in bridging the rural-urban divide, coming from Baltimore to Appalachia, and why farming keeps him humble. Listen to Everywhere Radio wherever you stream podcasts. Flaccavento is the co-founder of RUBI, the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative.  Flaccavento is also farmer and rural development consultant from Abingdon, Virginia in the heart of the Appalachian Coalfields.  The Founder of Appalachian Sustainable Development, Flaccavento has focused most of his work over the past four decades on building healthier food systems and more diverse, locally rooted economies in Appalchia and around the world.  His consulting firm, SCALE, Inc, works with communities across the nation to evaluate, plan and build healthier farm and food systems and local economies. Flaccavento is the author of Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up:  Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), along with “Healthy Food Systems:  A Toolkit for Building Value Chains” (self-published) and scores of articles and op-eds.  He writes and speaks regularly on rural development, bottom up economics, overcoming the rural-urban divide and and a range of political and cultural issues.  He has taught course on these topics at Future Generations University, Emory & Henry College and community colleges. Flaccavento was the Democratic Candidate for the U.S. House in 2018, and remains involved in trying to impact politics and the public debate.  He is the co-founder of RUBI, the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, through which he works with colleagues to lead public forums and trainings designed to help people understand and begin to overcome the rural-urban divide.  He has also compiled The Rural-Urban Divide:  A Guidebook to Understanding the Problem and Forging Solutions.  He is married to Laurel, a retired public school teacher, and has three terrific grown children.

Our guest on Everywhere Radio is Cynthia McCowan, a community activist and connector. She's an advocate for black lives in Athens, Tennessee, and is spearheading a project to ensure black histories and experiences are acknowledged in this small rural town.

Our guest Teri Carter writes about rural politics, and now she's living them. Carter talks with Everywhere Radio about why she's a progressive running as a Republican for magistrate in her Kentucky county, how she stays in relationship with neighbors, and how she became a political writer. About the guest: Carter lives in Anderson County, Kentucky, where she writes about rural politics. You can find her work at the Lexington Herald-Leader, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Daily Yonder. She has a BA in English from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from San Jose State University. She teaches at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky, and is working on a book about stepfamilies. About the podcast: Everywhere Radio, hosted by Whitney Kimball Coe, features rural leaders and allies spotlighting the good, scrappy, joyful ways rural people are building a more inclusive nation. Everywhere Radio is produced by the Rural Assembly. All the links: 🔔 Subscribe to our Youtube channel: https://bit.ly/TheRuralAssemblyYT 🎧FIND all podcast episodes: www.ruralassembly.org/podcasts Subscribe: https://www.ruralassembly.org/newsletter-subscribe About this episode: https://www.ruralassembly.org/podcasts/everywhere-radio-teri-carter

On this episode of Everywhere Radio, we talk with Starre Haas, an advocate for women’s leadership and empowerment, mother, wife, and entrepreneur. We talk with Starre about her journey from accounting to women’s empowerment and politics and what it has meant to build a new community and life with her family in Hope, Alaska. Formerly with VoteRunLead, Starre is the founder and CEO of Community Connections Now, a company that focuses on empowering women through networking and leadership development and of the nonprofit, The Everyday Bold Woman, formed to spotlight and provide leadership training and financial resources to women, particularly mothers and homemakers, women who have been suffering as a result of the pandemic. Everywhere Radio is a production of the Rural Assembly. Learn more at rural assembly.org/podcasts.