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My guest for this episode is Thom Nees, the executive director of Serve Wenatchee Valley who is also leading the effort to develop the Common Ground Community Housing Trust
A community housing trust is a proven way to develop permanently affordable housing in a community. The simple mechanism is that a nonprofit owns the land and buyers purchase the home. This model has been successful in numerous communities, including Leavenworth and the Methow Valley.
The red hot housing market in the region is making it increasingly difficult for working families to afford homes, as anyone who is paying attention to the housing market can attest.
This is an effort that can make a meaningful difference. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Look for an upcoming column on this effort in The Wenatchee World.
My guest for this podcast is Christine Morgan, the executive director of the Icicle Fund in Leavenworth. Philanthropist Harriet Bullitt started the fund 20 years ago as a way of supporting arts and music, conservation, and natural history efforts in North Central Washington. The Icicle Fund has pumped more than $45 million into our region during that time.
Christine and I spoke about her childhood in Denmark, how she developed a commitment to collaboration and viewing challenges from multiple perspectives, and how the Icicle Fund is making a difference by supporting local nonprofits.
The Icicle Fund has provided transformational leadership by helping nonprofits dream bigger and make a more significant impact. It is a positive force for bringing people together to help us build stronger communities.
This episode features Yvonne Boyd, a member of the Braver Angels effort that seeks to depolarize political discussions and create a framework for honest discussions on difficult topics.
Braver Angels brings conservatives and liberals together in a format that has long been used in family counseling. The organization is growing by leaps and bounds as people on both sides of the political divide recognize the danger to America of not being able to have a dialogue.
Boyd talks about her background, how she came to be involved in Braver Angels, and talks about the virtual workshop that is being presented on Saturday, February 27. The title of the workshop is “Depolarizing within: Becoming a better angel in your own world.”
The workshop is about recognizing how we add to the polarization and offers techniques to have more constructive interactions with those we don’t agree with politically.
What happens in the conversations moderated by Braver Angels is that people see each other from a more nuanced and broader perspective beyond simple political labels.
Here’s a link to the workshop. https://braverangels.org/event/depolarizing-within-standard-central-eastern-washington/
My guest for this podcast is Jill Fineis, the principal of the fledgling Pinnacles Prep charter public school in Wenatchee, which will open its doors to sixth and seventh graders this fall in the Wenatchee Community Center on South Mission Street.
In our conversation, Jill shares her deep background in education and discusses the guiding philosophy of Pinnacles Prep. The learning environment they are committed to fostering encourages and supports students in finding their passion and taking charge of their learning journey. It’s an approach that has been successful in engaging students at other schools around the country.
Pinnacles Prep has a terrific and diverse group of board members and community ambassadors who are helping guide the design of the school’s academic program. They are doers with deep experience in public education here.
My guest for this episode is Jill Nielsen-Farrell, the daughter of longtime Wenatchee dentist Gerry Nielsen. She has started Wenatchee Community Acupuncture and treats a wide variety of conditions, including doing trauma-informed acupuncture for depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and addiction.
After losing her husband in a house fire, Nielsen-Farrell found that acupuncture helped her process her own grief and she decided to shift from a career as a social worker to helping people heal using Chinese medicine.
In our discussion, we talked about her personal journey, the unique aspects of community-based acupuncture, and her work with the Compassion Prison Project. She’s a delightful soul who I think will enrich this valley immeasurably.
This is a follow-up conversation with Dr. David Notter, the retired cancer doctor in North Central Washington and we focus on how playing music has helped him through some tough times and helped his patients and their families.
In our conversation, he talks about the healing power of music and unique experience of performing classical music and bluegrass. As a recovering violinist, this gave me new insights into the experience of playing bluegrass and impact playing the music has on the performers and the audience.
He shared four short segments of fiddle playing. It is a conversation that lingers with me still.
My guest for this podcast is Dr. David Notter, a retired Wenatchee oncologist.
Notter talks about the power of empathy – of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – and the strong relationships he developed with patients, their families and others in the community. He learned as much or more from his patients about healing than he taught them.
He talks about the difference between healing and curing and the powerful lessons that his patients taught him.
“If you watch and listen to patients with serious illness, they teach you immensely. They teach you about caring, and thereby about forces which foster empathy and ‘healing,’” he said.
Notter is one of four elders in the valley who will be sharing their wisdom and perspectives at a virtual event Sept. 20 that is sponsored by the Ripple Foundation.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
For this podcast, I am posting a talk titled “Civil Conversations in an Angry Age,” given by University of Washington Professor David Smith recently at the Wenatchee Library. The talk was hosted by the Wenatchee YWCA was sponsored by Humanities Washington.
In the talk, Smith gives some perspective about why we are at each other’s throats and a recipe we can use to become better at engaging in these difficult conversations. Smith comes from a fascinating background. He was born into a fundamentalist Christian family and was devoted to that view. He later spent 15 years evaluating that belief system piece by piece.
He emerged from that intellectual and spiritual journey viewing the world from a progressive mindset but also committed to teaching people to think for themselves about issues that matter to them.
My guest for this episode is a remarkable young man from Leavenworth who experienced a horrendous personal tragedy – a tragedy that fueled his desire to make a difference in this world.
D’Andre Vasquez lost both parents and his grandmother in a car accident four years ago and completed his education at Cascade High School as captain of the wrestling team and and as a leader in DECA, the high school leadership program. He campaigned successfully to become international president of DECA and is traveling the country supporting its programs.
D’Andre is what I would call an “us” rather than a “me” leader. He credits his success to the support of the community, his faith and his mentors. His philosophy of challenging himself to improve every day is something each one of us can emulate and benefit from.
My guest for this episode is Suzanne MacPherson, a former educator, council member, and mayor of Cashmere.
Suzanne has leveraged a strong sense of empathy, a willingness to listen deeply, and a commitment to helping people find a sense of belonging in a career and life that has changed lives in Cashmere.
Her strong will and sense of fairness led her to successfully challenge a Cashmere school policy back in the 70s decreeing that pregnant staff members resign. That’s a practice that needed to be updated and Suzanne accepted the challenge.
Suzanne is a marvelous example of a person with deep roots in the valley who is striving to make the community great for future generations. We can all learn a lesson in relationship building from her.
The podcast currently has 74 episodes available.