At Night I Fly

This second episode is all about dogs.

From Spoon hanging out with Common to me hanging out at a dog spa this episode wrestles with the domestication of dogs. The featured work is an excerpt from a play Spoon wrote. It's a speech from the perspective of a dog and this dog is NOT your best friend.

Spoon also talks about the one thing he'll miss in prison (that is, if his life sentence gets commuted.)

This first episode is about growing up.

Instead of hitting you over the head with Spoons famous collaborations (Ani DiFranco, Jamie Foxx...) we thought it'd be better to set the scene with where Spoon comes from: Barstow CA, the desert.

Spoon reads a poem about a pig and maggots, talks about growing up, I talk to my parents about how I didn't go to prison, and Spoon ends with a wonderful poem about his mom and deer that came to dinner.

Introducting AT NiGHT I FLY. An eight-part series with Spoon Jackson about his life and poetry. In this series we dive intro the complicated nature of being locked up and yet still growing. We then dive into the same themes but on the outside -- connecting our two worlds.

YOUR EULOGY IS DONE

But a new show called At Night I Fly is coming next. It's a great show about poet, prison, people, plants, and even non-alliterative nouns!

matthew schneeman, nathan miller, spencer brown KCRW 2019 submission.

Here's a radio doc I made about a Minneapolis property management company.

In 2016 the tenants of two different buildings sued their landlord Steven Frenz over poor living conditions. In a rash move he tried to manipulate their standing to sue by staging fake tenants and fake leases. The crack formed by this then allowed the tenants, a housing rights groups, and their legal team eventually bring the largest tenant based class action in Minnesota history. It involved perjury, protests, and a mysterious disappearing bathtub.

photo by Steel Brooks http://www.steelbrooks.com/

Aiai Lin is a friend and gave, hands down, the funn-est interview to date. But the interview is also very serious and sincere. Like, don't pollute! Don't kid shame people!

Aiai is a teacher at a chinese emersion school and from Taiwan. She's great.

John Gebretatose is a comedian and so I asked him to talk about a bunch of stuff that ISN'T funny! But he still made it fun. Wait ... maybe that's just what comedy is anyway?

He tells us about growing up with one parent with schizophrenia and the other with alcohol abuse. John performs standup all of the twin cities (minnesota) and teaches and performs at HUGE Improv theater in Minneapolis. (I even performed with him once on the open night ... which went alright, kinda.) and also he's a founding member of BLACKOUT, a black and poc centered improv group.

https://www.blackoutcomedy.org/

My Eulogy.

I met Carolyn in S. Korea. We were both ESL teachers. After leaving, as it generally happens, we returned to very different lives. But what she returned to was, in time, her dad's diagnosis of early onset alzheimer's disease.

Carolyn talks about her dad's body being donated to science, caregiving, and some other sad and beautiful things.