democracyroad

democracyroad

By John CaseSociety & Culture
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democracyroad episodes

  • The Poetry Show: Baucis and Philamon: Radical Hospitality
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    Because they did not need the Gods, the Gods were there

     

     

    The myths of hospitality as a bridge between Heaven and Earth
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded May 7, 2025

    Radical Hospitality

    by Rumi

     


    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning is a new arrival.
    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.
    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honorably.
    [S]he may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.
    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.
    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.

     

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    28 min
  • The Poetry Show: Opheus and Eurydice
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    Lost Love and the Birth of Poetry

     

     

    The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a tragic tale about a musician, Orpheus, who journeys to the underworld to bring back his wife, Eurydice. Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding from snakebite. Orpheus, heartbroken, uses his music to persuade Hades, the god of the underworld, to allow her return. It does not work out.
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded April 30, 2025

    The Makers

    by Howard Nemorov

     

    Who can remember back to the first poets,

    The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
    No one has remembered that far back
    Or now considers, among the artifacts
    And bones and cantilevered inference
    The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
    So lofty and disdainful of renown
    They left us not a name to know them by.
    They were the ones that in whatever tongue
    Worded the world, that were the first to say
    Star, water, stone, that said the visible
    And made it bring invisibles to view
    In wind and time and change, and in the mind
    Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
    And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
    Of the city into the astonished sky.
    They were the first great listeners, attuned
    To interval, relationhsip, and scale,
    The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
    Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
    Who having uttered vanished from the world
    Leaving no memory but the marvelous
    Magical elements, the breathing shapes
    And stops of breath we build our Babels of.

     

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    27 min
  • Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025

     

     

    Mother Jones: Honor the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living

     

    Broadcasts LIVE, Tuesdays at 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall
    Description: John, JB and Scott focus on Workers Memorial Day, honoring workers who lost their lives on the job in 2024. JB and John got to hear a moving, memorable and timely tribute from UMWA (retiring) president, Cecil Roberts, at the memorial in Wheeling, WV.

    This Episode Recorded April 29, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    42 min
  • Paris on the Potomac: Crash Landing in WV
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Paris on the Potomac: Crash Landing in WV
    Recession, Repression Loom. Time to Get Moving. Or Doom.

     

     

    Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: John Case, Karen Valentine
    John and Karen confront the growing uncertainty feeding doom, and the points of Light.
    This Episode Recorded April 25, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    24 min
  • Labor Beat Radio: The Larry Shultz Interview
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Labor Beat Radio: The Larry Shultz Interview
    Medicaid Cuts Threaten WV Hospitals

    Will Mary, Joseph and the Baby God be turned away?

     

     

     

    Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern
    Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall

     

    Guests: Larry Schultz
    Description: Attorney and radio host Larry Schultz reviews, in detail, the serious jeopardy proposed Administration cuts to expanded Medicaid and other health services to rural hospitals across the nation, and especially in West Virginnia.
    This Episode Recorded April 22, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    49 min
  • The Poetry Show: Persephone is Home
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?

     

     

    The Myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades: Do not be troubled if you do not like any of the characters. They are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict. No?
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts:
    This Episode Recorded April 23, 2025

    Persephone the Wanderer

    by Louise Gluck


    In the first version, Persephone
    is taken from her mother
    and the goddess of the earth
    punishes the earth—this is
    consistent with what we know of human behavior,
    that human beings take profound satisfaction
    in doing harm, particularly
    unconscious harm:
    we may call this
    negative creation.
    Persephone's initial
    sojourn in hell continues to be
    pawed over by scholars who dispute
    the sensations of the virgin:
    did she cooperate in her rape,
    or was she drugged, violated against her will,
    as happens so often now to modern girls.
    As is well known, the return of the beloved
    does not correct
    the loss of the beloved: Persephone
    returns home
    stained with red juice like
    a character in Hawthorne
    I am not certain I will
    keep this word: is earth
    "home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
    in the bed of the god? Is she
    at home nowhere? Is she
    a born wanderer, in other words
    an existential
    replica of her own mother, less
    hamstrung by ideas of causality?
    You are allowed to like
    no one, you know. The characters
    are not people.
    They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.
    Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
    ego, superego, id. Likewise
    the three levels of the known world,
    a kind of diagram that separates
    heaven from earth from hell.
    You must ask yourself:
    where is it snowing?
    White of forgetfulness,
    of desecration—
    It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says
    Persephone is having sex in hell.
    Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know
    what winter is, only that
    she is what causes it.
    She is lying in the bed of Hades.
    What is in her mind?
    Is she afraid? Has something
    blotted out the idea
    of mind?
    She does know the earth
    is run by mothers, this much
    is certain. She also knows
    she is not what is called
    a girl any longer. Regarding
    incarceration, she believes
    she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.
    The terrible reunions in store for her
    will take up the rest of her life.
    When the passion for expiation
    is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
    the way you live. You do not live;
    you are not allowed to die.
    You drift between earth and death
    which seem, finally,
    strangely alike. Scholars tell us
    that there is no point in knowing what you want
    when the forces contending over you
    could kill you.
    White of forgetfulness,
    white of safety—
    They say
    there is a rift in the human soul
    which was not constructed to belong
    entirely to life. Earth
    asks us to deny this rift, a threat
    disguised as suggestion
    as we have seen
    in the tale of Persephone
    which should be read
    as an argument between the mother and the lover
    the daughter is just meat.
    When death confronts her, she has never seen
    the meadow without the daisies.
    Suddenly she is no longer
    singing her maidenly songs
    about her mother's
    beauty and fecundity. Where
    the rift is, the break is.
    Song of the earth,
    song of the mythic vision of eternal life—
    My soul
    shattered with the strain
    of trying to belong to earth—
    What will you do,
    when it is your turn in the field with the god?

     

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    questions, comments: [email protected]

     

    31 min
  • The Poetry Show: AT the Movies 2
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    The Movie was a Poem

     

     

    Ishmael Reed's Mirrors, MIchael Palmer's silent star, the Wicked Errol Flynn, "Come, let’s go in."
    Wednesday's 10 AM Eastern, http://player.enlighenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded April 16, 2025

    My Wicked, Wicked Ways

    by Sandra Cisneros

     


    This is my father.
    See? He is young.
    He looks like Errol Flynn.
    He is wearing a hat
    that tips over one eye,
    a suit that fits him good,
    and baggy pants.
    He is also wearing
    those awful shoes,
    the two-toned ones
    my mother hates.
    Here is my mother.
    She is not crying.
    She cannot look into the lens
    because the sun is bright.
    The woman,
    the one my father knows,
    is not here.
    She does not come till later.
    My mother will get very mad.
    Her face will turn red
    and she will throw one shoe.
    My father will say nothing.
    After a while everyone
    will forget it.
    Years and years will pass.
    My mother will stop mentioning it.
    This is me she is carrying.
    I am a baby.
    She does not know
    I will turn out bad.

     

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    27 min

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