democracyroad

democracyroad

By John CaseSociety & Culture
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democracyroad episodes

  • The Last Stop Cafe: Sports and Failed States
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    The Last Stop Cafe: Sports and Failed States
    Its Spring Training -- Baseball will fix everything.

     

     

    Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern
    Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case
    The Cucch takes apart the baseball spring spirits, and the collapse of our Giant Redwood Nation into a pile of tinder.
    This Episode Recorded April 7, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    46 min
  • Labor Beat Radio: Bluejay Rising
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Labor Beat Radio: Bluejay Rising
    Zach Shrewsbury -- Bluejay Rising

     

     

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

     

    Guests: Zach Shrewsbury
    Description: Zach Shrewsbury joins usto discuss Bluejay Rising, a grass roots, community action based political movement within the Democratic party in southern West Virginia. Bluejay Rising has been focusing on flood relief. Zach's historic grass roots Senate campaign argues strongly for a grass roots path for the Democratic party to return to relevance, and winning.

    Here is Zach's speech at the Charleston, WV Hand Off rally.
    This Episode Recorded April 8, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    48 min
  • The Poetry Show: The Poetry of Sue Silver
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Shepherdstown, WV Poet Sue Silver Shines

     

    Image: a MS Copilot interpretation of a verse in Catness

     
    Sue Silver -- a longtime Shepherdstown poet, shares some poignant and powerful poems. Her friends join in the studio to listen to her reading. In the poem below, Sekhmet was a powerful and multifaceted ancient Egyptian goddess, often depicted with a lioness head, representing both the destructive force of war and sun's healing power.
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded April 9, 2025

    Catness

    by Sue Silver


    One night with the wind blowing wildly
    my cat climbs down from the porch chair.
    She rolls around on the ground.
    I wait, hold the door open ‘til she,
    in her own time, makes her way inside.
    The wind, all this while,
    works to wrest the door from my grasp.
    I run my hand over her black fur.
    Her yellow eyes gaze at me steadily.
    She purrs, her claws extend and retract on the cushion
    that protects my legs as she sits in my lap.
    I see the Egyptian Goddess, Sekhmet,
    who did Ra’s bidding annihilating evil hordes,
    after which she became the Great Healer, they say.
    Ancient one - She who lives with the wind,
    her eyes and paws reaching to me.
    Her body, an echo
    of all cats - tiger, panther, bobcat.
    Her stride, her stance
    that stillness in her strength.
    The stalk, the pounce.

     

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    34 min
  • The Poetry Show: Poems and Movies
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    The Movie was a Poem

     

    Billy Collins excerpt: 

    I would like to watch a movie tonight
    in which a stranger rides into town
    or where someone embarks on a long journey,
    a movie with the promise of danger,
    danger visited upon the citizens of the town
    by the stranger who rides in ...
     
    Mind Twisters Warnings : The double feature --- 'passing for white'--- Horror show --- Please Stop Talking During the Movie.
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded April 2, 2025

     

    Poem of the Week

     

    Early Cinema

    by Elizabeth Alexander

     

    According to Mister Hedges, the custodian

    who called upon their parents
    after young Otwiner and young Julia
    were spotted at the matinee
    of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik
    at the segregated Knickerbocker Theater
    in the uncommon Washington December
    of 1922, “Your young ladies
    were misrepresenting themselves today,”
    meaning, of course, that they were passing.
    After coffee and no cake were finished
    and Mister Hedges had buttoned his coat
    against the strange evening chill,
    choice words were had with Otwiner and Julia,
    shame upon the family, shame upon the race.
    How they’d longed to see Rudolph Valentino,
    who was swarthy like a Negro, like the finest Negro man.
    In The Sheik, they’d heard, he was turbaned,
    whisked damsels away in a desert cloud.
    They’d heard this from Lucille and Ella
    who’d put on their fine frocks and French,
    claiming to be “of foreign extraction”
    to sneak into the Knickerbocker Theater
    past the usher who knew their parents
    but did not know them.


    They’d heard this from Mignon and Doris
    who’d painted carmine bindis on their foreheads
    braided their black hair tight down the back,
    and huffed, “We’ll have to take this up with the Embassy”
    to the squinting ticket taker.
    Otwiner and Julia were tired of Oscar Michaux,
    tired of church, tired of responsibility,
    rectitude, posture, grooming, modulation,
    tired of homilies each way they turned,
    tired of colored right and wrong.
    They wanted to be whisked away.

    The morning after Mister Hedges’ visit

    the paperboy cried “Extra!” and Papas
    shrugged camel’s hair topcoats over pressed pajamas,
    and Mamas read aloud at the breakfast table,
    “No Colored Killed When Roof Caves In”
    at the Knickerbocker Theater
    at the evening show
    from a surfeit of snow on the roof.
    One hundred others dead.
    It appeared that God had spoken.
    There was no school that day,
    no movies for months after.

     

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    37 min
  • Paris on the Potomac: The Blood Moon Show
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    Paris on the Potomac:
    The Blood Moon Show
    Report Back from the WV Legislature. Omigod!

     

     

     

    Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: John Case, Karen Valentine
    John and Karen ponder the portents ahead: Time to Stand UP.
    This Episode Recorded Mar 14, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    37 min
  • The Last Stop Cafe Show: Sports & WV Cyanide Commentary
    Enlighten Radio Presents
    The Last Stop Cafe Show: Sports & WV Cyanide Commentary
    Sports Forecast: Casey at the Bat? James Walks Again!!

     

     

    Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern
    Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd
    Mike, John and James revel in baseball, then despair at uncovering the secret of WV overall decline, and commit themselves to a TONTINE
    This Episode Recorded Mar 31, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

     

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    35 min
  • The Poetry Show: the Yellow Show
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    "I have nothing else to give you, so it is a pot full of yellow corn...I love you"

     

     

    The Yellow poems this week concludes Janet's foray into the three basic colors via the jeweled eye of our favorite -- and newly discovered -- poets: Pablo Neruda, Charles Demuth, William Blake, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and more
    Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded March 26, 2025

    A Lemon

    by Pablo Neruda

     


    A Lemon
    Out of lemon flowers
    loosed
    on the moonlight, love's
    lashed and insatiable
    essences,
    sodden with fragrance,
    the lemon tree's yellow
    emerges,
    the lemons
    move down
    from the tree's planetarium
    Delicate merchandise!
    The harbors are big with it-
    bazaars
    for the light and the
    barbarous gold.
    We open
    the halves
    of a miracle,
    and a clotting of acids
    brims
    into the starry
    divisions:
    creation's
    original juices,
    irreducible, changeless,
    alive:
    so the freshness lives on
    in a lemon,
    in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
    the proportions, arcane and acerb.
    Cutting the lemon
    the knife
    leaves a little cathedral:
    alcoves unguessed by the eye
    that open acidulous glass
    to the light; topazes
    riding the droplets,
    altars,
    aromatic facades.
    So, while the hand
    holds the cut of the lemon,
    half a world
    on a trencher,
    the gold of the universe
    wells
    to your touch:
    a cup yellow
    with miracles,
    a breast and a nipple
    perfuming the earth;
    a flashing made fruitage,
    the diminutive fire of a planet.

     

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    31 min
  • The Poetry Show: The ”Red” Show
    Enlighten Radio Presents

     

    The Red Badge of Poetry -- Seek the Truth

     

     

    Scarlets, Bloods, lipstick, red earth, red sky, Matisse, red history, red poems, Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, Robert Frost, Nizar Qabbani, Carole Satyamurti, and more.
    Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern
    Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
    This Episode Recorded March 19, 2025

    Every time I kiss you

    by Nizar Qabbani


    Every time I kiss you
    After a long separation
    I feel
    I am putting a hurried love letter
    In a red mailbox.


    Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown

    A Microsoft Copilot Interpretation (imagistically)

     

     

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    34 min

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