KZYX: Be More Now with Blake More

This interview features author, animal rights advocate and veterinary homeopath Jan Allegretti. They will be discussing holistic health care for animals, as well as animal/human wellness and how it relates to personal growth, environmental sustainability and spiritual curiosity.

For more than thirty years, Jan Allegretti has been a consultant in holistic health care for animals and a passionate advocate for animal rights and welfare. She holds a Diploma in Veterinary Homeopathy, and offers private consultation and group workshops in animal health care and advocacy.

Since the mid-1980s Jan has written and worked toward a better relationship between humans and other species. In 2007 co-founded the Mendocino County, California, animal advocacy organization CARE: Compassion for Animals, Respect for the Earth. In 2009 she was nominated for the American Red Cross (Sonoma and Mendocino Counties) Real Heroes Award in the Animal Category.

Ms. Allegretti is the author of The Complete Holistic Dog Book: Home Health Care for Our Canine Companions (Ten Speed Press 2003; 2nd edition Tenacity Press 2018) and Listen to the Silence: Lessons from Trees and Other Masters (Tenacity Press 2007). She has also written extensively for print and online publications, including the column Beyond Body, Mind, and Spirit in the In Defense of Animals e-newsletter.

Jan combines her work as an animal advocate and animal health care consultant in her classes and workshops; she lives in the hills of northern California, in a mountaintop home with the resident deer, ravens, coyotes, rattlesnakes, bears, and countless other wise and wild ones.

This show originally airs at 7pm Thursday March 18, 2021 on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits, as well as streams on the web www.kzyx.org. 

For this edition of Be More Now, host Blake More dives into Mendocino poetry, and poets, sharing a couple of interviews with valley poets Bill Churchill and Michelle Peñaloza.  You will hear a mix of poetry, process and lots of discovery as these two fine Mendocino County poets discuss what makes them write!   

     Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fifteen books. Bread and Salt is her fourth collection of stories. Her latest novel is Traveling with Spirits. Other novels include After Eden, Range of Light, A Walking Fire, Winter’s Edge, Blood Sisters, All Good Women, Movement: A Novel in Stories, and Murder in the English Department. Her short fiction books include Abundant Light, The Night Singers and Trespassing. Her collection of essays is Rumors from the Cauldron: Selected Essays, Reviews and Reportage. In 2002, The Low Road: A Scottish Family Memoir was a Finalist for the PEN USA Creative Non-Fiction Award. Her short fiction collections, Trespassing and Abundant Light were each Finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards (1990 and 2005).

           Valerie Miner’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The T.L.S., The Women’s Review of Books, The Nation and other journals. Her stories and essays are published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Dutch. In addition to single-authored projects, she has collaborated on books, museum exhibits as well as theatre.

            She has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, Fondazione Bogliasco, The Brown Foundation, Fundación Valparaiso, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia.

            Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. She and her partner live in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California.

This show originally aired at 7pm Thursday January 21, 2021 on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits. 

This interview features Ayurvedic Doctor and co-founder of Pacific Coast Ayurveda Madison Madden. In honor of the season, this month’s show focuses on gratitude, the kind of gratitude that starts with self and then extends out into the world because it has no choice, it simply overflows into all aspects of being, from personal health, to freedom, food choices, and the environment.

Maintaining safe distances by talking on the phone, they will discuss ways to cope with Covid-19, including some helpful tools to  deal with anxiety, media overload, job uncertainty, financial stress, sleep deprivation, and most importantly, how to build a new reality in order to stay productive and healthy.

The show will also include poems by 6-8 grade students at Manchester Elementary School who wrote Covid-19 poems as part of my online “Viral Poetry Lesson”

In the words of Sartre: “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”

The show originally aired on April 30 from 7-8pm  on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits.

More information about Alena Guest can be found at her website alenaguest.com.

This podcast features a lively mix of poetry, discussion and inspiration, traversing topics such as how writing poetry helps with healing, trauma, memory and serve as inspiration for altruism, courage and resilience.  

The show also includes poems by 6-8 grade students at Manchester Elementary School who wrote Covid-19 poems during my online classes this spring,

You can find Gail’s award winning collection Blood Memory at Small Press Distributor.

This interview features award-winning author, trainer and public speaker Holly Stiel, who is renowned world wide for her trailblazing service philosophy. In this 45 minute conversation, we discussed Holly’s life, the basic tenets of kindness, silver linings, gratitude and fortitude, mixed with a healthy dose of levity and creative playfulness, which describes Holly to a T.

This show originally aired at 7pm Thursday August 6 on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits. 

You can find out more about Holly Stiel and her offerings by visiting her website

This interview features the 2020 Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Awardee, SF Poet Michael Warr discussing his work as a poet, his latest book Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, his literary career, his two languages/one community project, and so much more.

This show originally aired at 7pm Thursday September 3 on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits.

• You can find out more about Michael Warr by visiting https://michealwarr-creativework.tumblir.com for updates on poetry whereabouts.  
• For bilingual writing and workshops and video of “To Your Assailant…” see: https://twolanguagesonecommunity.com/
• also FB pages for https://www.facebook.com/OfPoetryandProtest/ 
• and the page https://www.facebook.com/thearmageddonoffunk/ for poetry community posts.
• His book Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin is now available online at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) by clicking this link: https://bit.ly/3fCZWkM.

This interview features author, filmmaker, and “Phoenix Lights” experiencer Dr. Lynne Kitei; she and host Blake More are discussing Dr. Lynne’s first hand account of the mysterious “V” shaped orbs that flew over the state of Arizona on March 13, 1997 and were witnessed by over 10,000 people, as well as the lasting impact it has had on her “healthy skeptic’s” life. 

Show originally aired on Thursday October 1 on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits, as well as streamed on the web www.kzyx.org.  You can find out more about Dr. Lynne Kitei and the Phoenix Lights by visiting thephoenixlights.net