News from the Peak

What do Elvis Presley, child support, and our guest James Forsher have in common? (No, he's not the long lost son of Elvis...) They share a connection with pioneering child support researcher Trude Forsher. On today's show, we hear about Trude Forsher's life, her escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, her groundbreaking role as a working mother (including time as Elvis Presley's personal secretary), and how, on top of all of that, she provided a research base that helped set in motion the child support program we know today. This podcast just keeps getting better!

Taylor Hagood on Stringbean, Persistence, and the Problem of Cutting a New Path

Banjo player and comedian David Akeman, known essentially all of his professional life as Stringbean, lived the kind of rags-to-riches story that was supposed to come with a happy ending. 

On this episode of News from the Peak, we talk to Professor Taylor Hagood about Stringbean and the work—the very real and often quite fragile work—of writing a book about someone who has tended be seen as only important in death.

Hagood is as engaging a speaker as he is a writer. A professor of literature at Florida Atlantic University, Hagood has a distinguished career as a scholar of William Faulkner, among other writers, and is a teacher and lecturer of no small renown. 

Alongside all of that, he somehow finds time to perform magic and sing and play piano and banjo. A skilled visual artist and craftsman, he recently built a banjo that uses the same resonator as the one most closely associated with Stringbean (the Vega #9 Tubaphone) and closely follows it in other elements of its design. 

That’s the banjo you can hear Hagood play in these three tracks that he very generously recorded for us. You will hear Cripple Creek during the interview and at the end we share two tracks in full —“Hot Corn, Cold Corn” and “Pretty Polly”. All of these are closely associated with Stringbean and Hagood plays them in the clawhammer style that Akeman favored, and on the Banjo he built during the writing of this book.

(Intro by the host, Maureen Leif) I met Pam back when I was a Deputy District Attorney working on the child support docket. She was Magistrate Gagel back then and she was hearing the child support cases. As she tells the story, we would often go at each other (in jest) because I felt like she could be lenient. In hindsight, she was always right! Pam and my colleague Emily and I would go to dinner when Pam left the bench, and it was always a fun way to connect and talk about our profession lives. From the time that I first met Pam she would talk about her work on a Title IX case Roberts v Colorado State University[1]. You can hear the passion and impact of Title IX in Pam’s voice when I ask her about her experience and what it means to her all these years later. All people, young and old, need to understand and appreciate the hard work, dedication, long hours and sacrifices made to bring Title IX into being. It is about more than just sports and had a broader impact than most people realize.

[1] Roberts https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/814/1507/1765777/

On the 50th Anniversary of Title IX, we had the good fortune to speak with two amazing women who played a roll in the creation and implementation of this important milestone in education and a move toward furthering opportunities for women. On this episode, Part 1 of 2, we welcome Hall of Fame Coach, Carol Plodzien to talk about her experiences as a student athlete and coach before and after Title IX. As a coach to our own Liz Bullard, we hear their recollection of their days as Player and Coach, and the impact that the experiences had on both of them. 

We have had a couple of recent episodes, which you should check out if you haven’t already, on the LCO Good Life Camp. This camp, while an amazing experience on its own, is part of a larger grant we are working on with the LCO Tribal Child Support program. The grant is focused on responsible parenting and economic mobility. The underlying theme of the grant is the idea that by teaching young people about their own culture, we can improve these outcomes for them as they become adults. There is obviously a lot more to it than that… and that’s where our guest comes in. Today we welcome Dr. Nell Weber. Nell is a consultant and researcher with experience in parenting, parental beliefs, early childhood education, literacy, language acquisition, global citizenship, and international education. She earned her Doctorate in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and now makes her home in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We talk about her research on parenting both in the US and internationally, and how that background led her to our project. We discuss the impact of culture in parenting, and why this is such a key component of our project.

Only News from the Peak brings you artist and bear management tech Carl Ramm, who saw many of this year’s contenders in action earlier this year as part of his work at Brooks Camp in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.

On this episode, Carl gives us some updates from his season at Brooks Camp, and we talk about Fat Bear Jr, and Fat Bear week, and we learn even more about bears than we thought possible. For more on the competition and to see the brackets and vote, check out https://explore.org/fat-bear-week 

Part 2 of our series on the Good Life Camp features Andy Bachmann. One of our partners in this endeavor was Camp Highlands in Sayner Wisconsin. Andy is the third generation in his family to serve as the Camp Director at Camp Highlands, and he has been at camp as a camper, counselor and Director every summer for most of his life. When not in Sayner, Andy serves as Minister for Education, Outreach and Justice at the United Church of Gainesville, in Gainsville, Florida. In this episode we get Andy's thoughts on how the mission of the camp worked so well with the mission of the Good Life project, and reflects on the impact this had on him and his staff, and what he sees for the future of this program. Don't forget to check out the previous episode and watch for more on the Good Life Camp, and the Good Life project coming soon. 

This is the first in our multi episode series about the Good Life Grant, and the Culture Camp. This summer Lac Courte Oreilles Child Support Services (LCO CSS) launched its first ever cultural camp for youth. The camp is part of The Good Life Vision project, which brings LCO CSS together with community partners to preserve, strengthen, and renew Ojibwe values in the LCO youth by providing opportunities to learn about the culture’s history, values, and practices to support Good Life parenting and reduce the negative effects of generations of cultural trauma.

The LCO Cultural Camp is one of the many programs in the works this year to develop culturally relevant and long-sustainable curricula and other tools for middle school, high school, and college students and young parents.

On this episode of the News from Peak’s podcast, Melinda McKevitt-Isham, who was the lead from the LCO CSS office, shares her perspectives on the goals of the camp with us, how it turned out, discuss with us lessons learned, and the impact she has already seen on the youth and the community at large, and hopes to build on in the future.

During this time of high stress, organizations are finding it more important than ever to support employees and teammates and encouraging self-care. Organizations are realizing that employees that are take care of themselves and feel supported have reduced stress, are more efficient and productive. Employees that take care of themselves, take less sick time and stay at an organization longer. Self-care helps ensure ongoing good health (both mental and physical), and help you better manage your stress and build resilience.

Grays Peak Strategies has been doing work with organizations on energy management, chair yoga, and meditation. This idea of a health coaching has been a recent topic that has come up and we have been introduced to an amazing health coach, Lenka Dostalova.

On this episode, Maureen Leif welcomes 4 outstanding leaders answer questions on the topic of women in leadership. We feel so lucky to have interviewed Betsy C. Donat - Ardita, Vice President of Compliance at Everside Health, Kim Newsom Bridges, Director of Child Support Services at Conduent, Keri Batchelder Jacobs, Programs and Services Section Manager, Division of Child Support Services at Colorado Department of Human Services and Kristie Arneson, Senior Administrator, Economic Security Divsion/Wyoming IV-D Director at the Wyoming Department of Human Services. They talk about their leadership styles, how they have overcome obstacles and challenges during their career, and what advice they would give if they could talk to themselves at age 25. It's an insightful and interesting conversation, and we hope it will spur on more conversation for our listeners.