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This encore episode features our interview with the 2020 Reading Across Rhode Island author Elizabeth Rush of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore as well as a reading of the opening chapter titled The Password.

Book Recommendations from Elizabeth Rush:

Getting Involved with Climate Activism:

This episode was originally planned as a live in-person event on March 12, 2020. It was canceled due to COVID-19. You can learn about the original  partner organizations that were working with the library to bring Elizabeth Rush to Barrington.

Barrington Land Conservation Trust 

Podcasting in Seven Easy Steps: A Video Series

This  podcast is a project of the Office of Library & Information  Services and is made possible by a grant from the Rhode Island Council  for the Humanities.

In today’s episode we are headed outside to set up a StoryWalk® at Sowams Woods, a property managed by the Barrington Land Conservation Trust. We will also hear from a few board members of the Trust to learn a bit  about what they do to conserve open space in town and how you can enjoy a land trust property near you. Discover your RI land trust through the RI Land Trust Council's website.

A  StoryWalk® is an innovative way to enjoy reading and the outdoors at  the same time. Laminated pages from a children's book are attached to  signposts along this one-mile loop trail where you can walk along this  woodland path and read The Belonging Tree by Maryann Cocca-Leffler.

StoryWalks® were  created in 2007 by Anne Ferguson in Montpelier, Vermont and have been  installed in all 50 states and 12 countries.

Reading Recommendations about the natural world from out BLCT guests include:

Melissa’s Pick:

Victor’s Picks:

Cindy's Picks:

Discover the story of Providence’s legendary Celebrity Club, New England’s first integrated nightclub, with Tom Shaker, co-author of A Treasury of Rhode Island Jazz & Swing Musicians.

Find out about the famous jazz and R&B musicians who played there,  including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie  Holiday, and Fats Domino, and hear tales from local musicians and  club-goers who saw remarkable shows and became part of the story.

Dr. Tom Shaker is a college professor, a radio DJ, a documentary filmmaker, and an expert on Rhode Island jazz.

His radio show The Soul Serenade, featuring classic soul music from the 1960s and 1970s, airs on WICN on Mondays at 7 p.m.

His award-winning film with Norm Grant Do It, Man! The Story of The Celebrity Club tells the story of the legendary Celebrity Club, the integrated 1950s nightclub in Providence’s Randall Square neighborhood.

His book with Dennis Pratt A Treasury of Rhode Island Jazz & Swing Musicians is a biographical collection of jazz and swing musicians who have  played in Rhode Island and a sequel to Who's Who in Rhode Island Jazz:  c. 1925-1988 by Rhode Island musicians and historians Lloyd Kaplan and  Robert Petteruti.

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Rhody Radio, RI's first collaborative state-wide library podcast project, began in a time when libraries were closed to the public due to a worldwide pandemic, and has since become a long-term programming outlet for libraries. Through fifty-seven episodes and twice as many meetings, the creative team has been meeting via Zoom to plan and program each episode. Now, a year later, Rhody Radio meets in person for the first time, recording live at Barrington Public Library! 

Host Lauren Walker (Assistant Director at Coventry Public Library) chats with the rest of the team - Nicolette Baffoni (Library Development Manager and LSTA Coordinator at the RI Office of Library and Information Services), Dave Bartos (Coordinator of Adult Services at Cranston Public Library), Jessica D'Avanza (Community Engagement Librarian at Barrington Public Library), and Emily Goodman (Community Outreach Coordinator at North Kingstown Free Library) - about their experience creating a weekly library podcast and their goals for the future of this program.

Theme music for this episode is Hopeful Journey by Scott Holmes. Connect with Rhody Radio on Facebook and Twitter, and please rate and review Rhody Radio wherever you find podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, both to this episode and also all year with us! 

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The "Clock Man,” a.k.a. Philip D’Avanza, is standing outside of 404 Market Street in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, and is about to take a step inside the town's clock tower housed in the First Evangelical Lutheran Church. The movement on this 125-year-old tower clock was taken apart, piece-by-piece in October 2020, and driven 450 miles to the Clock Man’s workshop in New Hampshire. Over the course of nine months, he repaired and refinished every part, restoring the clock to its original late nineteenth-century condition.

Come and hear the sound of a happy clock, on this tour of the inside of a clock tower. You will be guided by a man who is known, quite literally, to have “time on his hands.”

Philip D'Avanza has been in the clock repair business for over forty years. Since 1990, he has focused on tower clock repair in historic structures and is thoroughly familiar with the Guidelines for Historic Preservation as established by the Secretary of the Interior. He began his career in design and precision machining. Then utilized his skills as a tool and die maker to provide full-service repair and restoration on some of the most recognized tower clocks in New England. His work has received notice for several award-winning projects such as the Hallsville School in Manchester, NH, and the Massachusetts Trial Court in Fall River.

View photos of his tower clock repair projects at davanzaclocks.com.

Rhody Radio is a project of the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services and is supported in part through a grant from the Rhode Island Council for Humanities.

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Jane Walker is living her dream as a shuttle driver at Roger Williams University (RWU) in Bristol, Rhode Island. Here, she interacts with students, transports them around campus, and encourages singing and merriment on her shuttle rides (especially on Thirsty Thursdays). But when the world changes overnight in mid-March 2020, she is forced onto unemployment and yearns for the day when she can be back at work doing what she loves.

RWU '20 graduate Alex Bowden, narrates this podcast and reflects on how graduating in 2020 has affected him over the past year. He reconnects with Jane to hear how she has coped throughout the pandemic. Together, they document the changes on campus and in their own lives, while expressing hope for the day when things get back to normal (as much as possible). 

Alex Bowden is the former news director and general manager of 88.3 FM WQRI Radio in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he hosted a weekly talk show called The Bowden Breakdown. He is currently the podcast producer for local author and former head of health for the state of Rhode Island, Dr. Michael Fine’s Alternative Fictions podcast. Alex is a 2020 graduate of Roger Williams University having earned degrees in Theater and Communications in Media Studies.

Music credits: Since1999, 1sosamakaveli, and MarsReaven.

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This week’s episode features some self-proclaimed ‘Lovers of the Bard”! Bristol, RI Shakespeare Reading Group showcases a sampling of one of their typical meetings. Join them as they read from Act 5 Scene 2 of ‘As You Like It’ and explore the topics within.

If you’re a fellow lover of the Bard and wish to join the Shakespeare Reading Group, or start one of your own, you can contact Ray Edler at [email protected].

The music featured in this episode is What if I never Speede? by John Dowland, performed by Jon Sayles.

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Join Katherine Stapp, reference librarian at the North Scituate Public Library and producer of the monthly podcast Novel-Tea from the North Scituate Library, for a marathon of their recurring segment “Behind the Shelves,” a fictional gossip column with a literary twist.

Listen and subscribe to Novel-Tea anywhere you find podcasts or online at https://novel-tea.pinecast.co/ and follow the North Scituate Library on Facebook and Twitter.

Theme Music for this episode is "Champ de tournesol" by Komiku. Thanks for listening!

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Lauren Walker, assistant director at the Coventry Public Library discusses the library’s new grant-funded summer Mobile Library program and shares an overview of bookmobile history. Lauren chats with Library Director, Megan Weeden and Bookmobile Intern, Aliyah Harris about the goals of the Mobile Library and how the program is going so far.

For a full list of works cited, please visit the Coventry Public Library website. 

Music courtesy of Pixabay Music.

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Librarians love getting book recommendations too! As a citywide initiative, Providence Community Library invited Groundwork Rhode Island’s Executive Director, Amelia Rose, to co-host PCL READS in April 2021 and to select the next book. Combining personal memoir, feminist theory and pop culture analysis, Feminist City by Leslie Kern is a revelatory work that “offers intersectional insights into the gendered nature of the modern city” (Kirkus). This episode features Leslie Kern's talk, but you can listen to the full community conversation that followed at Providence Community Library YouTube Channel- just start the video at 29:00 to pick up where the episode leaves off! 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Leslie Kern is an Associate Professor of Geography and Environment and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Allison University. She is the author of Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World and Sex and the Revitalized City: Gender, Condominium Development, and Urban Citizenship. Her research focuses on gentrification in North American cities, exploring issues such as embodiment, gendered labor conditions, and environmental and human health using feminist urban theory.

ABOUT GROUNDWORK RI

Groundwork Rhode Island is a community-based non-profit dedicated to creating healthier and more resilient urban communities in Rhode Island. They achieve this through a variety of urban stewardship programs, which seek to support local residents in the development of economic resources that improve their individual lives and communities, as well as improve both the natural and built urban environment, especially in economically-distressed areas. Groundwork RI’s core programs include Green Team youth employment, adult environmental job training, Harvest Cycle composting service, which employs both youth and adults involved in Groundwork RI’s programs, and GroundCorp landscaping service, which hires graduates of the adult job training program. Groundwork RI also runs the Ring Street Community Garden in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood, the Prairie Avenue Greenhouse in South Providence, and the soon-to-be West End Compost Hub