Credits

Life of Kaye is produced by me and Kaye Phipps.

Thank you karaoke singers! For more information about monthly karaoke in Montpelier, I think you can find information here. Otherwise, do an internet search for Saphen Von Cabbage karaoke and hunt around. Otherwise ask me and I’ll figure it out and get back to you.

Welcome to a new,  periodic series called Life of Kaye.

This first episode is called:  Some Kind of a Speaker.

The series is produced by me and Kaye Phipps.

Send us your comments if you have them and thank you so much for listening.

Home health and hospice nurses provide all kinds of healthcare to people in their homes...day and night, and in mud and snow.

I knew of these folks because I met some of them after my father came home from the hospital. A nurse came to help with his medications. A VNA therapist came to give him physical therapy. But I wasn’t really aware of these nurses and therapists UNTIL my family really needed them, and I expect there are a lot of people out there like me.

So this is a show about the nurses who travel, and what their days are like, and what they know about this place because of the work they do. 

Vermont Quick Lube is where I've been getting my oil changed for years, because I love it there. They are fast and nice and they offer coffee. Everyone at Vermont Quick Lube is always in a good mood, even in November or January. Recently I went on a Wednesday and Mike, who runs the register, told me it was Ladies' Day and handed me a red carnation and a ticket for a free car wash. It was the excuse I needed to make this show. 

From The Kitchen Sisters Presents:

Pioneering radio artist Larry Massett, a producer's producer, who led listeners into unexpected worlds and influenced so many in public radio and beyond, died last year at the age of 80. 

This is a same-day reaction to this morning’s story called: A springtime show about how about the economy that partly explains why we feel ashamed. That story features a wonderful listener in Scotland who is a money manager and made some fascinating comments about the last class series. I asked her if she’d be willing to share some of these thoughts on the phone, and she was willing, and that was this morning’s story.

A couple hours later I got a reaction audio from one of the people featured in the class series who we talked about in this morning’s story. So I’m playing it. Because it’s great and because the point of the class series is to talk about these things and this is almost like a real goddamn conversation!

What Class are You? is a series I make for Vermont Public. 

This is a story about a song.

Six years ago, seventeen-year-old Finn Rooney killed himself in his home in Walden, Vermont. A couple days later, his community held a bonfire in the parking lot of Hazen Union High school in Hardwick. Hundreds of people came. Tom Gilbert, who organized the bonfire, asked his friend Heidi Wilson to write a song for the occasion. The song was called Hold On. She made sure it was a song everyone could sing. And they did.

Now people are singing this song all over the world. People in Minneapolis have been singing it to ICE agents. They’re singing it for their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. They’re singing it in Wales and Australia and Iralend in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Peole are singing it all over, to give each other some comfort and some courage.

This is a story about where that song came from and where it’s gone.

I met Arwa and Habib Meiloud because they’re Anne’s kids and Anne works at the post office in the village here in East Calais. They live in the house right across the road from the post office. Arwa and Habib’s father is from Mauritania and lives out of the country, but both Arwa and Habib were born in the US, and their mother Anne grew up in Vermont. Arwa is 17 years old, Habib is 18. In this conversation, we talk about the roles that race and class have played in their lives.

Kaye Phipps lives in Montpelier, Vermont. Right now she works as a custodian at a local grocery store. She’s also been a florist, a housekeeper, and a house cleaner. But even though she’s sometimes working multiple jobs, she often comes up short. In this episode, Kaye talks about how having a limited income makes her feel like a child, long into adulthood.