WPKN Community Radio

Thursday, February 25, 2021, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

Everyone lives somewhere. We all talk about where we live, but more, we think about it. A lot. Especially when we have been under House Arrest lo this entire year. There are two worlds that we go to to consider our options in creating our own home. One is everywhere, especially now in a Connecticut Covid Bounce that has seen prices jump 20%, the Real Estate world. It is a world of marketing, dumbing down everything to a “Style” or “the latest trend”. Whether HOUZZ or Home Depot, our home love is seen a Profit Center Opportunity, and the language of “Buy Now And Save” is the same as that for selling anything, hype over insight, let alone listening to our fondest dreams.

The second world of those you can talk to about your biggest asset and risk, where you live, are the designers, builders, architects who make the homes you are thinking about everyday. But a different hype happens. Rather than feign sentimental intimacy of Your “special” needs, architects and designers pose as oracles of cool, hiding their preconceptions in language that you do not understand, but, they hope, will confer wisdom, insight and value.

Rooms are “Zones”. Windows and doors are “Openings” or worse,”Fenestration”. Trim becomes “Datum”. Walls become “Planes” and doorways become “Voids”. Seeing outside becomes “Transparency” and spending less on heat is “Sustainable”.

Why can’t architect’s just talk the walk of homemaking?

Today on HOME PAGE we ask that question of three who have dealt with how we communicate in design in ways that. Give them exceptional insights.

Peter Chapman has worked at The Taunton Press for over 30 years and is currently executive editor for Taunton Books. Peter has had a hand in most of the home design books that Taunton has published since 1998, including two from our host, Duo (Staying Put and The House You Build), as well as Sarah Susanka’s best-selling Not So Big House series. In earlier lives, Peter worked as a house painter (church steeples a specialty), educational test compiler, and apple picker.”

Gina Calabro is the Executive Director/CEO of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Connecticut). AIA Connecticut serves as a resource to architects and the public. Its membership of over 1,500 is comprised of architects, professionals working towards licensure, architectural students, and business professionals in affiliated fields. Prior to joining AIA Connecticut, she has worked with or lead trade associations as the CEO for the Home Builders and Remodelers Association (HBRA) of Fairfield County, and as the Division Director of Membership and Marketing for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

Kurt Andersen is a writer. His latest book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (2020) about how U.S. society was re-engineered during the last quarter of the 20th century to serve big business and the well-to-do at the expense of everyone else. It was a New York Times bestseller, like its companion volume Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (2017), Andersen’s prize-winning history of America’s weakness for exciting untruths. In addition, he’s the author of four critically acclaimed, bestselling novels –– You Can’t Spell America Without Me (2017), True Believers (2012), Heyday (2007) and Turn of the Century (1999). Andersen also writes for television and the stage, appears regularly on MSNBC and contributes to the New York Times. He co-created and hosted the Peabody Award-winning weekly public radio program Studio 360, co-founded Spy magazine, and was a columnist and design critic for The New Yorker, New York and Time, as well as editor-in-chief of New York. Born and raised in Omaha, he graduated from Harvard College and lives with his wife Anne Kreamer in Brooklyn

Thursday, January 28, 2021, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

The world has changed, so architecture will change, so houses become the laboratory for change in design, process and technology as it always has been: What Does This Mean For Homes in the ’20s? Common Edge Collaborative was created 5 years ago to address architecture and its cultural context, evolution and social meanings. There has never been a time when perspective in what and how our homes mean to us and our culture than after a year where the pandemic has forced all of us to encounter our homes.

I have written for Common Edge Collaborative every month for five years. Martin Pedersen was a creator of the organization will join us, as well as two of the site’s contributing writers, Richard Buday and Mark Hewitt, who, like me, are architects who write. All of them, and me, and you, have homes. From the macro level of trying to understand architecture in the context of our culture to the micro reality of how each of us lives, these thought leaders have insights we should all hear.

The nimble reality of web-based commentary and shared understanding has a special meaning in this Pandemic year: everything has changed, but we will be inoculated soon, perhaps even “safe” by summer’s end. What of our present condition changes our homes, architecture, our culture? Homes are the canary in the cage of what we value: whatever architecture does, it has millions of test drives in all the homes we live in.

Let’s hear what a group of creators, commentators and dwellers in homes think has changed, will changed and what will change beyond this year on Home Page Radio.

Thursday, September 24, 2020, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

Forgive the sexism, but once upon a time it was said that “A man’s home is his castle.” That ownership imperative meant that “Single Family Zoning” was the Law of Suburban America for three generations after World War 2. In the 21st century, Climate Change, Sustainability, New Urbanism and now COVID 19 have all raised the question of “Density” – more people living on each acre of land.

Connecticut has some of the most established and built-out suburban communities in America. There is now precious little land left for residential development – so little that “tear-downs” has become a word. That scarcity has meant that housing costs, and taxes, are among the highest anywhere in the country as well.

When need butts up against opportunity change happens. But change, as someone once said, is hard. In the light of a pandemic the density of living in mid and high rises in New York City is now newly dangerous. In the full apprehension of climate change more people living closer together creates less carbon and thus lessening the cost on infrastructure. The competition between property value and social good is coming to a head in one building type, not new, but newly important.

Across the country the legality of “Accessory Dwelling Unit”’s (CDU) is being debated, and zoning laws changed. There is a growing drumbeat to modify local zoning codes to accept greater flexibility beyond the freestanding single-family home zoning that has dominated suburban life for three generations. The larger wheels of sustainability, diversity, and increasing the value of our homes have meant new ways of thinking about how we protect communities in the ways zoning codes restrict uses.

The issues are complex. What about the benefits of intergenerational living in one place? Why shouldn’t you be allowed to expand your home without “adding on” and killing trees and making massive homes? Should zoning promote income diversity? As parents age, and children cannot afford to live separately in Connecticut should several generations of families be allowed to live on one site in their own dwelling units?

Beyond that, the post pandemic economy will be different from the one we have now. We may need to expand the use of single-family homes to recognize home offices. Costs may increase to the point where the homes purchased generations ago provide an income stream (for both property taxes for towns and rental income for homeowners)?

As we come out of sequestration, get vaccinated, and look to the future, the landscape will change. Like the three bear’s porridge, the density of The City may be “too hot”, the isolation of the single-family home may be “Too Cold”, but something in between may be “Just Right”.

HOME PAGE welcomes those on the cutting edge of this evolving landscape: Homeowner Paul Czepiga knows the issue as one who is creating a “CDU” for his family, Joan Arnold directs Allied Community Enterprises in Westchester and has worked in all forms of housing prototypes and reinventions, and Carrie Makover is on the Fairfield Affordable Housing Committee, and served as a planner in Westport for over 11 years. JOIN US!

Thursday, August 27, 2020, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

We all live somewhere, and some of us own where we live, especially in places like Connecticut and Long Island where single family homes fully fill the landscape. In the last 40 years there have been unending Boom/Bust Cycles in Real Estate: The Gas Crisis, The Reagan Boom, The S&L Crisis, The Clinton Economy, The Tech Bubble, 9-11, The Housing Bubble, 2008, The Obama Recovery, COVID-19 – and now in a matter of months The Connecticut Housing Boom.

So quickly that anecdotes are its best data, the last two months have seen a Contrarian Paradise where “Bedroom Community” homes are spiking in Value, reports are price explosions of 20% in one month, unsolicited offers to buy homes not on the market, bidding wars, Real Estate Agents declaring a sudden explosion in interest during a Pandemically Stunted economy.

What is Up?

This is a show of anecdotal information: we are in the middle of a radical change in Connecticut, set between the Apple and the Bean – NY and Boston. I have new homes commissioned on Long Island and throughout CT. A group of 9 homes, in Madison, Ct, had 7 have commitments to buy in less than 4 days when the listing was posted. Anecdotes create history, but not trends, patterns, the future. We do not know the future, but listening allows us to understand where we are. The HOME PAGE is about listening to the front lines of how people are changing their lives, first through their homes.

What is Up?

HOME PAGE brings in those on the front lines of home buying and selling to get some clarity and perspective with 4 Real Estate professionals that have different perspectives and markets up and down the shore of Long Island Sound.

Leigh Whiteman Is a real estate broker and leader of The Whiteman Team at William Raveis Real Estate. She has been selling real estate up and down the Connecticut Shoreline since 1988 and has helped her clients

Todd Gould has lived on the Connecticut shore his entire life. He has been a broker/manager/owner for 27 years, from a family that has been involved in Real Estate for generations, and lives the market.

Margaret Muir is a residential waterfront property expert who helped open Sotheby’s Affiliate offices in this part of the state 15 years ago – an office based in Madison Margaret has spent 30 years selling unique Ct shoreline properties largely second and third home purchases.

In 1973, Tom Gorin became a full-time realtor, joining the venerable Greenwich independent firm Cleveland, Duble & Arnold. He was a broker and the sales manager for thirty years, Always active in the real estate community, Tom was the 2005 Realtor of the Year of the Greenwich Association and was honored to be inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2010.

Thursday, July 23, 2020, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

Its a long, hot, COVID19 summer: we are basting in our reactions and, mostly, in our homes: Let Us Share Them!

Radio Legend Bruce Barber, AIA President George McGoldrick, Former Mayor of Trumbull, Tim Herbst, and Arts Doyen & Journalist Lucy Gellman vet WINNERS & LOSERS in our weird season: Some proffered awardees:

WINNERS OF COVID

The table: we are no sitting at them, joined, but also socially distanced by the,

The window: they fully connect us to the world that we now appreciate

The thermostat: so much time doing little physical activity, we know know where it is too hot, or too cold

The Front Porch: The elevation and the railings make “distancing” social and friendly, but safe.

The Grill: Restaurants are still scary, even when you are outside, but outside cooking is just plain fun.

The “Extra” space: The walk in closet becomes your ZOOM cal studio, your guest room becomes your office, your basement becomes a retreat.

Cook Books: Who knew?

Zillow: All the joy of vicarious home porn viewing, with none of the guilt facilitated by by Sequestration

LOSERS OF COVID

The Sink: All the day’s consumption has the byproduct of dirty dishes to deal with.

The Home Gym: It is all to often more guilt than motivator

The Coffee Table: The collector of all those projects you start, or think about, but never do, but never get rid of, either.

The Home TV: After 4 months you may become allergic to Binge Watching.

The Bed. A trap and Harbor for the COVID Night Terrors (and the terror of anticipating the Night Terrors)

The Great Room. Home Schooling, Zoom Calling, Multimealing pollute the flowing space as it it was New York Harbor in 1976

Zillow: Everyone Lives In A Better Place Than You.

My guest on this DITD this episode is Km Stanley Robinson. Stan Robinson is a New York Times Best selling Author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards. He is author of more than 20 books including his much loved Mar's Trilogy and he will be here today to talk about his latest book "The Ministry for the Future". In 2008, he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.

"[A] gutsy, humane view of a near-future Earth...Robinson masterfully integrates the practical details of environmental crises and geoengineering projects into a sweeping, optimistic portrait of humanity's ability to cooperate in the face of disaster. This heartfelt work of hard science-fiction is a must-read for anyone worried about the future of the planet."―Publishers Weekly on The Ministry for the Future

- Farming has destroyed soil of America's Midwestern prairie.

- Color change shows Rivers are imperiled ecosystems

- Federal flood insurance premiums to quadruple

- California's Pacific Coast Highways days are numbered

- Seville Spain to turn oranges into electricity

- Washington state’s Clean Cars 2030”

From the Super Bowl to the Vaccination roll out we have seen great examples of leadership. In the Super Bowl we saw Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeat one splendid team after another. In the vaccine rollout Governor Lamont of Connecticut got it right.

The Connecticut-based band Autopoet have just released their first 14-track album titled "The Night Life Has Changed you."

They join Richard Hill for a conversation about how this duo creates a hard driving, complexly-layered sound with such titles as "Street Couch" "I'm good at dancing" and "Confusing Girl."

*Do Biden's Syria Airstrikes Signal Continuing 'Endless War' Policy? David Swanson, campaign coordinator with RootsAction.org Producer: Scott Harris

*Republicans Cannot be a Legitimate Party Without Casting Out White Supremacists and Fascists Loretta J. Ross, activist and Visiting Associate Professor of the Study of Women & Gender at Smith College Producer: Scott Harris

*Militarism’s Direct Impact on the Climate Crisis Adrian Huq, a member of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team Producer: Melinda Tuhus