Rumble Strip

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House was intentionally built to straddle two nations and two communities. Three quarters of the building is in Stanstead, Quebec and one quarter is in Derby Line Vermont, and it's been the local library for both communities for over a century. The main entrance to the library is in the U.S., and for as long as anyone can remember, Canadians have been allowed to walk the 70 feet of sidewalk around the building to that front entrance.

But in late January of this year, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem paid a surprise visit to the library while she was up touring some of the Vermont border crossings, and she did a little show for everyone there. And starting in October, Canadians will no longer be able to visit their local library without passing through a border crossing.

This is a show about it.

This is a show about the challenges of getting health insurance and understanding health insurance and paying for health insurance and using health insurance…even for those of us without major medical challenges. It stars my friends Justin Lander and Kaye.

The show is sponsored by East Hill Tree Farm, a tree nursery in Plainfield, Vermont.  The nursery opens on April 18th with bare-root trees and shrubs for sale. They're awesome. Go there. 

Recordings: In this show you hear from Carolyn and her neighbors on Coits Gore Road in Vermont, Amanda in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, dogs in Atlanta, Jeff Sharlet interviewing Pastor Pete in Holiday City, Ohio, Heather’s kids in Washington DC, Jarod in West Philly, Susan and Stella in Pittsburgh, a xylophone on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma. You heard my  mom Barbara on my couch, Devon in Gladstone Missouri, the train in Melbourne Australia, Aaron in Shediac New Brunswick, night insects in South Africa, Zack in Lafayette, Indiana, Beverly and her mom in Toronto, Alice in Los Angeles, Mathhew in Glasgow, Scotland, Christina breastfeeding her one week old daughter in Lostine Oregon, Kelly and Dan in Randolph Vermont, basketball dribbling in East Montpelier Elementary in Vermont, and Miles, Stan and Deirdre in New Mexico playing the ngombi and talking about Johannesburg.

T.O. got out of prison in Rutland a couple weeks ago, after a six and a half year bid.  I met T.O. through my private investigator friend Susan Randall in May, 2017. He’d been a client of hers in a federal public defender case. T.O.’s been in and out of jail his whole adult life, and it’s become a kind of tradition for us to get together and talk when he gets out of jail. We don’t talk about his crimes. Mostly we talk about what it’s like to start over…over and over. Now T.O. is in his mid forties, and this time he was released in the middle of a Vermont winter. 

Here is episode 2 of What Now Sounds Like, a show I make that is entirely comprised of your recordings. Desperate times call for desperate show methods. I'm hoping that shows made up of all of us will help us all feel less alone. 

In this show you hear from: Blake in New York City, James in Sussex England, the Niagara Frontier Radio reading service (thank you Papageorgiou in Brussels...), River in Portland, Oregon, Alice in Fletcher, Virginia, Naomi Hodde in Middlebury, Vermont, Howard in Woodstock Vermont, bells recorded by Melanie in Merida, Mexico, and a fricking amazing recording James made at a professional wrestling even in London. 

Send me more recordings as they occur to you. You can send them to my email at [email protected]