democracyroad

The Poetry Show: Baucis and Philamon: Radical Hospitality

 
 
Enlighten Radio Presents
 
Because they did not need the Gods, the Gods were there
 
 
The myths of hospitality as a bridge between Heaven and Earth
Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
This Episode Recorded May 7, 2025
Radical Hospitality
by Rumi
 
This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. [S]he may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
 
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Enlighten Radio: The Storytelling Hour: May 12: Stories Children Tell

The Poetry Show: Opheus and Eurydice

Enlighten Radio Presents
 
Lost Love and the Birth of Poetry
 
 
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a tragic tale about a musician, Orpheus, who journeys to the underworld to bring back his wife, Eurydice. Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding from snakebite. Orpheus, heartbroken, uses his music to persuade Hades, the god of the underworld, to allow her return. It does not work out.
Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case
This Episode Recorded April 30, 2025
The Makers
by Howard Nemorov
 
Who can remember back to the first poets, The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus? No one has remembered that far back Or now considers, among the artifacts And bones and cantilevered inference The past is made of, those first and greatest poets, So lofty and disdainful of renown They left us not a name to know them by. They were the ones that in whatever tongue Worded the world, that were the first to say Star, water, stone, that said the visible And made it bring invisibles to view In wind and time and change, and in the mind Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers Of the city into the astonished sky. They were the first great listeners, attuned To interval, relationhsip, and scale, The first to say above, beneath, beyond, Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine, Who having uttered vanished from the world Leaving no memory but the marvelous Magical elements, the breathing shapes And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
 
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Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025

 
Enlighten Radio Presents
Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025
 
 
Mother Jones: Honor the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living
 
Broadcasts LIVE, Tuesdays at 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org
Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall
Description: John, JB and Scott focus on Workers Memorial Day, honoring workers who lost their lives on the job in 2024. JB and John got to hear a moving, memorable and timely tribute from UMWA (retiring) president, Cecil Roberts, at the memorial in Wheeling, WV.
This Episode Recorded April 29, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV
 
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Paris on the Potomac: Crash Landing in WV

 
Enlighten Radio Presents
Paris on the Potomac: Crash Landing in WV
Recession, Repression Loom. Time to Get Moving. Or Doom.
 
 
Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org
Hosts: John Case, Karen Valentine
John and Karen confront the growing uncertainty feeding doom, and the points of Light.
This Episode Recorded April 25, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV
 
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Labor Beat Radio: The Larry Shultz Interview

 
Enlighten Radio Presents
Labor Beat Radio: The Larry Shultz Interview
Medicaid Cuts Threaten WV Hospitals
Will Mary, Joseph and the Baby God be turned away?
 
 
 
Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern
Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall
 
Guests: Larry Schultz
Description: Attorney and radio host Larry Schultz reviews, in detail, the serious jeopardy proposed Administration cuts to expanded Medicaid and other health services to rural hospitals across the nation, and especially in West Virginnia.
This Episode Recorded April 22, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV
 
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Enlighten Radio: The Storytelling Hour: April 21: Folk and Fairy Tales 2

The Poetry Show: Persephone is Home

 
 
Enlighten Radio Presents
 
What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?
 
 
The Myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades: Do not be troubled if you do not like any of the characters. They are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict. No?
Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org
Hosts:
This Episode Recorded April 23, 2025
Persephone the Wanderer
by Louise Gluck
In the first version, Persephone is taken from her mother and the goddess of the earth punishes the earth—this is consistent with what we know of human behavior, that human beings take profound satisfaction in doing harm, particularly unconscious harm: we may call this negative creation. Persephone's initial sojourn in hell continues to be pawed over by scholars who dispute the sensations of the virgin: did she cooperate in her rape, or was she drugged, violated against her will, as happens so often now to modern girls. As is well known, the return of the beloved does not correct the loss of the beloved: Persephone returns home stained with red juice like a character in HawthorneI am not certain I will keep this word: is earth "home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably, in the bed of the god? Is she at home nowhere? Is she a born wanderer, in other words an existential replica of her own mother, less hamstrung by ideas of causality? You are allowed to like no one, you know. The characters are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict. Three parts: just as the soul is divided, ego, superego, id. Likewise the three levels of the known world, a kind of diagram that separates heaven from earth from hell. You must ask yourself: where is it snowing? White of forgetfulness, of desecration— It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says Persephone is having sex in hell. Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know what winter is, only that she is what causes it. She is lying in the bed of Hades. What is in her mind? Is she afraid? Has something blotted out the idea of mind? She does know the earth is run by mothers, this much is certain. She also knows she is not what is called a girl any longer. Regarding incarceration, she believes she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter. The terrible reunions in store for her will take up the rest of her life. When the passion for expiation is chronic, fierce, you do not choose the way you live. You do not live; you are not allowed to die. You drift between earth and death which seem, finally, strangely alike. Scholars tell us that there is no point in knowing what you want when the forces contending over you could kill you. White of forgetfulness, white of safety— They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed to belong entirely to life. Earth asks us to deny this rift, a threat disguised as suggestionas we have seen in the tale of Persephone which should be read as an argument between the mother and the loverthe daughter is just meat. When death confronts her, she has never seen the meadow without the daisies. Suddenly she is no longer singing her maidenly songs about her mother's beauty and fecundity. Where the rift is, the break is. Song of the earth, song of the mythic vision of eternal life— My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth— What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?
 
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