Programs for the Week of 9/5

Jean’s Pick of the Week (watch video): Slow Violence: Rob Nixon (Slow Violence...) opened my eyes to a whole different environmental ethos coming from the Global South. He piqued my appetite for wanting to know more about writers such as Nigeria’s Ken Saro-Wiwa, Africa’s first environmental martyr, and India’s Indra Sinha who wrote the novel Animal’s People about the afterlife of the Bhopal disaster. Unlike their North American elder cousins – Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold - these writers do not separate humans from nature, and they are passionate about bringing to light the fact that environmental degradation violates people every bit as much as it violates the earth itself.Our Guest producer Chris Malina picked his program Odd Bits as his favorite of the week; watch the video to hear why!

Monday: Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire (encore): 2011 marks the one hundred year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City. We celebrate Labor Day by remembering its victims and the labor law successes of the early 20th century. (Rebroadcast from April 11, 2011)

Tuesday: Chasing Carnegie: The Little Free Libraries Project: Rick Brooks and Todd Bol, two Wisconsin men, are promoting worldwide literacy and building community, one Little Free Library at a time...and one could soon be coming to a neighborhood near you. Together, they’re on a quest to break Andrew Carnegie's record of creating over 2,500 free libraries.

Wednesday: Somalia through Nuruddin Farah's Eyes: Winner of the Neustadt Prize and frequent nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah has been writing about his homeland for over 40 years. His works are full of love and longing for the country he left behind, and concern for the direction in which Somalia is heading.

Thursday: Transforming a Nation's Trauma: Nationally recognized citizen diplomat Sahar Taman and Rev. Robert Chase, head of Intersections International in New York City, are collecting and planning affirmative commemorations for the decade anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Beyond Islam, beyond terror, they see the anniversary as a time to deepen community and seek transformation as individuals and as a nation.

Friday: The Cuban Kitchen: Raquel Rabade Roque's The Cuban Kitchen was such a hit in Spanish that she rewrote it to be published in English. She'll give us a tour of the Cuban coffee counters of Miami and the tastes of an ever evolving Cuban-American cuisine.

Wishing you a labor-free Labor Day weekend and juicy end-of-summer bash -

Jean