I hung out with Forrest Foster in his sugarhouse a few weeks ago. Sugarhouses are the best because they’re full of warm, sweet steam and there’s nothing to do but hang around and make sure the pan doesn’t burn. Also, if sugaring is happening it means that winter is almost over and that is a joyous time for me. I love the hell out of April. So here are a few happy minutes with Forrest in his sugarhouse.

This is a show I made a few years ago that very significantly involves Total Eclipse of the Heart, which is my favorite song. I am playing it again now because it is ECLIPSE WEEK. I hope you enjoy it.

Kasey Phipps is transgender and has always been transgender. But Kasey didn’t grow up in a place where the word transgender was well understood. Or understood at all. It’s only in the last four years that Kasey’s put a name to this lifelong experience of living life in the wrong gender. This is just one story about the experience of being trans. Credits: Linda Young plays the harp in this show, for which I am eternally grateful. Here is a link to her excellent TRIO. There is also a song in the show from one of my favorite artists, Carla Kihlstedt and the Tin Hat Trio. Here is a link to them performing this song, little i. My thanks to Amelia Meath, Tobin Anderson, Chelsea Edgar and Serena Matt.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.

Many of you got in touch with me after Isaac's story aired in the first week of What Class Are You. Isaac's on his way to Columbia in the fall, on a full scholarship, and you came up with amazing ideas for how you might be helpful, so I went back up to Newport to discuss it all with Isaac. And it turned into a really interesting conversation on a number of fronts.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the series on Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share this series with Rumble Strip.

What Class is a periodic series I produce for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share this series with Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share the stories with Rumble Strip.

What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for allowing me to share these stories with Rumble Strip.

Irfan Sehic and his family fled the war in Bosnia when he was seventeen, and landed in Barre, Vermont. Irfan did a lot of jobs when he got here, then went to college, and now runs an insurance company out of his house. I’ve interviewed Irfan for Rumble Strip before, about the war, which you can find on this site somewhere, but in this story, Irfan talks about the American class system as he sees it, starting with the middle class. This is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share the shows with Rumble Strip.

Isaac lives in Newport, Vermont, which is as far north as you get in Vermont. It’s a town in the Northeast Kingdom with a beautiful lake. It’s also a town with a state prison and a lot of drugs and poverty. I met Isaac at a writers group in town, which meets once a week in town at the amazing Nevermore Bookstore. Isaac is eighteen. He loves to read and write and this spring he’s graduating form Lake Region High School. I asked if he’d be willing to talk with me about class, and he was. What Class Are You is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public, and I want to thank them for letting me share these stories on Rumble Strip.

Today is the first episode of What Class Are You, a periodic series I make for VP. This series started as an experiment a few years ago. I wanted to have conversations with people about the terrible cultural divides that keep growing in our country, without ending up in boring conversations about politics…so I drove around asking strangers ‘what class are you’, which is a kind of stupid and offensive question, but it turns out people have a lot to say…about money, education, opportunity…power. The very first shows I made about class I already ran on RS as a single show…you can find it on my website….but these next episodes in the series I’ll run one at a time, every couple days, for a few weeks. We’re going to start the series with my old friend Susan Randall, the private investigator I interview a lot for Rumble Strip. She talks about what it was like to grow up upper-middle class.

This is a rerun of what could be called a VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL, and I hope you enjoy it. Last year on Hardwick's Front Porch Forum, someone called Tiana asked if there was anyone who could help her with her hair and makeup for an important date with her boyfriend. Front Porch Forum is an online, daily community forum, which is like a bulletin board at a local general store. You can find secondhand tires there. Or read complaints about the Selectboard. Every Vermont town’s got a Front Porch Forum and you have to be from that town to be on it. Since Tiana's new to town, she thought she might have luck finding someone to help her get ready for her date through the Forum. And she did. Here is her original posting: Makeup for Special Occasion Tiana • Hardwick I'm looking for someone who'd be willing to do my makeup (and possibly hair?) on the 23rd of this month. Just something simple with my eyes and something to hide some red spots. Is there a way to make an illusion of a skinner face? I think thats a thing, right? I understand it's a long shot and I don't have much money. I usually don't like anything thats considered "girly". However I want to surprise my boyfriend for our first anniversary. I have a nice dress picked out with matching press on nails. The issue is I have no clue how to do makeup. YouTube tutorials have never done me any good considering I don't own any makeup and I have a very round, chubby face. Thank you for reading! Credits Music by Brian Clark Thanks to Tara Reese for finding the posting Thanks to Tobin and Mike and Rose Welcome the Civic Standard! Thanks to Aubrie St. Louis at the Rehair Shop

The Anair story was produced for Vermont Public.

This is one of my all time favorite shows. I made it for Vermont Public in 2019 and I think about these guys all the time. It was the little league playoffs in St. Johnsbury in 2019, before the pandemic, recorded in a simpler time. Let's play some good D out there.

East Hill Tree Farm is awesome. Honestly. It's just the best.