Dave Para & Cathy Barton are passionate about folk music and folk history, living that out by performing folk music, old and new, by creating historical albums, like about Lewis & Clark, anchoring the Big Muddy Festival and by jamming with the folks of Carp Camp at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.
At that age of 76, Margaret Moore took part in the Teaching Drum Outdoor School family year-long, living naturally in the Northern Wisconsin woods for 11-months as an intergenerational clan of 42 people. Without the niceties of civilization, like books, soap, clocks, etc, Margaret and the rest experienced a connection to nature and each other badly missing for most people today.
Mark Kastel is co-founder and senior farm policy analyst for The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-originated organization serving as a watchdog for "good food" - organics, family farms, environmental and economic justice issues, all around food. With careful research and attention to the oft-missing integrity of our food system, Cornucopia helps plug the holes in our national organic food standards.
Interview transcript available:
David Huckfelt is co-founder of The Pines, a Twin Cities band making Midwest music which is sometimes haunted, eloquent, gripping, starkly poetic, and which is always very, very, good. With all kinds of musical influences, the final product is unique to them. David grew up in Iowa and now is in awe of Lake Superior.
Marjorie Heins is the author of Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge, examining the roots of free speech by teachers as a special concern of the US constitution, and the lessons we can learn from the way these rights were compromised badly during the McCarthy Era. Through decades of work as a civil rights lawyer, Marjorie carries a passion and deep insight into the ways our rights are, or are not, protected by our government.
AGAPE* (David Scherer) does deep, searching, inspirational, hip-hop/rap music calling listeners to a closer connection to God. Son of hippie-Lutheran parents, the lone white kid in an inner city school, Dave comes from great stuff and leads us there as well. Completely real, Dave is a tonic for those who despair of real Spirit in the Church.
Joe Wenke has just released You Got To Be Kidding: A Cultural Arsonist’s Literal Reading of the Bible, and with humor and sometimes sarcasm, he brings new, unjaded eyes to the writings of the Bible. He aims to disarm those who would use the Bible for oppression and domination and is seriously focused on making you laugh on the way to the unshackling. Joe has been a corporate speech writer, a stand-up comedian, and has trademarked the Cultural Arsonist moniker.
Ben Tousley is a folksinger with a great mix of song and spirit, with 6 CDs to his personal credit, plus one more recently released with Sue Kranz. His degree from Harvard Divinity School prepared him as chaplain to college students, the elderly and to hospice patients. As a cancer survivor, he understands vulnerability, anguish, and hope from the inside, and it ends up in his music, his hospice work, and in his teaching.
Peterson Toscano, using wit, humor & theater, illuminates non-conforming gender roles in the Bible, reclaiming existence for a variety of folks ignored & silenced by the mainstream. With his winning humor and incisive vision, Peterson found acceptance for his revolutionary insights when presenting at the joint 2012 conference of the Society of Biblical Literature/American Academy of Religion. His newest theater production is Jesus Had 2 Daddies.
Featured Music:
I Learned It In Sunday School - Andy Murray
Denise Jordan Finley performs in a duo with Daniel Pagdon as Finley and Pagdon. Denise has decades of experience with other duos and configuration, but the real suprise is that she's only really got her stride as a songwriter in the 12 years or so. With music rooted in folk or Americana, she ranges to bluegrass, jazz and much more. As a non-conforming believer, directing music in the Presbyterian Church, she's a deep soul and a musical voyageur.