The Poetry Show: The ”Red” Show

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

The Red Badge of Poetry -- Seek the Truth

 

 

Scarlets, Bloods, lipstick, red earth, red sky, Matisse, red history, red poems, Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, Robert Frost, Nizar Qabbani, Carole Satyamurti, and more.

Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded March 19, 2025

Every time I kiss you
by Nizar Qabbani

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown

A Microsoft Copilot Interpretation

 

 

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The Poetry Show: The ”Blue” Show

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Poetry Show

 

"Why make so much of fragmentary blue ... When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?" R. Frost

 

image generated by MS Copilot from the above quote

 

The Great Blue Heron, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, D.H. Lawrence, Shel Silverstein, aqua still waters, or blue fire and steel hooves across the clouded sky, and more. Keeping it Blue.

Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern AT player.entlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded mar 13, 2025

Masks

by Shel Silverstein 

She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through.
Then passed right by
And never knew.

 

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Labor Beat Radio: WV Progressives Return to Life

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: The Dem Fight Back

Bloodied, but not Beaten!?

 

 

 

Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern

Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall

 

Special Guests: Troy Miller

 

Troy Miller, musician, author , candidate for Delegate in the WV 98th District, weighs in on the resistance to the fascist takeover -- via elections --  in the state and federal governments.

This Episode Recorded Marc 11, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Last Stop Cafe: Sports Under Fascism

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Sports Under Fascism

Suck it Up, Jack Daniels, THIS IS RUGBY

 

 

Mondays 7:30 AM

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case

Women, Rugby, Hockey, Gretzky, WNBA, Rugby, Cricket, Puck, Futbol, Football, the Green Giant

This Episode Recorded Mar 10, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Paris on the Potomac: What Side Are You On (Updated)

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: What Side Are You On (Updated)

Democracy or Fascism?

 

 

Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on Player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

 

Special Guest

Bob Jensen, Artists for Action

Artists for Action is rebirthing a classic labor song to new world challenges to democracy. From our Northern Neighbors, from across the world.

This Episode Recorded Friday, March 7, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Last Stop Cafe: Roll on Rugby, Roll on Baseball

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Last Stop Cafe: Roll on Rugby, Roll on Baseball

Eagles Say "No Thanks" to Trump

Mondays 7:30 AM

Hosts: John Case, Mike Cuccherini

Mike and John try to escape reality into a Rugby fantasy. It does not work.

This Episode Recorded Mar 3, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Paris on the Potomac: A Hard Rain is Fallin’

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: A Hard Rain is Fallin'

 

Special Guest: Zach Shrewsbury:

Bluejay Rising is Spreading Across West Virginia

Bluejay Rising is a community action driven political movement. Zach Shrewsbury's historic US Senate campaign was just a beginning of a new kind of politics. The floods in southern West Virginia exposed the utter incompetence -- and indifference -- of the very noisy Trumpers running the WV state government's response (or lack of response) to a serious crisis wiping out hundreds of families' homes.

This Episode Recorded February 28, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Paris on the Potomac: Your Government Has Been Overthrown

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac:

St Valentine Day Massacre

Tens of thousands of loyal, devoted Federal Workers Summarily Fired

SHAME!!!! BETRAYAL!!!!

 

 

Fridays, 7:30_ish AM Eastern -- LIVE

Special Guest: Joe Grey

The people who serve the American people, under sacred civil and moral codes, have been betrayed by a scrum of billionaires masquerading as populists. Special guest Joe Grey joins us. Joe is a retired federal worker, a friend, frequent guest and commenter on this program for a number of years. His recollections of the codes of duty and sacrifices of federal workers now frame a memoir as a painful eulogy.

This Episode Recorded Feb 14, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: Love Poems (romantic) on Valentine’s Eve

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

To the Marriage of True Minds

 

 

Love poems both ideal and sensual, married and seasoned: Yeats, e.e. cummings, Willie the Shake, Rilke, Neruda.

Podcasts at podcasts.enlightenradio.org

Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Feb 12, 2025

Sonnet XI

by Pablo Neruda 

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

 

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Labor Beat Radio: The labor movement: guardian of democracy

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: The labor movement: guardian of democracy

Special Guest: Constitutional historian Ray Smock.

 

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern

Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall

 

Guests: Ray Smock

Retired director of the Byrd Legislative center at Shepherd University

Description: Ray Smock is a retired offical historian of the US House of Representatives, and a powerful, eloquent commentator on the current political scene and the emergent constitutional crisis.

This Episode Recorded February 11, 2014 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

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The Poetry Show: Telescopes

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Between the Blaze and the Black: Thru the Lens

 

 

Janet says she went looking for planet poems, after pondering the stars. She was not satisfied, but found -- beautiful poems on the theme of telescopes: Get to know the planets, and stars, and ourselves, better. Ted Kooser, Louise Gluck, Emma Trelles, Jessica Young, Diane Thiel, Kewayne Wadley report in verse.

Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern, player.enlightenraio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded February 6, 2025

######

Night of the Telescopes

by Emma Trelles

I have buried my share and hardly anyone knows.
A house must hold ghosts, writing
Names across funereal woods and windows
Good for viewing the lingering past.
This night of telescopes fixes the cold
October sky—a Saturn so delicate as if
Sketched by moths holding to nearby stones
For their lives. The sutures of the moon drift
Into sharpness and a hand points to the inevitable screen
Another haunt in this dim garden where voices ride
Across pines and the invisible fountain locked
In the same little song. Here is the Sea of Crisis
And I would recognize its expanse anywhere
Having visited often, even beneath my lids when I disappear
At night to visit with a father who no longer knows me
Or the dead who always do, and glow like the rain or a rose
Finished with the business of becoming. I can’t say the worst
Because I’ll keep living it. Machine of the mind. Belt
Of the hunter. I can spot his patient blade from either coast—
The one where I drown the one where I love the one
Where I keep rowing through the blaze and the black.

 

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Paris on the Potomac: A Chance to Stand Up

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: A Chance to Stand Up

If you are waiting for a savior, Spartacus may be the only one coming!

 

 

Broadcasts Fridays 7:30 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case, James Boyd

Karen, John and James walk through impending collapse of US democracy, and peace between peoples.

This Episode Recorded Jan 31, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: Stars

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Stars of Gold and Sunsets Burn

 

 

Janet and John read some Star poems, following the Moon show, and planning on Planets next week: Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinsen, Janet's own poetry, WH Auden, and Walt Whitman join the show.

Broadcast Wednesdays 10 AM Eastern

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Jan 28, 2025

##########

Brief Lull between Clinical Depressions

by Janet Harrison

 

The sprawling stars that stud the night
look close enough to grasp. Imagine-
if they were marbles the sparkling games
we'd play: a new meaning for "a shooting star",
a chance to gather galaxies. I'll trade
Aldebaran and Sirius for the Pleiades.

 
Rare and cherished,
this clarity flees despite my wish
to cling, to close my fist tight.
Only void in my hand─
despite the tantalizing stars,
now grown distant and so cold.

 

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The Poetry Show: Moon Shadows

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Moonlight Twixt Twilight and Starlight

 

 

As you might expect, moon poems abound, and winter ones outnumber the harvest ones, and appear neck and neck with Junes. Lisel Mueller, Jane Toomer, E. E. Cummings, Padraig O Tuama, Dylan Thomas and Robert Hayden traverse the imagination twixt twilight and starlight, in the moon's shadows.

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Jan 23, 2025

Who Kknows If the Moon...

by ee cummings

 

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky

filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
get into it,

if they
should take me and take you into their balloon.
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited, where

always
it's
Spring) and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

 

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Labor Beat Radio: The WV Legislative Session -- Worker and Retiree Concerns

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: The WV Legislative Session -- Worker and Retiree Concerns

Medicaid, PEIA coverage, Public Education -- The Big Step Back?

 

 

Broadcast LIVE Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern Time at player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen

 

Special Guest: Frank Caputo

Description: Labor Beat welcomes special guest Frank Caputo, a board member of the WV Alliance for Retired Americans and a longtime member and leader of the American Federation of Teachers in West Virginia. Whats at stake for workers and retirees in the upcoming WV legislative session with a Republican super-majority.

This Episode Recorded Jan 21, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Last Stop Cafe: Commanders Win, Fascism Begins

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Commanders Win, Fascism Begins

Democracy made its last stop at the Cafe, before an Acid Trip to the Mojave Desert

 

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Jaydon Daniels is showing how the game is played. Billionaires Praise Trump's 'Vision'

This Episode Recorded Jan 20, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Paris on the Potomac: the NAACP Freedom Trail Interview

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac
aka: The Winners and Losers Radio Program

The 2025 Jefferson County Freedom Trail March: Jan 19, 2025, 1:30 PM, Charles Town Library

 

 

Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

 

Special Guest: Donaldson Twyman

John and Karen welcome Mr. Donaldson Twyman, newly elected president of the Jefferson County NAACP chapter. He succeeds George Rutherford, who served as president for 50 years. Mr. Twyman introduces this years memorial Freedom Trail March, honoring the spirit and example of Dr. Martin Luther King. Whether Wind, Snow, or Freezing Cold, the march for Hope will take place! 1: 30 PM Sunday, Jan 19, at the Library in Charles Town, WV. Dress Warmly!

This Episode Recorded Jan 17, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: First Snow

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

"in this stillness, starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze."

 

 

There is a universe of poetry on the subject of snow, and a large subset on "first snow". Haiku from Issa, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Eleanor Hammond, and more...

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Jan. 15, 2025

 ------

Winter Woods

By Eleanor Hammond

The winter wood is like a strong old man,
Grizzled, rugged, and gray,
With long white locks tattered by many storms.
He lifts gnarled arms defiant of the blasts,
And rears his old head proudly
Under the menace of the winter sky.

 
from Family Friend Poems 

 

First Snow Haiku

by Kobayashi Issa

the year's first snow
all trampled...
by the crows

 

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The Last Stop Cafe: The LA Fire Moves East

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: The LA Fire Moves East

 

 

A Tribute to Jayden Daniels

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern

Hosts: John Case, Mike Cuccherini, James Boyd

Mike nails the Commanders. He has been right all along. 70 yrs of growth -- then natures revenge on California capitalism

This Episode Recorded Jan 13, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show -- Epiphanies: Journeys of the Magi

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

The Shining Star and God's Watchful Eye

 

 

The poetry of journeys has a long history and assumes many forms, some long and some short. TS Eliot, Mary Oliver, Nikki Giovanni, Joseph Brodsky, Rabindranath Tagore share their Hellos and Farewells

Wednesdays 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Wednesday, Jan 8, 2025

#####

Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

 

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