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Friday, May 16, 2025

Paris on the Potomac: If I had a billion dollars

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: If I had a billion dollars

If I had a billion dollars, and the hospitals were closed, and I saw the Rough Beast of the Second Coming.....

 

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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

This poem is in the public domain.

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

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

Karen and John : What did Jesus do after the Inns were closed at his birth? What will 'able-bodied' men do when rural WV hospitals close from defunding Medicaid, responsible for over half the births in this state?

This Episode Recorded May 16, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Labor Beat Radio: Back to 1935

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: Back to 1935

The Return of "John L Lewis" is Imminent

 

Labor Beat Radio: Back to 1935

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Tuesdays at 10 AM on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall

Description: JB John and Scott underscore the destruction of legal unionism by Trump and DOGE.

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

 

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The Last Stop Cafe: Is it Too Late to Stop Now?

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

last_stop_redwood.png

The Last Stop Cafe: Is it Too Late to Stop Now?

Does Trump Want to Bring Back Dixie as the National Anthem?

 

The Last Stop Cafe: Is it Too Late to Stop Now?

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

James and John and Mike on a search for meaning: Women's professional sports?

This Episode Recorded May 12, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: Opheus and Eurydice

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Lost Love and the Birth of Poetry

 

makers.jpg

 

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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Paris on the Potomac: Turn Off Your TV -- The Data Center is Feeding.

 




Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: Turn Off Your TV -- The Data Center is Feeding.

A First Degree Ripoff of Jefferson County may be underway.

 

Paris on the Potomac: Turn Off Your TV -- The Data Center is Feeding.

 

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

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

 

Special Guest: Lucia Valentine

Lucia-Valentine.png

Lucia Valentine, a strong candidate for Delegate in Jefferson and Berkeley counties, and staff lobbyist for the West Virginia Environmental Council joins Karen and John to discuss the recent Legislative session, with emphasis on the multi-billion dollar data center investments being made in the Eastern Panhandle -- but what do the people of the Eastern Panhandle get from it?

This Episode Recorded Friday, May 9, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: Raven and Coyote

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Is Coyote at Your Door?

 

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Janet has found a marvelous selections of poems on "The Trickster" -- an active character in Native American mythologies. Sometimes as a Raven. Sometimes as Coyote. Carolyn Dunn, Ben Stickle, Peter Blue Cloud, and Charles DeLint contribute.

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded May 14, 2025

Coyote, Coyote

by Peter Blue Cloud

 


Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is a shaman?
A shaman I don’t know
anything about.
I’m a doctor, myself.
When I use medicine,
it’s between me,
my patient,
and the Creation.
Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is power?
It is said that power
is the ability to start
your chainsaw
with one pull.
Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
What is magic?
Magic is the first taste
of ripe strawberries and
magic is a child dancing
in a summer’s rain.
Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
Why is Creation?
Creation is because I
went to sleep last night
with a full stomach,
and when I woke up
this morning,
everything was here.
Coyote, Coyote, Please tell me
Who you belong to?
According to the latest
survey, there are certain
persons who, in poetic
or scholarly guise,
have claimed me like
a conqueror’s prize.
Let me just say
once and for all,
just to be done:
Coyote,
he belongs to none.

 

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The Poetry Show: Baucis and Philamon: Radical Hospitality

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Because they did not need the Gods, the Gods were there

 

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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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Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: Workers Memorial Day 2025

workers_memorial_day.png

  

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.

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This Episode Recorded April 29, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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Saturday, April 26, 2025

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.

 

Paris on the Potomac: Crash Landing in WV

 

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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The Poetry Show: Persephone is Home

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?

 

Persephone the Wanderer

 

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 Hawthorne
I 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 suggestion
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read
as an argument between the mother and the lover
the 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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The Poetry Show: AT the Movies 2

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

The Movie was a Poem

 

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Ishmael Reed's Mirrors, MIchael Palmer's silent star, the Wicked Errol Flynn, "Come, let’s go in."

Wednesday's 10 AM Eastern, http://player.enlighenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded April 16, 2025

My Wicked, Wicked Ways

by Sandra Cisneros

 


This is my father.
See? He is young.
He looks like Errol Flynn.
He is wearing a hat
that tips over one eye,
a suit that fits him good,
and baggy pants.
He is also wearing
those awful shoes,
the two-toned ones
my mother hates.
Here is my mother.
She is not crying.
She cannot look into the lens
because the sun is bright.
The woman,
the one my father knows,
is not here.
She does not come till later.
My mother will get very mad.
Her face will turn red
and she will throw one shoe.
My father will say nothing.
After a while everyone
will forget it.
Years and years will pass.
My mother will stop mentioning it.
This is me she is carrying.
I am a baby.
She does not know
I will turn out bad.

 

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Friday, April 11, 2025

The Last Stop Cafe: Sports and Failed States

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Sports and Failed States

Its Spring Training -- Baseball will fix everything.

 

The Last Stop Cafe:  Sports and Failed States

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case

The Cucch takes apart the baseball spring spirits, and the collapse of our Giant Redwood Nation into a pile of tinder.

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

 

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Labor Beat Radio: Bluejay Rising

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: Bluejay Rising

Zach Shrewsbury -- Bluejay Rising

 



 

Tuesdays, 10 AM Eastern

Hosts: John Case, JB Christensen, Scott Marshall

 

Guests: Zach Shrewsbury



Description: Zach Shrewsbury joins usto discuss Bluejay Rising, a grass roots, community action based political movement within the Democratic party in southern West Virginia. Bluejay Rising has been focusing on flood relief. Zach's historic grass roots Senate campaign argues strongly for a grass roots path for the Democratic party to return to relevance, and winning.

Here is Zach's speech at the Charleston, WV Hand Off rally.

This Episode Recorded April 8, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: The Poetry of Sue Silver

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Shepherdstown, WV Poet Sue Silver Shines

 

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Image: a MS Copilot interpretation of a verse in Catness

 

Sue Silver -- a longtime Shepherdstown poet, shares some poignant and powerful poems. Her friends join in the studio to listen to her reading. In the poem below, Sekhmet was a powerful and multifaceted ancient Egyptian goddess, often depicted with a lioness head, representing both the destructive force of war and sun's healing power.

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded April 9, 2025

Catness

by Sue Silver


One night with the wind blowing wildly
my cat climbs down from the porch chair.
She rolls around on the ground.
I wait, hold the door open ‘til she,
in her own time, makes her way inside.
The wind, all this while,
works to wrest the door from my grasp.
I run my hand over her black fur.
Her yellow eyes gaze at me steadily.
She purrs, her claws extend and retract on the cushion
that protects my legs as she sits in my lap.
I see the Egyptian Goddess, Sekhmet,
who did Ra’s bidding annihilating evil hordes,
after which she became the Great Healer, they say.
Ancient one - She who lives with the wind,
her eyes and paws reaching to me.
Her body, an echo
of all cats - tiger, panther, bobcat.
Her stride, her stance
that stillness in her strength.
The stalk, the pounce.

 

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Friday, April 4, 2025

The Poetry Show: Poems and Movies

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

The Movie was a Poem

 

A_stranger_riding_into_town_or_someone_embark...

Billy Collins excerpt: 

"I would like to watch a movie tonight
in which a stranger rides into town
or where someone embarks on a long journey,
a movie with the promise of danger,
danger visited upon the citizens of the town
by the stranger who rides in ..."

 

Mind Twisters Warnings : The double feature --- 'passing for white'--- Horror show --- Please Stop Talking During the Movie.

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded April 2, 2025

 

Poem of the Week

 

Early Cinema

by Elizabeth Alexander

 

According to Mister Hedges, the custodian
who called upon their parents
after young Otwiner and young Julia
were spotted at the matinee
of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik
at the segregated Knickerbocker Theater
in the uncommon Washington December
of 1922, “Your young ladies
were misrepresenting themselves today,”
meaning, of course, that they were passing.
After coffee and no cake were finished
and Mister Hedges had buttoned his coat
against the strange evening chill,
choice words were had with Otwiner and Julia,
shame upon the family, shame upon the race.
How they’d longed to see Rudolph Valentino,
who was swarthy like a Negro, like the finest Negro man.
In The Sheik, they’d heard, he was turbaned,
whisked damsels away in a desert cloud.
They’d heard this from Lucille and Ella
who’d put on their fine frocks and French,
claiming to be “of foreign extraction”
to sneak into the Knickerbocker Theater
past the usher who knew their parents
but did not know them.


They’d heard this from Mignon and Doris
who’d painted carmine bindis on their foreheads
braided their black hair tight down the back,
and huffed, “We’ll have to take this up with the Embassy”
to the squinting ticket taker.
Otwiner and Julia were tired of Oscar Michaux,
tired of church, tired of responsibility,
rectitude, posture, grooming, modulation,
tired of homilies each way they turned,
tired of colored right and wrong.
They wanted to be whisked away.

The morning after Mister Hedges’ visit
the paperboy cried “Extra!” and Papas
shrugged camel’s hair topcoats over pressed pajamas,
and Mamas read aloud at the breakfast table,
“No Colored Killed When Roof Caves In”
at the Knickerbocker Theater
at the evening show
from a surfeit of snow on the roof.
One hundred others dead.
It appeared that God had spoken.
There was no school that day,
no movies for months after.

 

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Paris on the Potomac: The Blood Moon Show

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac:

The Blood Moon Show

Report Back from the WV Legislature. Omigod!

 

Blood_Moon.png

 

 

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

Hosts: John Case, Karen Valentine

John and Karen ponder the portents ahead: Time to Stand UP.

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

 

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The Last Stop Cafe Show: Sports & WV Cyanide Commentary

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe Show: Sports & WV Cyanide Commentary

Sports Forecast: Casey at the Bat? James Walks Again!!

 

mighty_casey.jpg

 

Broadcasts LIVE, Mondays, 7:30 AM Eastern

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Mike, John and James revel in baseball, then despair at uncovering the secret of WV overall decline, and commit themselves to a TONTINE

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

 

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The Poetry Show: the Yellow Show

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

"I have nothing else to give you, so it is a pot full of yellow corn...I love you"

 

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The Yellow poems this week concludes Janet's foray into the three basic colors via the jeweled eye of our favorite -- and newly discovered -- poets: Pablo Neruda, Charles Demuth, William Blake, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and more

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded March 26, 2025

A Lemon

by Pablo Neruda

 


A Lemon
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

 

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Sunday, March 23, 2025

The Poetry Show: The ”Red” Show

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

The Red Badge of Poetry -- Seek the Truth

 

Every time I kiss you

 

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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Thursday, March 20, 2025

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

 

Asolid_hue90lgq.png

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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Thursday, March 13, 2025

Labor Beat Radio: WV Progressives Return to Life

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Labor Beat Radio: The Dem Fight Back

Bloodied, but not Beaten!?

 

 

labor beat radio

 

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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Monday, March 10, 2025

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

 

The Last Stop Cafe: Sports Under Fascism

 

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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Saturday, March 8, 2025

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?

 

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

 

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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Tuesday, March 4, 2025

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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Friday, February 28, 2025

Paris on the Potomac: A Hard Rain is Fallin’

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: A Hard Rain is Fallin'

 

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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questions, comments, want to be a reporter? host@enlighernradio.org

 

Friday, February 14, 2025

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!!!!

 

Paris on the Potomac: Special Guest Joe Grey

 

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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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

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

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

To the Marriage of True Minds

 

Sonnet XI

 

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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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

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.

 

Labor Beat Radio: The labor movement: guardian of democracy

 

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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Thursday, February 6, 2025

The Poetry Show: Telescopes

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Between the Blaze and the Black: Thru the Lens

 

Night of the Telescopes

 

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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Sunday, February 2, 2025

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!

 

Paris on the Potomac:  A Chance to Stand Up

 

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

 

Brief Lull between Clinical Depressions

 

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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Friday, January 24, 2025

The Poetry Show: Moon Shadows

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Moonlight Twixt Twilight and Starlight

 

The Moon's Balloon

 

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?

 

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

 

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

 

The Last Stop Cafe:  Commanders Win, Fascism Begins

 

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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Friday, January 17, 2025

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

 

Paris on the Potomac

 

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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Wednesday, January 15, 2025

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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Monday, January 13, 2025

The Last Stop Cafe: The LA Fire Moves East

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: The LA Fire Moves East

 

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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