As filed for The World on August 31, 2015.
Jersey City is just across the water from lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. About 40 percent of the town’s residents were born outside the United States, and more than half the city speaks a language other than English at home, according to the most recent census data. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that Jersey City is embracing a style of emergency medical services that, until now, has only existed abroad.
WAMU Radio says goodbye to one of its founders and host of its longest running show, The Big Broadcast. He was 83 years old. Walker passed away a few hours after his final broadcast, and I was honored to offer this remembrance.
Walker gets a kiss from Scott at the Radio Hall of Fame ceremony honoring Walker in 2010.
Nick Balenger was a star high school athlete in Northern Virginia until a swimming accident about two and a half years ago put an end to his athletics and left him temporarily paralyzed.
Friend and colleague, the legendary bluegrass broadcaster Ray Davis, died December 3 of leukemia at the age of 81. Ray was a one-of-a-kind storyteller with a voice made for radio. Most of his stories were about the people and music he played on the air.
For decades he introduced and hung out with country music stars at concerts and festivals, including people like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and The Stanley Brothers.
So-called “sea going cowboys” helped wrangle farm animals on ships that crossed the Atlantic after WWII. Sixty years later the men gathered to tell stories and learn how the organization they served has evolved into a modern day aid group called Heifer International.
From the public radio program Metro Connection in August of 2005.
In the latest installment of DC Gigs we meet Marine Corps Captain Charlene Thoreen based in Quantico, Virginia. If you live around the Washington region you’ve probably seen her before, flying overhead in the black and white helicopters used to carry the President. Marines call the helicopters “white tops.” The rest of us call them Marine One.
Thoreen says her job is never the same, and that’s part of the appeal. The HMX1 squadron is the largest in the Marine Corps, with about eighty pilots. That’s because they support the President wherever he is in the world, and as Thoreen explains, there’s more to that than you might think. For example, HMX has to disassemble the helicopters to transport them overseas, and it takes several days to get them back together again.
From the Marketplace Morning Report
About 50 million Americans say they’re scared of the dentist. Wikipedia has an entry for “dental fear.” There’s even a professional scale for measuring that anxiety. However, music and a foot massage may go a long way toward luring fearful patients into the dental chair. At least, that’s the bet being made at so-called dental spas, which are cropping up all over the world.
As produced for Marketplace.
There’s no federal guideline for what a public school should do when a child doesn’t have money to pay for lunch. That means the experience for a young child can be completely different, even at schools just miles apart. So even in kindergarten — no money can equal no food.
Jennifer L. Strong 