Rumble Strip

Latest Episodes:

Bell Rising Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

This show is a kind of coda to Finn and the Bell....

At long last, the bell is in its tower at Hazen Union High School. The final installation happened right before the Hardwick Memorial Day Parade. I stopped by and recorded some of the volunteers as they constructed the tower, hoisted the bell, and rang in its new life up on the hill over Hardwick.

More than a Dog May 31, 2022

Show notes

Tara Wray is a photographer. And a dog person. She takes pictures of dogs which are haunting and beautiful, and every bit as distinctive as pictures of individual people. I interviewed her shortly after the death of her beloved dog, Nighthawk. Then my friend Tobin’s dog died, and he told me that he sometimes felt ashamed for feeling so much about the death of a dog--a dog who had been his only companion throughout the pandemic.

It seems that a lot of people feel like they have to hide the amount of grief they experience when their dogs die. But the death of a dog can be just as painful--sometimes more painful--than the death of a human family member. This is a show about dog love...and grief at their loss. And there is absurd singing.

More about These People

Learn more about Tara Wray and her beautiful work.

Learn more about Tobin Anderson

Learn more about musician Brian Clark's band, The Anachronist

Puppy Diaries May 11, 2022

Show notes

I've been thinking of getting a dog for years but even though I have an eighteen-year-old son, I've never felt mature enough to have a dog. So when my friend Chris told me he and his partner Beth were getting a puppy, I asked if he'd chronicle the event, and for the next seven months, he sent me recordings of what it was like to have a puppy. It was hilarious and weird and harrowing. Here are the Puppy Diaries.

**Forrest Foster, Independent Dairyman** Mar 04, 2022
Show notes

Forrest Foster is a farmer in Hardwick, Vermont. It’s an organic dairy farm, seventy cows total and about forty milking at any given time. I spent an afternoon following Forrest around the barn, his sugarshack, we took a long ride in his tractor, out past his deer camp. He took me to the place where he cuts cedar and hemlock boughs for deer in the winter, and dispatches his old animals to feed the bear and the deer and the coyotes and the ravens.

Forrest would rather trade services than exchange money. He’ll give you meat if you can’t afford it, and he’ll expect you’ll do some chores in exchange. What I love about Forrest Foster is that he’s always practical and always generous, and these things are always the same thing.
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It’s New Years. Remember Grant Owen. Jan 01, 2022

Show notes

I am home alone on New Years, cleaning and listening to music, and suddenly I remembered Grant Owen, a kid I interviewed at the beginning of the pandemic, and I realized he is exactly the company I needed. So as you’re getting ready for your dinner party or dance party or if you are stuck in a cab or a subway on the interminable trip to The New Years Place, I think you will find that Grant Owen is good company.

Will Staats, Hunting Biologist Dec 17, 2021

Show notes

Will Staats worked for both Vermont and New Hampshire for forty years as a wildlife biologist. He’s also a passionate hunter. He knows the back country of the Kingdom right up through Maine and into Labrador. One day in October he took me bird hunting deep in the unorganized town of Ferdinand. We talked about birds. And we talked about the growing divide between traditional hunting culture and people who don’t like certain kinds of hunting here in Vermont. But it was more interesting than that…it was also about how people harden against each other then alienate each other…something we do a lot of these days.

Here is a recent article from Will that ran in VTDigger.

**Finn and the Bell** Nov 02, 2021
Show notes

Finn Rooney killed himself on January 3, 2020 in the afternoon after school. No one predicted it. There were no signs. All that can be said for sure is that there was a flash of high emotion that comes with youth, and there was a gun nearby, and bullets.

This isn’t a story about suicide. It’s a story about a boy called Finn who loved to fish and play baseball and write poetry and embroider…and what happens to a small Vermont community as it staggers forward after an unspeakable tragedy.

**Make comment at bottom of this page. Because we really want to hear from you.** **And we want you to be able to hear from each other.**

**An interview with Rob Rosenthal for How Sound, on the making of Finn and the Bell**

**Thanks**

My profound thanks to Tara Reese for her insights, her candor and her time.

Thank you to my friends: Amelia Meath, Tobin Anderson, Clare Dolan and Mark Davis.

I also want to thank *every single person* who talked with me for this show. You didn’t really want to but you did anyway. Thank you to Arron and Alleigh and Butch and David and Illia and Mike and Kim and Mirko and Alex and Mac and Allison and Dave and Jack and Dante and Bob and Ben and the Bread and Puppet Band.
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**Finn and the Bell** Nov 02, 2021
Show notes

Finn Rooney killed himself on January 3, 2020 in the afternoon after school. No one predicted it. There were no signs. All that can be said for sure is that there was a flash of high emotion that comes with youth, and there was a gun nearby, and bullets.

This isn’t a story about suicide. It’s a story about a boy called Finn who loved to fish and play baseball and write poetry and embroider…and what happens to a small Vermont community as it staggers forward after an unspeakable tragedy.

**Make comment at bottom of this page. Because we really want to hear from you.** **And we want you to be able to hear from each other.**

**An interview with Rob Rosenthal for How Sound, on the making of Finn and the Bell**

**Thanks**

My profound thanks to Tara Reese for her insights, her candor and her time.

Thank you to my friends: Amelia Meath, Tobin Anderson, Clare Dolan and Mark Davis.

I also want to thank *every single person* who talked with me for this show. You didn’t really want to but you did anyway. Thank you to Arron and Alleigh and Butch and David and Illia and Mike and Kim and Mirko and Alex and Mac and Allison and Dave and Jack and Dante and Bob and Ben and the Bread and Puppet Band.
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Hill Farm. A Tribute to Peter Dunning Oct 28, 2021

Show notes

I heard recently that Peter Dunning died. I want to play this again, in tribute. He was an amazing man.

Peter Dunning’s farm was a Vermont hill farm. A hundred and thirty-six acres of forest and orchards and wet spots and steep, rocky pasture, picked over by farmers for hundreds of years.

Peter farmed here, mostly alone, for nearly forty years. When he was getting done, we spoke at his kitchen table, as the farm was growing up around him.

Credits

I learned of Peter Dunning from a documentary, Peter and the Farm. It’s stunning. Watch it if you can….

Music for this show by David Schulman and Quiet Life Motel

Thank you Geof Hewitt for your help with the poetry!

This show also features the last verse of a remarkable poem called Marshall Washer, by Vermont poet Hayden Carruth. Here’s the full text.