Music and Art 69

Excerpts from the 2021 Season of Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast
Guide to Living Downstream montage of 2021 episodes

1 – 00:00 – 11:41
Excerpts from beginning and end ("Mister's family also has a lot of hope…") of Generations in Houston's 5th Ward Contend with Contamination, Cancer Clusters.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6gGCYAx1CfD08mkEoMQNyY

2 – 11:42 – 15:09
Excerpt from Chicken Country, North Carolina: Justice on the Factory Floor 
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6gGCYAx1CfD08mkEoMQNyY
Victoria Bouloubasis has been covering this part of North Carolina for several years. She's fluent in Spanish, and does much of her reporting in that language. Our decision to use Spanish voices in the episode, which she translates, contrasts with the standard practice of talking over voices that aren't in English.

3 – 15:09 – 17:58
Excerpt from Struggling to Breathe in the Bronx 
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QoOQnZXGsWII3XHo8iJoS
Reporter Ese Olumhense grew up with her family in the Bronx. Her father, who had immigrated from Africa, moved the family to Westchester when she was young. That's when her childhood asthma disappeared.
This story was partially funded by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and as you will hear, Olumhense broke new ground by combing through records of where New York City's COVID cases were highest, and cross-referencing them with areas impacted by pollution from the city's highways.
Since the reporting was done during the height of COVID, we improvised sound gathering and reporting techniques, like having the mom keep an audio journal, including giving her son his daily doses of asthma medicine.

4 – 17:58 – 19:00
Excerpt from West Oakland's Diesel Death Zone
Lots of hard science in this episode. But we're taking the time to introduce you to the neighborhood and to Miss Margaret, who leads her community's effort to improve its air.

5 – 19:01 – 23:46
Excerpt from Catherine Coleman Flowers: Warrior for Environmental Justice
Catherine Coleman Flowers may be one of the most visible environmental justice advocates in the country, especially after receiving a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2020. Drawn from several discussions, this episode includes excerpts from her new memoir, Waste, and what we consider to be a relevant digression about how her faith animates and motivates her. Flowers' focus is on improving access to sanitation for poor families in the South, many of whom "straight pipe" their sewage into their back yards.

6 – 23:47 – 26:35
Excerpt from Health, Wealth and Race in Today's Louisiana
Shalina Chatlani reported this story, deepening and broadening available information to describe and prove how farmers and landowners in one small Louisiana town had mineral assets and rights to cultivate land stolen from them. She brilliantly gets onto the record the casual, systemic racism that is growing worse in New Iberia. 

7 – 26:35 – 29:56
Excerpt from The Sea Next Door
The two young women at the heart of this episode were just graduating high school, during this pandemic, and hosted the episode, while helping report and write this extraordinary story about the Salton Sea. They were mentored by two other women: a young, local Latina documentary filmmaker; and a longtime science and environment correspondent who has worked throughout California for many years.

Entire Season on Spotify –
https://open.spotify.com/show/1tPKsb6vtQkuJjNrn5MEij
Season Two Starts in April, 2021 with Struggling to Breathe in the Bronx

Living Downstream Season Two Montage - April thru October 2021

Steve in conversation with Marika Partridge talks about the cultural festival in Austin that regulars call "South By." After the gatherings were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, 2021 was enthusiastically in person and featured luminaries like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Gabby Giffords, Magic Johnson, Sheryl Crow - and so many more.

Steve Reports from SXSW 2022 - with Marika Partidge on WOWD, Takoma Park, MD

This is an excerpt from an interview I did with Alicia Clair, entitled "Music Therapy, Alzheimer's and Post-Traumatic Stress." Clair is a music therapist and expert on the effects of music on the brain. The interview was part of a Library of Congress podcast called Music and the Brain. More about Alicia Clair here: https://music.ku.edu/people/alicia-clair
The entire interview can be heard here:
https://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_clair.html

Library of Congress - Music and the Brain Excerpt  - 13min

Created in 1971 by students from Sonoma State University and community leaders, KBBF in Santa Rosa was the first bilingual, bicultural educational radio service in the United States when it went on the air two years later.
KRCB and KBBF are working together this fall, with funding from the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Impact Fund to explore health in Roseland after the neighborhood's annexation into the City of Santa Rosa.
To start the project, KBBF's program director Edgar Avila sat down with KRCB news director Steve Mencher to talk about why the collaboration is important to both stations and holds great promise for the local community.
See the story in context here:
https://norcalpublicmedia.org/science-health/krcb-begins-collaboration-with-kbbf-on-roseland-health

To kick off USC health project, KBBF's Edgar Avila interviews KRCB's Steve Mencher

Here's a pilot for the Music and Art 69 podcast. It's unique, so doesn't offer an exact template, but should give everyone an idea where this is going.

Pilot - Music and Art 69

We revisit the history of the High School of Music and Art, including the contributions of Fiorello LaGuardia and an early icon, Miss America Bess Myerson. Then we continue dialogues about our class and why we maintain relationships with friends of 50 years.

Episode 2 - Music and Art 69: Music & Art Gets Its Start

Host Steve Mencher remembers an afternoon in Riverside Park with Pablo Frank and other friends. Elliot Gertel and Margery Meadow schmooze, and our 94-year-old principal makes an appearance.

Episode 3 - Music and Art 69 : We Remember a Lost Classmate, and Find Our Principal

The Class of 1969 at the High School of Music and Art experienced a senior year unlike any before or since. The school year began in the chaos of a teachers' strike, and ended at our graduation in Carnegie Hall, as we sped into uncertain futures. At the helm was the youngest principal to ever take over a New York City high school, Richard A. Klein. Mr. Klein died on June 27, 2024, at the age of 94. We interviewed him less than 3 weeks before his death, and he remembered us well.

Episode 4 - Welcome to the Titanic, Captain

In this episode we pay a brief tribute to Music and Art grad Laura Nyro, and do a deep dive on the career of her brother Jan Nigro, Music and Art class of 1968, who created and nurtured a project called Vitamin L with his wife Janis for more than three decades.

Episode 5 - Jan Nigro and His Sister Laura Nyro

Should the United States join the International Criminal Court? The US is one of the outliers - including China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen - which do not recognize the court's authority. Does this posture harm international peace and security? I wrote, directed and coproduced this hour-long special for NPR's Justice Talking. We won a bunch of awards with this, and it's among the best things I've done in any medium. Executive producer was Katherine Kolbert, and coproducers Kara McGuirk and Erin Mooney.

And Justice for Some: The U.S. and the International Criminal Court

Susan Stamberg on Peter Yarrow

Mencher-Florida-groff

Founding NPR Mother Susan Stamberg Remembers the HS of Music and Art via WHQR

At the Harmony Interfaith Concert Sunday, November 8, in Kansas City, Missouri, a Mount Washington Baptist Church choir led by Rev. Willie Thornton sings Richard Smallwood's "Anthem of Praise." We're meeting the community to start our #BeyondBelief project, part of #FindingAmerica from AIR and CPB.

Richard Smallwood Anthem of Praise in Kansas City

Milkshake song by Anne-Marie Akin at Takoma Park Library with Karen MacPherson.

Milkshake Song

Just out of the studio - with David Schulman Violin, Alex Martin Guitar, Tom Kaufman Bass and John Shepherd Drums

Steve Mencher

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks