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Take a deep dive into the 1969 fire at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant with author Tyrone Jaeger and his novel
In the novel, Alvin Wund, a recent widower and security guard at the plant, is called in to help fight the fire. Amongst the flames, alarms and contamination, he sees the blue ghost of his wife, Esther.
A blue light flashed.
Time stopped. There she was Esther the blue of a pale sky, untouched by clouds and descended from heaven, where she had made a deal with God to punish Alvin. He felt Blue Esther s embrace, and he thought,
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Meet math-loving fourth grader, Danny Bowman Marsh, and join us for an unforgettable story to remind us all that we do not choose our parents.
Note: This episode contains depictions of parental neglect.
On this episode, author Amy Parker joins us to discuss her short story collection,
Beasts & Children, published by Mariner Books, and we take a journey into her short story, The Balcony. Maybe if he acted like he didn t notice her, she d go away. Danny erased a problem in long division, concentrating on the pink rubber shavings, the pencil smear. He blew them away, erased again. He erased so hard, he bore a hole in the paper. He liked long division, liked imagining the numbers entering a little house, fitting in neatly, with the remainders confined to the roof. The door squeaked, and his mother came in, slipping a little in her high heels. She weaved between the desks. Her perfume was like a blow from a fist.
Credit UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture
Discover Sue Cowan Williams, an early Civil Rights advocate in Arkansas, who sued the Little Rock School District for equal pay in 1942. With Thurgood Marshall at her side, she paved the way for social justice work in Arkansas.
On this episode, we take a deep dive into early Civil Rights by examining the life and social justice advocacy of Sue Cowan Williams and foundational work of the NAACP in Arkansas and beyond.
Historian John Kirk is our guest and shares his lecture on teacher pay equalization laws suits and rare audio recordings of Cowan Williams from the 1990s, where they discussed her leadership role in the law suit, her personal sacrifices, collateral damages and outcomes of the suit.
A discussion of the roots of Ozark rural resistance to federalist authority.
Join us as we interview historian J. Blake Perkins about the history of populist defiance in Arkansas.
Though quite different from the current conservative popularism of today s rural Arkansas sects, the historic tradition of anti-government sentiment in this region is explored in Perkins book
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, conflicts arose over issues such as illegal stills, conscription to military service, and agricultural regulations regarding compulsory cattle dipping. As a micro-historian, Perkins takes listeners on a deep dive into these poor, working class rural communities and settlements to illuminate their ideas, beliefs and actions as they attempted to level the playing field with regional wealthy elites and federal policies and practices that favored the ruling class.