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Dennis Sullivan — Christmas Day podcast
Dennis Sullivan begins our Christmas Day podcast by reading from one of his Christmas columns on his naïve search as a child for the Star of Bethlehem, which became a lifelong journey to finally find it. Sullivan has compiled 62 of his Enterprise columns into a just-released book, “Homeward Bound.” He took the cover photo of the rail trail after rain had cleared it of people, leaving a green leafy canopy over a straight shot of pavement. At age 80, Sullivan says, “I’ve got a foot in the grave … All that’s waiting for you, me, anyone is that white light.” Sullivan spends a month meditating on each of his essays, which starts with “une ligne donné” — a given line, as French poet Paul Valéry put it. “There is a world beneath that line and it is a writer’s job to find out what is below that line,” says Sullivan. “The lines don’t leak,” he says of his writing, crediting Joan Didion and Janet Malcolm as two of his literary parents. “The columns really are poems,” says Sullivan. He references Virgil’s pace — no more than three lines a day — in writing The Aeneid, quoting the ancient Roman poet: He licked those lines into existence like a mother bear licks her new-born cubs into shape. In the Age of the Internet, when local links are disintegrating, Sullivan’s focus in compiling his book, and in life, is on the local community. He has been Voorheesville’s historian since 1986 and has led library groups on poetry and memoir writing and helped launch the poet laureate contest that used to be held at Smitty’s Tavern. His work on restorative justice — he wrote “Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective” — had international reach but focused too on the local, whether in South Africa or London, as the only way restorative justice can work — finding ways communities can resolve disputes without violence. Sullivan hopes his book will encourage readers to look at their own lives and write about them.
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Daughter and mother coach dragon-boat paddlers
31:33Anna Judge and Louisa Matthew realize they live in an ageist and sexist society — but, with generous spirits, they are paddling against the current. The mother-daughter duo together coach a crew of dragon boat paddlers. Matthew, the mother, is an art professor at Union College. Judge, her daughter, is a certified personal trainer who led her mother into the sport. “A dragon boat is a 40-foot long, very narrow racing boat,” explains Matthew in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “That became standardized in the 20th Century but it’s based on a thousands-year-old Chinese tradition of racing the big rivers in China.” A dragon boat has 20 paddlers, two to a seat, with a person in the stern who steers and a person in the bow signaling directions, traditionally by drumming. “It’s the national sport of China,” said Judge “so it’s quite big in Asia and has subsequently spread to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.” It came to the United States through Canada, she said, citing the work of a doctor in British Columbia who changed prevailing medical opinion on exercise for breast-cancer survivors.Angelica Sofia Parker and Elca Hubbard prepare for a pageant while supporting each other
27:03https://altamontenterprise.com/07242023/angelica-sofia-parker-and-elca-hubbard-prepare-pageant-while-supporting-each-other