Tune in to Experience Talks, our “Radio Magazine for the Experienced Listener.” Saturdays 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 99.5 China Lake, 93.7 N. San Diego, streaming live online and now syndicated on up to 100 Pacifica Network stations! Experience Talks is produced by EngAGE, Inc.
Miss the show? You can always hear it as a podcast on the Listen Page of our website! You’ll also find an archive-in-progress of all of our previous shows there for you to enjoy. New shows are usually posted within 24 hours after broadcast.
EXPERIENCE TALKS 1/31 @ 8 AM PT:
GARY FERGUSON
with host TIM CARPENTER
Photo: Gary and Jane Ferguson by the Hood River, above the Arctic Circle
For 25 years, GARY FERGUSON and his wife, Jane, roamed the Rockies, working as naturalists, he as a writer, she as a teacher. But in 2005, a canoe trip on a dangerous stretch of the Kopka River in the Canadian Rockies turned deadly. Jane drowned and Ferguson turned to what he knew to recover from his heartbreak, writing The Carry Home: Lessons from the American Wilderness. The memoir chronicles his journey to spread Jane’s ashes in her five favorite wild places, all in the Rocky Mountains. The journey took several years through the wild lands of Idaho into Yellowstone National Park, and Ferguson learned lessons about grieving as he made his way from one wild haunt to another, finally coming to terms with the notion that “the grief journey unfolds at its own pace.” Tim Carpenter talks to author Gary Ferguson about the wilderness of grieving.
“The Carry Home offers a powerful glimpse into how the natural world can be a critical prompt for moving through cycles of immeasurable grief, how bereavement can turn to wonder, and how one man rediscovered himself in the process of saying goodbye.” ~ from Counterpoint Press
“Lucky Strike Beach,” “Start of Train Trip,” “Roll of French funeral, 1947” — these are some of the labels found on 31 never-developed rolls of film taken over 70 years ago by an American World War II soldier. One roll was wrapped in a letter that reads: “I’ve always had a lonesome life, dreaming of success and love.”
Remember singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 Southern Gothic tale of doomed romance, “Ode to Billie Joe?” Remember the mysterious lyric that left you wondering what was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge? (We had our theories, of course.) Equally mysterious is Bobbie Gentry’s disappearance from the public eye for the past thirty-plus years. There’s been no scandal, no explanation, not even a clue about where she has retired.
Silicon Valley has been criticized for being ageist, but that’s not what 90-year-old designer Barbara Beskind discovered. She is on staff at IDEO, the legendary firm that designed Apple Inc.’s first mouse, the Pilates machine and dozens of high-tech gadgets and digital interfaces. Ms. Beskind started designing at the age of eight when she came up with an idea for a hobby horse made out of tires. She became an occupational therapist and now uses that experience to design products that work for seniors. “I live among people who are retired,” she said, “in some cases very retired. I want to be someplace stimulating, with people who are passionate and creative. This is the best experience I have had in my professional life.” Read more about her 
The fabulous Angela Lansbury, 89, will retire from the road after her current tour as the charming and disarming medium, Madame Arcati, in Nöel Coward’s ghost-haunted 1941 comedy, “Blithe Spirit.” Read more 
“Worth Repeating” is a weekly feature on the EngAGE Blog that will bring you previous posts that we think are still timely, interesting, or just plain fun! From 1/15/15:
Brooklyn-based photographer Nadia Sablin received the 2014 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography for her series “Aunties,” an exploration of the daily lives of her father’s two unmarried sisters, who live together in their childhood home, in Alekhovshchina, Russia, five hours north of St. Petersburg. You can see her beautiful photo essay 
