In this edition of WYSO Weekend we’ve got Community Voices and Culture Couch – WYSO’s occasional arts series – and today the return of Politics Ohio. Later in the program, Rebecca Rine has some aviation commentary for us. See full details below.
- Bergholz, Ohio in Jefferson County, near the Pennsylvania border, is a rural, farming community of less than 700 people. Bergholz is mostly known for its Amish community as of late, notorious for a series of beard cutting attacks that took place in 2011. Sixteen members of the Bergholz Community waged five attacks on victims who were mostly their Amish relatives who had either left the community or openly showed opposition it. The 16, including leader Samuel Mullet Sr., were eventually charged with hate crimes and sent to prison. Mullets grandson, Johnny Mast has now written a book about the Bergholz Community detailing what was behind the attacks, and touches on the aftermath, including the trials in which he testified as a witness for the prosecution. In this interview with WYSO last week, he tells what that experience was like and what’s like for him now that he’s left Bergholz behind.
- Today we have a story from newly‐ minted Community Voices producer Anna Lurie of Dayton. Lurie is an elementary level teacher, attuned to the needs of young people. She’s found a place in Moraine called the Possum Creek Stables, where young volunteers are working with horses.
- The novel MobyDick by Herman Melville is a dense and complicated beast of a book by any measure. Even serious readers never finish it. Melville published it in 1851 and since then, it’s been adapted and reimagined by artists over and over. For WYSO's arts series Culture Couch, Dave Barber met a local librarian who has created a new way to experience the story of the white whale.
- Last week Kettering writer Rebecca Rine sent her kids back to school. And it caused her to think about FOCUS: how to teach it to her kids and how to refine it in her own life. In this commentary, which first appeared in the Dayton Daily news she explains that her inspiration is the Wright Brothers.
- On Tuesday, a panel of judges shot down the “golden week”, 7 days during which Ohio citizens could both register and vote at the same time. For our series Politics Ohio, WYSO’s April Laissle talked to Ohio Public Radio’s Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler about why the issue was so contentious, and how it may affect the November election.
