Community Voices

This week is the season finale of Dayton Youth Radio.  Miami Valley School student Ben Roth talks about his relocation to a different part of the country. 

Ben Roth is a student at the Miami Valley School. Special thanks to Lindsey Cummings, social studies teacher at the Miami Valley School. Learn more at the school's website:  http://www.mvschool.com/

Dayton Youth Radio is supported by the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation and the Armotte Boyer Charitable Trust, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee.

Today on Culture Couch we meet local sculptor Jon Barlow Hudson, who’s finishing a piece of public art for the downtown Dayton Public Library  building.

Creating a public sculpture puts an artist in the middle of a conversation  - the work is accessible, people can walk around it and touch it.  Hudson’s new work includes two seats – it’s actually a place to sit and talk.  Community Voices producer Lauren Shows visited the artist’s studio to learn more about his work:

Drag performances happen regularly all around Ohio, as they have for many years. Men dressed as women - with elaborate and sometimes outrageous hair, costumes and makeup - perform on stages and in clubs in Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, but also in smaller towns like Lima and Monroe.

Dragonflies might be the least understood insects on the planet. They have been called the Devil’s Darning Needles, Mule Killers, and Snake Doctors. For an insect that has been around since before the dinosaurs roamed the earth, surprisingly little is actually known about them. Community Voices producer Renee Wilde went in search of answers to why a dragonflies form a huge swarm on her farm in Ohio every year.

Chris DeWeese is a Creative Writing professor at Wright State University, and Heather Christle is a poet who has taught at several area universities. Two and a half years ago their daughter Harriet was born. Poet and Community Voices producer Lori Gravley spoke with Heather and Chris at their Yellow Springs’ home about how they overcome the challenges of raising a child while doing deeply introspective work.

Chris and Heather are parents, poets, and professors, trying to balance it all

In 2015 floriculture sales made up a $31.3 billion dollar industry according to the Society of American Florists. 78% of those flowers came from Colombia, which became a competitive market thanks to the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, that gave the country duty-free access to the U.S. market. Low wages make imported flowers cheaper than U.S. produced. The average flower worker in Colombia makes $6 a day and can work up to 70 hour weeks without overtime.

As children of a Jordanian-American mother and a Syrian-American father - both parents practicing Muslims, sisters Jenna and Selma feel fortunate not to have experienced serious racism or bullying at school or in their neighborhood. The Dayton area teens feel lucky they are in a school that supports diversity and enforces a policy of zero tolerance for bullying and racism. They know too, many teens in the Miami Valley face schools and communities where intolerance and even violence are sadly common.

Have you ever wondered what happens in those drab metal buildings clustered together in faded industrial parks? Newly minted Community Voices producer, Jim Kahle, discovered preparations for the Bonneville Salt Flats races going on in one of those buildings not far off I-75, just north of Dayton.

It’s likely that the name of the farmer who raised your steak is already on the menu at your favorite independent restaurant. It’s part of a national trend where restaurants source locally, but it’s about more than just ingredients. Community Voices producer Kateri Kosta tells about something so central to the culinary experience that you probably don't even notice it's there: your plate.

On any given day of the week, you’ll find Elli Schroll working at Possum Creek Stables in Moraine.  She’s fourteen years old and has been volunteering at the horse barn since she was 11 years old, mucking stalls, throwing down hay bales, and feeding the horses.

No matter how difficult it can be, Elli loves working here and believes that it’s a great experience for her and the other young volunteers.  

“I’ve learned a lot since coming here, like about horses, about just myself, and everything about, like, who I am and just about horses and everything,” says Elli.