Community Voices

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse. It’s been called “children’s theater for adults” with topical themes, sophisticated humor, and clever songs. This year’s show, Superhuman Happiness, adapts the Greek myths of Ovid’s Metamorphosis to explore the role of change in kids’ lives today. The playhouse and artistic director John Fleming also face some major changes. Community Voices producer David Seitz has their story.

50 years ago this month, volunteers from across the country came to Oxford, Ohio to prepare for a pivotal event in the civil rights movement. Dave Barber created this story for WYSO'S Community Voices. 

“We hope to send into Mississippi this summer upwards of 1000 teachers, ministers and students from all around the country who will engage in what are we calling freedom schools, community center programs, voter registration activities, in general a program designed to open Mississippi to the country.”    Bob Moses  1964     

It’s common for people hear things that go bump in the night. But have you ever heard country and western music coming from an inanimate object? Community Voices producer Renee Wilde shares her close encounter of another kind, along with an interesting way to use a potato.

Spring is roofing season – time to check your roof for damage it may have sustained during the winter.  Near the banks of the Great Miami River in Dayton, a man is making an unusual roof this spring, using materials most that most people would never consider. Community Voices producer Renee Wilde has our story.

Tucked between a busy interstate and a pair of train tracks lies a prehistoric site called the Sunwatch Indian Village, and in that recreated village something unusual is going on. An Irishman is keeping a Native American tradition alive.

It’s smaller than your thumbnail, but the destruction it can cause is huge. The shiny green Emerald Ash Borer is a beetle native to Asia and Russia. It has been traveling from state to state, catching rides on firewood, and then settling in to eat away at the Ash Tree.

The Greene County Parks and Trails department is currently cutting down 3,000 dead Ash Trees which have been killed by this insect. That’s going to dramatically change this part of Ohio. And no one knows this better than two naturalists who work there.