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In this Front Porch rerun show, Ted Leach jokes that running a marionette theatre is not much different than running for political office. And he would know. For much of the 90's Ted ran the New England Marionette Opera in Peterborough. Today, he serves as the Republican State Representative from Hancock and Chairman of the Clean Air Subcommittee. In his spare time, he is writing an opera, a novel, and a musical and pulling all the right strings to make his various projects a reality.

In the late 60s, Michel Peltz was an American soldier in the war. He developed a close friendship with a Vietnamese nun, but after the war, he lost touch with her. This year, he made a return trip to Vietnam. It was a journey that healed some of the emotional scars of his wartime experience, and reunited him with his long-lost friend.

Dennis Meadows has been called one of the top one hundred futurists of all time- and he doesn't use a crystal ball. Through complex computer modelling of a lot of data, Dennis predicts future trends in economics and the environment. He is co-author of The Limits To Growth, a 1972 book that warned the world was growing at an unsustainable rate. Dennis also creates experiential games that develop teamwork and personal skills. He's director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire.

For more than 30 years, ceramic artist Jane Kaufmann has been firing clay at her home studio in Durham. Her work is by turns political, whimsical and personal. We talked to her last November about her then new works about �Bad Girls� � notorious women from history. She makes a variety of items, from orbs to story towers to finger puppets� but no bowls, plates or coffee mugs. She was a lot of fun to talk to so we decided to bring you that interview again.

Douglas Whynott's book A Country Practice describes the challenges of running a veterinary clinic in rural New Hampshire. For two years, he followed veterinarian Chuck Shaw and his colleagues as they treated everything from kittens with colic to cows with stillborn calves. We'll hear about the ups and downs, and the rewards and hardships of a very demanding profession.