The road trip is symbolic of freedom in American literature and folklore. A New Hampshire artist adds a bold black woman to the list of adventurers who escaped convention by hitting the road. Today, the remarkable true story of Bessie Stringfield.
Plus, the Handsome Family had 20 years of making music under their belt when HBO used their song for the opening of True Detective - suddenly, the husband and wife team were famous. We'll talk to them about capturing spirits, fame, and making music with your spouse.
Listen to the full show.
Joel Christian Gill & The Motorcycle Queen of Miami
Joel Christian Gill is the chairman, CEO, president, director of development, majority and minority stock holder, manager, co-manager, regional manager, assistant to the regional manager, receptionist, senior black correspondent and janitor of Strange Fruit Comics. He’s also Chair of Foundations at the NH Institute of Art.
Listen to this story again, learn more about Bessie Stringfield, and see some of Joel's artwork here.
The Handsome Family
The husband and wife team The Handsome Family had been making music together for some 20 years when HBO chose that tune for the opening credits of the hit series True Detective. Fourteen million YouTube views later, Rennie and Brett Sparks were thrust into the mainstream. They're on tour to promote their new album Unseen - including a stop in Portsmouth at the Music Hall Loft on September 29th.
The Mythic Island of Trash
The story was as impossible to miss as the image it conjured. Marine researcher and sea captain Charles Moore was sailing from Honolulu to Santa Barbara when he discovered civilization's plastic footprint; a swirling soup of garbage...bottles, caps, wrappers, truck tires and tubes ...as far as the eye could see. The LA Times series on "the Pacific Garbage Patch" won a Pulitzer Prize. The idea of floating island of filth "twice the size of Texas" floating in the Pacific awakened public disgust.
But, the most substantial thing about the vast patch of debris, as Slate columnist Daniel Engber puts it, is the big idea of it that floats around inside our heads. And that tangible, localized image is one of the biggest challenges for re-thinking the environment.
Related: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Was the Myth We Needed to Save Our Oceans
How to See Glass
People who live on the coast see plenty of trash washing up on the shore. Some, while scouring the shore for other discarded material: glass. This story, about a pair of very serious sea-glass collectors, comes to us from producer Erika Lantz.
You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.