See You In a Hundred Years

Original airdate: June 22, 2007

Logan Ward and his wife, Heather, had traveled the world—Kenya, France, Peru. But nothing compared to their next adventure: a trip back in time, living the life of dirt farmers in rural Virginia circa 1900.

Disillusioned by city life, the Wards pulled their son out of daycare and traded skyscrapers for silos in search of simpler times. Adopting strict rules that limited them to only the tools that were available at the turn of the century, they faced a year of struggles, where unremarkable feats—putting food on the table, attending a neighbor’s 4th of July party—became the worthiest accomplishments of their lives.

With no phone, no computer, and few distractions aside from irritable livestock and a plague of garden pests, Logan and Heather began to reconnect and rebuild their fractured marriage. More than that, they found what they didn’t know they were looking for—community. As the skepticism of neighbors and family turned to admiration, the Wards developed a network of support and love bound by neither time nor technology. By renouncing everything from cell phones to supermarkets they discovered what’s important in life, whether a hundred years ago or a hundred years in the future.

Logan’s chronicle of the Wards’ four seasons in the farming community of Swoope is an honest and compelling account of one family’s struggle to reclaim their lives from our fast-paced, materialistic society—a memoir for our modern age. See You in a Hundred Years is for anyone who has ever daydreamed about the good old days—and wondered how good they really were.

Listen to the show:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Visit the author’s website:

www.loganward.com
 

The Day I Stopped Being Pretty

Original airdate: January 18, 2008

About the Book: “The Day I Stopped Being Pretty” chronicles the life of a young, black gay male who awakes and finds himself in the emergency room after a failed suicide attempt. After regaining consciousness, he begins to reflect on the events of his life that led him to attempting to take his life. His story is told in gritty and raw flashback, focusing on the men who shaped him into the man he has become, beginning with the first man he ever loved, his father.

After he shares the path that led him to his own self-destruction, he realizes in the face of death, the love that he has sought in many others, has always been in the one place he never looked, within himself.

This raw and gritty story spans twenty-seven years of the lead character, as he faces racism, homophobia, rape and coping with being HIV positive. It is a story that shows the face of growing up black, living gay and loving positive. “The Day I Stopped Being Pretty” is one that shows triumph over adversity and the ability to find the love we all search for, self love. – from SimonSays.com

 

Listen to the show:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Revenge of the Donut Boys

Original airdate: January 4, 2008

The paste below is from Mike Sager’s bio. I also read it just about verbatim as the opening of this show.

He truly is amazing although a bit all over the place and a tough edit. We talked on mic for at least an hour.  I cut it down significantly and made myself appear the devil’s advocate in this one… Who wouldn’t love living with deviant characters for a few months? And yes, I know better than to judge anyone for the predicament life has brought them… but to get the answers, I am the martyr for radio.

Husband, baby and I also drove to DC to meet him at the studio offices of 60 Minutes. It was Mike’s suggestion, he has cool friends. The door to the suite was the most remarkable detail about the event. In a building with sweeping, prestigious windows holding corporate lobbies landscaped with potted plants, the door to the studio was just plain wood. There was merely a number marking the hub of current events in our culture, no glamour, no drama, no spectacle of television.

Mike ushered me around to look at various rooms, finally settling on a small conference room in the front. No Morley Safer, no swapping child rearing tips with Leslie Stahl, no weeping in the arms of Anderson Cooper over the death of Ed Bradley. Despite the fantasies on the long drive up, I remain another undiscovered Richmonder.

Thanks for tuning in.

Liz Humes

Next week: A conversation with Mike Gilbert author of “The Switch Effect: A Real-Life Example of How to Become and Entrepreneur.”

About the author: Mike Sager is a former Contributing Editor of Rolling Stone and Writer-at-Large for GQ, Sager has also written for Vibe, Spy, Interview, Playboy, Washingtonian and Regardies. For his stories, he has lived with a crack gang in Los Angeles; ex-pat Vietnam veterans in Thailand; a 625 pound man in El Monte,CA; teenage pitbull fighters in the Philadelphia barrio; Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; heroin addicts on the Lower East Side; Aryan Nations troopers in Idaho; U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton; Tupperware saleswomen in suburban Maryland; high school boys in Orange County. Eight of his articles have been optioned for or have inspired Hollywood films. Sager has read and lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the Medill School of Journalism, the Yale Law School, and various other forums; his work is included in three textbooks presently in use in college classrooms. Each spring, he leads a popular writing workshop for Literary Journalism majors at the University of California-Irvine, where he is a Pereira Visiting Writer. Fifty years old, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Emory University, he lives with his wife and son in La Jolla, California. www.mikesager.com

Listen to the show:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.