Air Date: September 22, 1995

SEGMENTS

Baltimore Reclaiming Chesapeake Bay / Martha Honey

There is a new movement in the city of Baltimore to unite citizens for urban and natural renewal. Underlying the effort is the belief that by helping restore and revitalize the city, the bay will be spared further suburban development that often threatens the fragile watershed environment. City church leaders and ordinary citizens are spending more time on the bay as well, experiencing the connection between this once bustling port town and its surrounding waterway. Martha Honey reports. (07:10)

Bronx Nature Walk / Neal Rauch

Reporter Neal Rauch spends a summer day with toddlers and their parents on a guided nature walk in pastoral Bronx, New York. Known more these days for its tough street crime image, the Bronx is still a place full of natural wonders even the youngest and most vulnerable and can sometimes get out and learn to enjoy. (06:33)

Living on Earth Listeners Respond

Last week's report on the debate over possible national parks closures elicited much reponse from our listeners. (03:00)

Living on Earth Profile Series/Obituary: Helen Nearing / Andrea DeLeon

Back-to-the-land movement pioneer Helen Nearing died September 17th at age 91 from injuries sustained in a car accident. Best known for the book she wrote with her late husband Scott Nearing titled Living the Good Life, the book has been in continuous print for decades. The Nearings were also known for opening their homestead and sharing ideas with many curious visitors. Helen's legacy continues with two recent volumes of her writing. Andrea DeLeon from Maine Public Radio has this profile. (04:50)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

Copyright c 1995 by World Media Foundation. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold, or transmitted without the written authority of World Media Foundation.

HOST: Steve Curwood
NEWSCASTER: Jan Nunley
REPORTERS: David Wright, Martha Honey, Neil Rauch, Andrea DeLeon

(Theme music intro)

CURWOOD: From National Public Radio, this is Living on Earth.

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: I'm Steve Curwood. An alliance of civil rights and environmental activists say one way to help save Chesapeake Bay is to help save the center city of Baltimore. The effort is boosting hopes that the bay will make a comeback.

WHITE: I do believe it's getting better. It will. You all get together and agree, say we're going to clean this bay up and get it back, you know what I mean? It'll come.

CURWOOD: Also, we visit an environmental educator in New York City who's getting babies out of their apartments and into nature to help them learn about the real world.

EHRLICH: You can't do, like, virtual reality outdoor stuff. It's not the same. You have to be exposed to it. You have to touch it. You have to breathe it. You're not going to smell things, you know, from watching TV.

CURWOOD: And your letters this week on Living on Earth, coming up right after the news.

Environmental News

NUNLEY: From Living on Earth, I'm Jan Nunley. Scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health unveiled an unusual vaccine they're developing to fight Lyme Disease at an annual meeting of microbiologists. From KQED in San Francisco, David Wright reports.

WRIGHT: Lyme disease has been hard to prevent because the bacteria, once active, are highly adaptable. Conventional vaccines, which help create antibodies that recognize and kill an infection, simply don't work according to Dr. Sam Telford of the Harvard School of Public Health.

TELFORD: Once the organism has gotten into your body, the vaccine has absolutely no utility at all. You can have all the antibody in the world. That bacteria is so clever that it will evade those antibodies.

WRIGHT: So Telford and his colleagues have been testing a new vaccine that would kill the bacteria before they've even had a chance to invade a human host. The vaccine creates antibodies which the tick drinks in with the blood, poisoning the Lyme disease bacteria in the belly of the tick when the bacteria are still dormant and vulnerable. Tests of the unusual new vaccine have been promising, but it's still a few years away from any chance of going on the market. For Living on Earth, I'm David Wright.

NUNLEY: A House of Representatives effort to close some Federal parks has come back from the legislative grave. The full House voted down a proposal by Utah Republican Jim Hansen, forming a panel to recommend which parks should be closed. Less than 10 hours later, Hansen tacked the same provision onto a broad budget bill crafted by the House Resources Committee as part of the Republican's deficit reduction effort. Under Hansen's plan an 11-member commission would evaluate the park system and make recommendations on which ones, if any, do not meet standards established by the US Park Service. The National Parks and Conservation Association blasted the vote, saying it flouted the will of a bipartisan majority. The Clinton Administration has come out strongly against the bill.

House and Senate budget negotiators have agreed to renew the government's practice of letting companies take title to lands where they have staked mining claims, and that's just one controversial measure contained in the appropriations bill for the Interior Department and other agencies. If the legislation passes, the government would again have to sell mining rights on Federal land for as little as $2.50 an acre. Also contained in the $12 billion spending bill are measures that would prohibit the listing of new endangered species and one directing the Forest Service to allow increased logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. President Clinton hasn't said whether he would veto that bill, but the Administration has been critical of the bill's interference in Federal land management and environmental protection programs.

That old saying, "When it rains, it pours," is becoming more true with each passing year as global warming takes hold. A report in the journal Nature by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says overall, weather is becoming more extreme. Decades of data gleaned from Australia, China, the former Soviet Union, and the US, show temperatures steadily rising, with less difference between night and daytime temperatures. And that when it does rain, it rains harder. Senior scientist Thomas Karl of the National Climatic Data Center says that's not all.
'

KARL: Other factors that we're seeing include reduced snow cover in North America. Over the past 10 years we've seen about a 10% reduction in snow cover.

NUNLEY: Karl is 95% certain that the changes are due to an increase of so-called greenhouse gases, most of which come from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Researchers will try next to measure extreme weather events such as hurricanes, hail storms, and tornadoes.

The richest nation in the world? Why, it's Australia, of course. That's the conclusion of a new World Bank study, which expands the definition of wealth beyond just money and investments, by weighing what a country earns against what it consumes. Principal author John O'Connor says the survey incorporates human resources and environmental health along with traditional economic indicators of wealth such as Gross National Product. O'Connor admits the new system isn't perfect.

O'CONNOR: This definitely is a research process at the moment. It's very crude first results. But we felt we needed to get the message out, not just to bank researchers, but to people who are concerned about the environment and sustainable development in general.

NUNLEY: Many experts hailed the survey for putting real numbers to the costs of environmental degradation.

Idaho has seen the reintroduction of wolves and it's under consideration as a new home for grizzly bears. Even so, it came as a surprise to residents when they found out that African lions were prowling around their state. Fifteen of the beasts escaped from a private zoo southeast of Pocatello. Within a day of their escape all 15 had been tracked down and killed by local police. The lions escaped form a compound known as Ligertown, where the owners keep lions, tigers, and ligers: the offspring of a lion and tiger. Local officials knew little about Ligertown and said they had no powers under state law to regulate the zoo.

That's this week's Living on Earth news. I'm Jan Nunley.

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Baltimore Reclaiming Chesapeake Bay

CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. This time of year, Maryland's Chesapeake Bay is just gorgeous: sailboats, sea birds and sunsets make it all seem magical. But just beneath the surface is an ecological disaster. Over-fishing and pollution have decimated the once abundant populations of oysters and crabs, and even the common rock fish is getting harder and harder to find. Antipollution laws and other government efforts have slowed Chesapeake Bay's decline, but increasingly, community efforts are seeking to make a difference. In Baltimore, some citizens are linking suburban sprawl to the increase of bay pollution and to the decline of the center city. They say saving the city will help save the bay. They're a coalition of civil rights and environmental organizers. Martha Honey has our report.

(Men and women yelling: "Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho!...")

HONEY: For most of the two dozen men and women pulling in the long lines, this is their first trip on a fishing boat. They are African American ministers and parishioners from Baltimore, and they've been invited by the Baltimore Urban League and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to spend a day cruising the bay and seeing firsthand its problems. For the last year, this black civil rights organization and predominantly white environmental group have been working together to find ways to help the bay and its nearby watershed by helping the city. Will Baker is the Foundation's president.

BAKER: You know, Baltimore now has less than 700,000 in population. The population is declining and that's not good for the Chesapeake Bay because much of this development occurs in forests and marshland out in the countryside. So restoring Baltimore, saving the city, is key to saving the bay.

HONEY: The strategy includes getting black ministers on board. First the Foundation's educational boat, and then the project. Churches are central institutions in Baltimore's inner city. Today the minister's catch includes only one live crab, and a wide assortment of manmade fish.

(Woman: "Very popular cigarette butt fish. Many of fiberglass acts like a filter. Filter feeders, swims through the water filtering plankton out of the water. And always the Styrofoam peanut fish: they come in green, white, round, S-shaped, every color you can imagine. And...")

HONEY: Amid the humor, the message is not lost on Baptist minister Isaiah Hill.

HILL: Well, the main thing is you know, after getting a first-hand look at the type of pollution that was there, I mean, it really caused everyone to become aware of the danger that we face. I'm excited. I can't wait to get back to my youngsters so I can tell them to come on and go on the boat ride and experience what I experienced. But hopefully if you catch the youngsters while they're young, their minds are more receptive.

(A group of children. Man: "So why do you think worms are good? Why do you think worms are good for the soil?" Child: "They don't bite you." Man: "Because they don't bite you? I think...")

HONEY: Catching young people is one of the main aims of Baltimore's first ever EnviroFest, promoted in part by the Urban League and the Bay Foundation. Interactive displays under large canvas colored tents draw kids to learn about water pollution, green households products, gardening, and environmentally friendly insects.

(Man: "Yeah, here let me pick him up for you because " " Child:"Oh!" Man: "You nearly had one...")

HONEY: The chief organizer of EnviroFest is Joyce Bramble, publisher of the Baltimore Times and board member of the Urban League. The League has historically focused on job training and has identified the field of environmental protection as a main growth industry for the coming century. Bramble is a strong advocate of the League's Coalition with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

BRAMBLE: What's happening is that they're bringing the skills of both organizations together and they're going to, they're forming a bond. The Chesapeake Bay brings technology, its knowledge of all the things that have to be done in times, in terms of the environment. The Urban League brings the inner city person who needs to be made aware of what's going on in the environment. The Urban League also has a training piece in terms of jobs...

HONEY: The jobs issue is the glue that binds the 2 organizations together. It's a long-term strategy which includes teaching inner city kids about the bay, working with local high schools and colleges to encourage these students to study biology, chemistry, and environmental sciences, and systematically training African Americans for a range of high and low tech jobs in environmental fields. The Coalition is joining forces with some other local initiatives to revitalize Baltimore's neighborhoods, to make the inner city more livable and to slow urban flight.

(Sirens down the street)

HONEY: Franklin Square is one of Baltimore's most depressed neighborhoods, but community activists and children from the local Martin Luther King Recreation Center are working to create patches of beauty amongst the urban blight.

ANDERSON: We planted flowers and stuff over there and, like, they made like a shape of Africa out of rocks and they, flowers are growing out of Africa, and we, um, planted some of the flowers over there. And some flowers are supposed to be growing back there.

HONEY: Ten-year-old Luthela Anderson proudly points through the wire fence that surrounds this community garden. This used to be a vacant lot used by drug dealers. now it contains a flower-filled map of Africa. Franklin Square has a half dozen other neighborhood vegetable and flower gardens, as well as dozens of newly planted trees along the streets. Sally Lumus is managing the project, which is assisted by the US Forest Service.

LUMUS: What we're trying to do is help people restore their environment as well as restoring their communities. It gets really hot in the summer, and part of what we're trying to do is make some nice, cool places outdoors where people can enjoy themselves.

HONEY: In the vision of the new Urban League-Chesapeake Bay Foundation alliance, reclaiming these vacant lots will do more than just make blighted neighborhoods better places to live. They'll also help cut down on illegal dumping of toxic wastes. These hazardous chemicals seep into the ground and ultimately into the bay, threatening the health of living things along the way. The Alliance is planning a major anti-toxics campaign as part of its long -term effort to restore the bay.

(Boat horns. Man: "Fascinating.")

HONEY: Back at the bay, in Annapolis, fisherman Earl White explains that he's become an environmental educator. He's 75, and should have retired. But instead, he started working with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, taking young people out in boats from Baltimore and other cities to teach them about the dangers facing the bay.

WHITE: I do believe it's getting better. It will, if they do, like " you all get together and agree, say we're going to clean this bay up and get it back, you know what I mean? They'll do it. It'll come.

HONEY: The Baltimore Urban League and Chesapeake Bay Foundation are hoping their innovative coalition will become a model for other parts of the country. Already, Washington, Norfolk, and several other cities are talking about starting similar programs. And activists say with the tide in Washington turning sharply away from government regulation, efforts to save both the environment and urban areas may rest more in coming years with citizen coalitions with this rather than with government programs. For Living on Earth, I'm Martha Honey in Baltimore.

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(Men and women shouting: "Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho!...")

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Bronx Nature Walk

CURWOOD: Some researchers say children need to explore wild places for good development, even if they can just poke around a weed-filled vacant lot. And as far as environmental educators at one public garden in New York City are concerned, no child is too young. Even before they can walk, they say babies can explore nature from backpacks, and they've designed a program to do just that. Neil Rauch went to one session and brought his family along.

(Birdsong)

EHRLICH: If I had the influence with the good fairy who's supposed to preside over all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. So that's what we're going to do today: we're going to work on our sense of wonder.

RAUCH: Appropriately enough, our journey begins with that quote from a Rachel Carson book, The Sense of Wonder, read under a large tree.

EHRLICH: These trees are over 100 years old, and...

RAUCH: Stephanie Ehrlich, who leads the Babies and Backpacks Program, readily admits that introducing babies to nature is really more for the parents.

EHRLICH: What we're trying to do for the parents is show them that their sense of wonder is important to sort of nourish and cultivate and then they can share that with their children, and that's a wonderful thing, you know, for children to have forever. With the toddlers there is something that they would get out of it. There's more touching and listening and looking and stuff that the older babies can do, that the toddlers can do. Your 2-year-old would be very, very busy. (Laughs)

RAUCH: My 2-year-old, David, has come along with his mother, Nancy Consolazio.

DAVID: Look, mom! Look! (Splashes)

CONSOLAZIO: You can touch the water. Is it cold?

DAVID: Bbbhhh, it's cold!

RAUCH: David not only sticks his hand in, but his foot, too, with the shoe and sock. He's thrilled at the sight of a pool stocked with goldfish.

DAVID: There more fish there.

CONSOLAZIO: There's more fish, look at that!

DAVID: Gub, gub.

CONSOLAZIO: Glub, glub, right!

RAUCH: The Babies in Backpacks Program is hosted by Wave Hill, a 28-acre public garden in the north Bronx. Until 1965 it was a private estate where famous people like Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and Arturo Toscanini would stay. It overlooks the Hudson River and the Palisades, the majestic cliffs on the other side. It's a peaceful setting disrupted only by the near-constant buzz of planes, helicopters, and the equipment of the maintenance staff. Yet the kids didn't seem to mind one bit, and Stephanie Ehrlich says you don't need to have pristine wilderness to learn to love nature.

EHRLICH: I grew up in Brooklyn and we had, like, a little lot behind our building. And we'd go out and we thought we were on safari. And now looking back, I realize they were weeds, you know? So you can take what you're learning here and then you can take that love and that sense of wonder and that curiosity and apply it to, you know, a little patch of green that's growing out of the concrete on the ground, you know? In Brooklyn or Manhattan or wherever it is you are.

(A child babbles)

RAUCH: It's this kind of love of the outdoors that Leslie Doyle is hoping to instill in one-year-old Alexander, even though she herself is a city gal.

DOYLE: To be honest, it's not natural for someone growing up in the Bronx to be a nature lover. But we're trying. (Laughs)

(Alexander cries. Rauch: "He didn't want to leave the water?" Doyle: "No.")

RAUCH: Like my son David, Alexander also likes pond and gets quite upset when it's time to move on.

(Woman: "Wanna see some more fish?")

RAUCH: Another mom, Liz Pimentel, says that this program has helped her understand how her 2-year-old son Felix sees nature very differently from an adult.

PIMENTEL: He just went around, about 10 times around the trunk of that tree, you know, and all the roots. You know, I wouldn't think that that would be something that would be particularly interesting for him to do, but, you know, he said "Oh look at these big roots", and then he " it's more, you know, the fact that they structure it. It's a learning experience for us because then we can teach, you know, teach the kids how to appreciate certain things that we had never noticed before and knew about.

(Footfalls. Children babble.)

RAUCH: The kids watch in awe as a butterfly flutters about. Stephanie Ehrlich says that this kind of experience can't really come from the classroom or TV nature shows.

EHRLICH: You can't do, like, virtual reality outdoor stuff. It's not the same. You have to be exposed to it. You have to touch it. You have to breathe it. You're not going to smell things, you know, from watching TV. You have to go out and experience it and that's, I think, the only way you're going to develop a real feel for it.

(Woman: "Oh, what is that? Fuzz. Fuzzy wuzzy; can you touch that fuzz?")

RAUCH: The children feel the fuzzy leaves, called lamb's ears. Of course, not everything in nature is warm and fuzzy.

(Woman: "He was very interested in the bumble bee, but he wanted to hold the bumble bee." Child: "Bumbee bee...")

RAUCH: And then David spots a plant with pods that look like tiny watermelons.

CONSOLAZIO: No, don't eat it, honey. We don't eat that stuff.

RAUCH: Anything poisonous here?

EHRLICH: Yeah, actually. This is a plant, it's digitalis, it's used for heart medicine. But taken in large doses it could really do some damage.

RAUCH: However, this hazardous road is a 2-way street, as when David gets a-hold of a lovena puff. This plant features buds that are filled with air. David quickly discovers that squeezing them makes a fun pop sound, sort of like natural bubble wrap.

CONSOLAZIO: Squish, squish. You know what? He's going to kill all those flowers.

RAUCH: Or when he sees the calamundin or Panama orange tree, a small plant with tiny oranges.

DAVID: Oranges...

CONSOLAZIO: Try not to pick the fruit. You can hold that one.

DAVID: Are there more?

CONSOLAZIO: No more, no more. Only one.

RAUCH: But any minor destruction is probably worth it. Felix's mom certainly thinks so.

PIMENTEL: He's just enjoyed himself. It's true, this is the age. They're just opening up to all these things and exploring and curious and not scared of bugs. By the time they start school, they're already, you know, they've seen it all.

RAUCH: Next spring, Stephanie Ehrlich is hoping to expand Babies in Backpacks by reaching out to poor and minority parents with tots, especially teenage parents.

EHRLICH: I think it's really part of growing up, to be involved with nature and to have a relationship with it as a young person. I think it really, it grounds you in a way for later life. You feel connected to something bigger.

RAUCH: For Living on Earth, I'm Neil Rauch in New York.

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(A toddler babbles. Music up and under.)

Living on Earth Listeners Respond

CURWOOD: And now it's time to hear from you, our listeners.

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CURWOOD: Last week we ran a story on the debate over cutting back the National Park Service. People called from all over the country, and many of you said what Mae Schatteman told us. She listens to WSUI in Iowa City.

SCHATTEMAN: Please, please don't let them close down the parks. We need these to preserve not only our economy but our way of life.

CURWOOD: A listener in Ohio had this worry.

CALLER: I listen to NPR on WKSU. I believe they should keep all the parks open that are open now. If they close down the smaller parks it would just make the more popular parks even more crowded than they are. What we need is less concrete and more greenery.

JONES-ROWE: Hello, this is Charlotte Jones-Rowe in Raleigh, North Carolina. My husband Chuck and I strongly feel that it's important to keep the parks open and to add to them. If there should have to be any cutting of the parks programs, we think it should happen in the districts of the Congressmen who are so avid to cut the park services. That might change their tone a bit.

CURWOOD: But a number of people also said Federal funding of the National Park System should be looked over closely. Thorough the Internet, Jean Spencer of Danville, Pennsylvania, wrote, "I don't think they should be exempted from review simply because they are national parks.

MORROW: This is Houston Morrow calling from Paonia, Colorado. Our station is KBNF. I am all in favor of trimming the budget. I do not like the idea of closing any parks, but reform might be appropriate. Small parks that are little visited, why can we not have senior and perhaps high school volunteers staff these parks for little or no pay, and have a small fund used for supervising such people, administered through the local park service?

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CURWOOD: If you have a comment about our program, you can reach us at 1-800-218-9988. That's 1-800-218-9988. Zap us a message on the Internet at LOE@NPR.ORG. That's LOE@NPR.ORG. Or the Post Office will deliver a letter to Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. That's Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. Cassettes and transcripts are $10.

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Living on Earth Profile Series/Obituary: Helen Nearing

CURWOOD: On September 17th, Helen Nearing, coauthor of Living the Good Life, died at the age of 91 in a car accident near the Maine homestead that she and her late husband Scott Nearing had made famous in their writings. Perhaps more than anyone else in these times, the Nearings personified the back to the land movement. Maine Public Radio's Andrea DeLeon has more.

DeLEON: The sign at the end of Nearing's driveway says, "We will see visitors from 3 to 5 to help us live the good life." Though Helen Nearing and her late husband Scott loved solitude, Helen admitted that they opened the door to visitors at all hours. Over the past 3 decades, thousands of people found their way down the narrow, rutted road to Cape Brozier to meet the authors of the book that became a sort of back to the lander's bible: Living the Good Life. Once there, visitors helped in the garden and chatted with Helen, looking for practical homesteading tips and soaking up the essence of the simple way of life she represented.

NEARING: Look at them there. This is just a volunteer that just came from nobody knows where. And three years ago I thought it was a dandelion here that stuck its nose up...

DeLEON: The flower that captured Helen Nearing's attention on the spring day 4 years ago was a vivid poppy the size of a dinner plate, pushing its way to life in an idle greenhouse constructed of fieldstone and old storm windows. The unlikely poppy might be a suitable metaphor for Nearing, who spoke fearlessly of death as a momentary break in the action.

NEARING: What I feel is a continuity of life, that you don't flicker out like a candle. That something goes on.

DeLEON: So you're "

NEARING: That I look forward to.

DeLEON: Scott and Helen Nearing built their first homestead in Vermont at the height of the Depression, leaving the city for a rural farm life not by choice but by necessity when Scott lost his job as a professor.

NEARING: We were merely living in a very simple way, and because we had no money and we grew our own food, cut our own wood and built our own houses, made our own clothes, that sort of thing. Not from any great idealistic purpose but because that was the way things were with us.

DeLEON: But Nearing says they saw themselves merely as poor farmers until Pearl Buck paid them a visit and urged them to write their story. The result, Living the Good Life, has been in print ever since. The Nearings left Vermont for the Penobscot Bay hamlet of Harborside in the 1950s. There, they continued to practice their own recipe for simple living on another run-down farm, eventually building a house from stone they collected on their own beach, and always eating primarily what they could produce themselves, a diet that never included animal flesh.

NEARING: I can't imagine nice people eating animals, but they do. But at least we can stop eating, we can stop killing humans, we can stop killing the animals, and we can live on the produce of the garden and of trees and of orchards, of nut trees. There's plenty to eat, whereby you don't have to kill animals.

DeLEON: Scott Nearing died more than a decade ago when at the age of 100 he announced that he was going to stop eating. Helen said she supported him in that decision and would make the same choice herself when she felt ready to. She continued to live their version of the good life after Scott's death, accepting daily visitors, traveling, and doing the work they had learned together. She said she didn't miss Scott much because she felt the was still with her as a daily presence, and she looked forward to seeing him again. Helen Nearing's thoughts turned more toward death as she approached her 90s, and she wrote 2 books on the subject, Loving and Leaving the Good Life and a collection of quotations called Light on Age and Dying that is just being released. In a Maine Public Radio call-in last year, she discussed her own expectation that she would be reincarnated. She said she worried a lot about the near future, but that the far future would be gorgeous.

NEARING: I mean it: we finally will realize what we can make of our lives and what there is ahead. The important thing is to be brotherly and to help when we can and to learn all we can and to help all we can. And I think that is coming. I hope the human race will finally learn to do that, and I think that's our future.

DeLEON: The future of Nearing's 4-acre shorefront homestead is secure. She recently signed the papers to ensure that it will remain much as it is, a sort of a good life center dedicated to the simple ways of living with which she and Scott became synonymous. Helen Nearing will be remembered at a memorial service October 1st. She died September 17th when her car went off the road and hit a tree near her Harborside home. She was 91. For Living on Earth, this is Andrea DeLeon in Portland, Maine.

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CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced and edited by Peter Thomson. Our production team includes George Homsy, Deborah Stavro, Kim Motylewski, Constantine Von Hoffman, Jan Nunley, Julia Madeson, Jessika Bella Mura, David Dunlap, and Susan Shepherd. Our WBUR engineers are Mark Navin and Keith Shields. Special thanks to Larry Bouthilliere. Michael Aharon composed our theme.

Living on Earth is a project of the World Media Foundation, and is recorded at the studios of WBUR, Boston, and Harvard University. I'm Steve Curwood, executive producer.

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