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People of Northwest Public Radio

Sueann Ramella
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All Things Considered Weekend on NPR & Classical Music

Weekends at 4 PM
Hosted by: Guy Raz

Since its debut in 1971, this afternoon radio newsmagazine has delivered in-depth reporting and transformed the way listeners understand current events and view the world. Heard by almost 13 million people on nearly 700 radio stations each week, All Things Considered is one of the most popular programs in America. Guy Raz hosts a one-hour edition of the program on Saturday and Sunday.

Visit All Things Considered at NPR.org

 

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The Two-Way
9:01 am
Mon October 29, 2012

The Science Of Why Sandy Is Such A Dangerous Storm

Credit Gerry Broome / AP
A Dare County utility worker checks on conditions along a flooded Ride Lane in Kitty Hawk, N.C., Monday, Oct. 29, 2012.
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Originally published on Tue October 30, 2012 8:33 am

Here are a few reasons government forecasters at the National Hurricane Center and emergency management officials are so concerned about Sandy:

1. Sandy is one of the largest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. Sandy's winds cover an area of more than 1,000 miles in diameter. That's enormous by hurricane standards. So instead of affecting an area a couple of hundred miles across, Sandy will cut a huge swath. That means many millions of people are probably going to be exposed to high winds, heavy rains, and, for those on the coast, powerful storm surge.

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China: Change Or Crisis
8:34 am
Mon October 29, 2012

China's New Leaders Inherit Country At A Crossroads

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Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
"The Defense of Yan'an" re-enacts a 1947 battle to protect Mao Zedong's Communist stronghold during the Chinese Civil War from the Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
A new attraction at Yan'an is a blockbuster stage show called "Nursery School of the Red Capital." It tells the story of an orphanage the Communist Party set up in Yan'an, and it cost $5.5 million to produce.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Tourists can dress up and take part in "The Defense of Yan'an," a re-enactment of a 1947 Chinese Civil War battle to protect the revolutionary base from the Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Other tourists wear the mustard-colored uniforms of the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Communists' opponents in the country's civil war.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Traditional Shaanxi folk dances also lighten the mood during "The Defense of Yan'an," which ends with a rendition of "Socialism is Good" that the audience joins.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
"The Defense of Yan'an" is a whizbang performance that includes lots of fighting, an antique tank and a plane zooming down a zip wire.
Credit Angie Quan / NPR
When a Chairman Mao lookalike appears (on left), the crowd of tourists applauds loudly.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
The former revolutionary stronghold of China's Mao Zedong has become a tourist spot exalting the communist cause. This "Red Army" is actually a team of top Chinese salespeople from Amway, the U.S.-based direct sales company. They have earned a three-day trip to Yan'an, the "Revolutionary Holy Land," as a reward for hitting sales targets.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
A statue of Mao — who spent 13 years in Yan'an building up support for the communist revolution — stands in front of the Yan'an Revolutionary Memorial Hall, which cost $80 million to build and opened in 2009.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
At the Yan'an Revolutionary Museum's huge gift shop, a bevy of Mao statues await the party faithful. Tourist numbers in Yan'an have tripled in five years, exceeding 20 million in 2011.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
A tourist with a passing resemblance to Chairman Mao put another visitor in a stress position known as the "airplane," which was often used on "class enemies" during the mass upheaval of China's Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
A tourist models communist chic.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
As a tribute to Mao, enthusiastic tourists have thrown cigarettes onto the bed in his former cave dwelling.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Guo Haiyun, 46, and his wife in their cave home, not far from the revolutionary stronghold of Yan'an. He says he probably only has two or three yuan in cash at home, while he has taken out bank debts he can't return to pay for his daughter's university education.
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
He Fang, 90, is a former revolutionary who wonders where the Communist Party went wrong. "Our purpose was to achieve freedom and democracy," he says. "But now there is neither freedom nor democracy."
Credit Louisa Lim / NPR
Guo limps across the yard of his cave home, which has no running water. He says he is a big supporter of the Communist Party, but admits he envies city folk, who "live and eat and do everything better than us" country folk.
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Originally published on Tue October 30, 2012 7:53 am

China is about to get new leaders for the first time in a decade, and it comes at a sensitive moment for the world's most populous nation. Economic growth, which surged for decades, has slowed. Demands for political reform have increased and the Communist Party has been hit by scandal. In a series of stories this week, NPR is examining the multiple challenges facing China. In our first story, Louisa Lim looks at how the Chinese view the Communist Party in the place where it took shape.

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NPR Story
3:33 pm
Sun October 28, 2012

Getting Out The Vote: The Last-Minute Political Push

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The presidential candidates are kicking their campaigns into high gear. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks to NPR's Mara Liasson about the latest political news. Then we check in on get-out-the-vote efforts in the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia. And journalist Sasha Issenberg talks to Lyden about the high-tech methods campaigns are using to micro-target voters.

Author Interviews
2:03 pm
Sun October 28, 2012

Stories Of The Power of Language, 'Found In Translation'

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Credit iStockphoto.com
Credit Perigee Trade
Nataly Kelly has worked in the language services industry as a certified court interpreter and freelance translator. She is the author of Telephone Interpreting.
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Originally published on Mon October 29, 2012 7:41 am

Translation is everywhere — that's is the crux of a new book by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche: Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms our World.

From NASA to the U.N. to Chinese tattoo parlors, the book looks high and low for stories of the undeniable importance of language. One of those stories centers on a man named Peter Less, 91, an inspiration of sorts to interpreters and translators everywhere.

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Science
12:26 pm
Sun October 28, 2012

Millennia Of Stargazing At 'African Cosmos' Exhibit

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Credit National Museum of African Art
Untitled, by South African artist Gavin Jantjes, is one of the works in the "African Cosmos" exhibition.
Credit National Museum of African Art
This delicately painted Egyptian mummy case was created around 3,000 years ago for a singer in the temple of the sun god Amun-Re.
Credit National Museum of African Art
This rainbow serpent was built from recycled gasoline cans by Romuald Hazoume, an artist from Benin.
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Originally published on Sun October 28, 2012 3:33 pm

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Commentary
12:18 pm
Sun October 28, 2012

Around The River Bend, A Flood Of History

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Credit Liam O'Leary
The Ho-Chunk Indians still consider the river to be sacred, and it's easy to feel that calm, floating along the Bark.
Credit Liam O'Leary
The Bark winds through southeastern Wisconsin's "Kettle Moraine" — small hills called drumlins and deep glacial lakes known as kettles. It's part of the Mississippi watershed.
Credit Liam O'Leary
The Bark has some muddy shorelines, but it also has "shaking ground," soil that looked solid but is actually afloat. This is called "terre tremblant," or shaking ground. It hindered U.S. troops during the Black Hawk Indian War of 1832, as it continues to do with contemporary explorers.
Credit Liam O'Leary
Margaret Zerwekh, who has lived in the mill house for half a century, listens to Milton Bates read from his book, Bark River Chronicles. Zerwekh's home is a treasure trove of Delafield history.
Credit Liam O'Leary
Maintaining the mill, pond and dam has been a joy, and a struggle. On the mill pond outside of Zerwekh's home, fallen leaves rest on a soft crust of algae pond scum.
Credit Liam O'Leary
This former mill is the last private mill on the Bark and was in operation until a few years ago. It was built in the 1850s by one of the founders of Delafield, Wis., Nelson Hawks, to grind corn and grain. The mill pond and an earthen dam are behind it.
Credit Liam O'Leary
Zerwekh, 93, is also a local historian. Due to her efforts, Civil War soldier Lt. Alonzo Cushing finally received his Medal of Honor in 2009. Cushing was born on the banks of the Bark in Delafield. In 1863, at the age of 22, he was killed as he held out against Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.
Credit Liam O'Leary
The Bark River was carved in Wisconsin's Ice Age, about 13,000 years ago, when glaciers covered much of the state.
Credit Liam O'Leary
The Bark winds through southeastern Wisconsin's "Kettle Moraine" — small hills called drumlins and deep glacial lakes known as kettles. It's part of the Mississippi watershed.
Credit Liam O'Leary
The canoe party paddles past "Sugar Island," where the Bark River flows through Nemahbin. The Potawatomi tapped these trees for sugar. I'd never known there was an island in Nemahbin Lake; it holds summer cabins.
Credit Liam O'Leary
My favorite view from the fourth floor of Margaret Zerwekh's mill house, looking east out on the Bark — herons use the river like a private causeway, and fish swim in the millrace.
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Originally published on Sun October 28, 2012 4:41 pm

The Bark River is my backyard, childhood river. And yet, in a lifetime of travel, I'd never explored it.

I knew it carved the land from the Ice Age to settlement times, from the Black Hawk War of 1832 (in which young Abraham Lincoln appears) to the era of grist mills. But the Bark also flows past impressive Indian mounds. It nurtured poets, naturalists and farmers.

When former Marquette University professor Milton Bates published his Bark River Chronicles through the Wisconsin State Historical Society, I jumped at the chance to learn about the river with him.

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Presidential Race
4:45 pm
Sat October 27, 2012

Candidates Sprint To Election In Tight Contest

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Transcript

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm asking for your vote, and I'm asking you to vote early.

MITT ROMNEY: It matters. This race matters. You know how big this race is.

LYDEN: The candidates making their last swings through the swing states a week and a half before Election Day. James Fallows of The Atlantic joins us as he does most Saturdays. Hello there, Jim.

JAMES FALLOWS: Hello, Jacki.

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Economy
3:48 pm
Sat October 27, 2012

Bust To Boom: Why Housing Matters, Economically

Credit Nam Y. Huh / AP
A construction worker finishes a roof in Chicago on Oct. 12. Signs of recovery in the housing market are springing up nationwide, but there's still a ways to go.
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By NPR Staff

Originally published on Sat October 27, 2012 4:45 pm

The economy has peppered political speeches for much of the presidential campaign. But talk of creating jobs has stolen thunder from the housing market.

The epic housing collapse four years ago was a key ingredient in creating the Great Recession in the first place. Plus, boosting the housing market can be a boon for overall economic recovery.

Beginning A 'Long-Term Cycle'

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Music Interviews
3:41 pm
Sat October 27, 2012

Beth Orton: 'These Songs Are My Little Bit Of Sugar'

Credit Jo Metson Scott / Courtesy of the artist
Beth Orton's latest album is called Sugaring Season.
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By NPR Staff

Originally published on Sat October 27, 2012 4:45 pm

In the late 1990s, Beth Orton set the music world buzzing with her singular sound: part folk, part electronica. But six years ago, she found herself at a life-changing juncture: pregnant with her first child — and dropped from her record label.

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From Our Listeners
3:41 pm
Sat October 27, 2012

Three-Minute Fiction: Great Men, Real White House

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Originally published on Sun October 28, 2012 2:02 pm

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF CLOCK TICKING)

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

Only one more week before we announce the winner of our Three-Minute Fiction contest, our contest where listeners send in original stories of under 600 words. Our judge, the novelist Brad Meltzer, asked for stories that revolve around a U.S. president who could be fictional or real. Brad will join us next weekend to reveal the winner of Round 9 of Three-Minute Fiction. Until then, take a listen to some excerpts of our favorite stories so far.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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