PRI: Living on Earth Now

Living on Earth is giving a voice to Orion magazine’s longtime feature in which people write about the place they call home. In this week’s edition, songwriter Angela-Faye Martin uses her words and music to picture her North Carolina valley on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains.

In this week’s trip to the place where you live, Anne Kelsey takes us to East Claridon, Ohio, where her family has owned land for 100 years and the morning quiet on the pond is sacred.

With many untouched wild rivers and sensible fishing regulations, Alaska has some of the healthiest salmon fisheries in the world. But as Emmett FitzGerald reports, new gold and copper mines upstream in Canada have the fishing community in Southeast Alaska very concerned about what toxins could be released into the rivers.

Wrangell, Alaska is a small, isolated town at the mouth of the mighty Stikine River and a former a timber capital. But since the saw mills shut down in the ‘90s, the small town has reinvented itself as a tourist destination and a commercial fishing hub. Since both of these industries are dependent on the Stikine, some locals worry that a mining development upriver could put the whole town’s livelihood at risk.

In the first of Living on Earth’s three-part series on Alaskan River Riches, reporter Emmett FitzGerald wades through a small stream near Juneau for a lesson in casting and salmon science from a fly-fisherman with a conservation ethic.

Not only should we consider eating insects for environmental reasons; they can also be tasty. David George Gordon has just released an updated version of his Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, brimming with recipes that feature crickets, grasshoppers, ants, spiders, centipedes, and their kin. Here are a few choice recipes.

Michael Brune, Sierra Club executive director, Responds to Obama Climate Speech- In a recent speech at Georgetown University President Obama outlined his plan to tackle climate change. Brune says Obama signaled a rejection of the Keystone Pipeline and should improve his position on natural gas. Overall, Brune gives the speech a B+. Click "read more" to hear Brune's interview with LOE's Steve Curwood.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Secretariat stopped by the Living on Earth studios on her way from the University of Massachusetts Boston to the next phase of international climate negotiations that began in Bonn, Germany on April 29. The Bonn session is one of many leading up to a final meeting in Paris, France in 2015 when nations have pledged to come together on a binding deal to expand the Kyoto Protocol to include all major emitters of global warming gases. Figueres spoke with Living on Earth's Steve Curwood.

Thanks to determined citizen activists in the 1960s, the lovely cliffs of Bodega Headland in California on the San Andreas Fault did not become the site of a nuclear power station.

In Winfred, South Dakota a horse and rider wander through the rugged grasslands.

The Living on Earth staff recall their first environmental ah-ha moments.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers keeps an eye on the fields to make sure workers are paid fair wages. Jessica Ilyse Kurn talks to the Coalition’s co-founder Greg Asbed.

The soul of American cuisine came out of bondage. On the holiday known as, Juneteenth, we remember the story of slavery and the foods that sustained the spirit.

Living on Earth’s Bruce Gellerman talks with author Ken Shulman about his new book “Venus in Sole Visa” (Venus Seen Against the Sun).

Researchers believe frigid temperatures in the late 1600's made it difficult to grow crops, and some farmers blamed their problems on witchcraft.

Restaurant chain, Chipotle, says the Food and Drug Administration was late to the plate in terms of limiting antibiotic use on farm animals.

Fire retardant chemicals are commonly found in household items like furniture and electronics. But a new study found them in a place you probably wouldn’t expect: food.

With childhood obesity rates rising, some activists have set out to reform school food.