Paula and Justin King, the married couple behind Rexhill Studio
Beaconites!
How do you end up going into business with your life partner? For Paula and Justin King, the couple behind Rexhill Studio, the decision came many years after they first met, as their separate interests and skillsets gradually converged in their adopted home city. Paula grew up in NJ, attended NYU and lived in the East Village in the 90s. Justin grew up in Ohio, took an early interest in art and dreamed of escaping the Midwest. They both ran away to the West Coast, each for their own reasons, and met in Portland where they lived for years before moving back East and putting roots...
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The many facets of Vibeke Saugestad
Beaconites!
Not sure what to do with your one precious existence? Good news from the true-life adventures of Vibeke Saugestad: You don’t have to pick one thing. Best known as a power-pop singer-songwriter, Vibeke is also an accomplished literary translator, multi-instrumentalist, puppet-maker and ventriloquist. “I don’t stand still for long,” she says in our interview. Vibeke’s music career started in the early 90s when she was the teenage frontwoman for Weld and other bands. She kept making music for the next 35 years in various groups ranging from the mellow,...
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Everyone needs help, with disability rights advocate Beth Poague
Beaconites!
Beth Poague’s life changed when she and her then-husband Jim learned that their youngest son Finn had a rare genetic disorder. Their pace of living shifted, they sought community with other families going through the same thing, and as Finn got older, Beth channeled her energy into advocating for changes to Beacon’s schools on her son’s behalf. First at JV Forrestal and later at Rombout Middle School, Beth pushed for — and got — more integrated classrooms and school activities that allowed kids with disabilities to learn alongside typical kids. She believes the work she and other...
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The Zach Rodgers interview
Beaconites!
Repost: Some listeners experienced a truncated version of this interview, so we are deleting and reposting. -ZR The tables have turned! After six years and more than 133 interviews, Beaconites creator and host Zach Rodgers (i.e. me) moves into the guest's chair for a discussion of his life and the evolution of this community project. A few listeners have asked for this episode over the years, and Beacon AV Lab's own Jonny Taylor — my creative and production partner during the full run of this project — was kind enough to be my interlocutor. We talk about my upbringing in Northern...
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Finding magic in a drop of water or a nighttime walk, with Julie Winterbottom
Beaconites!
Julie Winterbottom has written a wide range of books aimed at children, including books on farts, pranks and horror — all designed for maximum humor, spine chills and fun. Her most recent work is a little different: “Magic in a Drop of Water” tells the story of ecologist Ruth Patrick, who did pioneering research connecting biodiversity to river pollution and helped to write the 1972 clean water act. It’s a beautiful book in terms of both the story it tells and the gorgeous illustrations of marsh snails, hugsuckers and, above all, diatoms, the family of phytoplankton that appear in all...
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How food stabilizes community, with Mike Diago
Beaconites!
Mike Diago loves eating, and writing about, food, but his interest is only partly about the cuisine itself. In articles for Eater, Saveur, Chronogram, The Bittman Project and other publications, Mike has created a niche covering the critical role food and eateries play in stabilizing communities. He has written about the surprising Dominican expat tradition of holding spaghetti feasts on the beach; about a BBQ restaurant in the Bronx that has operated continuously since 1954; about a burger place in Jersey City that has anchored its community and overcome sharp racial divides. This...
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The choral-cosmic works of Heather Christian, MacArthur Fellow
Beaconites!
Heather Christian is a singer, playwright, composer and recent winner of a MacArthur "genius grant." Her compositions use spiritual music forms to explore themes as varied as ghosts, grief, the Odyssey and the Big Bang. She describes them as “ choral-based complex music theater works.” They are often presented in the round, in part to obliterate the hierarchy between audience and performers. “I’m interested in existence. I’m interested in unanswerable questions,” she says in our interview. “Our lives have become so much about the in and out business of our civilization....
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Carolyn Glauda is an optimist in dark times
Beaconites!
As the only candidate running for city council representing Ward 4, Carolyn Glauda is pretty much a shoe-in for the seat, but she still wants to earn your vote. In this interview, she shares her vision for a safer, more affordable and more sustainable Beacon. Carolyn has been a member of the traffic safety committee since 2020, an experience that got her hooked on civic engagement. In this interview, she shares her point of view on Beacon’s affordability crisis, sustainability initiatives, transit and other topics. She also indulges her interviewer in a detour on the failures of...
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How's the cell phone ban going? With Beacon teachers Christina Dahl and Lesli Tomkins
Beaconites!
In this back-to-school episode, we hear from two longtime teachers in the public schools. High school history teacher Christina Dahl and JV Forrestal kindergarden teacher Lesli Tomkins talk about changes for the 2025-26 school year, the largest of which is a new "bell-to-bell" ban on cell phones at Rombout Middle School and Beacon High School. This is a huge experiment that's playing out across New York State, and Christina offers an early take on how it's going. We also review some important curriculum changes that are picking up steam this year. A big one for elementary students is the...
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Making art through life’s changes, with Margot Kingon
Beaconites!
Our new interview with Margot Kingon, an artist and the founder of Second Wave Supplies, has a wonderful sweep to it. As an artist and creative instigator, much of Margot’s work could be labeled “art as social practice.” Her many projects have included a long-running pop-up dance party (Dance/Play), a year-long series of Covid-era family portraits, and most recently, an art supply thrift store in Beacon. When she takes something new on, Margot typically isn’t only out to express herself creatively but also to invite others to engage and build something together. All...
info_outlineHeather Christian is a singer, playwright, composer and recent winner of a MacArthur "genius grant."
Her compositions use spiritual music forms to explore themes as varied as ghosts, grief, the Odyssey and the Big Bang. She describes them as “ choral-based complex music theater works.” They are often presented in the round, in part to obliterate the hierarchy between audience and performers.
“I’m interested in existence. I’m interested in unanswerable questions,” she says in our interview. “Our lives have become so much about the in and out business of our civilization. The email, the phone alerts, the economy. When you zoom way way out, all of those things seem so arbitrary and small. I wanted [to] imagine what it would be like if we had the time, space and bandwidth to ask the big questions - like why and how we are here.”
Heather’s two best known works are Animal Wisdom, which was staged in 2017, and Oratorio for Living things, which has been staged three times, including a string of extremely sold-out performances in 2022.
Originally from Natchez, Mississippi, Heather has lived in Beacon for 13 years, largely under the radar.
“I’ve tried to keep a separation of church and state. Beacon is church,” she says. “Beacon reminded me a lot of my hometown. There’s something about river people. There’s a reverence to the landscape you’re inhabiting. We use it, it grounds us.”