An Evening with Rachel Reynolds
March 23, 2023
Rachel is a folklorist, fiddler, community-based organizer, and pie champion living in the magical forest in Stone County, Arkansas. She is the head Project Steward at Meadowcreek, a 1600-acre nature preserve, where she leads programmatic efforts with an emphasis on creating and supporting the sustainable and equitable development of rural futures through the lenses of art and culture. She is Co-founder of The People’s Library and Founder and Principal of Cultural Continuum Consulting. She is a Curator for the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the feature of which is Ozark culture, and stories by or about Rachel and her work have been published in Mother Earth News, Upworthy, Acres U.S.A., and University of Georgia Press among others.
With musical guest The Salty Dogs
Started as a lark retro-country act, the quartet immediately found chemistry, along with a lot of joy, as they dug into their craft. Their sound has expanded over a decade and a half, from uber-twang and purist classic country to equal parts 1954 Nashville, 1961 Bakersfield, and 1972 Everywhere.
An Evening with Margie Raimondo
April 27, 2023
Chef Margie Raimondo’s roots in her culinary career were planted at a young age. Both parents’ families immigrated from Italy to an urban community in south Los Angeles, where most of the source of their food were the rabbits and chickens they raised and the vegetables they grew in the yard of their urban house.
Urbana Farmstead Market is more than a market for farm produce. It offers specialty foods from Italy and other artisan producers, extra virgin olive oils, and freshly baked bread. Visiting Urbana Farmstead is reminiscent of Chef Margie’s childhood days, filled with artisanal ingredients, seasonal farmer’s market produce and authentic Italian hospitality.
With musical guest The Salty Dogs
Started as a lark retro-country act, the quartet immediately found chemistry, along with a lot of joy, as they dug into their craft. Their sound has expanded over a decade and a half, from uber-twang and purist classic country to equal parts 1954 Nashville, 1961 Bakersfield, and 1972 Everywhere.
An Evening with Monica Potts
May 25, 2023
Monica Potts is a senior politics reporter for the website FiveThirtyEight. Her previous work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, among other publications, and on NPR. She was a 2015–16 New America Fellow and is a former senior writer with The American Prospect. She lives in Clinton, Arkansas. monicapotts.com
With musical guest The Salty Dogs
Started as a lark retro-country act, the quartet immediately found chemistry, along with a lot of joy, as they dug into their craft. Their sound has expanded over a decade and a half, from uber-twang and purist classic country to equal parts 1954 Nashville, 1961 Bakersfield, and 1972 Everywhere.
An Evening with Jennifer O’Brien
June 22, 2023
Jennifer O’Brien encourages compassionate, real conversation about caregiving, legacy planning, and grief.
After years of caring for people with serious illness as a physician, Jennifer’s husband, Bob Lehmberg, was diagnosed with a stage IV, metastatic cancer. But caregiving for the man who had made a 40-year career of caregiving as a physician was not easy. When Jennifer’s husband was diagnosed and later after he died, she turned to what had brought her comfort for years—art journaling. She documented and depicted the raw, honest, beautiful and exhausting reality of caregiving through collage, tableaus, notes and observations. She included much of the wisdom and perspective she learned from her husband in his years as a physician.
With musical guest The Salty Dogs
Started as a lark retro-country act, the quartet immediately found chemistry, along with a lot of joy, as they dug into their craft. Their sound has expanded over a decade and a half, from uber-twang and purist classic country to equal parts 1954 Nashville, 1961 Bakersfield, and 1972 Everywhere.
