Chamaigne Montana is producer and sometimes co-host of Writers’ Voices, as well as content coordinator for writersvoices.com. This is her blog about producing and co-hosting the show.

8/7/09  Dean Gabbert – Brown Water Boating

This week, Dean Gabbert and his publicist Marilyn Candido drove in all the way from Nuavoo Illinois to talk with us. Dean was the editor of the Farifield Ledger for many many years, and retired in 1985.  Our station manager, James Moore, was very excited to welcome Dean to the station.  Dean is an important emissary of living history in our town.  Writers’ Voices co-host, Caroline Kilbourn remembered Dean from way back. She has been a long time radio personality here in Fairfield and also in Burlington.

Dean has had a life-long love affair with the Mississippi River and has written many stories which have been published in local newspapers and journals.  Brown Water Boating is a collection of those stories. Dean’s stories are so valuable to the preservation of our local history.  Dean isn’t so sure what he thinks of this new-fangled blogging thing, but his publicist Marilyn eggs him on to keep getting his stories down. I hope he’ll do that.  He’s an award-winning novelist as well as having a lifetime of experience with the River.

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7/31/09 Victoria Moran – Living a Charmed Life

This interview was a great follow-up to last week’s interview.  Last week, Marina Spense talked about how to “Make Every Day a Friday”. This week, Victoria Moran spoke on “Living a Charmed Life.”  Victoria’s book presents short essays that give tips and inspiration for a well-rounded and even magically wonderful life.  The book is presented as a fun, light read, but it is full of very profound wisdom.   This was truly spiritual food for me.

The thing that stood out for me most about this book was the tip to “stay close to the things that make you come alive”.  That is so important. Reading this book cast a light of gratitude over my whole weekend, as I looked around and recognized all the charm in my life.  I had a weekend full of the things that make me come alive – singing, dancing, and pretty dresses.  What a blessing it is for me to be involved in this show and get exposed to all these wonderful authors that lift my spirits and enrich my mind and heart.

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7/24/09 Marina Spense

Marina’s book, “Make Every Day a Friday” was a joy to read.  It was about finding work that really fits, and making career changes smoothly.  A theme in the book was to take career change step by step.  Basically, due diligence pays off.  Being really clear on the what, why, when, and where of your career change plans can make all the difference in creating a strategy that is low on stress and high on fulfillment. Marina used her personal experiences of career change to develop a methodology that is quite brilliant. It is a way to make sure that when you’re trading in your career, you’re trading up.

One of the things that stood out for me in this interview was that she said one of the biggest myths about work is “Do what you love, the money will follow”.  A great title for a book, but not actually true. In reality, you have to find the intersection between what you want to do and what the world will pay you for. Sometimes this does in fact mean compromise.  But this insight combines well with another myth of work: that a fulfilling career alone will make you happy.  The reality is that you always have to create a balanced life, and that work only fulfills part of your needs.

This little myth-busting session was a relief to me because I always have this nagging feeling that because my number 1 passion and gift is singing, if I am not doing that for a living it is because I somehow lacked faith.   Working through another book called Wishcraft, I remember identifying something that I thought I wanted, (a job singing on a cruise ship).  Then I followed the process to work through all the objections that come up. (I can’t do that because….)  It’s a great idea that you can overcome any obstacle, but if the obstacles are that I don’t like alcohol, cigarettes, staying up late, loud music, sexy clothes, and vaccines for travelers, and I lack the energy to work the 12 hours days in the job description,  then perhaps these aren’t just imagined obstacles. Perhaps they mean I don’t actually want that job!

In the “Do what you love and the money will follow” paradigm, you’re sort of discouraged away from making “stable income” or “good job outlook” one of the things you love. But in the real world, these are factors to consider. An earlier author we had on the show, Janet Attwood, wrote “The Passion Test”. In that book she has an exercise to help you clarify your priorities. It very well may be that a stable paycheck is more important to you than a creative career.  My sister figured this out at age 18 when she chose her college major.  She had the insight that although her passion was acting, she didn’t want the lifestyle of an actress. She went into computer programming instead, teaches Lindy-Hop on the side, and muses about going into politics one day.  She’s very happy.  Her husband was an animator that transitioned into industrial design – a classic example of the intersection between what you want to do and what the world will pay you for with the stability that you want as much as you want fulfilling work.

This interview with Marina was very thought provoking.  Our show happens to be on a Friday, so it was very fitting to leave the radio station after the interview and think that my job as producer of Writers’ Voices is in fact so perfect for me that I have “made every day a Friday”.

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6/19/09 Gary Douglas and Dain Heer

These guys were just fascinating. Their book, Talk to the Animals, is about animal communication and healing using their energy healing modality called “Access Energy Transformation”.  A little Googling on Dain Heer reveals that he overcame quite a lot of difficulty in his life with Access.  Technically, they wouldn’t call themselves “healers”, because they are just facilitating the healing that is ready to happen.  This interview takes us pretty far down the rabbit hole, to discussing the possibility of communicating with the energy signatures of inanimate objects as well.  It’s an interesting possibility.  If everything is energy, why not?  What exactly is consciousness, and do all forms of energy have it? Is consciousness the basis of communication?  I didn’t think to ask these questions during the interview, but my questions did bring out some interesting and useful fine points in energy work and relating to the Laws of Nature. Gary and Dain also had wonderful success stories of helping people and animals into more positive experiences.

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6/12/09 Kevin Roose – The Unlikely Disciple

I really looked forward to this interview after reading the book, and I wasn’t disappointed.  Kevin Roose was a journalism student at liberal Brown University, and took a semester off to attend Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University to write about the Born-Again Christian culture and the “God-Divide”.  The idea started when he met some Liberty students and noticed how hard it was to communicate with them – what a different culture they were, right here in the U.S.  When he read statistics about just how many young people identify themselves as born-again Christians, he decided it was a worthwhile project to try to build a cross-cultural bridge of understanding.  Like many, I wondered if this book was going to be a mockery of Liberty, or a book about cross-cultural dialogue.  Kevin wasn’t sure at first exactly how it would turn out, but he knew he wanted to try to keep an open mind and give Liberty a fair shake.   It turned out to be a very multi-faceted and honest book of laughable, heart-warming and scary stories, interesting background information, and a personal look at characters worth knowing.  This book has the power to soften the hearts of those who wish to bridge their own God-divide with real compassion and understanding for a different way of life and thinking.

I found myself feeling deep resonances with many of the themes in this book, having had a foot in multiple religious paradigms myself.  Growing up atheist, I began with a template very similar to that of Kevin’s, as a very secular and non-religious, inactive Quaker.  With a very similar motivation to Kevin’s I became fascinated by born-again Christianity almost because it was so different.  I grew up laughing at it, but as a teenager I visited churches and felt that there was something going on that was worthy of respect.  It wasn’t until I became interested in Vedic Philosophy that I looked over my shoulder at Christianity and saw that there were some very deep universal truths there.   At one time I immersed myself in a Born-Again church and school, just to see what would happen, and I did have a “born-again” type of experience with Jesus.   Ten  years later I still consider myself a Christian, though a very unconventional one.

Kevin’s book brought back fond, funny, and frustrating memories of both my time in the born-again Christian school and my recent experience living immersed with 100% Mormon family and friends in the heart of Mormon country for the past couple of years.  Especially just having moved back to Fairfield from Provo, Utah, I really related to Kevin’s description of his “reverse culture-shock” upon re-entry to Brown University.  It really does feel like there are two different selves, and it’s not so much that there is anything to hide, or even anything that incompatible about the two selves. It’s just that in a new context, there is no container for so much of who you were. The question of identity becomes interesting when no one is there to acknowledge or receive who you feel yourself to be.  You are speaking a foreign language. Ultimately it is a strengthening process, but it is unsettling at first.  For me, coming back to Fairfield from Provo was coming home to the delicious comfort of like-minded people.  It was a big relief, and yet I still missed my Mormon persona and way of languaging things. It felt odd to no longer have support for the parts of my Mormon persona that I wanted to keep.  From talking to Kevin and reading his book, it sounded like this is much the way he felt upon returning to Brown.  It was a coming home, a relief, and yet such a different culture, and no support for the things he wanted to keep, like a regular prayer practice.  For me, there was a question like, “OK, do I really want to keep these things or was I just under mass hypnosis?”   Evangelicals also deal with culture-shock and identity questions  when they  throw themselves into foreign territory to proselyte.  This is an example of how Kevin’s book bridges the God-divide by showing that in a lot of ways, we’re not so different.  Whatever your perspective, The Unlikely Disciple packs a lot of insight.

Besides being thought provoking, Kevin’s book was hilarious and witty. It was a very enjoyable read.  His website, www.kevinroose.com is really entertaining and a stellar example of up-to-the-minute book marketing strategies.  I think this guy has a great writing career ahead of him.  He’s already made a great contribution to inter-faith dialogue.

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6/8/09 Weekend with Alan Gompers

Alan’s book signing at Revelations Book Store was a great success. There were 15 or 20 people there who were very interested in hearing about Alan’s experience.  After Alan told his story, the conversation was lively and interactive and intimate –a real satsang.

That evening, my boyfriend and I invited the group to a fire ceremony where we could release the old and welcome the new.  We had a few takers who were very appreciative.  We all had profound experiences.  It’s fun to play host and show off our little town with so much life-affirming stuff to do.  Some great friendships were made that weekend.

My boyfriend and I attended Alan’s workshop the next day and it was also very moving.  Several people drove in from out of town, and there were people there who were getting their first introduction to any form of yoga and meditation.  Some had some prison experience and were interested in Alan as a mentor for that reason.  Alan has powerful things to say about acceptance of what is and total personal responsibility for everything in our lives.  The yoga and meditations were designed to be beginner-friendly.  He created a lovely guided meditation CD with a significant amount of time for silence to the sound of a tanpura.  That was very helpful for an undisciplined meditator like me.  It seemed that a lot of people came away with a great deal of enthusiasm and hope, which was lovely to see.

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5/22/09 Alan Gompers – Maximum Security and Mary Foster – Thank God I…Book 2

Alan Gompers, who was a guest via phone a couple of weeks ago, came to do another interview live in person. He came down from New York to do a workshop here in Fairfield. It was great to meet him in person. He is really on fire with the stuff he’s learned and wants to pass on.  He speaks with a lot of wisdom.  He came with an entourage to help him with his workshop and book signings.  A couple of Unity-church  lady friends came up from Kansas City.  A couple of guys came with him from New York. One of them is a master yoga teacher who came to teach a segment in the workshop this weekend.

After the radio show the Gompers group invited the rest of us to join them for an official tour of Maharishi University.  Although I’ve spent many years in Fairfield, I’ve never been on the official tour or even been inside the domes.   Isn’t that funny that when you live in a place you take it for granted and never get around to seeing the sights from a tourist’s perspective?

I learned some things on the tour that I didn’t know, and Alan and his friends seemed appreciative of the similarities in both concept and energy with their own tradition.  We got a chance to sit for five minutes in the ladies dome and feel the quality of silence of this place where millions of hours of meditation have occurred.

After the tour we refreshed ourselves at the campus organic grocery store and disbanded.  Tomorrow I will stop by to see how they’re doing at the book signing at Revelations Book Store.  In Alan’s other life he’s known as “Pop Do-Wap”, and in my other life I’m a singer. We got talking about music some, and I plan to give him a CD of mine as a thank you for his sharing his book and life story with us.

The second half of the show featured Mary Foster, contributor to Thank God I…Book 2. Her chapter is entitled, “Thank God My Father Died When I Was Four”.  It was a very moving short piece. The message she really wants to get out there is that we really can let go of stuff, and it is so liberating and important to our spiritual growth to learn to move on.  Finding the blessing in disguise as she did with her father’s death is one way to do that.

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5/29/09 Ellen Greene – Remember the Sweet Things

I savored this book by Ellen Greene, about the “sweet things” list she secretly kept for 20 years, which recorded all the nice things her husband did for her. Every Valentine’s Day, the secret list would be revealed and he would be treated with the memories and gratitude from the previous year.  Besides having a marriage worth emulating, Ellen and Marsh Greene had many adventures – on the high seas, in Mexico, and with health.  This would be a terrific book to read by anyone who becomes a caretaker for a spouse with a serious illness.  There is something so powerful about having the subtleties of human experience articulated.  As an example, Ellen talked about the balancing act of figuring out how much to help when her husband became very ill.  If she helped too much, it was embarrassing to him. If she helped not enough, then sometimes important details would get missed.  It was almost a relief once the disease progressed to a point where he needed total help all the time, because then at least it was clear.  This is the kind of feeling that when shared, can wash a listener over with a sense of familiarity and validation and not-aloneness, if they are going through a similar experience.  Even if there isn’t similar experience, there is something rich about hearing the details of a life experience that is something that most of us fear – to need to be cared for or to need to care for someone to that extent.  Ellen got through it with grace and gratitude, and she shares her whole range of emotions with candor.

The real power of this book is that it inspires the reader to start keeping their own lists, or at least mentally noting the sweet things.  The sweet things list actually began at the start of the relationship as a list of negative things, designed to be a reality check for Ellen, should her heart run away with her reason. But after a few months, she found that she did not have one negative thing to say about anything Marsh had said or done.  On the contrary, the relationship was brimming with kind and thoughtful gestures.  So, she decided to write those down instead.  After all, isn’t it better to look for and emphasize the good?  It became a tradition that lasted 20 years, and what a profound bit of wisdom is contained in this simple gesture.

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5/22/09 Alan Gompers – Maximum Security

Wow, what a story! Alan Gompers was in a maximum security prison when he had a spontaneous spiritual awakening.  He found a teacher and grounded this experience in a daily meditation practice which he still does today.  Ironically, he landed in prison because of his pursuit of “security” in the form of financial wealth.  He had made fortunes on Wall Street and then gotten into selling drugs to friends when his fortunes threatened to go away.  His search for security landed him in prison, and there, behind bars, he found the true meaning of freedom.  It’s a fabulous interview, well worth the listen.

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