In
the days and weeks after Irene, excavators were allowed into rivers with verbal
permission – rather than the typically required written permits – to extract
gravel to rebuild road beds and shore up banks. Environmentalists are saying much
of this work has caused more harm than good. We talk to Louis Porter, the Lake
Champlain Lakekeeper at the Conservation Law Foundation, and Kim Greenwood, the
Water Program Director for the Vermont Natural
Resources Council, about how Irene cleanup may have increased the risk of
future flooding and caused environmental damage. And we hear from Justin
Johnson, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Environmental
Conservation.
Also on the program, an
exhibit currently on display at the Folklife Center in Middlebury brings to life a scene few of us get to
see: the transformation of male performers into larger than life drag
queens.
Westminster West photographer
Evie Lovett spent a couple of years taking photographs at a now defunct gay bar
in Dummerston that had a popular monthly drag show. The resulting photographs and accompanying
audio profiles of the performers have become the show "Backstage at the
Rainbow Cattle Co."
We meet Lovett and two of the performers she profiled:
Mike Powers, who lives in Orange, Massachusetts, and brings to life a character called Candi, and
Mark Hermon May, who performs as Mama.
They describe what working on this project was like, and why it was
important to reveal these moments of transformation on camera.