This is an important, impressive program. It covers so much ground on what I think is perhaps the most important issue facing the nation. This program is smart and insightful, clear and compelling. I think it's the best explanation and exploration of the racial achievement gap I have ever heard. It goes really deep into so many inter-related issues from preschool education to the problems with tracking in high school to the nuanced and complicated way that race affects student achievement. We get to know students, teachers and administrators at one school, we hear from researchers and advocates, and all of it is carefully and knowledgeably distilled by the producer Nancy Solomon who clearly knows this topic inside and out and presents it all in a thoughtful and appropriately complex way. You should listen to this program, play it for your listeners!

This is a wonderful hour of radio. I highly recommend it to stations for broadcast anytime.

It's an elegant, thoughtful, and informative piece on the incredible contributions of drummer Max Roach. And it just made me smile a lot. You can't help yourself when you hear Roach talking about his passion for music, for life.... and when you hear the story about his big break filling in for Duke Ellington's drummer, his anecdotes about living with Miles Davis, their stories about soaking up the jazz life together in New York when they were both basically teenagers still. It's an incredible story about creative energy and innovation, both intimate and broad. And the music never stops; it's an exciting, seamless mix. And, if you're like me and you don't know enough about Roach and his contemporaries and the invention of modern jazz, then you will learn so much, and come away feeling fulfilled and enlightened. Public radio listeners will love this. It would work in a news/ culture slot, or during a jazz or music show too.

Gorgeous piece. Thoughtful and engaging, great mix. Burnett has so many wonderful things to say about music and art, and life. This is a gem. It reminds me, in form and content, of the series David Schulman produces about musicians "In Their Own Words." If you appreciate that series, listen to this one, and vice-versa.

This is an extraordinarily beautiful piece. I could not recommend it more highly. There is so much raw emotion, so much honesty. I was honored to listen, and especially to hear the way so much love was expressed between father and daughter. I will not forget it. And such an important topic that we don't hear enough about - dying, saying goodbye, reckoning with life and love. Lovely, lovely piece of radio. Certainly one of those driveway moment pieces that you will have to sit and listen to until it's done... unless you have to turn the radio off right away because this topic is too close, too much. My husband and I have seven parents between us, and so far they are all alive and healthy. But I know this process is in my future, and I feel like I receive a gift every time I get a chance to hear how someone else goes through this experience. Thank you.

This is tale that would probably work best on the first night of Hannukah. It's traditional and conventional. Some beautiful music. A classic feeling, "feel-good" kind of holiday story.

This is a local showcase program. The "meat" of the program is Thembi's AIDS Diary produced by Joe Richman. It's an excellent piece and if you've not yet heard it, listen! The producer/ host of the showcase program opens the half hour with tape of a local man and his story of being diagnosed with AIDS. It's some nice tape that anchors the story in the local place. The producer/ host gives some data about HIV/ AIDS and uses the data to make a transition from Portland, ME to Thembi's story in South Africa. The program sounds to me like it makes most sense for a local audience in Maine (A local AIDS info line is given out, for example), and that audiences in other parts of the country would be better served by hearing Thembi's story on its own, or cradled with another "local" angle appropriate to the place or time.

This is a woman reading a recipe for cranberry sauce, and giving some nice suggestions for how to eat it (cranberry sauce on rice pudding. Sounds good!)

It's a very simple and straightforward reading of a recipe. Nice voice. Maybe you could use it as part of a show for the holidays? Heard Susan Stamberg find yet another way to give her recipe this morning... you must give that woman stars for coming up with new ways to deliver the recipe every year. I'm beginning to appreciate the creativity, but still haven't made the stuff.

Mary Jo's recipe made me - for a second - wish I would actually take the time to make cranberry sauce. It did remind me that cranberry sauce is yummy, and easy to make... but Whole Foods does such a great job!

This is an extraordinary program! I enjoyed it at every level. The program took me places I'd never been, introduced me to circumstances I'd never much considered, introduced me to people who made me think (and feel) about ideas and education in new ways. And I smiled and laughed and just thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

This is really just a gorgeous piece that is full of ideas yet moves so gracefully scene to scene, building a larger story from so many small ones, so many lovely details and sounds and characters. And it's an important story. Don't be fooled that the focus on one room schools makes this something quirky and small and on the sidelines of the big questions about education. This piece is all about some of the biggest questions facing education today - small schools versus large ones, the importance of relationships and mentoring, how schools reflect and connect their communities, how the daily details and little moments are often more significant than the large movements in education reform can capture or appreciate. I recommend this program highly. I say... play this in your one hour special slot if you have one, play it/ repeat it over the holidays when you need GOOD programming to fill up your air while your staff takes a break from the daily grind.

I listened to this piece more than a month ago and when I listened I liked it, but I did not come away with particularly strong feelings one way or the other. But I keep thinking about it! .... coming back to images and memories, especially the sound of walking, and the wide thoughts about the meaning of walking and walking and walking. To many American ears, I think this piece might sound slow and unusual. But there is quiet and deep beauty in this piece - the topic and the choices about how to explore it. Worth listening to!

This is a superb show that would be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about making radio, and to experienced and veteran radio producers too. I felt energized by the program -it's exciting to hear about others' techniques and tricks, and to kind of "get back to the basics" and think about your own habits, be reminded of things you're forgetting to try. For example, I loved the moment when Rob Rosenthal from SALT talked about inviting a subject to be your partner in getting good, up close sound - tell them what you are doing, have them work with you to make the best recording possible. I thought, "yeah, yeah, I need to remember to be clear like that more often... I forget."

I'd play this program for students in a heartbeat, or for any audience with an interest in "getting behind the curtain" of making radio. If I was a program director, I am not sure I'd be willing to program this for a "general" public radio audience. A colleague/friend suggested to me that this program could be of great interest to a typical public radio listener. My gut says no. The program does provide more than just tips and advice on making radio (the pieces that are played are excellent, especially the teen mom piece. Beautiful, important story!) And some of the conversation about the making of radio would probably interest some "pure listeners" because of how the discussion reveals WHY radio is such a powerful form for many people.... but I don't think most public radio listeners are as interested as we might think in how the sausage gets made.

Though that last phrase does the program a diservice, becuase it is about many things, and full of ideas... but most of them get back to the nuts and bolts of making radio, not just listening to it.

My knowledge of music and music history is shockingly slim, so everything I know of Roky (Rocky) Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators I learned from this piece. I'm afraid that if I were listening to the radio and this piece came on, my mind might drift away. I think if I knew something of Rocky and his band, my ears might well have perked up; I'd be interested in the "what happened to him?" information that the piece provides. But, I wanted more of Rocky. I think perhaps the producer did the best he could with the little he got (we learn that Rocky is not much of a talker). Still, I wanted more Rocky, and in the end the piece felt a bit "distant" because it relied more on the comments of his friends/ former band members. I was not left with a strong enough impression of Rocky himself, of his own story from 1958, brief stardom, drugs and mental hospitals, to now, performing live in Chicago 2006. I felt the producer was trying to make Rocky's story too much a story "of the times," and I wanted just more of Rocky's story.

This is an elegant, engaging, thought provoking hour of radio. The tape is from 2003, and as I listened I tried to imagine if and how it could be aired now. At moments it feels "old" in that the story of the Iraq war has had so many chapters since, and I felt an eagerness at points to know more, to come forward in time.... but as someone who generally believes there is no such thing as an "old" story if that story is rich and compelling, and personal as this one is, I think this program could be aired now. And if and when this war "ends," or sooner, and a producer or station wants to put together programs that take listeners back on a journey of reflection about what the war was, how it changed, the impact it had, etc.. then this piece or portions of it should be on the docket. The story of Ahmed is an extraordinary "lens" through which to see the war... his exuberance at Saddam's fall, his reservations about the coming of "democracy," his disappointment at returning to his homeland, Erbil, and ultimately his inability to stay there. Ahmed is a wonderful character, and the story of his own life - his various "careers," the story of his marriage, the religious and ethnic diversity within his own family, provide a rich frame for any listener to better understand the politics and history of Iraq, and the war. I highly recommend.

Beautiful music. It's a piece about a music/ dance group called "Children of Uganda" - 22 kids ranging in age from 6 to 18. Most of them have lost at least one parent to AIDS. The group has come to perform at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, and at first the piece is a story about the group and the performance. We hear the performance, and then from the artistic director, a former member of the group, about how he puts the performances together, decides on what dances and music and costumes to use to explore/ celebrate different regions of Africa. But then the piece takes a turn to telling us the real purpose of the group is to educate audiences about the AIDS crisis, in particular AIDS orphans in Africa. Then we get what is an interesting story, and might have provided a better focus or "ground" for the piece, about the founder of the group - a former Texas banker who asked God for help finding a calling and eventually quit her job, moved to DC, met a Senator and his wife interested in Africa, went to Uganda, met a nun who'd put together a performance group in an orphanage, and then took the group on a six week tour of England and the U-S to sing and dance and become this group called "Children of Uganda." We continue to hear beautiful music through the piece, and we hear from one of the kids in the group about how happy he is to "change lives" with the performance. But I never quite feel or understand the group's impact (we never hear from any audience members, for example, though I am not sure the kind of vox pop one could get at a performance would have done the trick). I think in many ways this was two pieces smushed into one ? one piece is a review or profile of the group and the performance, and the other is a story about the woman who founded the group. Of course they are related stories, and so I understand why they are both in this piece. But I think in the end the piece felt a bit incomplete and unfocused, and the script a bit clich?d, especially at the end (and endings are always hard, and clich?s kind of ?happen? there, I know from personal experience). I feel like the piece TOLD me more about the significance of the group and the performance than showed me or helped me experience the group?s impact. That?s why I think this piece might have been stronger if it were ?head-on? about the founder of the group, a story that culminates with this particular performance in Boston. A well produced story, and again, very beautiful music, but the ?story? did not entirely hold my attention, catch my curiosity.

This is a half hour magazine format program about challenges facing gay youth. There is a host, who introduces three pieces - the first about gay youth in the foster care system, the second about sexual abuse and gay youth, and the third about young gay people living with disabilities. It's a good effort and well put together program by young producers. I thought the second piece about sexual abuse had some especially revealing and stunning moments in it. In general, I thought the program served too much of an "overview" purpose. There seemed to me to be too much general discussion and not enough focus in on new or surprising information or stories. I thought the program perhaps tried too hard to fit into a magazine format and wondered if there might be a more edgy or specific, different, focused way to present reports or stories on this topic.

This is a half hour documentary about the effort to "re-introduce" buffalo back to South Dakota, particularly to the Native American reservations there. It's a good and well produced piece, with a lot of information and some memorable stories and anecdotes about the meaning of buffalo to the culture, and the health, of Native Americans in particular. I love the story near the beginning about the "pact" between the buffalo and the Sioux. I listened to the piece twice, and understood much more on the second listen. I think I missed some of the information on my first listen through, because of the way the piece was structured and cut. I found it hard to pay attention to the details, and on the second listen I realized that this piece needs more character development. I think I would have cared more, immediately, about the issues in this piece if I had been able to understand the issues more deeply, intimately through a couple of the people who give us the information. At points, the voices seem sort of "disembodied" and I wanted more context, more narrative, more of a "story" about these issues and less "pieces" of information about the topic. Again, a good piece, but I think it could be better, more engaging if developed through characters rather than structured around information.