Check out this edition of Old Hills Radio, with two Halloween-themed stories from the ‘Sven Marlow Small Town Detective’ and ‘Curiosity Peddler’ series. Listen Here:...

WDRT had another great year participating at the Vernon County Fair. Saturday was a big day, and started with Mr. Koppa doing a live remote broadcast via bicycle on Main St. to the fairgrounds,  and (after overcoming a few technical glitches) hosted the remainder of his program there with Uncle Ray Hadley. Listen to the bike ride down Main St. here: http://wdrtradio.org/audio/2018Fair/2018FairKoppaRide.mp3 Later in the day, we did another live remote broadcast at the Demo Derby, with Nick and Jason from ‘Driftless Doom.’ We also had a car in the derby, driven by Sam Leighton and painted by Tatiana Katara. We got ‘Best in Show’ for the paint job and placed 3rd in our heat!   Listen to Nick & Jason cover WDRT’s heat here: http://wdrtradio.org/audio/2018Fair/DoomDerby2018.mp3   See you next...

  For the last 32 years, Frieda Werden has been hosting and producing WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service, a program by and about women. WDRT spoke with Frieda about her show, current happenings in women’s movements and community radio. WDRT – Your program often exposes different aspects of patriarchy. Could you explain patriarchy as you understand it, and what you would envision for an alternative? FW – There are many explanations of patriarchy. Non-patriarchal societies are finally starting to be widely recognized as having pre-dated patriarchal ones, for example by further validation of the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. One theory is that males who were expelled from their communities for being violent then captured and enslaved females, and that once those societies developed the technologies of horsemanship and metal weapons, their values were widely disseminated through conquest of non-patriarchal resource-rich communities. (Adding to the plausibility of this theory is a statement in one of the WINGS shows by an Inuit woman that in traditional times, men in their communities who were rapists or child molesters or extremely violent were killed by authorization of the community, but that the white society arrested the men who carried out these sentences so the violent men now go free to prey on the community.) A fairly new field known as Modern Matriarchal Studies has grown up around the work of German scholar Heide Goettner-Abendroth. Abendroth and others in this movement work to counteract the common notion that matriarchy is just like patriarchy, except with mothers ruling. They say that the arch- in patriarchy is from a root meaning rule, and that patriarchal societies are structured around hierarchy and force. However, they say that the arch- in matriarchy is from another root meaning “from the beginning.” In other words, matriarchal society starts with the premise that giving birth and raising children are not solo activities and that community naturally evolved around meeting such fundamental needs of our altricial species and the continuing mutual care of one another’s offspring. Aside from the archaeological, mythological, zoological, and just plain logical bases for presuming that such societies existed, there are still remnants of matriarchal (sometimes conflated with the terms matri-local or matrilinear) societies around today, and there are also historical records of some. In North America, a well-known example is that of the Haudenosaunee (part of the Iroquois confederation), who had a profound influence on the origins of the feminist movement in North America. (A WINGS interview with Sally Roesch Wagner goes into this in some detail.) These societies tend to be organized around maternal domiciles and to provide for community needs through cooperation and sharing. The men tend to reside with their mothers and sisters...

              Youth Initiative High School students in Viroqua held a walk-out on March 14th to raise awareness on gun violence in the United States. YIHS student Ingrid Wendland gave a speech after naming each of the 17 students who died in the Parkland, Florida shooting earlier this year:...

Dan Peak speaks with Larry Fanta, Irving Leif and Karen Mischel, candidates for mayor of Viroqua. A primary election will take place on Tuesday, February 20th. Listen...

Jane & Kevin welcome Doc & Terry Roddy, ‘The Roddys,’ for a raucous hour of music and conversation. Listen Here.

A talk with John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri. Ikerd discusses “Defending Rural Communities against Economic Colonization.” This talk was presented at the Industrial Agriculture in the Driftless Area on January 20th in Boscobel, WI. Listen...

Listen to a recording of a special performance at Leo & Leona’s at Newburg Corners. Featuring Brothers of Story & Song: Raldo Schneider, Larry Long, Clay Riness, and Eddie Allen with Master Storyteller Tom Thibodeau, Dan Sebranek (Guitar), Larry Dalton (Upright Bass). Recorded live by Brett Huus on December 2, 2016. Special Note: These old friends and fellow songsmiths will be back to reheat the soufflé they whipped up last year at Leo & Leona’s on Friday, December 1st, 7:30 PM. Listen Here. Leo & Leona’s: http://www.leoandleonas.com Community Celebration of Place: www.communitycelebration.org...