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Wisconsin Public Radio

THE GROWING SEASON

Program 06-07-09-A

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What's the centerpiece of the American Dream? Is it our belief that you can pull- yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps? Maybe it's our rugged individualism? Or maybe, just maybe, it's the lawn. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge the obsessive quest for the perfect lawn. Also, a little bunny rabbit named Alba. A little bunny that happens to glow in the dark. Is it art, or Frankenstein?

SEGMENT 1:

Ted Steinberg wrote "American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn." He tells Jim Fleming that Americans love perfect mono-cultures and especially since the era of post WWII development, are willing to over-water and freely use chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to achieve them, even where they make no ecological sense.

SEGMENT 2:

Nicholas Harberd spent a year observing a thalecress in a country churchyard. He kept a diary, published as "Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants." Harberd is a plant biologist and tells Steve Paulson what he learned from his year of watching the weeds. And he reads excerpts from his diary. Also, TTBOOK producer Veronica Rueckert reports on what makes this growing season in her garden different - her new baby son.

SEGMENT 3:

Kenneth Helphand tells Jim Fleming how a photo of a French soldier tending a rose bush in a trench during WWI resulted in his book "Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime." Also, Eduardo Kac (pronounced cats) tells Anne Strainchamps about Alba, the GFP Bunny. She is a real rabbit, created in a lab and genetically modified to glow in the dark. She was created as a piece of art. Kac talks about the moral and ethical implications of art using living subjects. And Jim Fleming reads a poem by Ronald Wallace called "Prayer for Flowers" from his collection "Long for This World: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)" (University of Pittsburgh Press).

CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 06-07-09-A.

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For more photos and images of Alba, the GFP Bunny:
http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html

Books:

• Ted Steinberg, American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (Norton Books)
  
• Eduardo Kac, Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits, and Robots (University of Michigan Press)
  
• Kenneth Helphand, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (Trinity University Press)
  
• Nicholas Harberd, Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Music:

• Lawn mower by Los Straightjackets on thier CD Viva! on Upstart Records.
• Eugene Ysaye's 6 Violin Sonatas op.27. Vincenzo Bolognese, violin, on Europa Records.

Distribution dates:

week of 07/09/2006 - hour 1

Listen!

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Questions and comments can be addressed to: flemingj@wpr.org

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