State News Roundup, Madison Woman's Atlantic Voyage, High Cost Of Senior Care

This week, residents from U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher’s district in Wisconsin held a town hall in his absence. We hear about the event and check in on more of the week’s top state news stories. A Wisconsin woman joins us to talk about her harrowing sailing journey across the Atlantic Ocean, part of her effort to better understand climate change. We also hear what’s driving the high costs of long-term care for senior citizens, and consider possible solutions.

Featured in this Show

State News Roundup For June 2, 2017

Download

On Tuesday night, U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher’s constituents held a town hall…without their representative. A news editor joins us to talk about the details of this meeting and other top news from the past week.
Learning Life Lessons From The Sea

Download

An environmental activist from Madison tells us how she went from hopelessness to hope after spending six years aboard a small sloop in the Atlantic ocean.
Environmental Activist Gains New Outlook On Climate Change After Years At Sea

Download

After spending almost 20 years as an environmental activist and consultant on climate policy, Heather Lyn Mann decided to leave her life in Madison to spend six years on a small boat in the Atlantic Ocean.

She and her husband had always been drawn to sailing and life off land, but even when they realized they had saved enough money to sail away for years, Mann, who was dedicated to her work as a climate advocate, said that it wasn’t an easy decision.

“I thought long and hard about whether I needed to go, because as an activist, you don’t just let yourself off the hook to go sail over the horizon,” she said.

So Mann took the multi-year sabbatical as an opportunity to work out how to engage with climate change, an issue with increasingly concerning projections she said “the world just didn’t seem to be addressing head on.’

“I decided to take with me a question, and that was, ‘How am I to be in a suffering world?’” she said.

Mann details the answers to that question and the lessons learned from nature in her new book “Ocean of Insight: A Sailor’s Voyage from Despair to Hope.”

In it, she recounts a brush with death, a time that was terrifying and illuminating.

“This was the first time when I was deeply frightened,” she said. “I was really bad crew.”

Mann described herself struggling to problem solve on a night when she misjudged the direction of the wind, a storm was building, and her boat was pushing back towards the shore and large rocks. The boat eventually got out of harm’s way, but Mann said the experience taught her about the impact fear had on the decision she made.

“When I am deeply afraid, I am lousy crew and I don’t think straight, and I can’t be nearly as affective as when I am calm and stable and purposeful in my actions,” she said.

It’s an idea she said is applicable to many of the “strong emotions” people are feeling about the climate and environment today.

After appointing Scott Pruitt to head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who has a history of suing the agency, and the United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trump administration has sparked deep concern from environmental advocates around the country.

Mann also described one of her biggest takeaways as a new understanding of climate change as a spiritual crisis in a world where she said there are “delusions” of human life being separate from nature.

“What it comes down to is that nature is everywhere, and even our own bodies and minds are a part of nature.”
What's Behind The High Cost Of Caring For Seniors?

Download

Families in Wisconsin and around the country are struggling with the high costs of long-term care for aging relatives. An expert looks at what’s driving those costs–and possible solutions.