Are We Here Yet Podcast

Scott M. Graves
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Are We Here Yet Podcast

We're telling the stories of entrepreneurs artists and other creative class warriors making a go of it in cities and small towns all over the country. The Are We Here Yet? Podcast blends topics of economic development, urban planning and arts and culture. We are the official podcast for SMGravesassociates.com.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    AWHY? Music feature Extra: We Remember Saxophonist Lou Donaldson

    Lou Donaldson passed away on November 10, 2024.  In a career spanning more than seven decades, the alto saxophonist began as a stylist devotee to the bop of Charlie Parker, quickly evolving into a soulful and bluesy player which became his signature. Joan Watson Jones, host of the AWHY? Music feature The Jazz Room sat down to interview Lou in 2020 at Studio 952 in Harlem, New York City. In Part 1 of their interview Lou tells us how he got started in the business and why he took up the Saxophone. In Part 2 he tells us about working with Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith and offers his own observations on the future of Jazz.

    58 min

  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    AWHY? Music feature: Celebrating Gershwin in Jazz

    Our music feature, The Jazz Room returns for a feature of the great American composer George Gershwin.  Host Joan Watson Jones features many great musicians from a long list of recordings featuring the work of George Gershwin, one of the most prized composers of the American song book. For jazz musicians, Gershwin represents an endless source to be mined to create great improvisations and has been for over a century.

    31 min

  3. NOV 6

    The Case for Incremental Development

    Our guest is Noah Harper.  I met Noah at the CNU New England conference in Providence, RI. We were tasked by the organization to debate whether the Congress is positioned well as a leading voice in the current housing challenge before us all.  Thus sparked some great discussion.  Explore Noah's Substack here  Noah has been featured in Strong Towns.  He is a community planner for the firm J.M. Goldson.  Noah is a strong advocate for incremental development and we're sure you will find inspiration in his seamless movement through themes of design excellence, craftsmanship to equity and democracy.   In his own words,   We are, broadly, in a crisis of housing affordability, of which one notable piece is the lack of supply. The question to me then becomes: how should we solve the supply issue? We’ve been experimenting with a lot of different methods of building in the last century, but a return to a more traditional way of building might yield the best result. I’m really interested in the work and writing of Christopher Alexander, an architecture professor working in the sixties and seventies who wrote a book called “The Timeless Way of Building.” It’s on many planners and architects' shelves, but I think some of the biggest ideas have been overlooked (at least until now).  I like to think of it in terms of music. How did we arrive at different genres? How do they evolve over time? By people playing them, innovating, copying off one another. A mutually agreed-upon structure, but also room to innovate, for participation, for call and response. Memes are another great example too—order and variation and innovation. And one of Alexander’s big ideas is that our places grew up in the same way, too. It’s why so many of our towns and villages have a certain quality, and yet they’re not quite the same.  This decentralized, memetic, fundamentally creative act is what motivates me as a planner and writer and advocate. It’s the way we achieve beauty and a more democratic order in our built environment, through more people building and taking part in their place. And, beyond the sort of beauty argument, I think you can make a really strong moral and economic case for it too.

    53 min

  4. OCT 30

    Celebrating the Life of Saxophonist Claire Daly

    We’ve had the pleasure of featuring Baritone Saxophonist Claire Daly twice in the AWHY? Music feature, The Jazz Room.  Host Joan Watson Jones first sat down with Clare at Studio 952 in New York City to talk about her CD "Baritone Monk", recorded at the North Coast Brewing Company. In our second interview Claire spoke to Joan regarding her recording, "The Mary Joyce Project-Nothing to Lose" which tells the story of her father's cousin Mary Joyce who crossed Alaska on dog sled alone in the mid 1920's. Learn more about Claire and her music at www.clairedalymusic.com

    1h 2m

  5. OCT 23

    The North Adams Opportunity Scene

    Our guest, Andrew Fitch is Communications Manager for Lever, a Venture Capital Source pioneered by founders and government in the city of North Adams, MA. The last decade or more has seen a resurgence in young professionals rediscovering opportunities in the western half of Massachusetts.  Opportunities in housing, urban development, entrepreneurship and life crafting. Much of Andrew’s time is focused on developing the capacity of the Mass Founders Network, centered in North Adams.  Along with other surging organizations working in collaboration, the northern half of Berkshire County is redefining its economy, with hopes that this will benefit those in place and encourage more relocation already in process. Andrew walks the walk.  He is highly engaged as an economic leader but also represents his neighbors as a city councilman in North Adams.  He is investing in his city by purchasing downtown property. We say Bravo, and encourage all listeners to get involved in this kind of bottom up, roll up your sleeves approach to rebuilding your community.

    34 min

  6. OCT 17

    Innova802: Activate with UVM’s Kendall Fortney

    Kendall Fortney is an artist and designer based in Vermont who is currently the Program Director for UVM's VERSO the open-source program centered at the University. Kendall spoke with the Innova802 crew on the power of the open-source community in shaping a society that delivers human-scaled, beneficial solutions in technology. Find out more regarding the resources and community at VERSO VERSO offers a vibrant community of problem solvers engaged in their accelerator.  Find out more by clicking here. Also mentioned in our conversation farmhack.org

    47 min

  7. OCT 11

    Our Indigenous Peoples Day Special

    For our latest Are We Here yet? podcast we offer four perspectives sure to keep you contemplating on this upcoming Indigenous People’s Day. Our Season III guest Doug Harris, retired archivist for the Narragansett Tribe spoke to us regarding New England’s Ceremonial Stone Landscape for episodes 87 and 88.  We feature two clips here, the first focused on answering the question, ‘what is this place and who are we?’ The second which ends our podcast focuses on his groundbreaking work alongside Smithsonian documentarian Ted Timreck, our guest for episode 132, which has dispelled many falsehoods about the peoples of this part of North America.  How they lived, traded and thrived for thousands of years.  Sandwiched between our clips of Doug Harris we offer contemporary native American poets and their work with poet and essayist Joshua Michael Stewart, a frequent guest of our show. We originally aired his reading of these six poems in 2021.   Joshua is the author of three books of poetry, his latest being 2022’s ‘Love Something’.  His soon to publish ‘Welcome Home, Russell Edson’ combines the graphic novel with the prose poem. He writes for M the Media Project under the feature, ‘The Way of Wind and Stream’.  Listen to our episode on Kerouac at 100 from March 2022.  But first, our host Scott M. Graves reads from his 2020 essay ‘Borders’.  Scott was investigating the early colonial New England period of King Philip's War for several years which led him to taking a deeper dive into the competing concepts over land ownership between indigenous and English colonial cultures.  ‘It didn’t escape me at the time that I was doing this amateur investigative work while the question of immigration in the US was speeding into a raging crisis,’ he told us. ‘what results here are my thoughts on a very deep, very flawed piece of debris just underneath our skin that continues to leave scars on our culture.  We can and should do better’.  The issue h only become more polarizing and central to the presidential election in 2024.

    52 min

  8. SEP 28

    Making Pee Pay w/ founders BrightWater Tools plus Orrin Evans in The Jazz Room

    CEO Kimmerly Nace is dedicated to changing the narrative on how we see our waste.  She’s passionate about making this planet, or rather making its people work better for a sustainable planet for all of us, creatures large and small.  Imagine a world where our toughest waste issues become some of our most profitable revenue centers? Literally turning problems into profit; using our existing financial incentives for good and not greed.  We spoke about her team at Brightwater Tools of Brattleboro, VT and it’s origin story in the international mission organization she also founded the Rich Earth Institute.  Today’s discussion is on regenerative sanitation.  Realizing better nutrient management by diverting the worst offending liquid, our urine, out of the water system and into our soils for crop production.   Or as I like to say, making our Pee pay. That’s the latest from SMG’s ‘Are We Here Yet?’ podcast.  …And in the Jazz Room…We met pianist/composer, Orrin Evans at the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.  In part two of this interview we talk about the origins of several songs featured on his CD “The Red Door” and learn about the musicians who are featured on this recording. Click here to learn more about Orrin Evans.

    1h 7m
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About

We're telling the stories of entrepreneurs artists and other creative class warriors making a go of it in cities and small towns all over the country. The Are We Here Yet? Podcast blends topics of economic development, urban planning and arts and culture. We are the official podcast for SMGravesassociates.com.

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