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RavePodcast recommendation: Rumble Strip
This podcast, grounded in the Vermont home state of its creator, Erica Heilman is a tonic to our times. I came to it via RadioLab as Erica recently won a Peabody Award for her Finn and the Bell piece. I don’t know if I’ve ever been as moved as I was listening to Finn and his story. It is amazing. But the reason I’m posting about Rumble Strip is that there are several episodes about community and how to do that hard work as a verb as well as some salt-of-the-earth types that really spoke to me. (Looking at you, dairyman Forrest Foster.)
Many of the people Erica profiles are extremely self-sufficient, with professions that demand a firm centering in material reality, yet also live by community because in an isolated and harsh environment, that’s the key to survival. They find a way to get along, to work through their differences, because there isn’t any other way.
When you say brownie are you talking about the girls scouts ?
Yeah, it was the entry-level rank for Girl Scouts, starting at 5 IIRC?
In the UK, it’s the 7-10 level of Girl Guides, and it’s the level that the highest proportion of British women have been involved in at some point.
Rainbows are 5-7. Guides are 10-14.
There’s a lot to like about Guides and the whole movement, but the Brownie story and the messaging around it in Brownies is female socialisation writ big. Cubs (Cub Scouts, the equivalent now for all children, then just for boys) “Do Your Best”. Brownies, in those days, “Lend a Hand”.
You're remembering correctly.