An Armao On The Brink

In this segment coming up you’ll be hearing Rosemary Armao, host of the On the Brink podcast, talking with Albany Times Union opinion columnist Jay Jochnowitz. The two met in Bennington Vermont for a special two-hour podcast before a live audience at the Orchard Club to consider the transformational changes the Trump administration is ushering in including how we think about the law and corruption, American values and national unity.Jay Jochnowitz joined the Times Union as an Albany City Hall reporter in 1987. He became state editor in 2000, editorial page editor in 2008, and retired as opinion editor in 2022. He remains a member of the newspaper’s editorial board and continues to write editorials and a monthly column.

St. Paul had a female traveling companion but we never hear about her; women suffering at all times of their lives from menstrual cramps to menopause are told by untrained doctors that it’s in their heads, and even when mice are the subjects of medical experiments, they are almost always male. Long accustomed to taking a back seat and suffering in silence, women are increasingly speaking up for better treatment at the hands of medicine. Two of them from different generations, Abby Lorch, a UAlbany student, and Liz Seegert, a long-time health journalist talk about what should be done — and their despair that Health Secretary RFK will do it.Abby Lorch is a 21-year-old UAlbany student graduating with a journalism degree and a law and philosophy minor. She plans to attend Albany Law School starting in fall 2025. She has always been interested in women's issues, and reporting on the university community and the Capital Region has given her insight into how these issues affect her neighbors.Liz Seegert  is an award-winning, freelance journalist with more than 30 years experience writing for magazines, newspapers, radio and TV news, digital, PR, corporate, government, non-profit, and educational institutions. Her work has appeared in national, regional and local consume and trade outlets. She has done numerous fellowships with organizations such as  the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the center for Health Policy and Media Engagement, and the Gerontological Society of America. She is active in the Journalism & Women Symposium and is an instructor at the Empire State College.

New York is on the verge of becoming the 11th state plus DC to give citizens suffering from terminal diseases the right to die when and as they choose. Oregon was the first state  25 years ago to grant this right. Religious leaders, champions of the right to life, even some advocates for the disabled worry that such  laws  open the way to abuse, coercion, and worse. It seems never to have occurred anywhere, but death is a  fearful issue and dying fraught with guilt and worry.  We talk with a lawyer and a legislator who have led the campaign in New York for a better say to die, forcing the issues into the open and swaying opinions so that a bill making it’s way through the legislature now could shortly be on the governor’s desk for a signature.Corinne Carey from Troy NY is a  lawyer, organizer, and policy strategist.  For some time her mission has been to improve care and expand options for people facing the end of their lives.  She joined the non-profit organization Compassion & Choices after nearly a decade with the New York Civil Liberties Union where she served as deputy legislative director and where as co-chair of the statewide Women’s Equality Coalition she helped lead efforts to modernize New York’s abortion law well before most believed that Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy. She is a graduate of the University at Buffalo School of Law.State Assemblyman Al Taylor has represented the 71st District of Upper Manhattan since 2017. He’s been an advocate for that community for more than 20 years pushing economic opportunities, social change and reform of the criminal justice system. He has fought to reduce gun violence and hate crimes against transgendered people in his neighborhood. He holds a degree in public communication from Lehman College and a Master of Divinity from Nyack College Alliance Theological Seminary. He and wife Gwendolyn have five children.

International lawyer and judicial reforrmer Sally Fleschner who has worked on justice projects in Bosnia, Palestine, Kosovo, and Somalia disagrees with the American Jewish Committee and says the deliberation bombing and starvation of Gazans is genocide. Further more, the US is complicit in that crime against humanity and most Americans are not interested in even seeing (via movies) or hearing the real story of Israeli aggression.Lawyer Sally Fleschner is an expert in rule of law, judicial reform and the drafting of legislation. She has worked with USAID and other international organizations in Afghanistan, Palestine, Kosovo, Bosnia and Somalia. She also teaches classes at Brandeis on war and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and  Northeastern University's School of Law. In spare time she is an animal lover,  world traveler, marathon competitor and talented cook.  

Investigative reporter Miranda Spivack who is an expert in government secrecy and use of public documents has written a book about people she calls accidental activists They are regular citizens with no expertise special knowledge of leadership motivated by grief or worry for their community who figure out how to network and mobilize and drag information out of government and corporations to successfully battle City Hall. She says we all can do this. Here she is talking about one of the Local Heroes.Sometimes regular people just trying to help their families and communities are forced to become heroes. Investigative reporter Miranda Spivack has written a book about some inspiring local heroes around the country with no experience in leadership or in giving speeches or reading government documents have fought back against government secrecy and shady deals between government and business to bring about reform. The message is that you too can fight the power.

Veteran NBC broadcaster and author Linda Ellerbee talks with us from Mexico about what  she and our foreign neighbors think of Trump's first three months back in office and none of it is positive. This from a woman Trump once tried to date. So how do you fight back and how do you cope with dictatorship?

Once every semester I invite three students of mine from UAlbany to do a podcast featuring a decidedly younger point of view than mine. This is that chapter and outta the mouths of Zoomers you’l hear about the futility protesting, exhaustion over world events and fear of the future, Tik Tok and even the wonder of torpedo bats. Mirai Abe is an exchange student from Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan, to UAlbany where she studies journalism and sociology. She arrived in the US last August in time to learn English, take up a full load of classes, and write for the Albany Student Press as well as for the Japanese Student Association. She is interested in gender and sexuality in East Asia, American and Japanese politics, and social issues. Now a junior, she hopes to work as a local news reporter in the US after graduation. In her rare free time she is learning Korean, reads novels, and watches K-dramas. The biggest culture shock she faced coming to the US, she says, was seeing students wearing pajamas to classes.Sean Ramirez is a sophomore at UAlbany, double-majoring in journalism and political science. His passion for politics began through grassroots involvement, including volunteering in various upstate New York campaigns. He is an active contributor to the university’s radio station, and engages with MAP, the Minorities and Philosophy organization, exploring the intersections of identity, ethics, and public discourse. He’d like to merge his interests in media and political analysis, so is aiming to amplify underrepresented voicesthrough storytelling and policy advocacy. Latoya Wilkinson is a junior at UAlbany studying journalism and English. A Brooklyn native, she has danced, acted, and played the violin since childhood. She says she learned from the arts the importance and the satisfaction of rich storytelling. She loves travel and exploration for the same reason she is drawn to reporting and is looking for a career finding and writing stories that matter.

Long-time Albany County, NY Sheriff Craig Apple talks about the innovative programs he’s instituted in his 38-year reign including inmates doing yoga and fostering pets and using empty beds for a homeless shelter. He’s thinking about running for state office to help write laws about bail reform and gun safety that are thought out and smart.Craig Apple, began working in law enforcement in 1987, rose through the ranks, serving as a corrections officer and deputy sheriff, and starting in 2011 as Albany County Sheriff. In that job he oversees nearly 750 employees and a $100 million budget. But he is most known perhaps for his innovative community engagement and inmate enrichments programs such as the Sheriff's Heroin Addiction Recovery Program (S.H.A.R.P.) and the Sheriff’s Inmate Fire Training Program. He enrolls inmates in Obama care and most recently has opened up unused space in his jail for the area’ homeless people.

In this Chapter, Rosemary wanted to talk with leaders of Albany's unusually dynamic theater community about escape and make believe, but Patrick White and Chris Foster, the organizers of a unique Festival of Theater happening this summer, men who don't own a TV and watch plays every night of the week,  say live theater demands engagement, community involvement and public debate of controversy ad issues. You aren't just seeing a play, you are making a statement about values. A fantastic look at the importance of drama in our lives.Patrick White is a Capital Region "theatre maker" with more than 45 years experience acting, directing, producing, reviewing, and podcasting. He attends 300 shows a year. He has worked at nearly all the Capital Region theatres,  teaches an adult acting class at the Albany Barn, and  is a co-founder of Harbinger which has produced 14 Capital Region premieres in three years. White is also president of the Capital Region Festival of Theatre which will celebrate the 100+ theatres in Albany and its surrounding cities, towns and hamlets.Chris Foster  is the director of the Harbinger Theatre and secretary of the Capital Regional Festival of Theatre. He has directed numerous productions at the Harbinger theatre, Curtain Call Theatre, the Schenectady Civic Playhouse, the Albany Civic Theater and the Actor's Collaborative. His acting credits include: Ben Butler, In the Heat of the Night, Destroying David, The Normal Heart, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Time Stands Still, Turn of the Screw, Clever Little Lies, The Night Alive, Urinetown, Tigers Be Still, Opus, On the Twentieth Century, Bill W & Dr. Bob, The Andersonville Trial, Urinetown, and Sunday in the Park with George. He holds a BA in theater from Cal State University at Long Beach and an MFA from Penn State.

Given the current issues in the US and abroad regarding immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, democracy, and anti-semitism, Katy Meilleur, a nurse scientist who works on drugs for neurological disorders, recently published her father's memoirs. Lev Perlov escaped from Communist Russia with his wife and two daughters in 1973 tricking the KGB and slipping out despite rules meant to thwart Jewish emigrants. The daughter tells us that his story of survival and human triumph against all odds, is hopeful and inspiring.Katy Meilleur is a nurse scientist with a BA in biology from the University of Maryland, a master’s in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in nursing from Johns Hopkins University. She works in the biotech industry developing drugs for rare, neurological disorders. Born in the 1970's in communist Russia, she narrowly escaped to the US with her parents when she was an infant. She recently translated, added to, found photos for, and published her father’s memoirs about that escape in a book entitled The Flight: How My Family Outsmarted the KGB.

Podcast Host Rosemary Armao talks with colleagues from other departments at the University at Albany in trouble because of conservative attacks, economics that favor job-attracting majors, and dropping enrollments. Her guests are Professor Emerita of English Martha Rozett and Professor of Women and Gender Studies Janelle Hobson.

Boomer Jeff Wilkin, Millennial Zach Grady, and Gen Z’er Amar Sayeed tell Rosemary about finding, evaluating, and dumping dates in this age of online hookups, apps, and toxic masculinity. This is the flip side to Dating in the Digital Age from the point of view of women that we aired a while back. The women all had similar views, but men of different generations seem to have very different ideas. Different methods. Different taste. It’s kind of intriguing.

In this chapter Malcolm Nance talks with Rosemary and long-time investment banker Mark Wittman about the dangers in sees coming in the new Trump Regime including civic violence and mutiny in the military and what citizens ought to do about it. Mark Wittman earned his MBA in finance from NYU and has worked as an investment banker for more than 25 years.  He has provided financing and strategic guidance to consumer products clients in the US and globally.  He is a regular on WAMC's Round Table panel talking about all he knows. Malcolm W. Nance is an author and media pundit whose commentary is based on his long-time career as a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government's Special Operations, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies. A 20-year veteran of the US intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program and a six year veteran of the Global War on Terrorism he has extensive field and combat experience as an field intelligence collections operator, an Arabic speaking interrogator and a master Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructor.

Mary and Mike both teach civics/social students; Mary in a New York high school and Mike in a Virginia middle school. In this chapter they talk about what their kids don't know that they should, about the foolishness of banning books, about violence and guns in schools, about the threat of vouchers to public education, teaching to the test, and other controversial school issues. Our speaker bios this week are purposefully incomplete. Because teachers who speak out publicly are often disciplined by administrators we agreed not to identify the full names or the school districts and schools where the two teachers speaking in this chapter work. Mary has taught for more than 25 years at a small rural district in upstate New York. She has a BA in philosophy from Barnard College and a MA in European intellectual history from the University of Chicago. She has lived in England, Scotland and Switzerland and as a teen she attended five high schools, including a stint at a storefront alternative high school. These experiences have affected her views on education as did raising three sons, one of whom was autistic. Two of her sons work in the tech field. Mike has taught middle school civics and American history for more than eleven years in Virginia. He holds a BA in history and international studies from the University of South Florida and a MA in political science from the University of Missouri. From 2007 to 2009, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand teaching English and conducting HIV/AIDS awareness programs. In addition to teaching he coaches his school’s wrestling team and summers leads international student tours to significant historical sites, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Normandy, and the Acropolis. Mike is the father of two daughters who he says continually inspire and scare him with their perspectives on growing up in the digital age—a world vastly different from the one he knew at their age.

Two veteran political journalists Jim Asher and Dale Eisman who have investigated and analyzed Washington power for decades discuss what they saw in watching the Trump Inauguration and what they think it portends. It was a weird day from the guest list to the richest man in the world making a Nazi salute and it's likely to get more weird, they agree. James Asher, now retired, was a veteran investigative journalist and Pulitzer-Prize winning editor. Over his career, he worked as reporter and editor at five newspapers on the East Coast, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun, In 2002, he moved to Washington as national investigative editor for The Knight Rider company. He later ran the Washington Bureau for the McClatchy Co., which bought Knight Ridder in 2006. Under his leadership, McClatchy set a standard for independence in Washington, winning numerous national awards for journalistic excellence. In 2017, he shared a Pulitzer for his work on the global Panama Papers document leak about off-shore tax havens. In all, he managed and edited four other projects that were finalists for a Pulitzer, including two for McClatchy and two for The Sun.  After leaving McClatchy, he worked for Injustice Watch, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, and he helped The Associated Press with its coverage of the Mueller investigation of Donald Trump.  A native of Utica, NY, Asher holds a B.S. and a M.S. from Syracuse University and did postgraduate work in finance, economics and accounting in Temple University's MBA program. Dale Eisman is a veteran journalist who capped a 37-year newspaper career in Virginia and Washington DC with an eight-year stint advocating for good governance as a writer and editor at Common Cause. He’s covered trials in state and federal courts and campaigns for offices from city council to the Virginia statehouse to the US House and Senate. He’s also been catapulted off aircraft carriers and tracked sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Now retired, he lives in Surf City, NC.

Boomer and Gen Z guests Kris Antonelli and Emily Robbins talk with Rosemary about finding, evaluating, and sometimes dumping dates in this age of online hookups, apps, and toxic masculinity. What’s the bare minimum you should look for in a new guy and what is the worst date of all time? Emily Robbins, from Ravena, NY, is a sophomore at UAlbany, majoring in communication and minoring in journalism. She loves tennis and running in her free time. Kris Antonelli is a freelance writer and a literacy tutor in Baltimore Public elementary schools. She is a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Mokhtar Alibrahim fled his hometown of Damascus nearly eight years ago, leaving behind family, friends, and the budding career as a journalist he’d just begun other than be conscripted into the Syrian Army of Beshir al-Assad to wage war against fellow countrymen.  He lived in Lebanon, then Jordan, and now Germany despairing he would ever see home again.He learned two new languages English and German, He got his doctor wife out of Syria and they began building a new life in the west. Then weeks ago a miracle. Al-Assad was suddenly ousted, Syria liberated, and brutal civil war finally done. The future is unclear, Syria is still a mess under bombing by Israelis and Americans, but Mokhtar says he is hopeful and optimistic. There’s a lesson here for despairing Americans on the brink of a new Trump regime.

Two weeks out we continue to look into what the Democratic election losses portend and how Dems ought to be reacting to the drubbing they took. Michele Salcedo, a past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, talks about why Latino supported Trump and what they may expect in return and Ryan Horstmyer, a lawyer, lobbyist and long-time Democratic activist in ruby-red upstate New York, so he knows about defeats, talks about what Dems need most to do next. Michele Salcedo has covered Latinos and other communities of color throughout her 36-year journalism career in newspapers, wire service and digital platform. She is a past national president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the author of "Quinceañera: The Essential Guide to Planning the Perfect Sweet 15 Celebration." Ryan Horstmyer has volunteered on Democratic political campaigns for 24 years. He is a former member of the Albany County Legislature, Chairperson of the Colonie Democratic Committee, and District Director for the Office of Congressman Paul D.Tonko (NY20). He is an attorney and registered New York State lobbyist.

Steve Greenfield, a New Paltz firefighter and long-time activitist for alternative and third-party candidates explains the self-defeating votes we’ve just seen by working class people and minority men. Democrats need to understand why this happened and act to prevent it — yet again — from costing them an election Steve Greenfield, 63, of New Paltz, is a past member of the New Paltz Board of Education, the current Captain and former Secretary and Executive Board member of the New Paltz Fire Department, and has served the village, town, and school district of New Paltz in appointed positions for more than 20 years. He is a former New York State and National Committee member of the Green Party. He resigned from that job in 2020 in a disagreement over failing party strategy, and ran for Congress in the Hudson Valley in 2002, 2018, and 2020. He has been an organizer of civil disobedience actions against non-defensive war, fossil fuel use, and ICE and police misconduct, and has been arrested many times. He was the press officer for the New Paltz Green Party at the time of the first illegal same-sex marriages conducted in New York State by then-Mayor Jason West, the first Green Party elected official in New York State history. In 2005, Steve generated a brief national media frenzy by entering the Democratic Party primary for US Senate against Hillary Clinton, on an anti-war and progressive platform, in protest against Clinton's support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In his youth and young adulthood, he became an Eagle Scout, earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Columbia, and has traveled the world engaged in his career as a musician. He is also an endurance athlete for a variety of charities, including the 9-11 oriented Tunnel To Towers Foundation and the Sloop Clearwater.

On the eve of the 2024 election we talk with retired teacher George Goodwin of Albany who has done Democratic Party work for more than 20 years. This fall he’s been traveling to Pennsylvania and other nearby states drumming up votes for Kamala Harris and he knows a little about how to talk to people with different politics annoyed to see you at their door. He knows how persuasion can work and when it doesn’t. And Rosemary has been talking to voters about what they’ll do beginning today after the candidate has lost. Cry, Drink and Resist. Harder is the short answer. George Goodwin is a retired teacher and administrator in Albany NY. Since 2004 when John Kerry was running against George W. Bush he has worked for Democrats traveling in and out of state to canvass for candidates. This year he's spent a lot of time in the election battleground of Pennsylvania. He and his wife Maureen also have been making phone calls and filling out postcards and writing texts in support of the Harris campaign. That doesn't count all his work for local candidates as well. Goodwin has watched on-the-ground campaign strategy change over the decades with the advent of new technology and the emergence of a new breed of voters.