Filed under: Radio | Tags: Abortion, Adoption, Adoption Agency, Armhair, Attraction, Babies, Belfast, Birth Control, Birth Parents, Bitchiness, Boat Cruise, Boredom, Boyfriends, Catholic Church, Chatting Up, Chronic Fatigue, Concentration, Detroit, Diapers, Doctors, Downs Syndrome, Drugs, Energy Ration, Family, Flab, Flirting, Foster Parent, Gender, Grandparents, Health, HIV, Illness, Insanity, Love, Marriage, ME, Memory, Motherhood, Muscle, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Names, Night-feeding, Northern Ireland, Overbathing, Physical Therapy, Pittsburgh, Pregnancy, Prenatal Care, Race, Rape, Retirement, Russia, Sex, Social Life, Special Needs, Speed Dating, Students, Susan Darin Hagan, Swearing, Teenage Pregnancy, Travel, Urine, Vodka, Waitressing, Wheelchair, Yuppie Flu
The Chair
A young Belfast woman talks frankly about life with ME (or chronic fatigue syndrome) in the first half of the show. She discusses how the illness arrived, how it induced swearing and rattiness from her, and what the trade-offs have been. Also: whether she wants people to push her in the wheelchair, her plans for family or nunhood, and how she’s found men look at women in a chair.
In the second half, foster mother Susan Hagan talks about all the babies that have come in and out of her home. She, along with her husband and family, has been fostering newborns for the past seven years through a Pittsburgh agency. The babies stay for a weeks or months, and Susan describes what life with them (and without them) is like — including the health concerns, naming choices, attachment issues, and relationships with birth and adoptive parents.
A Foster Baby
Filed under: Radio | Tags: Alcoholism, Asylum Seekers, Belfast, Catastrophe, Chocolate, Christmas, Ethnic Minorities, EU, Family, Health, Homelessness, Hostels, Mental Illness, Migrant Workers, Pennsylvania, Pickles, Politics, Puddles, Retirement, Simon Community, Social Problems
The Original Wilma
In the first half hour, Mandy Jones and Julie Rea of the Simon Community NI discuss why homelessness is on the rise in Belfast, how their group works to address it, and what results they’ve seen. In the second half, Carla Pflueger talks about owning and working in Wilma’s Candy & Fudge Factory over the past twenty-some years. She and her husband Harold started the business in the basement of their home in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania and sold it 2 years ago. Carla talks about the art of making candies, the catastrophes that can happen in a chocolate factory, and what life after chocolate holds for her.
The Pfluegers
Filed under: Radio | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Belfast, Bipolar Disorder, Black Taxi, Britney Spears, Falls Road, Health, Hospital, Hostage, Johns Hopkins, Loyalists, Manic Depression, Mental Illness, North Belfast, Obesity, Politics, Race, Schizophrenia, The Troubles, Tourism, USA, Vivien Leigh
Peace Walls of Belfast
This week, the program goes to the Falls Road for an interview with a black taxi driver about his experiences giving tours and being taken hostage.
In the second half, Claire Hagan discusses her work with people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder at Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore.
