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Dirt

Brent Wilson

4/14/14: This week on "Fieldnotes:" "Dirt," by Deborah Tanner.

"I was a suburban kid, living near Memphis, Tennessee. However, I was reared by a mother who had spent her summers in the red clay soils of Northern Mississippi at the farm of her grandparents.   On one of those trips to the land of gravel roads and rusty tractors, we were driving past a cotton field when my mother commented, 'Look how rich that soil is!' I remember looking over and asking, 'What soil? You mean that dirt? It's rich?' She explained it was dark, almost black, and very fertile.

I don't remember how old I was, but at that moment, I knew my mother must have been an expert on dirt, having had experiences on a farm I would never have or understand."

Beth Anne Austein has been spinning tunes on the air (The Folk Show, Dancing With Tradition, Freeforms), as well as recording, editing and mixing audio for Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS, since the Clinton Administration. She’s jockeyed faders or "fixed it in post” for The Plant Detective; Listeners Bookstall; Fieldnotes; Musicians Spotlight; The Write Question; Storycorps; Selected Shorts; Bill Raoul’s music series; orchestral and chamber concerts; lecture series; news interviews; and outside producers’ programs about topics ranging from philosophy to ticks.
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