THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS – June 13-17, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011: Patricia McArdle is a retired Foreign Service Officer who in 2004 was assigned with the British Army in the Northern province of Balkh in Afghanistan. In Farishta, she draws on that experience to write a fictional account of the only female diplomat at a NATO outpost in northern Afghanistan. McArdle describes her experience and shares her thoughts about the future of that war-torn nation. Then, filmmaker Taggart Siegel made the documentary The Real Dirt on Farmer John and now he shares another glimpse into the friction between agriculture and modern life. The documentary, Queen of the Sun: What are the bees telling us?, dissects the potential “Colony Collapse Disorder,” and what that could mean for our plants and crops. Siegel talks about why bees are disappearing in mass numbers with no clear explanation: the queen is there, the honey is there, but the bees are gone.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011: American jazz icon Gerald Wilson started his professional music career in 1939, playing trumpet for the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. Since then, over the course of his seven decade career, Wilson has had great success as a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, writing music for and playing with jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Bobby Darin, and Ray Charles, to name just a few. Gerald Wilson releases a new CD today called Legacy, which also features the work of his son and grandson.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011: Best-selling writer Ann Patchett takes her remarkable imagination and gift for storytelling into the heart of the Amazon with her new novel State of Wonder. Here, Patchett tells the story of Marina Singh, a 42 year old doctor who travels the jungles of Brazil to investigate the suspicious death of a colleague. The author of Bel Canto, The Magician’s Assistant and others, Patchett is the recipient of the PEN/Faulker, the Orange Prize, and a number of other writing awards. Then, when Debbie Reynolds was just 20 years old, she starred opposite Gene Kelly and Donald O’Conner in the 1952 hit musical Singin’ in the Rain. That success propelled Reynolds into starring roles in a number of popular musicals, most famously in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), which earned Reynolds’ an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. This month, Reynolds is auctioning off her Hollywood memorabilia collection—including Charlie Chaplin’s bowler and Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress from The Seven Year Itch – at The Paley Center in Los Angeles.
Thursday, June 16, 2011: Dean Faulkner Wells is the only niece of William Faulkner, the last Faulkner in her generation and the only living member of the family who grew up at Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. She called him “Pappy.” Now 75-years-old, Wells has recently written a book, Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi. Then, we’ll hear an audio tour of the home where William Faulkner lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Rowan Oak was built in the mid-1800s, but Faulkner made extensive renovations during the 40 years that he lived there. We’ll hear description’s of Faulkner’s office, bedroom, and kitchen – which was his favorite room in the house.
Friday, June 17, 2011: Roméo Dallaire was the leader of the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. During his mission he witnessed the horrible reality of children being used as soldiers. The experience led General Dallaire to leave the military and form the Child Soldiers Initiative. He has now written a book on the topic titled, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Corey Harbaugh. Every parent knows the day is coming. The day your child asks whether Santa Claus is real. When Corey Harbaugh’s eight-year-old son asked him that question, Harbaugh recognized it as a momentous occasion.
Please note this one correction to your blurb regarding Bob's interview with me this Monday about my novel Farishta. It is a work of fiction. Although I was required to have the entire manuscript cleared by the U.S. Department of State and other agencies mentioned in the novel, all of the characters and incidents are fictional.
Thanks,
Patricia McArdle