Sunday, August 9, 2009

Discover Janesville at Codos Coffee - Teri Huber

Teri Huber has been the manager of the Janesville Farmers Market for the last 4 years. Under her leadership, the market has grown steadily and has become a cultural event held on weekly basis in downtown Janesville. Featuring produce as well as arts and crafts provided exclusively by vendors from Wisconsin, the JFM delivers a wonderful opportunity for the visitors to the market to buy and eat local, as well as speak directly to the growers of their food. A number of different events take place at the JFM on regular basis, including appearances by buskers (street musicians) and tasting competitions, making it the place to be on Saturday mornings.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Discover Janesville at Codos Coffee - Jose Carrillo

As is true for many of our guests, it is difficult to introduce Jose Carrillo as a representative of any one organization. He is a community activist in its most purest sense. Jose's involvement in our community is diverse and includes the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Rock County Partners in Prevention, Rock County Council on Aging, Justice Overcoming Borders, Badger Council of Girl Scouts and Prison Industries Board. He is even one of the trustees of the Hedberg Public Library. A retired GM worker, originally from Mexico, Jose worked as a migrant worker in California before settling in Janesville.

In our conversation, we retraced the steps that brought Jose to Janesville, and the reasons behind his decisions to get involved with the community groups that he is helping. We also talked about the Labor movement, which is a very important part of Jose's life and some of the ways that we can preserve American jobs.

part 1

part 2

Discover Janesville at Codos Coffee - David McKay, PhD

The episode filmed at Codos Coffee shop will be broadcast on JATV next weekend. It will feature interviews with Teri Huber, Terry Thomas, Jose Carrillo and David McKay. In the meantime, I will begin to post the clips of the interview here and on YouTube.

First is the interview with David McKay, PhD. David is a professional historian, who lectures on history and also works as the Fine Arts Coordinator at the UW Rock. We sat down and had a great discussion talking about several areas of David's expertise. These include the Electoral College and its value to our democracy. David made a very interesting statement when he said that so far the Electoral College has not disgraced itself sufficiently to warrant its removal.

We also talked about the Jeffersonian Dilemma, which had to do with the fact that Thomas Jefferson knew that slavery was deeply wrong. Yet Jefferson felt that correcting the evil of slavery was going to be difficult and thus he chose to not address the subject. A very interesting discussion that has to do with the philosophical implications of this simple dilemma: if we are aware of evil but feel that ending it will be too complicated, is that a sufficient justification to ignore the evil?

Finally we discussed a class that David teaches together a physicist and a philosopher at UW Rock that deals with the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Japan by the United States, at the end of the WWII. David covers the historical significance of this powerful event, while the philosopher and the physicist look at this historic event from their respective perspectives. This has to be a very interesting class and I highly recommend anyone who has an opportunity to take it, to do so.

Here is the interview:

part 1

part 2

part 3