Weekend America Series
Change of Seasons
Weekend America explores and celebrates how the seasons mark time in special ways across the country.
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Change of Seasons: Poetry and Curling
Is there a chill in the air yet, in your neck of the woods? Our nose hairs haven't frozen yet, but we're sure that treat is just around the corner. Which can only mean one thing: winter! You still have a couple weeks until the official beginning (December 21st, to be exact) but here's a little primer for the season.
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Those Summer Song 'Ear Worms'
It's summer, and that means that elusive summer song is about to make its way into your brain and take up residence. Do you remember songs from your past summers? And why can't you get them out of your head? Psychologist and author Dan Levitin explains how those "ear worm" songs actually stay on your mind, even if you don't want them to...
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Pushing the Ice Cream Envelope
On this Memorial Day Weekend, we celebrate the beginning of summer. And what summer means to Karen Roberts is ice cream -- lots and lots of ice cream. Roberts is a nurse practitioner, so you'd think she'd know her ice cream intake limits. But she and her family decided to push the ice cream envelope...
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Coping with the Summer SAD Blues
Most folks associate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with winter weather and dark days. But a small percentage experience the disorder in the summer -- they shun the heat and the glare of the sun, and find solace in dark, air-conditioned spaces. We talk with Saskia Smith about how she copes with summer SAD.
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Kid Poems for Summer Days
Betsy Franco is a children's poet and author of many books. She shares some of her favorite poems about summer, and what it's like to be young and full of wonder as the days turn hot and the nights are full of stars.
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Hitching a Ride to Spring Break
Mary Anne Wise remembers her 1972 odyssey from Minnesota to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., thumbing her way across the country with her two roommates. She hopes that if her own 17-year-old daughter does something equally foolish, she meets up with the kind of folks who looked out for her so many years ago.
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The Tiny Green Shoots of Welcome
Weekend America listener Corrie Befort Patnaude was 9 when her family moved to Minnesota, in the middle of a cold winter. She wasn't used to the cold and couldn't wait for spring to arrive. Befort shares memories of her yard leaping to life as the winter chill dies away.
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Homesick for Her Heartland
We asked our listeners to share their memories of spring. Sherry Connot from Nebraska wrote us about her freshman year in college, when she was homesick for her family's ranch. A song about springtime brought all those feelings bubbling up one day....
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How Do You Know It's Spring?
We asked members of Jane Streelman's kindergarten class to tell us how they know when spring has arrived. They gave us answers in pictures and in words.
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Signs of Spring
This weekend, the signs of spring are everywhere. We celebrate the arrival of the season with three stories of how folks say farewell to winter and embrace the Northern Hemisphere's return to the sun.
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Songs in the Dead of Winter
Last year, Bon Iver, aka Justin Vernon, holed up in his father's hunting cabin, far away from everything and everyone. His band had just fallen apart, he was sick in bed for three months and he broke up with his girlfriend. He tells us about the time he spent alone in with the Wisconsin winter and the music he made.
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Seeing Snowflakes
Kenneth Libbrecht photographs snowflakes. To do so, he holds out a piece of cardboard, captures the fleeting flake and photographs it using a custom-built microscope. The photographs capture the beauty that falls to earth, mostly unnoticed.
