This is a same-day reaction to this morning’s story called: A springtime show about how about the economy that partly explains why we feel ashamed. That story features a wonderful listener in Scotland who is a money manager and made some fascinating comments about the last class series. I asked her if she’d be willing to share some of these thoughts on the phone, and she was willing, and that was this morning’s story.

A couple hours later I got a reaction audio from one of the people featured in the class series who we talked about in this morning’s story. So I’m playing it. Because it’s great and because the point of the class series is to talk about these things and this is almost like a real goddamn conversation!

What Class are You? is a series I make for Vermont Public.

This is a story about a song.

Six years ago, seventeen-year-old Finn Rooney killed himself in his home in Walden, Vermont. A couple days later, his community held a bonfire in the parking lot of Hazen Union High school in Hardwick. Hundreds of people came. Tom Gilbert, who organized the bonfire, asked his friend Heidi Wilson to write a song for the occasion. The song was called Hold On. She made sure it was a song everyone could sing. And they did.

Now people are singing this song all over the world. People in Minneapolis have been singing it to ICE agents. They’re singing it for their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. They’re singing it in Wales and Australia and Iralend in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Peole are singing it all over, to give each other some comfort and some courage.

This is a story about where that song came from and where it’s gone.

I met Arwa and Habib Meiloud because they’re Anne’s kids and Anne works at the post office in the village here in East Calais. They live in the house right across the road from the post office. Arwa and Habib’s father is from Mauritania and lives out of the country, but both Arwa and Habib were born in the US, and their mother Anne grew up in Vermont. Arwa is 17 years old, Habib is 18. In this conversation, we talk about the roles that race and class have played in their lives.

Kaye Phipps lives in Montpelier, Vermont. Right now she works as a custodian at a local grocery store. She’s also been a florist, a housekeeper, and a house cleaner. But even though she’s sometimes working multiple jobs, she often comes up short. In this episode, Kaye talks about how having a limited income makes her feel like a child, long into adulthood.

Jules Guillemette grew up on their family farm in Lamoille County, Vermont, which has been in the family nearly 100 years. Since then, Jules has worked as a chef, a meat cutter and now they're an electrician. In this episode, we talk about what it means to own land of enormous value but always be struggling to save enough money.

What Class are You? is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public, which started back in 2022. I wanted to talk with people about growing political and cultural divides without talking about politics or cultural divides. I had no idea how to do it. Then one day I just drove around and asked people what class they are. And what I found was that as dumb and offensive as this question is, people have a lot to say about it. Socioeconomic reality is one thing we all share. Some of us have a lot, some have a little, and most of us fall somewhere in between, but it’s a big common denominator.

Trudy Richmond lives in subsidized senior housing in Burlington. She’s educated and worked all her life, but at a certain point, Trudy realized that she had too little money to pay for a comfortable retirement and too much to qualify for services that might make her retirement more comfortable. In this episode of What Class are You, Trudy talks with reporter Erica Heilman about how she negotiated a comfortable retirement for herself.

I make this series for Vermont Public. Thank you Vermont Public for letting me share these stories with Rumble Strip listeners!

This is a show about Thanksgiving, and what it sounds like. It is made entirely of your recordings.

Thank you everyone for sending me recordings. We have made a show that sounds like the whole damn country. Or a lot of it.