American Buffalo

American Buffalo:

In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds--there's only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful--Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia."American Buffalo" is a narrative tale of Rinella's hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo's past, present, and future: to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World's earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a"bone charcoal" plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china..

Frank and Deborah Popper on BTBNMP3: Pete Seeger - Home On The Range

The River is Wide

Not too long ago, we were sitting on the Metro North railroad, headed back to NYC, sore from hiking, reeking of campfire, tired as hell, and feeling just a little bit depressed knowing that around the next sunset would be a week filled with meetings and subways, instead of camping and waterways. Quite a shock to the system, it would be, if not for that massive and stunning Hudson River guiding the train all the way home, like a series of awnings bracing the fall from a roof.Now that fragile river has been in the news a bit recently – subject of a study by a group called Riverkeeper, and an editorial in the Times – reminders of the impact that that city will have on anything it touches. It was also the subject of a recent American Masters on Pete Seeger, one of that river’s first defenders.In 1966, Seeger started to build a 106 foot sloop called Clearwater (photo above), to sail down the Hudson, sing folk songs and heighten awareness for a river left for dead. That ship and Pete Seeger have since sailed 400,000 students up and down the river, fought polluters, and made a heck of a lot of progress.As Pete’s daughter says in the film, “He made a promise to me, when I was about 12 years old. He said when you grow up, you’re going to be able to swim in the river. And I did.”Catch the documentary if you can – the man was black listed for 17 years, hand built his home, and continues at age 87 to fight for his music, his river and the greater good.MP3: Pete Seger - Turn, Turn, Turn