(Thomas In A Storm)

From my very limited perspective, I felt today’s show on WBTNAM 1370 was the best one yet.

The calls were strong and interesting, I got about a dozen excellent comments and questions via e-mail, it felt to me like people were listening and getting comfortable enough to reach out to me.

I think Thomas and I were more focused in out interactions with one another. The broadcast began on an invigorating note: Maria was one of the first callers, she wanted to talk about an argument she and I had been having about Socrates, our mystery snail.

I thought he was dead and needed to be removed from the tank, she thought he was just hibernating, and didn’t smell badly enough to be dead. The call raised a number of issues that we were talking about all day, me and my readers and listeners.

Maria wrote about it on my blog, we talked on the show about how people with different ideas make decisions; we talked about gender differences in regard to nurturing, and the place animals have in our lives. I was glad she called, she really got the broadcast moving, as only she can do. You can read what she wrote on her blog here.

Mark called from Wisconsin to ask about his notion that animals were treated poorly in history, I called this the Christian Theory of “Dominion,”  and how we have evolved from cruelty and indifference to emotionalizing and rescue.

It was a very thoughtful question.

I read about a half-dozen e-mail messages – dog barking furiously at dogs on TV, dogs pooping, leash aggression and Marcia, a very thoughtful caller from Cape Cod who wanted to talk about Socrates, but also about her cat, and how to get her to stop biting playfully but painfully.

I enjoyed Anne Sweeney’s discussion about how we make decisions about our animals, about gender differences in nurturing, and about how many dogs are too many. She is very interesting.

Kevin Livermore e-mailed me the most beautiful tribute to his aging but much loved dog Joey. I read it on the air, it was touching and honest and wise. I hope I get more letters like that.

This is really so close to what I want the broadcast to me – interactive, wide-ranging, surprising and above all, useful. I feel like a community is forming around the broadcast now, and people are beginning to feel free (and safe) calling. It isn’t simple to call, but it isn’t really hard either (866-406-9286 and 802 442-1010).

It’s really simple. The program works when people call and e-mail me questions ([email protected]) and doesn’t work as well when they don’t. I don’t want to be talking to myself. I want to be talking to you.

I took my weekly portrait of Thomas Toscano out in a snow storm, it felt right with those mad Toscanini eyes.

Let’s go at it again next week. It felt today like it was coming together. Next week Wednesday, from one to three. WBTNAM1370. Streamable everywhere.