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- [00:01]
A
Department of Rejected Dreams if you had a dream rejected, IKEA can make it possible.
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B
So I always dreamed of having a man cave, but the wife doesn't like it. What if I called it a woman cave?
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A
Okay, so let's not do that. But add some relaxing lighting and a comfy IKEA hofburg ottoman and now it's a cozy retreat.
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B
Nice. A cozy retreat, man. Cozy retreat, sir.
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A
Okay, find your big dreams, small dreams, and cozy retreat dreams in store or online at ikea.us dream the possibilities.
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C
If your small business has a problem, you could say, just my luck. But you should say, like a good.
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A
Neighbor, State Farm is there and we'll.
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C
Help get you back in business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is.
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A
There.
- [00:54]
D
I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slow down Growing up, my two younger sisters and I were often at odds. We were close in age and we shared close quarters. But we weren't close. We were all born two years apart. Stair steps, my mother used to say. When we were ages 9, 6, 7, and 5, we argued over Barbies or what to watch on the one television in the house, or whether the youngest was able to tag along on a bike ride or a play date. When we were 17, 15, and 13, we fought, sometimes physically, over clothes, shoes, and CDs that one of us bought borrowed, er, stole from the others. We screamed at each other to get off the phone. We tattled on each other about missed curfews, bad boyfriends, and all of the things we weren't supposed to be doing. Sure, my sisters and I loved each other, but we didn't always like each other. Only after we all went away to college did we become close. I grew up thinking that having siblings was inevitably like this. You're annoyed with each other and you compete, and sometimes there's even a fist fight. But once everyone grows up, you come back together. These days, my sisters and I talk and text, frequently confiding in each other about our lives. On many Sundays, we have dinner with our own families at our parents house. Yes, sitting around the same table we sat at as children, stealing CDs from one another all those years ago must have helped us develop a similar taste in music, because now we like to go to concerts together too. If you're lucky as I am, your siblings are your lifelong friends, but I know not everyone is lucky in that way. Sometimes, because of an age spread, because of personality differences or family issues, siblings are not close. Today's poem looks tenderly at at two siblings attempting to close the distance between them. The poem is made even more poignant by the fact that its setting, a bar in California, has since burned down in a wildfire. Rancho Bar by Margot Kahn you'll feel like you're on a ship below decks, my brother says when he takes me to a bar at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. The ceiling is low, the floor is a carpet of tartan. It takes three beers and 20 years for my brother to tell me what he has to say, show me the pictures of his life scrolling across a screen. What else have I missed that's been right before my eyes? Who else have I not known for the sin of not seeing? What did you want when you were young? My brother asks me. Sex, I say. I wanted to travel. What did you want? I ask back. When the rain breaks, we walk home. From the kitchen, you can see all the way across the valley to Los Feliz. Sunset. Hollywood. The ocean. In the bathroom, paper towels in a jar catch drips from the leaky faucet. In the bedroom, my brother is sleeping. What he wanted is still what he wants, the thing that makes everything easier. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter. And find us on Instagram at slowdownshow and blueskylowdownshow.org.
- [06:33]
E
The Trump administration is making deep cuts to education research.
- [06:37]
A
The cancellation notices started coming.
- [06:38]
E
When the contract is cut, the study just dies. It's all happening just as schools are trying to make use of research to improve reading instruction.
- [06:46]
D
There would not have been a science of reading without the federal funding. It wouldn't have happened.
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E
I'm Emily Hanford. On our new episode of Soul to Story, what the Trump Cuts mean for the science of Reading? Go to your podcast app and follow Soul to Story.