Life In The Heart Land

More than a half million Virginians have served in the military, but many veterans report difficulty adjusting to civilian life after their service. They often struggle to make ends meet in their day-to-day life, but nonprofits work to provide them with food, community and supportive relationships with fellow veterans and assistance working through trauma.

With many Americans unwilling to take agricultural work, farmers today rely on migrant labor from Mexico and Central America. The hard work and isolation can make life difficult for many migrant workers. In Nelson County, Vanessa Hale works with a bilingual staff to build relationships with the “invisible population” of migrant workers in the orchards and vineyards.

Virginia has seen a spike in opioid-related deaths in the past several years. Counseling and other support centers struggle to meet the demand. We hear the stories of individuals in recovery in twelve-step and other programs as we explore the question of why addiction is such a hard problem to eradicate, by asking the people who have been through it themselves.

Explore the balance of cultivating healthy forests and using trees for timber. Ecologist Hank Shugart observes that foresters are beginning to consider the role they can play in mitigating climate change. We visit lumber companies across that provide jobs that rely on the business of trees. Queen City Silviculture share their approach to helping trees thrive alongside their human neighbors safely.

Social disconnection adds some $7 billion to annual health care costs in our
country. As our society has grown more mobile, the elderly are especially at risk for isolation, depression or abuse at nursing homes when their adult children are not present to care for them. We take a look at a variety of existing programs meant to provide the elderly with more fulfilling lives in their later years.

Today, many rural communities no longer have any local news coverage reported by people they know and trust. 20% of community newspapers have gone out of business since 2005. When local news reporting dries up, it has a ripple effect on other aspects of civic engagement, such as voter registration. In this episode, we visit small local newspapers that have managed to survive.