To Hum is Human

Intuition in Action: Stories of Inspired Impact

• Donnabelle Casis • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode, I sit down with Monte Belmonte, a longtime Western Massachusetts radio host, producer, and community activist, to explore how intuition, creativity, and compassion fuel collective impact.

From Monte’s March to his Campout for Cancer Connection to his work at NEPM’s The Fabulous 413, Monte shows how following your inner call can uplift an entire community.

Find me on Instagram @ToHumisHuman and www.sonorouslight.com

SPEAKER_00:

Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of To Hum is Human, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of tuning into our intuition to express our passionate purpose. I'm your host, Donabelle, and I'm so happy you're joining us today. I think you're going to love this episode because we will explore intuition in action, stories of inspired impact, because when we answer the call to lift one. We lift everyone. I'm so excited about my next guest. Monty Belmonte is host and executive producer of New England Public Media, or NEPM's The Fabulous 413. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and has been a radio host in Western Mass for the last 25 years, 17 of them as host of Mornings with Monty on the River, 93.9 WRSI. As host of Mornings with Monty, he developed several local fundraising campaigns, including the annual pre-Thanksgiving Monty's March for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. And this has been something that everyone looks forward to every year. It's phenomenal. Monty also volunteers as the president of the board of the nonprofit Shea Theatre Arts Center in his hometown of Great Falls or Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Welcome, Monty.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks so much for having me, Donabelle.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my gosh, it was just a no-brainer when I decided to start this podcast. Now, you've been a fixture on the airwaves for quite some time. And at one point, we worked together on the Bill Newman Show, which is now Talk the Talk on WHMP. Those were some fascinating conversations.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, those conversations were led by you. That was my backseat role as a producer, where I just pushed the buttons and made sure everybody got on the radio and then would Every once in a while, just make a dumb quip. But you brought all sorts of great artists and introduced us to great artists through that show. And we were really appreciative of that. And you yourself got to hear about all the things that you were producing, the events, the public events of art and celebration in Florence, Massachusetts. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, my gosh. It was an

SPEAKER_02:

honor.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, my gosh. Are you

SPEAKER_02:

still doing that with them with Talk the Talk?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm still doing Artbeat. Yeah, I'm still doing Artbeat, highlighting local artists and arts organizations in the Valley. But, you know, what I was always admiring when you were on producing, you know, the Bill Newman show was that you would have the most encyclopedic music archive in your mind. And somehow you were able to tap into knowing what outro music to play after the guest was on. How do you

SPEAKER_02:

do that? It's not in my mind. The Rivers Music Library, which I had access to in the WHMP studios, I would sometimes just be like, I'm going to search for a keyword here and then find it. I mean, I do know a decent chunk about music, but I was assisted with a simple search function on the library of the Rivers database.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, you know, you're very modest, but there is definitely an incredible connection between the song that you would choose right after the show. Because, you know, you could pick any song, but really, it was quite brilliant. I try. So my first question to you is, did you come out of the womb with a microphone in your hand? No. How did you become so comfortable speaking and being really on stage?

SPEAKER_02:

I know it's weird because this is a stage of sorts, but I don't consider myself an actor and it is comedy of sorts, but I don't consider myself a comedian. I am in this very, it's like the lowest tier of the performing arts. I like to think of it. Radio. They're like people that do all these amazing classical Juilliard-trained performers and stage actors and blah, blah, blah. And then the radio host. But I've always loved music, and music was my gateway into the world of radio. But given how spiritual your To Hum as Human podcast is, I have to begin with the idea that I grew up Catholic, going to Mass with my family in the Boston area to an Irish mom and an Italian dad. Classic, you know, Boston suburb story. And, you know, not really being that into it. And then as a teenager, kind of getting into the rock and roll lifestyle and drugs and getting in trouble, even with the police. But then also realizing like, yeah, maybe my life isn't going in a direction that I think it should be going. And at the time I was in a band with some guys who were taking guitar lessons from a guy who was a youth group leader at a Baptist church. So when I was about 15 years old, I had this like radical born again Christian experience after getting arrested.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what happened?

SPEAKER_02:

How did I get arrested?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you tell? Oh, yeah, sure. OK. Statute of limitations is up.

SPEAKER_00:

OK.

SPEAKER_02:

And, you know, I'm a white dude. So they were they went really easy on me. If I weren't, I'd probably still be in jail. Yeah, I we my friends and I, it was just shenanigans. We would sneak out of our parents' houses in the middle of the night and walk to a local golf course. and take the golf carts out of the open sheds at the country club, smoke weed, and joyride them all over the golf course while the sprinklers were on and the moonlight was out. And it was delightful. And despite the fact that the cops chased us off of the golf course, let's say on a Tuesday, we went back again on a Wednesday.

SPEAKER_01:

And

SPEAKER_02:

so we weren't the brightest bulbs. Yeah. And I ended up handcuffed to a wall in the police station and then was like, maybe I should not do this anymore. And so then I kind of like fell into the rhetoric that we were hearing from the Baptist Church youth group leader. And, you know, it fundamentally changed the way that I wanted to go in this very important period of time in your life where you're like picking colleges and things like that. So I said, I want to go to a Christian college and, you know, I want to be the white savior and go and save the world. And I did go to a Christian college and then I, in my very first semester there, you can stop me at any time or I'll

SPEAKER_00:

just keep going. This is fascinating.

SPEAKER_02:

I, so I did start, I was going to go for a Bible study, theology. And, uh, I did go for that. And in my first semester there, I'd always been intrigued by India and the juxtaposition of what we call poverty in the U.S. versus how poverty manifests itself in other countries. And I had particularly been interested in Kolkata, which was still called Calcutta at the time, and went in my first semester of college and spent the whole Christmas break there. So about a month. Wow. I met Mother Teresa and her missionaries of charity, which is another like complicated part of the legacy of like getting involved in helpers helping and who should be the helpers helping how. And that really changed my perspective on everything. So it'd been a couple of years of hearing evangelical U.S. Christian rhetoric and seeing how it didn't play out in the same way outside of the bounds of the United States. I still considered, you know, continued studying theology and did a semester in Jerusalem as well. So I'm now in this other really hotly contested epicenter of religious thought where three major world religions come together or don't. And also had seen a lot of how Hindu and Buddhism manifested itself in the time that I spent in India. Basically came away from all of that saying, I don't think anybody has the entire truth. And I think that theology and being in the church or a pastor of some sort is not my future. The woman who is now my mother-in-law, who at the time was only my girlfriend's mom, said when she knew I was having this mid-college crisis, well, you're pretty good at talking and you love music. Maybe you should go on the radio. So a very long story short is my mother-in-law said I should do it. And I did.

SPEAKER_00:

Really? Yeah. I mean, you know, but you have this sort of facility, I have to say, you know, because everyone can try to go on radio, but there's a certain facility you have with connecting with people. And that didn't just come from someone telling you to go on radio. I mean, there had to be something about you just being comfortable within your own self, right? Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

I agree. I guess to a certain extent. I think that there– I don't remember if there was a particular moment, but I will have to credit somebody who many people find controversial. Howard Stern was– as a kid listening to Howard Stern, he was not the radio host who was going to be talking like this and playing the hits. He would have these– very honest conversations and sometimes inappropriate conversations due to how radical his honesty was he would go to places other people wouldn't go and to me that it felt more authentic to to ask the real con the questions that people really want to know the answer to and to just be yourself and not put on a radio voice or anything like that and uh I think the origin story of just trying to be a conversationalist kind of comes from there. But I wasn't going to put on any airs.

SPEAKER_00:

Fascinating. Howard Stern. I would never have thought that.

SPEAKER_02:

If you ask Ira Glass from This American Life, he'd tell you the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, you know, when someone is sort of speaks their truth in a way that you're not quite used to hearing, of course, it's going to demand attention and a way to sort of make you think about things and how things are presented. So, yeah, I could see that. I could definitely see that. I'm curious about role playing for you, because I And creative expression, really, because there's a lot of what you do, just even in your dress. Like right now, you're wearing a fabulous shirt with this gorgeous... Oh, my goodness. Look at the sneakers. These

SPEAKER_02:

are Nike Air Max Atmos 1 Safari Pack. So they're Nikes that have different animal print, like one, two, three, four, like five different animal prints on them. I found them in a thrift store, despite the fact that they were like$300 sneakers out of the box.

SPEAKER_00:

That's crazy. And then paired with a beautiful sort of floral... Is that... Yeah, it's just

SPEAKER_02:

a little roses.

SPEAKER_00:

Roses all over your shirt. So there's something about creative expression in things that you do. And I'm curious about that. Like, I know you wear costumes often. Like, there is this sort of theatricality about how you sort of bring your message.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I always have kind of had a penchant for the fabulous when it comes to clothing and things like that. You know, when I had hair, I had long blonde hair. Wow. Wow. Because they were just more colorful, more vibrant, more fun. And it's, you know, the whole gender as a construct thing is something that I firmly believe in. We were just looking through my wife's grandfather's clothing and it's all these like little dresses for babies. And I'm like, see, this is a gender construct. You know what I mean? In the early part of the 20th century, they'd be putting these hardcore boys until they were four or five years old in literal dresses. So if I want to wear a literal dress now and again... I'm going to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, you know, I think that's sort of the rebel in you. I feel that has been sort of this feisty awareness that you have to sort of shake things up. And I feel like over the years, how do you find, well, we'll talk about that specifically with a lot of your philanthropic work. But there's something about ways in which to really help people think outside of themselves. Yeah, I

SPEAKER_02:

don't really know how to describe it. And it doesn't feel like rebellion to me. It just feels again like authenticity. It just feels like I'm not necessarily doing it because it feels like a rebellious act. I'm doing it because it feels like an authentic act. It feels like it's going to be fun for me. So this food bank march that you mentioned, you know, I knew I love the Broadway musical Wicked, and I knew the movie was coming out the weekend before the Food Bank March. And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to be both of the witches of Wicked, one on one day of the March and one on the other day of the March? And I happen to know the Broadway makeup designer who designed the Broadway stage show for Wicked, Joe DeLude II, shameless plug, if there was a Tony for Wicked. For Broadway makeup, he would have won 10 by now, but there isn't, which is a crime. But he taught me how to do all of the Elphaba and Glinda makeup and stuff. But then, you know, I didn't do it as a rebellious act necessarily. I did it because I loved that musical and I knew the guy who did the makeup and I knew it would be fun. And I knew I could bring in a local fabric hoarding organization, for lack of a better word, that loves to repurpose old fabric and make things out of it. So they made my dresses out of reclaimed fabrics and things. But while I was on that march, there was, you know, a male presenting person who said specifically to me, thank you for normalizing putting on dresses whenever you want. And I was like, yeah, I wasn't aiming for that, but I totally appreciate that you feel emboldened to do that now if you want to do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Right. Well, you know, I think a lot of what you're speaking about is the sense of authenticity and how you project that out into the world and how take it or leave it in some way. I think... Probably the word rebellious was not the word I was going for because I'm someone who likes to think outside of the box and help people understand that there are many perspectives to look at a particular subject. And, you know, when you're working with organizations, especially organizations that may be underrepresented or, you know, aren't necessarily in the forefront and you bring them out through your perspective, platform. Like, you know, you use your platform as a host on a podcast, but you actually go out in the world and physically go out to these places. How do you engage and talk about sort of difficult subjects with people like, you know, thinking about poverty, thinking about food insecurity, thinking about those types of things?

SPEAKER_02:

I think, again, it comes back down to just being honest with yourself and asking honest questions. So that's, you know, that's what this American life does. They would take a recorder out into the world and get this found sound. And that became an inspiration to me. It goes back to the Stern again, where he'd like he may be asking the more salacious questions at a certain time. But I think as he's evolved, even, you know, he realizes that that radical authenticity and getting to the heart of a matter, it can be the most engaging style of communication ever. for listeners and for the communicator. Like it's more fun for me to go into a situation as authentic. Like the only true wisdom is in knowing that, you know, nothing is what I stole from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. And if you go into a situation like, uh, food insecurity, like, uh, racism as a, you know, there's, I'm in the body that I was born into, and there's a lot of things I've never had to experience and you, If you want to learn about those things, go into it understanding you don't have all the answers. Ask honest questions. Accept when you have made a mistake. Ask for forgiveness. And I think it grants you a different level of access when you go in there with the idea that I'm a learner and I know I'm going to make mistakes. But please, I'd love to hear your story. It opens up these doors. doors in different ways as you're communicating with individuals. And then those individual communications can cascade into, you know, bigger conversations.

SPEAKER_00:

I absolutely believe that the whole butterfly in the tsunami conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

People, you know, when they feel like I'm just one person, I can't really make that much of a difference. And I see you and it's just like you're one person and you're making an incredible difference in your community. What do you What do you say to people like that who have that sort of mindset?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I feel like I'm trying to make a difference for me. And if it makes a difference for other people, too, that's great. But I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to engage and have fun with my community in ways that feel good and authentic to me. I'm not going out there saying I'm going to go and fix this problem. I'm saying I'm really interested in this as a topic and I'd like to learn more about it. Maybe you can come along on this learning journey with me. And ultimately, maybe more people learn about it. And ultimately, maybe it makes a big difference. But the goal isn't to make the big difference in a big way. The goal is to make an individual difference within myself, you know, and hope, I don't know, be the change that you want to see, I guess. But I mean, there's some truth to that idea that like, if I can change my own heart and mind, and just be an authentic witness to that. Maybe other people will want to learn too. That's

SPEAKER_00:

a beautiful way of stating it. And if someone were having this sort of uncertainty about ways in which they themselves can impact. It really does start with yourself. Yeah. You know, you got to have a little self-love first before you can actually bring more of that into the world. And what I love is that you have this incredible curiosity. I find that your mind really seeks all the truths out there. And what does that look like? And yes, it may align with whatever I'm thinking about, or it may... reconfigure a lot of the things I think about. You co-host the fabulous 413 with Haley Smith. And for those listeners who are not from the area, tell us what that is and what you cover.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it grew out of the show that I created on 93.9 The River, which was a mostly music show. But like, as I mentioned, I'd bring a recorder out into the world. Sometimes I'd bring guests by the studio, but I loved the sound from just a sonic perspective of like, if you're talking to a farmer to hear the sheep in the background, there's nothing. That's literally what's going to be on our show today. So I'm very excited to hear how much sheep is going to be presented. And I was doing this for a really community focused, but commercial music radio station. And I've been a fan of public radio for as long as I've been a radio and our local public radio station wasn't doing a lot of local conversation. And I had pitched them actually many times over the years to say, don't you think that this kind of thing that I'm doing would work on public radio? And I got turned down and got turned down and got turned down. There was new management here and they were like looking for people in the area to try to bring these conversations to the public radio station. And they didn't. came to me and said, what would you think about doing this? And I had a very particular vision about like what your station is missing is not all things considered in Morning Edition, those great programs that everybody knows and loves, but can get literally at any other public radio station or online as a podcast. If radio that is electricity sent to a tower on a hill in an area that is broadcasting invisible light to a certain radius is not talking about that radius, why would you even have that tower up? You know, just go online, just listen to the, you know, radio as a technology has a very limited radius. And I wanted to talk about that radius specifically and exclusively. So we came up with the idea of calling it the fabulous 413. We were going to just call it the 413, but somebody had already trademarked that somehow, even though it's the area code for this area. Adding the fabulous to it was enough distance that we called it that. The same person, he's the president of NEPM, Matt Abramovitz, who was reaching out to me to have conversations, had heard Khalees Smith on my other show, On the River, just nerding out about board games and music and things, and said, do you think Khalees would want to come too. And I was like, well, you should ask Khalees. And as much as she misses spinning records, she's been a part of the show since the very beginning here, a big part. And I hope that she thinks that it was the right decision.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you make a dynamic duo for sure. I think the chemistry is fantastic. And I'm curious how you choose who to engage with to bring to your audience.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the secret sauce is like it's not it's a five day a week show. So imagine doing this show five days a week.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know how you do it. So

SPEAKER_02:

here's how you come up with a couple of benchmarks. segments that, you know, are interesting, engaging people or ideas that you want to engage with on a weekly basis. So we've got one for every day of the week, essentially, where I talk to an astronomer, a friend of mine from Hampshire College who's been on my previous show for decades now. We always team up with CISA, the local agricultural advocates, and find a farmer to talk to. Merriam-Webster's dictionary is in our backyard and words fascinate me. So a friend of mine is an editor at Merriam-Webster who's on the show every week. I'm a wine snob. So we'll go to different wine shops and do a wine tasting and talk about that and kind of dispel the myths and rumors about how highfalutin wine often seems to be and make it more accessible to people that might just like to want to try that. And then our U.S. Congressman, Jim McGovern, who's also a big part of the Food Bank March, is a weekly guest on the show as well. So arts and culture. Yeah, I'll

SPEAKER_00:

tell

SPEAKER_02:

you that. And building it around that. So we did the whole show yesterday from the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst. So sitting in Emily Dickinson's house, first of all, and giving it that radio terroir. that I like to use, which is borrowing a wine snob term and bringing

SPEAKER_00:

it over here. I know that term,

SPEAKER_02:

yes. Yeah. Placiness is the best way to describe it. But to do a broadcast from Emily Dickinson's house, talking about the history of Emily Dickinson and her work with contemporary poets from the area, while you hear a lonesome train whistle in the background going by and then reading a poem Emily Dickinson wrote about how her dad brought the trains to Amherst. And like, it really creates this magical sense of place. None of that was explicitly planned other than it's national poetry month. We're going to the Emily Dickinson museum

SPEAKER_01:

and here's a train station,

SPEAKER_02:

but you've got to leave yourself open to the magic of what can happen in those, and by putting yourself in those contexts and then authentically reacting to them in real time and not being upset that there's a train whistle that's ruining my pristine broadcast, but to like lean into that, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you know, I have to, I have to speak about this magic because essentially you're sort of drawing in, oops, all these experiences. That

SPEAKER_02:

was, I don't believe in the, maybe the depths of levels of spirituality and things that you're talking about, Donabelle, but something just knocked over that something as a cautionary tale to leave, leave it in. Don't

SPEAKER_00:

edit it out. I'm not. Okay. I'll leave it in. Thanks. Thanks for that inspiration. Cause I'd be like, Oh, I'll mute that. But, but there's, something about becoming this force. I feel like you bring this energy with you and then you draw in the experiences through these collaborations. And, you know, I want to go back to the time you traveled when you were in college and you're experiencing all these different levels of being and seeing. Does your link to being connected with philanthropy stem from those experiences specifically? I

SPEAKER_02:

think so. Yeah. I mean, there's one way to look at it. You know, as I mentioned, I grew up Catholic and had this radical born again Christian experience. And this is going to sound somewhat blasphemous when I say this, that it comes from a very Christian perspective, obviously. And it almost doesn't matter to me whether Jesus was a historical figure or not. The lessons that you learn through Jesus's life, that you also can learn through every other major world religion, the do unto others, the golden rule, that has been what has mostly stuck with me. And that is one truth that I do believe I can say that I personally believe is absolutely true, that there is some ineffable something out there. Nobody has the entirety of it understood, but everybody has that part of it understood. So I go into everything kind of with that. mentality that the these acts of love towards our neighbor is is what drives all of it and i did learn that through both my religious upbringing but also seeing that work in action in in travel you know i went to jerusalem with all of this perspective about pro-israel and the palestinians are bad when i lived in jerusalem Almost all I did was hang out with Palestinians and they would take me to their homes and I would go to Gaza and I would go to the West Bank or I'd go to the East Jerusalem and and see how even that one city was so divided. And it became very clear that the rhetoric I was being taught was not real in real people's lives. That being said, the only time anyone has ever thrown a rock at me, it was a child who is a part of Hamas. And the only time I've ever been stopped and frisked by a police officer was It was the Israeli Defense Force. So there's so much tension. And yet at the same time, underneath all of that, there is this real humanity. There is this real love that I wish we could figure out how to tap into. And I will keep trying.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the goal, I guess. That's the life mission. Well, and it's interesting because walking in their shoes in a lot of ways makes me think about Monty's March. And well, you know, it's kind of interesting. I just had this vision and I guess I could be authentic about it in some way because immediately I was thinking as you were speaking about Jesus and, you know, I have all respect for all religions. I'm not religious myself. I believe in sort of the divine spirit within all. But there's something about as he was parading with the cross. And this is so strange, but I just saw the vision of you walking with the grocery cart. And I know there are no parallels to that, but that was just an interesting segue when you're talking about it. That vision came to my mind. How did you even begin to think First of all, the timing is impeccable for this event because it's so it's so much in the awareness of food and bounty. But then you really think about the lack of for some. How did you get started with this whole because Monty's March has been happening for how long now?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know, 16 years.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm

SPEAKER_02:

also terrible at like anniversaries and things like that. They don't they don't matter to me at all. So I don't really pay attention to it. Many years.

SPEAKER_00:

Many years.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. It started, first of all, the Stations of the Cross and Jesus Carrying the Cross is very different

SPEAKER_00:

in my perspective. Yes, and that's why I said I just want to mention that. But I

SPEAKER_02:

appreciate you leaning into your radical authenticity about wanting to say that. I love it. It is a ridiculous publicity stunt that people that I know that do this work of food justice day in and day out have asked me to stop calling a ridiculous publicity stunt because they do believe it has had an impact. And that makes me feel really honored and humbled. I was doing another ridiculous publicity stunt for another great organization called the Cancer Connection in Florence, which helps people kind of emotionally navigate through what it's like to go with cancer while at the same time receiving medical treatment, all for free. And I would camp out in the cold in the middle of downtown Northampton and wouldn't leave this downtown courthouse lawn until we raised X amount of dollars for the Cancer Connection. That went on for over 10 years. People started camping out with me over the years and went from trying to raise$5,000 in year one to raising over$100,000 in the last year.

SPEAKER_00:

Incredible.

SPEAKER_02:

We were also doing a fundraiser for the food bank where we would put a shopping cart out in front of Whole Foods and ask people to put in cans. It wasn't a fundraiser. It was a food drive. And the people from the food bank. I think being somewhat jealous of the success of the Cancer Connection campout, said, if we did a fund drive, we could actually, you know, you're going to pay$3 for a can of pinto beans at Whole Foods. But if we get$3, we can go buy a whole pallet of scratch and dent pinto beans that fell off a truck and we have the capacity to warehouse it. If you really care about this issue, would you consider a fund drive rather than a food drive? And it was a very great argument and makes total sense to me. Like canned drives are great. They feel good. You can be interactive. And yet that$3 I spent at Whole Foods, if I gave it right to the food bank, they can do so much more with it. So we brainstormed about what it could be because I thought another ridiculous publicity stunt might work. They said, what if you took that shopping cart that was parked in front of Whole Foods and pushed it like door to door in downtown North Hampton and asked like the local businesses to make contributions? And I said, what if I took that shopping cart and pushed it from North Hampton all the way to Greenfield, 26 miles away and do like a marathon. And that was the aha moment. Light bulb went off and we were all like, let's do it. And the first year was the same thing where it was like, let's try to raise$5,000. It was just me and like the guy driving the radio station van. And when the sun went down, another like salesman, you know, holding a flashlight out in front of me so I didn't get hit by a car. And it's now grown into this huge event.

SPEAKER_00:

How much do you raise now?

SPEAKER_02:

We raised over$600,000 this last year.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, my

SPEAKER_02:

God. Yeah. So it is stupid. But great. I mean, and it's not all from individual contributions. There's a lot of businesses that have stepped up their support. There's a lot of people and businesses that incentivize other giving by putting up challenge donations and things like that. So, yeah. And that... grew out of the river and then HMP, the station that you are on, it's also a big booster of it. But the fact that the public radio station, I basically said, I'm going to do this march one way or the other. You can either help participate in it too, or I'm going to keep doing it with my old buddies here. And it's been another amazing opportunity for competing medias to come together for a good cause.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and what I love too is it's also engaging for the community. In real life, like people march with you. You're not out there alone anymore. You have trails of people. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

it's great. I mean, and it first of all, it's, you know, the physicality because it's grown from just 26 miles from Northampton to Greenfield to 43 miles over two days from Springfield, where I am now at any p.m. to Northampton on day one and Northampton. And the reason that I wanted to expand it is because the more I learned about food insecurity, the more I learned about how the greatest need was in these urban areas, Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, which we all go through. And as you know, Donabelle, if you live north of the so-called Tofu Curtain, the Holyoke Range, yeah, there's a lot of affluence and a lot of, you know, let's just say it, you know, affluent whiteness and well-intentioned affluent liberal whiteness north of the tofu curtain, while in literal walking distance south of the tofu curtain, there's people of all different backgrounds that are suffering to a much greater level of issues of food insecurity than they are just 25 miles north. So it was an opportunity to that entire time we are walking to be talking and listening about these issues while raising money and while doing a ridiculous publicity stunt. while dressed up as one of the witches from Wicked.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I have to say, you're definitely upping your game with your

SPEAKER_02:

costumes. Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do

SPEAKER_00:

next year yet. It's hard to top that one, although you've been... Tell us what other characters you've been over

SPEAKER_02:

the years. Ooh, let's see. The first year, I just was like, can I even walk 26 miles in one day? That's a good question. So I just wore athletic gear, and then I wore a shirt that had the map of... Massachusetts on it. And then I dressed up as an astronaut and I dressed up in a gold lame suit and I had an Elvis costume made for me. I remember that one, yes. There's so many other good ones. Oh, I one year, AOC went to the Met Gala in a dress that said tax the rich.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So I

SPEAKER_02:

had a dress on me that said tax the rich and also had a shawl that said end hunger now. So,

SPEAKER_00:

yeah. So on point. You are so on point and with you. your costumes. I

SPEAKER_02:

was Barbie and Ken. So I was Ken one day and then Barbie the next

SPEAKER_00:

day. I thought you did half and half.

SPEAKER_02:

No. Yeah. It would be too hard. Maybe one of these years I'll do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you know, you're lucky it's like November. So you can actually put on a lot of clothing. If this was in the summer, that would definitely be quite a challenge for you to have. Well, when I

SPEAKER_02:

was Elphaba, I mean, when I was Glinda and when I was Barbie, I did not have on a lot of clothing. So it was also cold.

SPEAKER_00:

But you're moving. Well, that's true. You're moving. So, yeah. That's true. So what's next for you? Is there anything... on the horizon that you're particularly excited about? Aside from your daily work, working with communities.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I don't really, I don't, I'm not one of those people that's like, what's my five-year plan? You know, I really try to just take it day to day or maybe like in all honesty, like month to month. So there's no, like, I'm not working on any big, huge project right now, other than creating a daily radio show at a new ish, place for me to make. So I want to make sure that the level of quality is there, but expanding, you know, pushing the boundaries of what has been done in this building more and more, which is really exciting. So we're, I mean, we're living in an era where everything is feeling like it's spiraling out of people's bounds of understanding. And what I'm trying to use the show to do is to create a force where people can still feel like they can Yeah. would talk about these really big and important issues. And then he would also go like visit a crayon factory to learn how crayons are made and also like go hang out with Yo-Yo Ma and hear some beautiful music. So those touchstones and his mentality, it permeates everything we do here. I do feel like we're neighborhood building a la another public radio, a public television legend, Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's interesting being on, New England Public Media versus, say, WRSI, have you noticed a difference in how you engage with the audience or how the audience engages with you?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, it was a live call-in show on WRSI, so there was some real-time engagement that's not happening here, and I don't really think it would work for the format that we're doing very well. And the other thing is because we're a public media and associated with a news organization, I don't and can't, by contract, advocate specifically for specific issues. Well, I guess nobody's pro-hunger, I don't think. So I have to be a little bit more careful to protect the whole organization to make sure that we're looking at issues fairly, while at the same time recognizing that there are some very clear wrongs that are happening in the world and to still be talking about them. And art is a nice way to view all of these things through a non-political lens to address some very political problems. And that's sort of the only difference we've made. We're like on the river during the post-murder of George Floyd and in the middle of COVID, there are people that were feeling like they wanted to take to the streets, but also felt like they didn't want to get sick. So like I created with the team there, this rolling rally, the Black Lives Matter rally, where people would get in their car and there was a soundtrack that we had curated and had a bunch of speakers talking about issues pertaining to racism and police brutality that you could just, with your family, if you wanted to, drive around and listen to while listening to this soundtrack. So that would be something harder to do here, not only because we're not a music radio station, we're a talk radio station, and also because that might be viewed as too overtly advocacy. And I have to kind of try to view things in a more fair and balanced way. It's why you should continue to support public radio and television. Yeah, because they want to try to be as fair as possible, you

SPEAKER_00:

know? Right, right. And, you know, without our public radio, who knows what we'd be listening to? Yeah. Exactly. And I feel like also too, you know, and I'm sure you believe this too, but the arts really have... this unique ability to foster social change in ways that other platforms may necessarily have struggled with. And the interesting thing is they're cutting funding for the arts. And so, you know, that's a whole other conversation at

SPEAKER_02:

this point. It's why when there's these huge fascist political movements that it's often the artists and the poets that they come for very early on because they add the inspiration They bolster the spirit of the people that are advocating for change. So if you take away that hope and joy at the beginning, it's a lot easier to enact your agenda.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, my gosh. Right. Well, you know, as long as there are people like you out in the world, which is why I always like to highlight the lights in the world, who really bring about the beauty of our humanity. you know, how we are all connected in ways that are special and unique, but essentially we're all the same and we kind of have to look out for each other. And when you are in a place of privilege where you have a platform to sort of spread that in a way that's so impactful, it's a beautiful thing. And, you know, I'm so thankful that you Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

I go three days a week. It is my it's my new religion, I guess. I mean, I tell everybody I'm a devout agnostic, but I do believe in what you were saying where there is this interconnected humanity that we are made of star stuff and we're all the same stuff. And yet things can get so chaotic and the busyness of daily life. And also, I hate exercise. So if I can be training the mind and the body at the same time, I can trick myself into believing I'm not exercising. That's become a really, you know. And then I'm at the Shea volunteering a lot. But then again, that's just me taking in more art. It's me. I'm a consumer. I'm trying to consume all of the goodness that the universe has to offer us because I know our time here is limited. So I literally get angry every night when I have to go to bed because I hate sleep. I feel like it is a flaw in the design. We should just be able to experience all of the wonder all of the time. And I feel... ripped off when I'm like, oh,

SPEAKER_00:

I'm going to be sleeping for eight hours. Come on. Well, briefly, I would love to know your connection with the Shay because I know they're in your hometown. I understand that. But what do you love about the Shay?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it started because my kids were in a Shakespeare program where they were learning, doing full uncut works of Shakespeare. And there was a board that was running this tiny little gem of a theater. And the board was not going to continue until And my kids program still wanted to use that as their home base. It was convenient for us as parents because it was a mile from our house as opposed to having to drive them wherever. And because I was connected with so many other people in the arts, it was actually the Northampton Center for the Arts director at the time, Penny Burke, who was like, hey, we're moving our building. We don't have anything to do. The Shea needs a board. We're going to you should form it and we're going to help you. And I was like, oh, fine. So.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that they just tell you and you're like, okay.

SPEAKER_02:

When Penny Burke tells you what to do, you do it. So we did do it. And I got together a great group of people that many of whom are still very much involved, if not on the board. And yeah, and it's really just using this theater as a place where if you can imagine how this theater can be used, we want to help enable that. Can I swear on this podcast? Sure. Sure. Okay. So it's like right this week, I'm convening a bunch of Franklin County creatives in a team that I'm calling the Shea Helpful Imagination Team or the shit. Excellent. To literally just be like, look at the bones of this building. And you're an artist who has a track record of making things happen. Want to make anything happen here? Let's figure out how to make it happen together. Because it's a nonprofit. It's owned by the town. It's a community asset. And I want to just continue to figure out how to make it thrive.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's a beautiful venue. Yeah, it is. A historical venue. And it's just, it's a gem. It literally is this diamond in the rough. And it's just, you've turned it into now this sort of epicenter in this, in the town, I'd have to say. You're trying, you know, your one little spark. Well, as we closed today, is there anything particular you would love to say to help encourage people to... Kind of be thinking about the bigger picture. I

SPEAKER_02:

don't know how to encourage people or inspire people to do it other than to just to do it myself and hope that I'm doing it in a way that feels inspirational to other people. But I like to say that, like, I don't feel like this comes from within me. I like to think of myself as a mirror that, you know, there is so much goodness around us that. given the platform that I am so lucky to have, if I can be the biggest mirror I can to shine what else and reflect what else is going on to everyone else, then maybe their mirror will reflect it. And it'll be this incredible, like, you know, series of light, these little lights of ours, you know, shining and reflecting all over the place. The other thing I love to say, and it's almost cliche at this point, because I say it so frequently, but, you know, when you come into a radio studio, there's a, sign that goes on that says on the air but the technology of radio is actually light it's part of the invisible light spectrum so we're not blowhards we don't have to be blowhards creating air we can literally be spreading light and so I try to remember that I have this power at my disposal that has been granted to me for one reason or another and to just remember to keep spreading the light

SPEAKER_00:

oh

SPEAKER_02:

man

SPEAKER_00:

That's so beautiful. I love that. I love your passion for uplifting the community. I love what you do in the world. It's so remarkable. And to be witness to that is such a privilege. And I hope I can do that as well. And I love that. I love being the mirror because I always feel like we're basically a disco ball. We're all different. We're parts of the disco ball and every facet of that disco ball is us. And, but we're all part of the same disco ball. And if we could just like shine the light on that, it's, it creates a beautiful rainbow.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm stealing your, I'm stealing your disco ball metaphor. It's more, it's more in line with all my quirky, weird costumes and David Bowie love and things.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I actually got that from my teacher when she said, you know, Life, L-I-F-E, is love in full expression. And the disco ball is where it's at. That's where I go by. But anyway, I appreciate you and I appreciate you being on the show. Monty Belmonte, thank you for joining us today and just sharing the love, sharing the love.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you for welcoming me here, Donabell. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm so glad you spent this time with me. If something in this episode resonated, feel free to share it or pass it along to someone who might need that little spark. I'd also love to hear what came up for you. Send me a message or drop a comment on Instagram at tohumishuman. You can also find more episodes and updates at sonorouslight.com or on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep humming.