A poignant interview with local author Shirley Melis on her memoir Banged-Up Heart: Dancing with Love and Loss.  How do you cope with and survive losing two beloveds just a few years apart?  How do climb out of the despair of grief and risk loving again?  Or don’t take that risk and live only a half-life.  A wide-ranging interview touching also the importance of advocacy for a loved one with medical needs and somehow taking care of oneself. A tender interview that allows us to glimpse life’s hardest lessons through the eyes and words of someone who has been there twice.  www.shirleymelis.com

Eleven years before New Mexico’s largest recorded wildfire in Hermit’s Peak and Calf Calf another vast, destructive and shockingly hotter fire called the Las Conchas Fire devastated the Jemez Mountains, wildlife and unique flora of the area.

Photographers Patricia Galagan and her late husband Philip Metcalf, then new to the American west, chronicled the devastation, the stark aftermath, and the ultimate recovery of the land over a seven year period, creating and publishing a volume of photographs to treasure in a beautiful book called Fire Ghosts.

Patricia joins me in the studio to talk about their journey of visual discovery and her observations as a photographer on how fire transforms and teaches.  And how nature responds as best she can in this time of escalating climate change.  A sensitive and enlightening interview. 

Fire Ghosts published by George F. Thompson 2019.