(upbeat music) - Here's what's coming up next on, "You Oughta Know."

See how pickles became their passion and the idea for a business.

A local illustrator takes her art from the pages of her book to this Doylestown museum, plus an update on the Delaware watchmaking school giving disabled veterans a new mission.

(upbeat music continues) Welcome to "You Oughta Know," so glad to have you here.

I'm Shirley Min.

As we honor our veterans, our first story is about a Delaware school that teaches disabled veterans how to be watchmakers.

Watchmaking is an in-demand skillset that gives these service members a new purpose in life.

In demand, close to 20 graduates, veterans rebuilding their lives.

- [Sam] Veterans Watchmaker Initiative is the only technical school in the country that trains disabled veterans exclusively as watchmakers.

- [Shirley] Veterans Watchmaker Initiative or VWI opened its doors in 2017 here in Odessa, Delaware.

- [Sam] Watchmaking is a highly skilled, very intricate trade.

It's difficult to learn.

You may have anywhere from 110 to 150 pieces and parts, knowing what you're looking at, how to integrate these parts back into the movement and ultimately get it running so it keeps time.

- [Shirley] It's the only watchmaking school in the country, exclusively for veterans.

Largely funded through private grants and donations, the school is totally free and also offers housing.

(upbeat music) VWI continues what the Bulova Company started after World War II in Queens, New York.

While Bulova trained a whole generation of watchmakers in their time, now VWI founder, Sam Cannan is training the next (mellow music) - Well they ultimately closed.

We picked up the mantle and that's been now 14 years.

We've been doing this seven years in this location.

They need thousands of watchmakers just in this country, globally, tens of thousands.

- [Shirley] The need is such that luxury watch companies are courting students like Eric Preciado while he's still in the course.

- I've never had someone come to me and say, "Hey, I want you to work for me."

I've always been the one to go out and look for a job.

And when someone caters to you and courts you and wants you to be a part of their family, that hits different.

I would equate it to getting a ticket for the lottery, but knowing I'm gonna win.

(upbeat music) - [Shirley] The Navy corpsman was in a bad place prior to coming to VWI, injured from his time in the service and on the job afterwards, Eric contemplated suicide.

And at his darkest hour, Eric says this watch his wife gave him, saved his life.

- I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that watch and for her.

I was sitting there in the dark in my room and I was like, man, I want to know what's going on under that watch.

So like, let me just like try to open it.

And tried to open it, couldn't figure it out.

I remember thinking to myself, I was like, maybe I can look something up online and see if I can find something.

- [Shirley] What he found was VWI, and now he's on the same path as Jason Adams.

We first met the Army veterans six years ago.

Jason was injured in Iraq.

He suffered a traumatic brain injury, PTSD and a host of other issues.

He was in Sam's very first class.

Now he works for a high-end watch shop in New York and makes it a point to come back to VWI every year.

- That's what also makes it so important for me to come back to the school to talk to them, is I want them to know that it's real.

It's out there.

The opportunities is endless.

(upbeat music) Doing these types of things, I think puts this confidence in yourself that you can do it.

It provides me with like a purpose and it's something I love.

Doing the watches also helped with like the PTSD because being inside a watch, it uses so much mental capacity that you kind of forget about the other things in your life.

- The ones I get generally, they're kind of at the end.

They've used their benefits or whatever and they just don't fit in.

Nothing seems to work for them.

They're kind of in this position where they're okay, but they're not really okay.

And they stumble on this little program here and they find themselves among people that are just like they are.

So suddenly their whole world changes.

- [Eric] This is more of like a rehabilitation center for veterans that need help, that need to restructure their life, that needs some form of direction, right?

Because I didn't have any of that.

- This program's given me so much without me giving anything.

I mean, I understand I served in the military and I did something for my country and that's why the program does what it does but I still feel like I owe it.

- [Sam] This is one skillset once you're trained to do it, no one can take it away from you.

- And I wanna say big congratulations to all the students who recently graduated.

We wish you well.

Now, if you wanna learn more about how you can help or learn more about the school, visit veteranswatchmakerinitiative.org.

- I'm not gonna do anything weird to make myself 15.

So here I am.

I'm 15.

The Constitution is a living document.

It is a warm, steamy document.

It's hot and sweaty.

Our bodies had just been left out of this document from the beginning.

They were just like, "We don't know what to do with this kind of a body."

(audience laughing) Our constitution acknowledges that who we are now might not be who we will become.

- Art is designed to invoke reaction.

The Arden Theater Company's upcoming event engage with the art, takes theater goers from spectators to participants.

And here to tell us more about this event is Arden Theater's associate artistic director, Jonathan Silver.

Jonathan, welcome to the show.

- Thank you, Shirley.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- Before we get into the details of the November 11th event, let's talk about this idea of going from a play, using that as an impetus for a panel discussion.

- Sure.

Well, the play, "What the Constitution Means to Me" by Heidi Schreck is a wonderful new play that premiered on Broadway several years ago.

And it tells the story of Heidi, herself when she was 15 years old and she traveled around the country debating the constitution in competitions, and she won all these debates and she raised enough money to go to college with those winning funds.

- Oh my gosh.

- And so in the play, the actor playing Heidi resurrects 15 year old Heidi, and she tells the story of that time in her life, which is really exciting.

And so the themes of the play are really relevant right now and we wanted to engage with our audiences, engage with the community on a deeper, more authentic level.

And so this event will do just that.

- So the emotions after having seen the play for you, what kind of emotions did you experience and leave with?

- Sure, I've seen the play several times here in rehearsals as well as I saw the original production in New York.

And each time I feel the same three feelings.

I feel a sense of responsibility, a sense of hope and a sense of privilege for the body that I was born in, as well as a sense of privilege to get to tell this story through Ardent Theater Company's production.

- There's been so much talk about the Constitution recently and you kind of spoke to the play's relevance, but let's talk more about that in detail about the play's relevancy, particularly now.

- Just open the news and you'll see that the Constitution is mentioned on a daily basis.

And if not, it's definitely deep in all of the news articles that we read and see on TV.

And so the document that this play is based on and is responding to is still a living breathing document.

And that's really exciting and frustrating and the play tackles all those things.

And so it couldn't be more important to tell that story right now, - The November 11th event, let's talk about who's on the panel and then what are some of the themes that are gonna be explored?

- So on November 11th, we will have four panelists led by WHYY's editorial director, Jamila Bey, and she'll lead a conversation with Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, who is the writer and narrator of "Your Democracy" right here on WHYY.

She'll also have Anjelica Hendricks from the ACLU, Kathryn Kolbert, who is a constitutional lawyer and has argued in front of the Supreme Court twice will be on the panel and then finally, Allyson Schwartz, former Congresswoman of Pennsylvania, will also be with us to discuss the Constitution, women's rights, immigration, and their response to the play.

- This is so intriguing.

How can people attend the event?

- So go to ardentheater.org/engage-constitution and they can reserve their free tickets to this event.

- I love that it's free.

I love that it's free.

Okay, you wanna say that one more time?

- Yes.

- ardentheater.org.

- ardentheater.org/engage-constitution.

- I like that, dash.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.

"What the Constitution Means to Me" runs through December 10th.

Here's the website, log onto ardentheater.org for your tickets.

Thank you, Jonathan.

- Thanks Shirley.

- You have a couple of days left to witness the beauty of "RARE AIR," an exhibition from Illustrator and designer, Sarah Kaizer that expands on her book of the same title.

It's all on display at the Michener Museum in Doylestown.

- My name's Sarah Kaizer.

I'm a graphic designer and illustrator based in Philadelphia.

I started drawing endangered species over 10 years ago.

I came across the US Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species list that has over 1200 species listed at the time as endangered or critically endangered.

I had a lot going on in my personal life at the time and I was kind of looking for somewhere else to put my mind and energy.

And the way that I work is generally kind of slow and methodical and meditative, so it was a soothing and calming practice at the same time.

I started drawing clams and muscles and shells really obsessively.

And I didn't realize that I had a collection happening.

I really liked the shells just 'cause there was kind of lots of like little inner worlds to them.

And as a species, they're supposed to be incredibly resilient, but the fact that they're dying off is a huge red flag to waterway health and the state of the environment that we're in.

I had hiked a lot of sections of the Appalachian Trail in the years before I decided to hike the entire thing.

I made the decision to hike after my dad passed away.

It just sort of fell under how life is too short heading, I guess.

And I actually made the decision that night to hike.

The original idea was to document all of the trail shelters along the hike.

The hike's 2200 miles long and there are trail shelters about eight to 10 miles apart.

So I was photographing those pretty obsessively while I was hiking.

And following the hike, when I sat down to do the drawings, I think the drawings became more interesting when the trail community was in the drawings themselves.

So that series became more about the community and the people I connected with along the hike.

That became the basis for my first book, "Hiker Trash."

The book also features photographs from a friend I met on the trail, Nicholas Reichard.

He was carrying a lot of camera equipment on a trail and every ounce counts and you try not to carry anything so he documented the trail in a really beautiful way, and his work is also included in the project.

(mellow music) I grew up in Newtown, Pennsylvania, just down the road from the Michener Museum.

I am enormously grateful and very honored to be part of that legacy there.

- We specialize in art of the Greater Delaware Valley and specifically Bucks County.

We're particularly known for our Pennsylvania impressionist paintings from the early 20th century.

Because we have so many paintings of the local landscape in our collection, we frequently, you know, interpret those paintings thinking about how our artwork relates to the environment and environmental conditions.

We thought that Sarah's work and her drawings of birds, bees, bats, and butterflies that are endangered would really highlight this interest in environmental concerns and make those issues really tangible for our visitors.

- [Sarah] I've been working on endangered species illustrations for over a decade.

I've completed close to 300 drawings at this point.

This is the latest iteration of that project that culminated in a publication through Mountaineers Books.

This has been a process of trying to take those stories out of the publication and bring them to the public in a different way.

- [Laura] When curating the show, we were particularly interested in this grid form and you can see throughout the exhibition that we've arranged these paintings in a really close together tight grid.

It gives us a sense of the number of species that are impacted by issues of climate change and habitat loss.

There's at least one instance where we break the grid when we have the display of the endangered bees, where we wanted to get this sense of flight in the way that we've arranged the work.

- This is only a representation of 12 species out of, I'm not even sure how many that are at risk.

And a couple of these have gone extinct since this show has been put together.

- [Laura] People come in and they think these works are prints, but they're actually ink drawings, original drawings.

The fine detail in the work is really amazing and incredible.

And the way that Sarah has captured the personality of these species made them really come to life on the page.

What I also really appreciate about her work is she's included on the mats, descriptions of the species and also texts that talks about why they're endangered.

But I think more importantly, what's being done to help these species and to help bring these species back to areas where there are more depopulated or at risk.

And so there's an element of hope to the exhibition or of action.

It's not all gloom and doom about these different species.

- Kaizer's book, "RARE AIR" can be found where books are sold.

What happens to the glass bottles you recycle?

Well, if it ends up at Remark Glass, it may be reshaped into a treasure.

- There is tons of waste glass around us that's in different forms from sheet glass to bottles, and so much of it is ending up in landfill.

How can we make better use of that?

Welcome to the Bottle underground.

Come on in.

Hi, I'm Danielle Ruttenberg.

I am the co-founder and initiating board member of the Bottle Underground.

We were founded in 2020 and started as a branch off from our creative company here called Remark Glass, where we are upcycling bottles into new wares.

I became interested in using recycled glass because I was formally a glass maker.

I found a ton of interest in the glass industry.

I really love the fire, so that's really the exciting and enticing part.

However, I did see a great deal of waste through that process.

Looking at different ways that we can utilize resources that are right in front of us, that was really how it began.

We started out collecting only 200 pounds of glass a month.

We currently are collecting about 10,000 pounds a month.

Our process starts really at the loading dock.

Basically how we identify what we need to keep for those recirculation projects and for Remark Glass upcycling projects, about 15 to 20% will come through our facility and is earmarked for Remark Glass so turning into products that you see around me, and that's gonna be what we call upcycling.

It is going into our hot glass blowing facility and is being reformed into a variety of different wares from standard barware to custom lighting.

Another 15 to 20% is going to be in that recirculation where it's community organizations or small businesses that have a need for a specific outsize, a mason jar, you know, sausage jar that we see as a good fit to recirculate that specific bottle to their needs.

If you move into this room, we call this the jar room, namely because it's a bunch of jars.

So we have these Tostitos jars and as I mentioned before, Vellum Street Soaps is like our primary recirculating for these jars.

That's a company we've been working with for years.

We have specific jars that are the proper outsize for what they need to put their products in.

And it's a beautiful fit to kind of look at how much we're bringing in out of the community waste stream.

The remaining surplus of the glass that we bring in here, primarily it's gonna be a little thinner quality glass, beer bottles, things of that nature is going to our pulverizer.

And it's becoming what we call an aggregate, a glass aggregate or basically glass sand.

And that process, while it's a little time consuming, we're creating a really valuable resource as sand is one of the highest consumed natural resources that we have and there's definitely a shortage.

So we're seeing a great avenue in which we can produce the sand and it's being used in a variety of green storm water infrastructure projects throughout the city.

Once the bottle makes its way all the way down to Remark Glass, we are then properly cleaning it, taking any labels off that may be there.

And then it may get cut down to a specific height for what we call a prep start to our bottle reblowing process.

Once the bottles are cut down, they would make their way into an electric kiln and they would be brought up to a warm temperature on glass, which is still pretty hot.

After they are at that set temp, we can then pick the bottles up on the end of a steel rod and then take them into our reheating chamber, which is well over 2000 degrees, making the glass juicy and hot and able for us to stretch it, pull it, change it into a custom light fixture, or a really beautiful glass for somebody to drink out of every day.

- Whether you enjoy a pickle with a sandwich or by itself, the folks at Fishtown Pickle Project have some flavors, I'm sure you'll enjoy.

(upbeat music) - Fishtown Pickle Project specializes in handcrafted small batch pickles.

We started completely by accident.

The year that we got married, we gave out Mike's famous pickles to our wedding guests.

We kept it going as a passion project until Mike was unfortunately furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic where we had to make the decision to continue to run with it.

(upbeat music) Pickles have a really long history in our food production timeline.

Before the Industrial Revolution, different cultures were pickling because they needed to make their produce last through the winter climate.

(upbeat music) We like to source locally whenever possible.

It reduces our carbon footprint.

Important for us to be supporting local farms and local businesses as well.

(upbeat music) - We pick our cucumbers up locally.

We wash and sanitize all of our jars, and then the pickles come through our pickle slicer.

(upbeat music) They get packed by hand and then they get brined.

Then labeled, then they sit in our refrigerator for usually about a week until they get off to one of our retailers.

(upbeat music) So some of our top flavors, these ones today are the Habanero Dill.

A personal favorite of mine is the Zesty Sweet Garlic.

- It's a personal goal of ours to be able to support small business and wherever we can support different charities that are close to our hearts in the Preston & Steve's Camp Out For Hunger campaign, Preston Elliot has his own pickle flavor and a portion of profits from every jar sold goes to Philabundance.

(upbeat music) It is also important that people can access our pickles.

We're working on expanding to our regional markets so that we can reach more people and people can enjoy and share pickle love.

- Here's how you can check out Fishtown Pickle Project's pickling classes, and learn about their holiday event, the Feast of the Seven Pickles.

Okay, now from pickles to pumpkins, we wanna welcome Kerri Patton to "You Oughta Know."

Kerri is the founder of Pumpkin And Pine, a full service company that handles seasonal decor for your front door.

Kerri, thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- This is a very small sampling of the kind of work that you do.

- This is.

This would be a small package.

- [Shirley] How did you come up with this idea?

- Pumpkin And Pine started just from a love of holiday decorating and all things fall.

We did some orders last year in 2022 with family and friends that did really well.

And in 2023, we launched our website and opened orders to the public.

- Wow, and do you have a background in design?

- So Pumpkin and Pine, I started with my good friend Kayla, who I met while we were studying architecture at Clemson University.

So our background's not in pumpkins, but we do have some design background.

- And clearly there is a demand for this kind of service because you're done taking fall orders.

- Yes.

- But what tips do you have for folks at home who may wanna try to achieve like a similar aesthetic but may not be going to the level or the extent that you would do?

- So I would say go to your local garden center and pick up five to 10 pumpkins.

The specialty ones are my favorite just 'cause they come in such varieties and different colors and shapes and just play around with them.

Grab some mini pumpkins and gourds to fill in any gaps.

Step back if you like it, great.

If not, just rearrange and really have fun with it.

- And something I learned today is these pumpkins all have different names.

- They do.

They do.

So a regular pumpkin can be called a face pumpkin or a jack-o-lantern pumpkin.

This one right here is called a Long Island cheese and under it is a Blue Doll and we even have a Fairytale down the bottom.

So really fun names.

- Fairytale comes out of the book of Cinderella, right?

- It does, it does.

- So the geographical area that you serve, let's talk about the the area you cover.

- So Pumpkin And Pine is based in Hamilton, New Jersey.

So if you order in Hamilton, you do get free delivery but we do service all of South Jersey and next year we'll be expanding to Central Jersey, Northern Delaware, and all of the Philadelphia area.

- And you mentioned that there are no more fall orders being accepted.

Winter orders, you are offering it, but those are also sold out.

- Yes.

- This is incredible.

- So they sold out very quickly this year.

- But for people to know next year, When should they think about ordering for fall and then for winter?

- So they really need to start thinking right about back to school time when the weather is still about 95 degrees and you're not thinking fall yet, but you can go to our website, pumpkinandpineco.com and join our mailing list.

We take pre-orders in August and September, and then for the winter decor, we'll do that in about the end of September and into October.

- Okay, and the winter decor is going to be made up of what?

Like what will that look like?

- So we make custom wreaths, garlands, and swags that will be made to fit whether it's your front door, your front porch, columns, whatever you want, we will customize it for your space.

- I love this idea.

- Thank you.

- Gosh, full service start to finish.

Kerri Patton, founder of Pumpkin And Pine Company, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- And one more time, her website is pumpkinandpineco.com.

Okay, that is our show.

We hope that you enjoyed it and, "You Oughta Know" will be back here next week.

Goodnight everyone.

This is so nice.

(upbeat music)