Detroit, one of the birthplaces of American industrial capitalism, has also been in many ways one of its earlier deathplaces -- an urban landscape where many houses and lots are abandoned. A conversation with civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs and people she inspires offers a key example of how the urban agriculture movement is reclaiming post-industrial America both physically and spiritually.

Christa Tippett hosts this episode of American Public Media's On Being January 19, 2012.
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"Mike Partain didn’t believe the rumors about a place called Baby Heaven until he visited a Jacksonville, N.C., graveyard and wandered into a section where newborns were laid to rest. Surrounded by hundreds of tiny marble headstones, he started to cry."

"President Obama will not renominate his chosen candidate for assistant secretary of interior for parks and wildlife, who ran into a firm wall of Republican opposition in the Senate."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- The public is asked to comment on the Obama administration's first draft national strategy to reduce the impacts climate change is already having on wildlife, fish and plants and ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them."

"Exxon Mobil agreed Thursday to pay $1.6 million in penalties to the state of Montana over water pollution caused by a pipeline break last summer that fouled dozens of miles of shoreline along the scenic Yellowstone River."

"WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday blocked Vermont from forcing the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor to shut down when its license expires in March, saying that the state is trying to regulate nuclear safety, which only the federal government can do."

"BP is likely to agree next month to pay $20-$25 billion to settle all charges around the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a leading analyst, double the figure the company has set aside and more than other analysts expect."

"STOCKTON, Utah — Gary McCloskey may have destroyed more chemical weapons than any man alive, but he barely reacted when the final weapons from the world’s largest stockpile of warfare agents came out of an incinerator.

"President Barack Obama's re-election campaign sought to manage fallout on Thursday from his decision to nix a new oil pipeline, putting up its first television ad of 2012 to promote his energy record."

Dot Earth's Andrew C. Revkin summarized it best in his account of President Obama's Keystone XL pipeline decision: "How did oil markets react? Zz.z.zz."