How do you end up going into business with your life partner? For Paula and Justin King, the couple behind Rexhill Studio, the decision came many years after they first met, as their separate interests and skillsets gradually converged in their adopted home city.

Paula grew up in NJ, attended NYU and lived in the East Village in the 90s. Justin grew up in Ohio, took an early interest in art and dreamed of escaping the Midwest. They both ran away to the West Coast, each for their own reasons, and met in Portland where they lived for years before moving back East and putting roots down in Beacon.

Over time they realized they had complementary skills - Justin a woodworker of steadily improving ability, Paula a gifted interior designer with the operational knowledge to maintain books and oversee a shop. Thus was born Rexhill, a mom-and-pop cabinetry and interior design studio that has found a niche by resisting the prevailing forces of our economy.

In an age when most manufacturing is modular and mass produced, Justin and Paula have embraced a way of working that is custom and small-scale and local. And they've done it together while raising kids, something common in bygone times but very rare these days.

Not sure what to do with your one precious existence? Good news from the true-life adventures of Vibeke Saugestad: You don't have to pick one thing.

Best known as a power-pop singer-songwriter, Vibeke is also an accomplished literary translator, multi-instrumentalist, puppet-maker and ventriloquist.

"I don't stand still for long," she says in our interview.

Vibeke's music career started in the early 90s when she was the teenage frontwoman for Weld and other bands. She kept making music for the next 35 years in various groups ranging from the mellow, loungy Thinkerbell to her most recent combo, the hard-driving Vibeke Saugestad Band, featuring an all-star group of Beacon-based musicians. Another local project, The Wynotte Sisters, pairs Vibeke with Sara Milonovich and Daria Grace (both former Beaconites guests).

Outside of her music, Vibeke has built a career as a translator, creating Norwegian versions of English language books, including "Johnny Cash: The Life" by Robert Hillburn and Booker prize-winner "The Sellout" by Paul Beatty.

It doesn't stop there. During the pandemic, Vibeke took up ventriloquism and created Punguin, a conceited but adorable animal who spreads joy on Instagram at @the-punguin. (Penguin appears in this interview.)

For more episodes and community updates, visit Beaconites.com or contact Zach at zach@beaconites.com.

Photo credit: Ken Fox

Beth Poague's life changed when she and her then-husband Jim learned that their youngest son Finn had a rare genetic disorder. Their pace of living shifted, they sought community with other families going through the same thing, and as Finn got older, Beth channeled her energy into advocating for changes to Beacon's schools on her son's behalf.

First at JV Forrestal and later at Rombout Middle School, Beth pushed for — and got — more integrated classrooms and school activities that allowed kids with disabilities to learn alongside typical kids. She believes the work she and other parents did improved outcomes not only for their special needs kids but also for the "normal" kids.

"All of us get accommodated all the time, right?" she says in our interview. "I am wearing eyeglasses right now. That's an accommodation for my disability of my sight. But eyeglasses are seen as something normal, so we don't ever think of it as an accommodation. But accommodations for disability are all over the place. Every single one of us needs help. This idea that we're supposed to muscle through everything and pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and be independent and not need anything from anybody is harming all of us."

Also in this episode, Beth talks about the Wheel of Consent, a system for identifying and communicating needs for the purpose of clear communication, healthy boundaries and personal empowerment. Beth teaches classes and facilitates workshops about the Wheel of Consent. More on her website at BethPoague.com.