This June, the MobileBooth is recording stories in Indianapolis, thanks to local radio station partner WFYI.

The StoryCorps MobileBooth outside of WFYI Studios, Indianapolis, IN

In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, StoryCorps Atlanta and the Asian-Pacific American Historical Society sponsored a community listening event called APAs Making Waves: Stories about Love, Family, and Identity by Asian-Pacific Americans in the South.

We played eight stories recorded by Asian Americans living in the South. All of these stories were edited by Dana Goldman and have aired on WABE. Several StoryCorps alumni were also in attendance to shared why they came to StoryCorps and what their experience was like. (more…)

StoryCorps Door-to-Door recently traveled to Syracuse, New York, to record interviews with Central New York Community Foundation, Inc., where we met local artist, Dorothy Riester, and her friend Stephen Waldron. Growing up in the 1920′s, Dorothy decided she wanted to be an artist at age 12. She remembered that as a young adult, she listened to a lecture given by American writer Gertrude Stein and decided to drop out of her liberal arts college. Stein’s words, she says, shaped her life: “If you know what you want to do, do it.” She enrolled in art school and became a sculptor.

Years later, Dorothy and her husband, Robert Riester, stumbled upon a piece of land for sale in Cazenovia, New York. They immediately fell in love with it and began building a home for themselves inspired by the shape of the land itself. As part of a community of artists, Dorothy and Robert opened their property up as a home for the work of their friends, and the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park was born. (more…)

Summer is here, and StoryCorps San Francisco is gearing up for an exciting June! Check out the events below for a preview of what we’re up to this month.

Saturday, June 9 –We kick off a month of events this weekend at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center to celebrate Pride Month at their Annual Pride Party. This year marks The Center’s 10th anniversary, and we’re especially honored to be part of this momentous occasion. This year, we’ll have a listening station featuring stories from our 2011 partnership with The Center. But we’ll also record more stories this year with staff and other community members who have helped make The Center such a vital and supportive institution. Click here for more information and a full line-up of the day’s activities.

Ken Prag (l) and his partner Steve R. Collins (r) shared their story in 2011 and will be featured at this year's Pride Party listening station. Hosted by the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

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Cecil Crawford (l) and Nancy Larum (r) co-teach at Hellgate High School in Montana.

StoryCorps Door-to-Door traveled to Missoula, Montana, to record stories for our National Teachers Initiative. We were hosted by the Graduation Matters Missoula program, and during our stay, we met Cecil Crawford, a Blackfeet Native American teacher at Hellgate High School, and his co-teacher, Nancy Larum.

According to Cecil, he does not teach by giving directions but by telling stories, and in discussing his life’s work, he did just that. Cecil speaks with a calming cadence in his voice, and after our conversation I felt relaxed and overtaken by his infectious serenity. He shared a story of how one night, he dreamt of himself teaching a classroom full of Native American children. He took the dream as a sign and left his reservation to become the first teacher to implement a Native American studies curriculum in a high school outside the Indian reservation. This later became a model for other schools across Montana and other states. (more…)

To kick off the summer season, two miles of Atlanta, Georgia’s Highland Avenue were shutdown to traffic, and people on bikes, rollerblades, scooters, and on foot enjoyed a lovely day outside. Along the route, there were activities, performances, and food trucks — plus StoryCorps Atlanta! (more…)

StoryCorps Door-to-Door headed to Missoula, Montana for the National Teacher’s Initiative through a partnership with Graduation Matters Missoula. Facilitator Luis Gallo and I embarked on a journey into the wilderness. In keeping with the theme of our trip, it was an education. Moose, bald eagles, deer sightings, sweeping vistas of mountains, and rivers coursing through valleys, it felt as far away from our Brooklyn headquarters as one could get. Just as impressive were the teachers, educators, students, and parents we met during interviews at the Missoula Education Association.

Father and son Wayne and Sean Beddow are both teachers and arrived not quite knowing what to expect, but they gradually warmed to the process of telling their story. Over the course of the conversation, their love of teaching, coaching basketball, and their influence on one another became apparent. (more…)

Father Columba Stewart, O.S.B. is used to assumptions. He is Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, a 2011 winner of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. When we met it took all of my power to not ask if his life was anything like an Indiana Jones movie. HMML specializes in preserving early religious manuscripts, keeping digitized copies place far away from the originals to prevent loss in cases of accidental fire or flood.

StoryCorps participants Dr. Patrick Henry (l) and Fr. Columba Stewart, O.S.B. (r)

Fr. Columba assuaged my fears during his conversation with Dr. Patrick Henry. In reality, Fr. Columba and the HMML team spend more time and energy digitally photographing manuscripts and significantly less time hunting down hidden rooms. But this is not to say Fr. Columba hasn’t had that experience too. He told Patrick about on excursion in which he entered a room via a door hidden behind a bookcase, only to find another hidden room…and then another. Indy’s theme music played in my head as I listened to him.

It’s easy to guess why so many of our other participants mentioned Fr. Columba when speaking about HMML. He is passionate about his work with manuscripts and the Benedictine culture, and it’s easy to understand and feel close to the pieces housed at HMML. Think of their importance in literary terms or in religious terms, but the fact remains that at some point in the future, we can all look back and find, safe and sound, a story that was important enough to write down.

In StoryCorps’ case, we’ll find the conversations worth recording.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awards The National Medal to five libraries and five museums for extraordinary civic, educational, economic, environmental, and social contributions to their communities. This award is the nation’s highest honor for museums and libraries, and StoryCorps is proud to record the stories of these distinguished institutions. Click here for a full list of this year’s winners.

Constance Christensen (l) and and her daughter Elizabeth Foster (r)

Constance Christensen is a retired attorney and the mother of four adult children, and one of her daughters, Elizabeth (“Liz”) Foster, jumped at the opportunity to record a conversation with her at Brooklyn Museum this spring.

A big part of Liz and her siblings’ childhood was regular visits to museums with their parents. Connie says she loved art, but she knew that if her children didn’t want to stay at the museum, then she wouldn’t be able to. Connie knew she had to get creative.

“So, I invented games,” she said, and remembered how she asked her children questions, like “Which piece has your favorite color?” until it evolved into a game they called What I’d Take Home.

During the interview, Liz and Connie explained the rules to me. (more…)

Bridging Bay area histories through dialogue: Reverends George Cummings (l) and William McNabb (r)

Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, say Reverends George Cummings and Bill McNabb. This pointed observation is one they witness every week at their respective churches.

Dr. Cummings resides over a predominantly African-American congregation at Imani Community Church in Oakland, and Dr. McNabb’s Piedmont Community Church is in the affluent, predominantly white and Asian-American town of Piedmont. Both California churches are merely six miles from each other, yet in some ways they are worlds apart.

Dr. Cummings and Dr. McNabb met at a community clergy meeting in 2006 and decided to take an unusual leap. They planned a one-time event to bring members of both congregations together and develop what they hoped to be an on-going, deep-reaching partnership between the two churches.

Now, six years into the partnership the sister churches recorded interviews with StoryCorps San Francisco to further their efforts to foster dialogue and sharing. The idea was to encourage members to sit down with one another, share stories about their lives, and reflect on their churches’ partnership. Hosted by the Imani Community Church, several members of the two congregations shared their stories with each other. (more…)

StoryCorps Atlanta had the pleasure of hosting students from Girls Inc., a national youth leadership organization dedicated to providing girls a safe space and after-school activities. Girls Inc. of Greater Atlanta serves over 3,000 girls, aged six to eighteen, with outreach programs, after-school and summer camp programs, and community partnerships throughout the metro area. Their mission: to inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold.

Three middle school students embodying these qualities visited our recording booth for the first time. In addition to helping our visitors record stories, StoryCorps volunteer Amelia Bower and I led the girls in listening and storytelling games and gave them a tour of the WABE/PBA studios to meet the staff and learn how public radio and television work. Although uncertain about what to expect, the girls jumped into recording with enthusiasm and curiosity.

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Facilitator Katherine Brook and I traveled to Wisconsin to learn about the Madison Children’s Museum through its exhibits and the people who make them possible: staff, visitors, donors, and volunteers. The Madison Children’s Museum is one of ten winners of the 2011 Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal, an award given to institutions for their outstanding public programming. One prize received by winners is three days of StoryCorps interviews by way of our Door-to-Door service.

Interview participants painted a picture of a museum that celebrates and learns from its community in myriad ways, from going on cultural tours to dangling cows from the ceiling. The diverse types of learning embraced at the museum are made possible not only by its exhibits but also by the museum’s loyalty to its museum family, be they fiberglass cows, local experts, volunteers, or fourth graders. (more…)

Since November 2010, Lambda Legal has partnered with StoryCorps Atlanta to collect the stories of trans and gender non-conforming individuals, people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. To date, 20 people have shared their stories through Lambda Legal’s Trans Tell Your Story Project.

Holiday Simmons, Lambda Legal’s national community educator, travels the country to inform people of LGBTQ issues. In his trainings for law enforcement officers, healthcare providers, and teachers, he uses audio from the Trans Tell Your Story Project to bring voices of trans and gender non-conforming individuals into each session.

Lambda Legal recently hosted an event to share some of the stories they’ve collected and to encourage others to share their own. After listening to excerpts from the conversations, A.J. Jones, the project’s coordinator, invited several participants to share their experiences of recording their stories.

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When we first walked through the doors of EdVenture last week, co-facilitator Daniel Littlewood and I faced two of the largest feet we had ever seen. We looked at one another and uttered an incredulous, “Whoa!?” We had to investigate. Passing under the archway, we walked into an atrium, and there he was all 40 feet, 17.5 tons of him: Eddie, the worlds largest child (see the slideshow below).

If the museum’s signature exhibit could make us feel like kids again, we could only imagine the wonders it might work on a five year old. I was excited to find out what else this National Medal Award-winning museum had in store. If the world’s biggest boy says one thing about EdVenture, it’s that this is a place that puts kids first. “We were creating a museum that was for children. This is the world on their terms,” said Catherine Monetti, one of the museum’s original designers. Hands-on learning and creating “ah-ha” experiences are keys to this museum’s brand of education.

Eddie is a prime example of this, and he’s more than a giant statue: Eddie is an interactive exhibit. Kids learn how their bodies work while playing in Eddie, crawling through his brain, listening to his heartbeat, and sliding down his esophagus.

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This year, Friendship Baptist Church celebrates its 150th anniversary, and the anniversary committee has been hard at work on sesquicentennial plans, including helping church members pronounce the word that means “150th anniversary.”

The church has come far since its humble beginnings in 1862, when congregants met in a boxcar because they did not have funds to buy land. Both Morehouse and Spelman Colleges held their first classes at Friendship. And Atlanta’s first African-American mayor, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr., was not only raised in the church; his father was one of only six pastors who have served the community in its history.

Many of the church elders remember all of the pastors except the very first, Reverend Frank Quareles, who served until 1881. One important event for the anniversary committee will be the dedication of new tombstones for Reverend Quarles and his wife, whose unmarked graves were discovered at Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery.

The anniversary committee is also collecting oral histories of the church, and Vanessa Brown, a member of the Anniversary Committee, invited church elders to record their memories of Friendship Baptist Church and its leaders with StoryCorps Atlanta. (more…)

Close to one quarter of American high school students drop out before graduation. In Oakland, California, the dropout rate is higher at 35 percent. Last month, Northern California’s KQED hosted it’s first American Teacher Town Hall at Laney College in Oakland. Educators came from across the Bay Area to discuss these high dropout rates and the state of education in their communities – in California and across the nation.

StoryCorps San Francisco was also there to highlight the work we’ve done, locally and nationally with the National Teachers Initiative. For the past year, the National Teachers Initiative has supported the work of teachers nationwide by recording and preserving their stories and broadcasting them on NPR’s Weekend Edition. StoryCorps also supports the American Graduate Initiative by recording stories with public media hubs in communities where the dropout crisis is most acute.

At our table, current and former teachers and students listened to stories we recorded with teachers, including Antero Garcia and Roger Alvarez, Sarah Benko and Meliza Arellano, and Ayodeji Ogunniyi. Town Hall participants also wrote messages of thanks to teachers who have inspired them. (Below are just a handful of those notes.)

Do you have a favorite teacher? Thank them in the comments below!

Mary Mitchell (l) and Betsy Saunders (r) took action to remember entrepreneur Lewis Ginter

The phrase “last will and testament” evoke a lot of different feelings. Beyond the finality of death, there’s the desire to carry out those last wishes. When Mrs. Betsy Saunders and Mrs. Mary Mitchell learned about philanthropist Grace Arents’ will and that her intention to have gardens planted in memory of her uncle, entrepreneur Lewis Ginter, had yet to be carried out, the women were spurred to action. We met Betsy and Mary onsite of an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal awardee, the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, when they participated in StoryCorps.

LGBG sits on an historic property of over 50 acres of beautiful gardens, but the organization brings more than beautiful nature to it’s community: LGBG is a place to volunteer, somewhere to listen to music with the family, and even a good afternoon picnic spot. Its public programming educates the community on gardening and horticulture, allowing youth to realize that, yes, they eat plants.

That’s LGBG today, but back in 1981, 13 years after the city of Richmond took possession of the property, the land looked quite different.

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