Facilitator Jeremy Helton listens to Michigan on opening day in Grand Rapids

With the first days of fall, the East MobileBooth headed west from Akron, Ohio to Grand Rapids, Michigan—the last stop on an unofficial “Great Lakes Tour” that also featured Erie, Pennsylvania and Rochester, New York.

The MobileBooth is settled on the banks of the Grand River just outside The Public Museum. Among other artifacts, the museum houses a 1920’s Driggs Skyla biplane. Grand Rapids native John Shipman (below) came to StoryCorps to describe his first taste of flight in one of those planes as a ten-year-old farm kid growing up during the Depression. Now, John likes to visit the museum just to see the plane and get lost in the memories it calls up.

We look forward to sharing more memories during the next few weeks in Michigan!

We kicked off a month of recording in our host city of  Berlin with an ice cream social in Veteran’s Park, hosted by station partner New Hampshire Public Radio.

With cones of “Moose Tracks”-flavored ice cream, we welcomed people of all ages to see the MobileBooth and sign up to record a story.  Above, StoryCorps’ Sara Esrick chats up three Berlin Junior High eighth graders.

The MobileBooth East team will be in Berlin until June 25.  We look forward to listening to stories from young and old alike and to soaking up the fresh air of summer in the North Country.

The sun came out just in time for opening day and we were also greeted by our host station, KCPW, press, SLC mayor Ralph Becker (below) and most importantly, cupcakes. Check out great images of StoryCorps opening day from the local perspective here.

Our booth is parked in Washington Square–the heart of downtown, right across from Salt Lake’s inspiring central public library–much more than a place to house books, it is a real community gathering place where people meet for coffee, language exchange and public readings; kids run in the sun-dappled light under living trees in the children’s section and visitors take in the city’s signature mountain views from the rooftop patio.

Thanks to the library, within our first few days we heard the story of Melvin Grossman as told to his brand-new friend, Laurie Reed (below). They met one another at a recent StoryCorps volunteer gathering hosted by the Library. As Laurie puts it, she and Melvin have little in common–she comes from a long line of Western pioneers and he grew up on the streets of Brooklyn as the child of Polish Jewish immigrants. But as soon as they met, Laurie was eager to learn more so she invited him to make a StoryCorps recording with her to honor his family’s legacy as well as his own experiences.

We look forward to hearing more from family and friends old and new during our six-week stay in SLC.

On February 26th, we opened the booth in downtown Salinas, Steinbeck’s birthplace and “America’s Salad Bowl”–the surrounding land produces most of the greens consumed in the U.S. On Steinbeck’s 107th birthday, we found ourselves in the midst of the Salinas farmers market between tables of local produce, and the balloons and cake at the nearby National Steinbeck Center.

Among the stories shared in the booth so far were the recollections of Doris and Joe Bragdon (pictured below), “Okies” who, like the Joad’s in Grapes of Wrath, made their way west from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl to find work in California, often living on river banks or in government-funded tent camps.

Joe remembered visiting Doris after a day working on cannery row and having to keep himself–and the strong smell of sardines–out on the porch.

In a place known for its artichoke, garlic, spinach and strawberry production we have heard from contemporary farm workers and labor activists as well as those whose lives intersected with the labor history of the place.

Carmen Obeso told her granddaughter, Carmela Moreno (pictured above) about the time Cesar Chavez stopped by the house for a haircut and ended up staying the night.

We look forward to the next few weeks of hearing about the experiences that converge in this fertile place.

Little more than a hundred years ago, Ybor was mostly swamp until Cuban cigar factories set up shop. Casey’s great grandfather, Casimiro Hernandez, quickly opened up the Columbia in 1905. Back then it was a working man’s lunch counter serving up “the taste of home” to factory workers, including arroz con pollo, plátano frito, ropa vieja, and eventually the “Cuban.” The sandwich layers smoked ham, pork and swiss cheese with salami (a nod to Ybor’s Italian immigrants), German pickles and mustard on freshly baked bread the Columbia gets fresh every day from the same bakery it did more than a century ago.

In the past hundred years, a lot has changed in Ybor and at the Columbia. Six-lane highways roar through Ybor and the Columbia, a one-time humble lunch counter is now a dining palace with multiple elegant rooms and franchises in several other cities. But the menu, down to the recipes themselves, remains largely unchanged. “When we want to go forward, we usually look back,” says Casey. The cigar factories and social clubs may be gone but it is still possible to taste old Ybor.

After Casey’s StoryCorps recording, the MobileBooth East team headed to the nearby Columbia to check things out. And it was bien rico.

–From Origin by Moana

Voices from Inside is an organization based in Western Massachusetts that brings writing workshops to women in prison and formerly incarcerated women. Moana, who participated in the program and now teaches the workshops, came to StoryCorps to record a conversation with her daughter. A keeper of journals her whole life, Moana wrote her first poem in prison and found it to be “an avenue to speak deeply about yourself which doesn’t expose too much of yourself.”

_{Moana and daughter Jillian after making her recording in Greenfield, MA}

Several states away in Tampa, Florida, poet Lizz Straight hosts a weekly radio show called “Poetry Is . . .” Lizz learned that her voice had been reaching a dedicated listenership at a nearby state prison when she received an invitation from the inmates to perform her poetry. At her first performance, she stood alone at the microphone, looking out at the 1,400 prisoners gathered in the yard to listen who appeared like a “sea of orange.” Their attention and enthusiasm helped inspire Lizz to organize an annual tour to multiple facilities around Florida with a group of poets. These experiences have reminded her of the deep connection between word and empowerment: “A lot of people firmly believe that what we speak out into the world comes to fruition. Poets are powerful people in the world . . . we tell the stories . . .”

_{Lance Newman and Lizz Straight at the MobileBooth in Tampa, FL}

Kelly, an Iowa University graduate, left her desk to join an effort to protect university buildings from the water. “People of different backgrounds and different stories dropped everything and started working together. An inmate was handing a sandbag to an Amish man, who was handing a sandbag to a child, who was carrying it to a college student. I don’t think there are many situations that would bring people together like that . . .”

Donald told friend and coworker Carol about pitching in to get the city ready for the water. “I found myself filling sandbags . . . two people away from a neighbor of mine . . . somebody that I’m not particularly crazy about. I’m a cyclist and he’s sort of a sociopathic driver. But there’s a time and a place to carry on that battle and it’s not when you’re sandbagging, it’s not when the spillway at the dam is about to spill over. I sort of looked over at him and sort of smiled nervously. He hasn’t tried to run me down with his Jeep Cherokee since!”

Dan had just moved to Iowa City when the floods hit and told his friend Kristi about sandbagging with neighbors and strangers. “One of the good things that came out of this, one of the nice ëWelcome to Iowa’ things about this for me, was there was a real sense of shared purpose. People did come and do things for no immediate reward . . . just because it was the right thing to do. I don’t know if that’s a university thing or an Iowa thing, or a just human thing. That impressed me.”

The honesty and warmth of these participants in sharing their stories certainly impressed us.

As a Facilitator, I have been present for a number of conversations with people experiencing memory loss as part of the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative. Sometimes these conversations are an opportunity for the person with memory loss to share his or her stories, but it is not always so straightforward. In one conversation, a son and his father sat with their sensational mother and wife, whose stroke had left her unable to speak more than a few words. She listened to her husband recount their four year courtship through letters while he served in World War II.

Her son also remembered her devotion to her children and the love for theater she instilled in him. She was quiet and unresponsive during the interview but dazzled everyone near the end with a smile and the words, “Them were the days.” While her voice barely registers on the recording, she is present in the voices of loved ones as they narrate her story. She gently asked him what his very favorite song was, aware that he might not know. He thought for a moment and then replied it was one from his grandmother that goes, “When I get [sic] too old to dream / I’ll have you to remember.”

The words, originally from a love song written by Oscar Hammerstein in 1934, were unexpectedly poetic in the moment. They capture the inevitability of loss associated with aging and also the way that the memory of a loved one endures as other details fade. This is something I have often seen as people make their recording; an individual may have difficulty remembering many details or events yet they are confident in expressing love for the person sitting across from them.

Beyond that is the fear that eventually even this relationship will be forgotten, along with the details of a person’s life–the very things that make up a personal history and a personality. In this case, it is the spouse, friend, son or daughter who carries the stories and becomes the one “to remember.”