The Mobile East team was welcomed by North Country Public Radio staffers June Peoples, Ellen Rocco, and Sandy Demarest, as well as several curious folks who braved the rain and cold on our opening day. Our first participants were beloved local character, Forrest ‘Dew Drop’ Morgan and his son Dermott, the youngest of eleven. Forrest’s nickname was given to him by a bully in school who called him “fresh as the morning dew.” In his 85 years, Dew was an Olympic bobsled champion, a World War II bombardier shot down from his plane and held captive by the Russians, and has opened several restaurant businesses in Saranac Lake including the Dew Drop Inn and Morgan’s 11. Long after he left the Booth, stories about Dew kept flowing from the people we’d meet!

“If you could pick a word to dip in gold and give to every child in foster care, what would it be?”

“Love.”

Last week, Jenna Weiss-Berman and Yuki Aizawa traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts (Jenna’s hometown!) to record the stories of foster children and adults formerly in foster care through our wonderful partner organization, Friends of Children, a child advocacy and support group.

Our storytellers spoke with wisdom beyond their years of the reality of being taken from their families and shuffled between foster homes that are often abusive themselves. One young storyteller described his fear of living under a stranger’s roof to “driving a car and losing control.” By the end of each day their stories left us angered, saddened, and with overwhelming respect for the children who end up paying for their parents’ mistakes. The human capacity for forgiveness never ceases to amaze — after surviving all, these children and adults were still sweet, smiling, and warm.

Thanks to all our participants, the Weiss-Bermans for hosting us, and Jane Lyons for organizing the Door-to-Door!

On Sunday, Rose and Yuki recorded at the Casa de Cuentes, a small shotgun house owned by the Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice in San Antonio’s historically Hispanic and Latino Westside neighborhood. The house is also called Casa de la Misericordia because the woman who lived there during the Depression gave food to impoverished people who passed by. Back then, people in the neighborhood ran businesses from their front porches. “The neighborhood was self-sufficient,” explained Amanda, our contact from Esperanza, and it’s this kind of community spirit that Esperanza is reviving in the Westside.

The Casa had a warm, comforting feeling, and participants often stayed late after their interviews or came early to sit and talk in the kitchen. Old black and white blow-ups of beloved places and people from the community hung in each room of the house.

Esperanza is piecing together the history of the Westside by speaking with elders and recording their experiences. Through word of mouth, they found that Ruben’s Ice House next door to the Casa (pictured in the last two slides) was once a popular gathering ground. Esperanza plans to use the now abandoned building to house the oral histories it has collected, including those recorded by StoryCorps. One of the organization’s missions is to preserve historical landmarks, like Ruben’s, from demolition by the city. “Just because they are poor people’s monuments or they’re not big monuments doesn’t mean they’re not important,” said Amanda.

Last weekend Yuki Aizawa and Rose Gorman drove 1,400 miles on Interstate 10 from Los Angeles to San Antonio, Texas. Our Silverado transported us through breathtaking Joshua Tree National Park – whose strange landscape brought to mind Dr. Seuss and The Flintstones – dust storms in New Mexico, and along the border past sprawling Texas cattle farms. On day three, we met up with our Mobile Coordinator, Terry Scott, and our pro driver, Joseph Priest (pictured last two in slide show), who safely delivered the MobileBooth to its new location, steps away from The Alamo in downtown San Antonio.

On Wednesday, StoryCorps facilitators Brianna and Yuki recorded at Keiro, an assisted living facility for the Japanese American community located outside Little Tokyo. Many of the residents are second generation Japanese Americans born in the Los Angeles area, who were relocated to desert internment camps during World War II. Robin Nakabayashi (pictured first in slideshow, with friend and Keiro Administrator, Beverly Ito) is a long-time volunteer at Keiro. He was ten when he and his family were sent to live in a camp built on the Colorado Indians’ reservation near Poston, Arizona. They lived in long barracks made of wood and tar, and grew small gardens in the desert ground in between the rows. When Robin returned to Poston for a reunion many years later, he was surprised to find that the desert landscape where the camps stood was quite lush. The Colorado Indians told him they had learned from the Japanese how to cultivate the dry soil and over the years had created a green landscape out of the once barren area.

Facilitators Brianna Hyneman and myself opened the West MobileBooth’s doors in MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of downtown L.A. Westlake is currently the most densely populated neighborhood in Los Angeles, with most of its community originating from Central America. In the 1980s and 90s, MacArthur Park was notorious for its high crime rate and gang activity. Now the park is a much safer place where people bring their children to play. Soccer fields (just outside our booth) attract hundreds of players and spectators on the weekends, and the police station that once stood watch in the park is no longer in use.

Below: A marker on 6th street describes what once stood in this spot over 150 years ago.

For our Tuesday field recording, facilitators Yuki and Quentin drove two hours southeast of Louisville to Berea College, a unique place to study and live. Berea is a tuition-free university, primarily for students who come from Appalachian communities throughout the US. The college was founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational school in the South. Students can choose to work regular on-campus jobs or study with a master craftsman to learn traditional Appalachian woodwork, pottery, and weaving, which is sold at their campus store. It was hard to leave Berea; it is an institution that doesn’t seem institutional, it just seems like a great place to live and learn. Best of luck to our contact, Tim Jordan, and everyone else in Berea!

A student (above) at work at one of the looms in Berea’s weaving studio (below)

Some scrap fabric from the weaving studio

The library’s sound archivist, Harry Rice, gave us a tour of Berea’s amazing online catalog, which is the most extensive sound archive in Kentucky and houses old field recordings of traditional Appalachian musicians, storytellers, Baptist preachings, and historical Kentucky radio broadcasts. In the photo above, Harry shows us musical notation done by one of Berea’s Appalachian Music Fellows of a traditional fiddle tune that had never been written down before. Many of the recordings were transfered from the original acetate disks to digital, and have a beautiful quality to them.

Listen to the archives here.

A local farmer unloads vegetables grown on the Berea College Farm

The sun sets on twin stone silos on the drive back to Louisville.

The East Booth finds a happy new home in downtown Louisville, KY. Above, buildings along West Main Street are reflected on the many different glass surfaces of the The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, one of our excellent local partners. The Center houses Kentucky’s premiere performing arts spaces, and since we have been parked outside has seen everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev, David Crosby and D.L. Hughley perform inside its shiny walls.

Anita Streeter (left) and Cyd Iyun

Anita brought her friend Cyd to the Booth to tell her how some words Cyd said in passing changed Anita’s life. After graduating law school, Anita was working unhappily at a firm while pursuing her hobby as a seamstress on the side. She made weekly trips to Baer’s Fabrics where she would chat with Cyd at the register. One day Anita asked Cyd why she worked at Baer’s when she could be pursuing her talent for sewing further, and Cyd replied, "I get to see something beautiful everyday." Anita realized she couldn’t say that of her life, and quit the firm to follow her passion for sewing. The two hadn’t seen each other since then until coming to do a StoryCorps interview. Both of them are now professional dressmakers, and get to see beautiful things every day.?

Pictured last is the Thompson family: Robert, Sloane, and pint-size participant Matthew Thompson, two months. Waking up just as his parents’ interview was finishing up, Matthew was able to dispense some wise gurgles to his future self, who will no doubt appreciate it!