One of our many wise participants once told me, “Who you love is your family”.

It was an honor for me to facilitate an interview between two beautiful women who aren’t related to me by blood, but I certainly call family. Maggie Benedette-Smith and Jann Foley came in to celebrate National Midwife Week (October 7 – October 13). I learned that midwifery has always existed in the United States, but was legitimized in the 1920s by Mary Breckenridge, founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. Breckenridge and her staff traveled on horseback or foot to women’s homes over a 700 mile radius in rural Kentucky and dramatically lowered both infant and maternal mortality rates. Read the rest of this entry »

All those beautiful powerful words, they were you!
- Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

The Mill Mountain Players are a theatrical touring program launched in 1999 as a solution for educators in and around Roanoke, Virginia who wanted to expose their students to the theatre-going experience. In addition to serving area schools, the Players perform across the Commonwealth, enabling Mill Mountain Theatre to extend its reach and deepen its artistic and educational impact. Three of the Players – Justin Johnson, Allison Nock, and Michael Stablein – are currently performing their own special version of Cyrano de Bergerac, the classic play written by poet Edmond Rostand.

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The truth is that it is natural, as well as necessary, for every man to be a vagabond occasionally.

- Samuel H. Hammond

Tramps, rogues, and hobos. These are just a few of the names given to people whose lives are characterized by almost continuous traveling. While the term “vagabond” originates as a legal reference to vagrancy, it began to take on different meaning in the 19th century when it became more closely associated with Bohemianism. The critic Arthur Compton-Rickett defined the type as men “with a vagrant strain in the blood, a natural inquisitiveness about the world beyond their doors.”

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Poor houses, or poor farms, were county or town-run residences where people without means were supported at public expense. They were common in the United States beginning in the middle of the 19th century, and were often home to the elderly, the orphaned, and disabled. People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor, an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poor house.

Use of poor houses declined after the Social Security Act took effect in 1935, and most of these residences disappeared completely by the 1950s. Gene Meador came into the MobileEast Booth in Roanoke, Virginia to talk about his experiences at the poor house his family owned and managed when he was a child.

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“I was my father’s partner from age 5.”

Earl Reynolds came to StoryCorps with his daughter, Ashley, to share memories of growing up as a bootblack in his father’s barber shop on Henry Street in Roanoke, Virginia.

Earl remembered shining the shoes of the Godfather of Soul, who advised Earl, “It’s an honorable profession. You just need to think about what else you want to do with your life.”

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“You know, I love spirituals and rock, Sarah Vaughn, Johann Sebastian Bach, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni, just to name a few! ”
— Teena Marie, “Square Biz“

Music has always been a vital part of Nikki Giovanni’s life. Nikki is a poet, mother, professor, activist, Grammy nominee, National Book Award finalist, and a muse/collaborator for many musicians, including Kanye West, Capathia Jenkins, Queen Latifah, and Blackalicious. Nikki stopped by the MobileBooth recently in Roanoke, Virginia (an hour from where she is a professor at Virginia Tech) and remembered a few musically inspired moments in her life.

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Opening day in Roanoke, Virginia was a traveler’s dream! Of course, everybody loves StoryCorps’ Airstream but when you throw in our location at The Virginia Museum of Transportation, and the fact that we had Sharyn McCrumb, author of the New York Times bestseller, St. Dale (that’s Dale Earnhardt, to all the NASCAR uninitiated) and ARCA driver Adam Edwards as our first interview then there is no doubt that MobileEast was ready to roll!

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After spending the summer working in StoryCorps’ Brooklyn office, I gave up my little apartment, sold all my belongings, and hit the road.

Before I left New York many people asked me, “How does the Airstream trailer get from one location to the next?” In the old days (like 3 years ago) the MobileBooth was towed by brave Facilitators and StoryCorps staff in a truck. Today, we hire drivers, who usually come with pets. Mike, our fearless driver and his beefy sidekick Brandy, a 120 pound rottweiler, picked up our roving recording booth Sunday morning from the Basketball Hall of Fame parking lot in Springfield, Massachusetts, and delivered her safely to our new spot in front of the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke, Virginia on Monday afternoon.

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