This love story begins in, of all places, Las Vegas. “I came to the United States to be an entertainer,” said Sally Habana-Hafner. Sally was an 18-year-old college student in the Philippines when she heard about an audition for a Philippine Festival Show in Las Vegas. Months later she found herself dancing on a Vegas stage. “It didn’t last very long because it was too decent a show.” Sally laughed. Her career as a Vegas showgirl lasted one glorious year in which she got to hang with Elvis and Sammy Davis, Jr. among other Vegas entertainers. Frustrated by the Vegas lights, Sally quit showbiz to go back to college where, as fate would have it, she met her husband, Jim Hafner.

Jim first laid eyes upon Sally at a party for the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. Jim wanted to ask Sally out, but in accordance to Filipino tradition he first asked permission from Sally’s brother-in-law. Six months later they were engaged. Jim’s parents were warm and open to Sally. There were other members of his family, however, that were not quite as gracious. A priest even discouraged Jim from marrying Sally.

“People look at us like the mail-order bride or a military marriage. That was the type of stereotype at that time,” said Sally. These feelings never affected their relationship. Forty-five years, three children, and eight grandchildren later Sally and Jim laugh at the warnings against their “mixed-marriage.”

Dr. Karen Werner is changing the economy of Orange, Massachusetts one hour at a time. Werner and some of her students from Goddard College developed a Time Bank in Orange. A Time Bank deals in a form of alternative currency. The Orange Time Bank, doles out a web-based currency, meaning, that people list the services that can render and the services they wish to receive. One hour of raking someone’s lawn could earn you enough virtual capital for a 60 minute massage. “We are turning strangers into neighbors,” said Werner.

If there is one thing I have learned from the many Great Depression survivors who have shared their stories in the MobileBooth, it is that the kindness of strangers and neighbors pulled many people through tough times. Community is, indeed, something to bank on.

“When they say your work is amazing, what do they mean?”"It is a great feeling for me to know that my walls will be there after I am gone… A good stonemason must really know a rock well…to break one stone into two.”Sonam recently bought an old abandoned motel in South Deerfield and converted it into the Tibetan Plaza, a complex that has a Tibetan import store, organic pizza shop, and bakery. On the site he constructed a beautiful stupa, a sacred Buddhist monument.Ken Schoen, Sonam’s interviewer, invited us to visit his?Jewish bookstore?and site of the Jewish Historical Society of Western Massachusetts where we saw some Jane Trigere’s artwork. After we met Sonam we walked 7 times around the stupa and observed the fast growing lotus pond.These interviews were organized in partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of Western Massachusetts.

Photo: Paul Bloom/Jewish Historical Society of Western Massachusetts

Paul learned to repair umbrellas from his father and opened the family’s first store in Springfield’s Forest Park in 1934. Although Paul’s father died just before opening the store, Paul and his brother decided to move forward with their business plans. Paul, a lawyer by trade, never stopped building his family business. Within a few years, he had started selling luggage and a few years later began selling cameras. Bloom Umbrella & Luggage Company is one of the variations on the business name, location, and merchandise.

Springfield has changed a great deal since the opening of the Bloom family’s first store, but the stories of immigrants, and the children of immigrants is ever present. Sharing bits of wisdom, Paul said, “We should be proud that we are the children of immigrants, who when they had 50 cents, gave 10 cents to the needy.”

As the MobileEast Booth heads out to yet another new destination we wanted to take time to welcome Nina Porzucki and Carl Scott to the road and to share some of our favorite memories of Springfield, Massachusetts! The third largest city in Massachusetts holds the nickname of The City of Firsts, and earns that name because it is considered the first city established in the United States, being the largest metropolitan center on the Connecticut River and in Western Massachusetts.

Some well-known former citizens of Springfield include world jazz musician Taj Mahal, who was raised in Springfield, and Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, who was born here on March 2, 1904. Springfield is also the birth place of basketball and the home of the Basketball Hall of Fame! Downtown on Edwards Street MobileEast found a world class art center comprised of museums that explore fine arts, science, history and that has a sculpture garden paying tribute to Dr. Seuss and his creations. Just a short drive outside the city we found the Montague Bookmill. The mill is a used bookstore housed in an 1842 gristmill, set on the banks of the Sawmill River, a few miles north of Amherst and Northampton. It also houses a cafe and restaurant, all with a gorgeous view of the river below. Montague Bookmill quickly became MobileEast’s home away from home. Other fun excursions included our trip to Schoen Books at the old firehouse in Deerfield and an all too brief visit to the Emily Dickenson Museum in Amherst. With so many other places to go and people to meet we can’t wait to return to Western Mass in November!

“There are people around the world playing basketball of all shapes and sizes.” Following World War II, wheelchair basketball was invented. “One of the sad parts of history is that every time we have a war, there are more folks that suddenly need that diversion and wheelchair basketball has definitely thrived… Try sitting in a chair and throwing a free throw… “During our stay in Springfield the Basketball Hall of Fame held its 2008 Enshrinement Ceremony. This year, 7 players, coaches, and announcers were inducted into the Hall including Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Pat Riley, Cathy Rush, and Dick Vitale.Growing up, Paul went to college basketball games in Boston and to Celtics games with his father, Pierre Lambert, who told him, “A ball is a perfect toy.” Basketball is a perfect example of his words, it is one of the most accessible games, played on courts and streets across the globe. Basketball has grown far beyond the expectation of Dr. Naismith, who first played with two peach baskets and ball that barely bounced.

“It grew out of the sort of spirit and research kind adventurism that Dr. Land prompted,” says John. “Dr. Land, of course, was the founder of Polaroid and was always adventurous in terms of the kinds of things he liked to do with research. And Polaroid film, even though it had always been manufactured very large, was only sold in its largest format of 4 x 5 inches. So Dr. Land got this great idea to show off the quality of the film in its large state, even though it was already made large, and so he commissioned his research and engineering staffs to create a camera that could actually take a picture 20 x 24 inches.”

The camera has been used by a wide variety of artists and photographers including William Wegman, Chuck Close, Sarah Charlesworth, Ellen Carey, Sandi Fellman, Anna Tomczak, Mary Ellen Mark, Amanda Means, Lyle Ashton Harris, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Tim Mantoani and, of course, John and Jennifer themselves. Some well-known subjects photographed with the 20 x 24 camera include the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton, Charles Moore, and Helena Bonham-Carter for Kraken Opus’s Vivian Westwood shoot. Reactions from artists and subjects vary but there is often a sense of wonder at the images generated by the camera and the camera itself. “One artist compared it to photographing with a refrigerator and another artist, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, said it was kind of a combination of an armoire and a Volkswagen, which is kind of endearing,” recalls John. “It can be quite intimidating to have it not only in front of you but to be photographed by it,” says Jennifer. “In fact, last night we worked a benefit for City Harvest and I’d say at least one out of every ten people that came by wanted to actually have there picture taken standing next to the camera.” John agrees, “As if it were a monument of sorts.”

“I was born in Trini Tobago in the West Indies in the Caribbean. I was born in a Muslim family, Muslim religion. Coming out as a transgender person was very difficult at first because I was trying to identify the person I was on the outside, as well as the person I was on the inside. I was born male and, umÖwell, male in the wrong body. I felt that I was a woman trying to get out of a male body,” says DanicaMarie. “I was 8-years-old when I first experimented with my mother’s clothing. I was questioning my own mentality, my own physique, my own beauty. Seeing other kids I grew up with in the Muslim community, if they identified a small way of being male to female, or female to male, they would be punished for it.”

“The first time I tried to communicate [this] was when I first saw my first transgendered female person. Her name was Samantha. She was almost 40-years-old. I talked to her briefly, I told her what I felt, and she first told me, ‘Well, you’re gay,’ ” recalls DanicaMarie. “Then I explained to her more what I was feeling and she said ëNo, then you’re transgender. But you are a very young child to be transgender.’ ”

After struggling through years of discrimination and the death of her close friend, who was also transgender, DanicaMarie made her way to New York City. “I came to the United States when I was very young,” says DanicaMarie. “When I found that my community, my people like myself – gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people – existed in America, I felt like I was in heaven. I could be around them and be myself, and be who I am. Be happy with myself.”

Eileen learned how to tread water at age 28, a week before she took a sailing trip in the Caribbean with friends. On her first day in the water, she was sucked out to sea in a rip current. She remembers hearing her mother’s voice as the hours passed and the sky darkened, “You can do this, you have done hard things before. Remember when you couldn’t skip and I taught you how?”

Eileen and her husband Jamie

Eileen saw some land in the distance and made a flag out of a stick and the ribbon in her hair. After 20 hours treading water, a boat saw her and returned her to shore. When Eileen’s brother flew down to bring her back to Brooklyn and away from the ocean he told her that on the evening of her disappearance, her parents had received the call telling them she was lost at sea and presumed dead. Her mother had stayed up the whole night pacing and talking out loud… “You can do this, you have done hard things before….” Those were the same words Eileen heard as she tried to stay afloat.

“It was a remarkable relationship, to have a mom like that.”

“My poetry always had a private purpose to clean my heart and a public purpose to explore the connections I had with the world. But always, friendship has been central to my life,” says Verandah. “I’ve been educated by my friends. I’ve been fed and conversely fed my friends. I’ve shoveled the barn with my friends, and I really developed a way of working from talking and listening. I have had complete strangers become my friends through sharing my own poems and listening to their words and finding the poetry in it. I was their muse for hire or most often for free, but sometimes for hire. I went from teaching in the schools, which I still do to writing poems to commemorate people’s moments and milestones to working in nursing homes and giving writing workshops in nursing homes,” recalls Verandah.

“I gave all the cagey old ladies who were in this first nursing home in Ludlow, Vermont, they had their TV trays and they had their pencils, and I read them all kinds of poems to get them juiced up, some of mine and some poems that I thought they would greatly like. They were all smiling and nodding and I said and now it’s your turn. They put their pencils firmly on their TV trays you could hear the click, and they said ëNo, we can’t write because we’re old and we have nothing to say and we have shaky hands and what are you gonna do now?’ You know it was way worse than facing a classroom full of recalcitrant hicks because they had my number. And so I said okay, well, talk to me.”

That was just the beginning of a new collaboration between the elderly ladies and Verandah in which she would write down the ladies’ words and create told poems. Since then Verandah has had similar collaborations with other communities through schools, hospitals, prisons and adult literacy programs. “Mainly,” says Verandah, “I wasn’t interested in their information so much, or even in their turn of phrase so much as the passionate recollection, the saying of something they had never told before.”