The Wooster Group, perched on a street corner in Soho in downtown New York, at the forefront of experimental theater for some 40 years. Singular, rigorous, flamboyant. Their startling performances unravel and transform classic texts by Brecht, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Eugene O?Neill... along with their own striking original works. Six Obies, nine Bessies, accolades from around the world as they tour their works through Europe and Asia.

Theater. One of the more ephemeral of art forms. How to preserve the work, chronicle it, archive it for the ages? Yes, there are scripts, props, sets, costumes ? a pair of muddy shoes from a 1981 production of Route 1 & 9. But what if you're experimental theater? Devoted to process, improvisation, the dense layering of ideas and texts and sound and image, performances ever-changing? Obsessed with preserving everything?every rehearsal, every production meeting, every performance. How do you catalog something in a constant state of flux?

Clay Hapaz entered the universe of The Wooster Group as an intern in 1992. In 2000 he became their official archivist.

Voices you?ll hear include Clay Hapaz, Kate Valk, Frances McDormand, Hilton Als, Peter Sellars, Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) and Evan Jacoby in collaboration with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Mixed by Jim McKee.  

Special Thanks: Clay Hapaz, Kate Valk, Frances McDormand, Juliet Lashinsky-Revene, Hilton Als, Peter Sellars, Fran & Kate?s Drama Club and Elizabeth LeCompte. 

Music: Matt Dougherty and The Wooster Group?s archive. 

Thanks also to Lumi Tan, Lewanne Jones and Claire Maske.

Support for the Stories comes from The National Endowment for the Arts & Listener Contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions (Many thanks)

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia Podcast Network on PRX. Thanks for listening

On Sunday, December 19, 2021, The Cleveland Clinic and five other major health care institutions in Northeastern Ohio took out a full page ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the largest newspaper in the region. Simple and stark, the page was blank, save for the word?HELP?written in bold black letters.

Today the health care system of the region is nearing its breaking point with over 1700 hundred healthcare givers in the area out either with COVID-19 and its variants or in quarantine from having been exposed. Ohio is one of six states accounting for more than half of the nations? recent COVID hospitalizations.  Over 55% of Ohioans are unvaccinated and it is mostly unvaccinated people filling the hospitals there.

In the first year of the pandemic we presented the story The Great Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic, centered in this same part of Ohio.  When we saw the word HELP we thought it was time to reprise this story and shine a light on a time in the pandemic when people pulled together to help keep one another safe.

The story begins In April 2020. The pandemic is roaring, PPE is scarce and the supply chains are breaking down. A New York Times headline catches our eye: ?Abe Make a Sewing Frolic? ? In Ohio The Amish Take on the Coronavirus. This isolated, centuries-old, self-reliant community was rising to the occasion and collaborating with the outside world to fill the PPE needs of the massive Cleveland Clinic and beyond.

Artist Laurie Anderson helps narrate this story produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Outskirts Productions, designer Stacy Hoover, and producer Evan Jacoby.
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She rose every day at dusk and rehearsed, performed, ate and drank until dawn. Then slept all day, woke up and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang came from a moment of her life on the streets of Paris. She would tell her composer and musician lovers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture and they would put music and words to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet, some of France?s great musicians and writers recall their nights with Edith Piaf.

The Nights of Edith Piaf was produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Don Drucker, mixed by Robin Wise for Soundprint in collaboration with Raquel Bitton, who hosts and translates the program.

Hidden Kitchens, the duPont-Columbia and James Beard Award winning radio series on NPR?s Morning Edition, explores the world of unexpected, below the radar cooking, legendary meals and eating traditions ? how communities come together through food.

With host Frances McDormand this collection of stories chronicles kitchen cultures, past and present including: An Unexpected Kitchen?The George Foreman Grill; Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere?A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen; A Prison Kitchen Vision; the Ojibwe Harvest on Big Rice Lake; Hidden Kitchen Calling from from around the country, and more.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and Jay Allison and mixed by Jim McKee. Made possible by in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and contributors to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

One hundred-twenty-five years after he was arrested for sitting down in a whites-only train car, Homer Plessy may be pardoned for his crime. In 1896 his landmark case, Plessy V. Ferguson, went before the Supreme Court which ruled to uphold "separate but equal" racial segregation which remained in effect until 1954.

In June,1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed race shoemaker in New Orleans, was arrested, convicted and fined $25 for taking a seat in a whites-only train car. This was not a random act. It was a carefully planned move by the Citizen?s Committee, an activist group of Free People of Color, to fight a new law being enacted in Louisiana which threatened to re-impose segregation as the reforms made after the Civil War began to dissolve.

The Citizen?s Committee recruited Homer Plessy, a light skinned black man, to board a train and get arrested in order to push the case to the Supreme Court in hopes of a decision that would uphold equal rights. Homer?s case was defeated 7 to 1. The case sharply divided the nation racially and its defeat ?gave teeth? to Jim Crow.

The ?separate but equal? decision not only applied to public transportation it spread into every aspect of life ? schools, public toilets, public eating places. For some 58 years it was not recognized as unconstitutional until the Brown V. Public Education case was decided in 1954.

Homer Plessy died in 1925 and his conviction for breaking the law remained on his record. Now, 125 years after his arrest, the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously to recommend that Homer Plessy be pardoned for his crime. The pardon was spearheaded by Keith Plessy, a descendent of Homer Plessy, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great, great granddaughter of John Howard Ferguson, the convicting judge in the case. The two have joined forces digging deep into this complex, little known story ? setting the record straight, and working towards truth and reconciliation in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the schools of New Orleans and across the nation.

The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation is responsible for erecting plaques throughout New Orleans commemorating African American historic sites and civil rights leaders. This episode also delves into the story of one of these markers commemorating the integration of the McDonogh 19 Elementary School by three 6 year old African American girls in 1960.

Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather, the Reckoning at Standing Rock?a journey into the deep rich world of photographer Camille Seaman.

Born to a Native American father and African-American mother, Camille Seaman has been bearing witness and sounding the alarm through her powerful, other worldly photographs for more than 20 years. Her photographs and vivid stories document her journeys to the Arctic and Antarctic over the past two decades, her work as a storm chaser in the midwest, her documentation of the Standing Rock water protectors, and her ongoing project ?We Are Still Here,? photographing Indigenous people around the country, in all walks of life, along with messages to their future ancestors.

Camille was raised by her Shinnecock grandparents in Long Island and inspired by her grandfather?s teachings about our interrelatedness with nature. She attended the ?Fame? High School of Music and Performing Arts in New York City, living from couch to couch, working as a bicycle message and a one-hour photo lab operator.  Her award winning photographs have been published in National Geographic, Time, Newsweek and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. She is a TED Senior Fellow and a Stanford Knight Fellow, and she was honored with a one person exhibition, "The Last Iceberg" at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C.

The Kitchen Sisters interviewed Camille Seaman as part of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music?s 2021 Season. Her imagery was featured at the Festival as part of a piece entitled MELT, a lament on climate change with music composed by Sean Shepherd.

Julia Morgan, the first woman architect to be licensed in California, designed over 700 buildings in California including Hearst Castle in San Simeon. Despite her prolific career her architectural genius was overlooked by history for almost 100 years before she posthumously earned the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.

Morgan was the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. She designed many buildings serving women and girls, including a number of YWCAs, Women?s Clubs and buildings for Mills College. She pioneered the use of reinforced concrete in many of her buildings, a material that proved to have superior seismic performance in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.

Julia Morgan?s almost forgotten story has been lovingly researched and passed down over the years by a remarkable linage of ?Keepers? and is chronicled in ?Finding Julia Morgan,? the pilot episode of New Angle: Voice, a podcast about the lives and careers of pioneering Women in Architecture. Produced by Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, directed by Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA, and radio producer Brandi Howell.

The Braveheart Women?s Society, a group of Yankton Sioux grandmothers and tribal elders, have re-established an almost forgotten coming of age ritual for young girls?the Isnati, a four day traditional ceremony on the banks of the Missouri River in South Dakota. This year the 24th Isnati ceremony took place.

Eleven summers ago The Kitchen Sisters were invited to document this ceremony for our Hidden World of Girls Series. It was a mind expanding experience.

The grandmothers, mothers, aunties and older sisters teach the girls to set up their own teepee, collect traditional herbs and flowers used for remedies. The girls are not allowed to touch food or feed themselves for four days; they are fed and given water by their mother or other women at the ceremony. They are being treated as babies for the last time in their lives. Throughout the days, the elders talk to the girls about modesty, courtship, pregnancy ? and suicide, a serious problem on the reservations. One of the grandmothers, Theresa Heart, makes each girl a special dress. On the last day of the ceremony, the girls, one at a time, go into the teepee with their mother or auntie who bathes them, dresses them, does their hair, and paints their forehead. The elder tells the girl stories about what she was like as a baby, how beautiful she is and about the hopes and promises for her future.The girls prepare sacred ceremonial food and feed their community. She is given a new name and is presented to the the community as a woman.

We hear from grandmothers Faith Spotted Eagle, Theresa Heart, and Madonna Thunder Hawk who speak about Indian boarding schools, activism, and the importance of re-establishing traditions and rituals in their community.

Special thanks to the grandmothers, Brook Spotted Eagle and all the young women who have participated in the Isnati Coming of Age Ceremony. Thanks also to the WoLakota Project.

Betty Reid Soskin, the nation's oldest serving Park Ranger, works at the Rosie the Riveter Home Front World War II National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. Her tours and talks are hot ticket items. As a Black woman who worked in the segregated war effort, her perspective helps reveal a fuller, richer understanding of the World War II years on the home front as experienced by women and people of color.

In celebration of Betty Reid Soskin?s 100th year we?ve curated a kind of mix tape of Betty stories?stories gathered and preserved by producers and archivists over the years.

Betty was born September 22, 1921. Her Creole / Cajun family was from New Orleans and her great grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846. Betty grew up in Oakland in the 1920s and 30s, raised four children in the highly segregated Diablo Valley area where the family was subject to death threats. During WWII she works as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36, a Jim Crow all black union auxiliary. She and her first husband, Mel Reid, owned one of the first Black record shops west of the Mississippi located in Berkeley. Betty is an activist, a singer, songwriter, poet musician. She was a Field Representative for California State Assembly women Dion Aroner and Lonnie Hancock.

Special thanks to: This is Love Podcast and creators Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer; The San Francisco Public Library and Shawna Sherman of the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library; and A Lifetime of Being Betty, a Little Village Foundation recording release produced by Mike Kappus. Thanks also to Betty?s son, musician and songwriter Bob Reid.

An intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of The World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood, through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voicemail messages and interviews. The Sonic Memorial Project was produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with NPR, independent radio producers, artists, writers, archivists, historians and public radio listeners throughout the country.

The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series. We opened a phone line on NPR for listeners to call in with their stories and audio artifacts relating to the Sept. 11 attacks and the history of the World Trade Center. Hundreds of people called with testimonies and remembrances, music and small shards of sounds.

Combining interviews, voicemail messages, audio contributions from listeners, oral histories, home videos and recorded sounds of all kinds, the Sonic Memorial Project team created a series of stories for broadcast on NPR?s All Things Considered.

Now, these stories and contributions from listeners across the country can be heard at the Peabody Award-winning website SonicMemorial.org where you can explore the archive, contribute your own sounds and stories, and immerse yourself in the Sonic Browser, an interactive soundscape of stories and audio fragments.

In the early morning hours of August 16, 2020, 12,000 lightning strikes exploded across northern California, igniting more than 585 wildfires. In the Santa Cruz Mountains scattered blazes grew into one massive burning organism ? The CZU August Lightning Complex Fire ? eating all in its path, scorching some 86,000 acres, destroying over 900 homes and Big Basin Redwoods, California?s first state park. A year later the fire is still burning deep in some of the roots and stumps of ancient trees.

In the aftermath, The Kitchen Sisters turned their microphones on the region, looking for what was lost and what has been found since lightning struck.

This story grew out of a collaboration with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. People who lost their homes in the blaze were invited to bring in artifacts found in the ashes to be photographed by award winning photographer Shmuel Thaler and interviewed by The Kitchen Sisters about the fire, their homes, the environment, their lives. These stories and photographs are part of an exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and mixed by Jim McKee in collaboration with Grace Rubin, Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton.

Special thanks to photographer Shmuel Thaler, The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, The Amah Mutsun Land Trust and Stewardship Program, UCSC Professor Dana Frank, California State Parks, Mark Hylkema, Martin Rizzo Martinez, Jennifer Daly, and all of the many who shared their stories for the historical record.

With support from The California Humanities and The National Endowment for the Arts.

John Steinbeck called it the ?Mother Road.? Songwriter Bobby Troup described it as the route to get your kicks on. And Mickey Mantle said, ?If it hadn?t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.? For the Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s, for the thousands who migrated after World War II, and for the generations of tourists and vacationers, Route 66 was ?the Way West.?

Route 66, the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in America for almost fifty years. From Chicago, it ran through the Ozarks of Missouri, across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, up the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, and down into California to the Pacific Ocean. The first road of its kind, it came to represent America?s mobility and freedom?inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show.

Songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit Get Your Kicks on Route 66; Gladys Cutberth, aka Mrs. 66 and members of the old ?66 Association? talk about the early years of the road. Mickey Mantle explains ?If it hadn?t been for US 66 I wouldn?t have been a Yankee.? Stirling Silliphant, creator of the TV series ?Route 66? talks about the program and its place in American folklore of the 60s.

Studs Terkel reads from ?The Grapes of Wrath? and comments on the great 1930s migration along Highway 66. We hear from Black and white musicians including Clarence Love, head of Clarence Love and his Orchestra, Woody Guthrie, and Eldin Shamblin, guitar player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys?who remember life on the road for musicians during the 1930s. We travel the history of the road from its beginnings as ?The Main Street of America,? through the ?Road of Flight? in the 1930s, to the ?Ghost Road? of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and road side attractions of another era.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and narrated by actor David Selby.

Today we?re thinking about Pack Creek Ranch in southern Utah and an incredible archive of material, gathered by river guide and environmental activist Ken Sleight, that was consumed by fire in early June, 2021.

The archive held over 50 years of photographs, writings, and correspondence chronicling Ken Sleight?s years of guiding on the Colorado River, his fight to stop the damming of Glen Canyon and the filling of Lake Powell in the 1950s and 60s, and his close friendship with Edward Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench gang. Ken is the inspiration for Abbey?s character Seldom Seen Smith.

In honor of Ken Sleight and all who are out there working to save our planet we share again ?Cry me a River? ? the dramatic stories of three pioneering river activists?Ken Sleight, Katie Lee, and Mark Dubois and the damming of wild rivers in the west.

Katie Lee, born in 1917, a former Hollywood starlet, ran the Colorado River through Glen Canyon long before it was dammed, and in 1955 was the 175th person to run the Grand Canyon. An outspoken conservationist, singer and writer, she spent her life fighting for rivers.

Mark Dubois, co-founder of Friends of the River, Earth Day and International Rivers Network, began as a river guide who opened up rafting trips to disabled people in the 1970s. Dubois protested the damming and flooding of the Stanislaus River by hiding himself in the river canyon and chaining himself to a rock as the water rose in 1979.

We thank producer, river activist and ?Keeper,? Martha Ham for her inspiration, her work on this story, and for chronicling Ken Sleight?s life and world on the river. This piece is part of Stories from the Heart of the Land, a series featuring intimate stories from around the world about the human connection to land and landscape, produced by Atlantic Public media and supported by The Nature Conservancy. Special thanks to Jay Allison and Emily Botein.

In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 95,000 names. Gert never planned it this way, but over the decades she has become the Keeper of the Quilt and has stewarded it, repaired it, tended it, traveled with it and conserved it for some 33 years. Gert knows the power of sewing.

In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Gert was one of the first Bay Area citizens to begin sewing masks?PPE for nurses and health care workers who were lacking proper protection?masks she made from fabric left over from the making of the AIDS Quilt. The comfort, outrage and honoring of an earlier pandemic being used to protect people from a new one.

In January of 2020 The AIDS Memorial Quilt, now part of The National AIDS Memorial, returned home to the Bay Area after 16 years in Atlanta. It took six 52-foot semis to get it there. The over sixty tons of quilt, is made up of about 48,000 panels, each 3 x 6 feet, the size of a grave. The extensive AIDS Archive, which Gert gathered, collected and protected since its earliest days, is now part of The American Folklife Center at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

This piece features stories of Gert McMullin and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco, Harvey Milk and The White Night Riots and more. With interviews with LGBT Rights activist Cleve Jones who worked with Harvey Milk and conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and John Cunningham, Executive Director of the National AIDS Memorial.

Fifty years ago, a group of some of the top musicians from the United States ? Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, Santana and more -? boarded a plane bound for Ghana to perform in a musical celebration that was dubbed the ?Soul to Soul Festival.? Thousands of audience members filled Accra?s Black Star Square for a continuous 15 hours of music. The festival was planned in part for the annual celebration of Ghana?s independence, but also as an invitation to a ?homecoming? for these noted African-American artists to return to Africa. This episode revisits the famed music festival on its 50th anniversary and explores the longstanding legacy of cultural exchange with African diasporans originally set forth in the 1950s by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. Noted musicologist John Collins, poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji, concert goers and more.

Produced by Brandi Howell for Afro Pop USA.

We?re excited about The Genius Generation, a new podcast hosted by Danni Washington, and we want you to get in on it. The Genius Generation ? innovative kids, tweens and teens who are making discoveries, taking on the issues and problems they see around them and inventing new solutions using science.

Host Danni Washington is a young science communicator dedicated to inspiring and educating youth about all things science. Danni, the first African American woman to host a Science Television Show in the US, interviews these young problem solvers and inventors and shares their stories of innovation and inspiration.

Young people are sounding the alarm, not accepting things as they are, and using their smarts and ingenuity to invent the change they want to see.

Featuring an interview with host Danni Washington and an episode from The Genius Generation Season 1 - the story of Luna Abadia the 16 year old founder of the Effective Climate Action Project.

The Genius Generation. A new podcast from TRAX and PRX.

?A blue note in a minor key?America has its secret sonic weapon?Jazz.?

That was the headline in 1955 when the United States sent its top musicians overseas to promote democracy. They called them the Jazz Ambassadors?Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Dave Brubeck.

Today, in honor of Dave Brubeck month (May 4 is Dave Brubeck day ? that?s 5/4 named for the 5/4 time signature of take 5) the story of Dave Brubeck and the Jazz Ambassadors. In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet embarked on a tour of Europe and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

And a special interview with Dave Brubeck?s sons, Dan and Chris Brubeck and what it was like growing up with their very unusual and genius father. Excellent musicians in their own right, the two share intimate memories of their father and his legendary contributions to modern jazz.

Featuring interviews with Keith Hatschek, Program Director for Music Management and Music Industry Studies at the University of Pacific; and Mike Wurtz, Assistant Professor and Head of Special Collections and Archives at the Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of Pacific Library. The archival recording of Dave Brubeck is from his interview with Monk Rowe from the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College.

Produced by Brandi Howell for The Echo Chamber Podcast.

Lured in by a blackboard sign on the street in Davia?s neighborhood announcing ?Spotlight on Black Entrepreneurs,? we enter the creative and growing world of Black-Owned Pet Businesses.

Lick You Silly dog treats, Trill Paws enamel ID Tags, The Dog Father of Harlem's Doggie Day Spa, gorgeous rainbow beaded Dog Collars from The Kenya Collection, Sir Dogwood luxurious modern dog-wear.

?The dog training world?it?s a white dominated space. It?s kind of male dominated, too,? says Taylor Barconey of Smart Bitch Dog Training in New Orleans.  ?On our profile on Instagram we have Black Lives Matter, it?s been there for a year now. Before 2020, we would have not felt comfortable putting that up at risk of losing our business because people would have blacklisted us. But now, we feel like we can finally breathe and be open about things that really matter to us?speaking out against racism and not feeling shy about it.?

Chaz Olajide of Sir Dogwood wasn?t finding communities of pet owners or pet businesses owned by people of color. ?I did a deep dive into the statistics ?I just wanted to see if maybe I was an outlier, like maybe the reason why I?m not seeing more diversity in these companies is because maybe the demand isn?t out there. Actually, you know, that?s not really the case.?

Brian Taylor, owner of Harlem?s Doggy Day Care lost both his uncle and long time mentor to Covid. During the pandemic his business slumped by 80%. So with some help from his pet parents and supporters he decided to hit the road with ?The Pup Relief Tour offering grooming services to anyone going through rough times and in need. ?All together we had about 63 African American dog groomers that went on tour with us across the country and we groomed over 829 dogs.?

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Black-owned pet business entrepreneurs. There are tons more across America and you can support their businesses and services. House Dogge in LA ? artisanal dog tees, hoodies, toys ? committed to helping unwanted, neglected and abused dogs. Dr. Kwane Stewart, an African American veterinarian who walks skid row in downtown LA tending the unhoused dogs of unhoused people. Fresh Paws Grooming in Brooklyn. The animal advocates at Iconic Paws, a customized pet portrait gallery with flare. Pardo Paws in Georgia, an all natural company with a lotion bar in the shape of a dog paw for dogs with dry noses and paws made of cocoa butter, olive oil, coconut oil, beeswax, calendula. Precious Paws Dog Grooming in Bloomfield, New Jersey. 

Little L?s Pet Bakery and Boutique in Brooklyn. Scotch and Tea ? stylish and durable dog accessories. Bark and Tumble, a luxury and contemporary brand of hand made dog garments in Britain. Pets in Mind a Holistic Pet Supply Store in Coconut Creek, Florida. Beaux & Paws in Newark, Pet Plate ? an online black owned pet food delivery service. Duke the Groomer in Chicago, Ava?s Pet Palace started by Ava Dorsey, age 13. 
  
Most all of these businesses are giving back in some way to their communities working with at-risk youth, taking them in with mentorships and internships that hopefully lead to jobs, and donating generously to shelters and rescues and neighborhood food banks.

Francis Ford Coppola talks about homelessness, life, friendship, neighborhood history, and his ideas about the future as he tells the remarkable story of North Beach Citizens, the volunteer organization he spearheaded twenty years ago to help grapple with the lives and needs of homeless and unhoused people living in his neighborhood in San Francisco.

This month marks the 20th Anniversary of North Beach Citizens. Normally at this time of year some 400 people gather in the church basement of Saints Peter & Paul near Washington Square Park for an epic community dinner that raises the funds to keep NBC?s vital series of services available. Like everywhere, the pandemic has been hard on the unhoused and raised their numbers by some 64% in North Beach alone. The need is great.

As a frontline service provider, NBC is distributing nearly 3 times more food to the community than this time last year through daily meals "to-go,? and Wednesday Community Food Pantry. As a beacon of support for the neighborhood, they ensure that people who are living close to the margins know that they are part of a caring community and connected to support that meets their individual needs.

Our story takes us deep into the North Beach community with interviews with North Beach Citizens, volunteers, staff, clients?food writer and long time North Beach resident Peggy Knickerbocker, poetry and stories of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the supporter and Guardian Angel of North Beach Citizens, and more.

?Every neighborhood would benefit from a community group addressing homelessness?

? Francis Ford Coppola, Founder of North Beach Citizens

The women who were murdered in Atlanta were Korean, not Vietnamese. They were doing massage, not manicures. But they faced the hate and violence that is mounting against Asian American people in the United States.

We produced this story in 2000 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series on NPR. We presented it again as Vietnamese and other manicurists were losing their jobs and livelihoods during the pandemic. Today, we offer it again in honor of Asian American women wherever they live, whatever their work ? and in memory of the women who lost their lives in Atlanta offering strangers a kind touch.

Currently it is estimated that more than 40% of the nail salon technicians in America are Vietnamese women. In California the numbers are estimated at more than 75%. The majority of these women are immigrants. Arriving in this country, Vietnamese immigrants, like those from other countries, have looked for a place to make their own economic niche. Many found one taking care of people?s hands and nails.

This story was originally produced by The Kitchen Sisters for Lost & Found Sound on NPR. Our host/narrator is Francis Ford Coppola.

The impact of Shonen Knife, the 1980s all-girl punk band from Osaka?a story of cultural exchange through the cassette tape.

Shonen Knife, the three-woman band from Japan, formed in 1981?a time just before the internet drastically changed the way we consume and discover music. A time when a cassette tape, alongside fanzines and college radio created an environment that made possible the seemingly improbable circumstance of an all girl-band from Osaka opening for Nirvana, one of the biggest musical acts of the 90s.

?Shonen means boy in Japanese and it?s a very old brand name of a pencil knife,? says Naoko Yamano. ?And the word ?shonen? has very cute feeling and the knife has a little dangerous feeling, so when cute and dangerous combined together, it?s just like our band.  So I put that name.?

Featuring interviews with Shonen Knife?Naoko Yamano, Atsuko Yamano, Risa Kawano; Karen Schoemer, former music critic of the New York Times; and Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College and author of Shonen Knife?s Happy Hour: Food, Gender, Rock and Roll.

The Osaka Ramones was produced by Brandi Howell.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We?re part of PRX?s Radiotopia a curated network of independent producers creating some of the finest podcasts around.

It?s February 23, 2021? and we?ve just received word that our dear friend and North Beach neighbor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, has passed on at age 101.

In honor of Lawrence we?re sharing a story we produced for his 99th birthday, featuring the work of sound designer Jim McKee who, for more than 20 years, recorded and chronicled Lawrence?s life, poetry and world.

In this lushly produced soundscape, Lawrence talks about his youth, reads his poetry, and muses with his friend Erik Bauersfeld about life, death and the meaning of art.

Stories of Black pioneers, seekers and entrepreneurs ? self-made men and self-taught women, neighborhood heroes and visionaries. People who said "yes we can" and then did, hosted by Alfre Woodard.

A man tapes the history of his town with a scavenged cassette recorder, a woman fights for social justice with a pie, a DJ ignites his community with a sound. Stories of Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere, a Secret Civil Rights Kitchen; of Hercules and of James Hemings, enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; of Walkin? Talkin? Bill Hawkins, Cleveland?s first black disc jockey; and more.

A compilation of stories produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and Roman Mars, with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. The Kitchen Sisters are proud members of PRX?s Radiotopia network.

Sometimes you read a book and it alters the course of your life. That?s what happened to Frances McDormand. Twice. First it was Olive Kitteridge, the HBO series she produced and starred in based on the book by Elizabeth Stroud. This time it's Nomadland.

Academy Award winning Frances McDormand talks about the making of Nomadland which is coming to Hulu and select theaters and drive-ins starting February 19, 2021.

Directed by Chloe Zhao, based on the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving in the Twenty First Century by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland is the first film to ever premiere at the Venice, Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals all on the same night ? where it took home all the top prizes.

The story is a tale of our times centering on the very ?now? many Americans find themselves in. People uprooted from their old jobs and old neighborhoods, places they've called home for decades, now living in DIY customized vans, migrating for work with the seasons. Christmas near the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Virginia, the sugar beet harvest in North Dakota, cleaning latrines and being campground hosts in National Parks. They were already on the road by the thousands before the pandemic uprooted even more.

Frances McDormand plays Fern, a woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, sets out on a journey through the Midwest living as a van-dwelling itinerant worker ? a modern day nomad.

Frances talks about her experiences making the film in the van-dwelling community with clips from director Chloe Zhao, author Jessica Bruder, van-dwelling guru Bob Wells, and clips from the film.

??Zhao?s fable speaks to us, in 2020, as John Ford?s The Grapes of Wrath did to audiences eighty years ago.? Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Music and poetry were powerful headliners at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signaling change and new beginnings. This was not the first time the arts have reflected the mood of the country and a new administration.

In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra to perform an "anti-inaugural concert" protesting Richard Nixon's official inaugural concert and his escalation of the war in Vietnam. One of the main performances of the official inaugural was the 1812 Overture with its booming drums replicating the sound of war cannons.

In 1973, the United States was reaching the concluding stages of our involvement in Vietnam.  And while the war would soon come to an end, the weeks leading up to the second inauguration of Richard Nixon were met with some of the most intense and deadly bombing campaigns of the war.

The anti-war movement was unhinged. They had marched, they protested ? to seemingly no avail when it came to changing Nixon?s foreign policies. So what to do next...

Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra for an ?anti-inaugural concert?? a concert for peace?following his belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists had the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace.

This story was produced by Brandi Howell with special thanks to Michael Chikinda, Alicia Kopfstein, Matt Holsen, and Bernie Swain. Find more of her stories at: theechochamberpodcast.com

A mushroom farmer, food activist, business entrepreneur, foster mother to more than a dozen girls?Chido Govera is a kitchen visionary in Zimbabwe?a pioneer in the cultivation of mushrooms throughout Africa and the world.

Chido was orphaned at 7 when her mother died of AIDS. As a girl, who never had enough to eat, she began cultivating mushrooms when she was nine. Some people look at a mushroom and see a mushroom. Chido looked at a mushroom and saw a weapon for social change, a path out of hunger and poverty to empowerment and income for herself and other orphaned girls.

The founder of The Future of Hope Foundation, Chido has promoted mushroom cultivation as a sustainable source of food and income in impoverished regions of the world.

We met Chido in Sao Paolo at FRUTO, an international gathering of chefs, farmers, activists, fishermen, Amazonian tribal women organizers, botanists and more?organized by Brazilian chef Alex Atala, famous from Netflix?s Chef?s Table. Speakers from around the world delved deep into issues of food, zero waste, the destruction of coastal waters, agriculture and climate change, the rights and foods of indigenous people of the Amazon. The conference was profound?a global eye opener.

Special thanks to Alex Atala, Felipe Ribenboim, Lars Williams and the NOMA community in Denmark.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated collection of podcasts from some of the best independent producers around.

It was Friday, April 10th, 2020. The pandemic was really starting to roar. PPE was scarce and the supply chains were already breaking down. Every hospital was scrambling to find enough masks, gowns and face shields. It was already every state, every institution for itself.

It was everywhere in the papers. Page 1, Page 2, Page 3. On Page 9 of the New York Times, dateline: Sugarcreek, Ohio, a headline caught our eye: ?Abe Make a Sewing Frolic? ? In Ohio The Amish Take on the Coronavirus.

This isolated, centuries-old, self-reliant community was rising to the occasion and collaborating with the world outside to fill the PPE needs of the massive Cleveland Clinic and beyond. The story inspired us and we headed to Sugarcreek with our microphone.

In the attempt to record this story in Amish country in the midst of social distancing and the ever deepening pandemic, a new collaboration was born ? artist Laurie Anderson, Ohio-born designer Stacy Hoover and producer Evan Jacoby all joined with The Kitchen Sisters to bring these voices to air.

Today, The Kitchen Sisters Present? The Great Amish Sewing Frolic.

Frances McDormand talks about her extraordinary new film?Nomadland directed by Chloe Zhao, based on the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving in the Twenty First Century by Jessica Bruder. A tale for our times.

The story centers on the very ?now? many Americans find themselves in. People uprooted from their old jobs and old neighborhoods, places they've called home for decades, now living in DIY customized vans, migrating for work with the seasons. Christmas near the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Virginia, the sugar beet harvest in North Dakota, cleaning latrines and being campground hosts in National Parks. They were already on the road by the thousands before the pandemic uprooted even more.

Frances McDormand plays Fern, a woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, sets out on a journey through the Midwest living as a van-dwelling itinerant worker ? a modern day nomad.

Frances talks about the making of the film and her experiences in the van-dwelling community with clips from director Chloe Zhao, author Jessica Bruder, van-dwelling guru Bob Wells, and clips from the film.

??Zhao?s fable speaks to us, in 2020, as John Ford?s The Grapes of Wrath did to audiences eighty years ago.? Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

With all of us thinking of home and family and of all the things we love and miss, we thought we?d spend some time with Angelo Garro ? a Sicilian blacksmith living in a forge in San Francisco with a passion for hunting, foraging, opera, cooking, pickling, curing salamis, making wine and generously tending and feeding his friends and community. A Thanksgiving gift.

The Kitchen Sisters join Angelo along the coast of Northern California as he follows the seasons foraging fennel in the spring, wild turkey hunting in November, olive picking, eels, mushrooms, and when it rains it?s ducks.

?Angelo is a center of gravity for people from just about every class and every job,? says his friend Xavier Carbonnet. ?The forge is like the Old Country. Like a piece of Italy frozen in time in the middle of San Francisco.?

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In 1966, a young Marine took a reel-to-reel tape recorder with him into the Vietnam War. For two months, Michael A. Baronowski made tapes of his life and his friends, in foxholes, in combat and sent those audio letters home to his family in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Then he was killed in action.

Thirty-four years later, Baronowski?s friend Tim Duffie, shared these tapes which were used to produce this story as part of the NPR series, ?Lost & Found Sound,? created by Jay Allison and The Kitchen Sisters.

This episode also features Jay Allison and The Kitchen Sisters talking about the creation of the Peabody Award winning series Lost & Found Sound and about the production of Baronowski?s story produced by Tina Egloff and Jay Allison. The piece won the first Gold Award at the Third Coast Audio Festival and was one of the most responded to stories ever to air on NPR?s All Things Considered.

?The Vietnam Tapes of Lance Corporal Michael A. Baronowski includes live field recordings from the war that are incredibly honest, genuine, unrehearsed, visceral, funny, devastating?. In short, they?re remarkable.? Transom.org

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For Winona LaDuke the best part of running for Vice President in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket with Ralph Nadar was meeting so many people who really want to see a democracy that works?who really want to vote for someone they believe in. At rallies women would bring their daughters up to Winona saying, ?We want them to grow up and be like you.?

Ojibwe leader, writer, food activist, rural development economist, environmentalist, Harvard graduate?Winona, which means first born daughter, is a force to be reckoned with. She?s the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and the executive director of Honor the Earth. Most recently she was a leader at Standing Rock fighting the Dakota Access pipeline. She?s a visionary and a fighter and she?s in it for the long haul.

When we visited Winona on the White Earth Reservation in 2004 for our Hidden Kitchens story Harvest on Big Rice Lake she spoke to us about her family, her life and work?about running for Vice President, about harvesting wild rice on the lakes of Minnesota and creating jobs on the reservation, about how her Ojibwe father met her bohemian/artist/Jewish mother in New York City, how her dad went on to Hollywood to star in the Westerns and how he later became the New Age spiritual leader called Sun Bear.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Oregon, Winona moved to White Earth, her father?s reservation, after she graduated from Harvard in 1982. When she first arrived, she worked as the principal of the Reservation?s high school and became active in local issues. Seven years later, she started the non profit White Earth Land Recovery Project, dedicated to restoring the local economy and food systems and preserving wild rice.

Today Winona LaDuke operates a 40-acre industrial hemp farm on the White Earth Indian Reservation with the idea of creating textiles for the people and the planet ? of working towards a non petroleum based future. And she?s started 8th Fire Solar, operated by Anishinaabe, manufacturing solar thermal panels.

?According to Anishinaabe prophecies, we are in the time of the Seventh Fire. At this time, it is said we have a choice between a path that is well-worn and scorched, and a path that is green and unworn. If we move toward the green path, the Eighth Fire will be lit and people will come together to make a better future.?

Sometimes we find the story, sometimes the story finds us. Such is the case with this tale of two Keepers from the Pacific Northwest, the official/unofficial archivists for Pearl Jam. Caroline Losneck, a radio producer in Maine heard our Keepers series about activist archivists and rogue librarians and said to herself, ?Hey wait a minute, what about that mythic vault in Seattle I?ve been hearing about for years filled to the brim with 30 years of Pearl Jam, who's keeping that??

We are especially keen to put Caroline's story out now, as Pearl Jam, a notoriously activist band, has gone all in for registering young voters and getting out the vote since at least 2004 when they took their Vote for Change tour through the swing states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida registering as they went. This 2020 election is no exception.

Today Caroline Losneck and The Kitchen Sisters Present... Pearl Jam: It?s a Rock Band, Not the Smithsonian

Produced in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Mixed by Jim McKee. 

Special thanks to John Burton & Kevin Shuss, Jacob McMurray at MoPop, to audio engineer Alice Anderson and to Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Matt Cameron and Eddie Vedder ? Pearl Jam.

Like Pearl Jam says, get on out there and vote. Vote like it counts. Vote because you love the music and this messy, precious democracy.

We go to New Orleans for a kind of biblical reckoning. A story of science and prayer, with a cast of improbable partners?environmental architects and nuns?coming together to create a vision forward for living with water in New Orleans. Mirabeau Water Garden, one of the largest urban wetlands in the country designed to educate, inspire and to save its neighborhood from flooding.

New Orleans. Surrounded by The Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, besieged by hurricanes and tropical storms, permeated with man made canals, levees, pumping stations ?. Water is a deep and controversial issue in New Orleans. What to do with it. Where to put it. How to get rid of it? How to live with it?

David Waggonner, of Waggonner & Ball Architecture & Environment has been thinking and dreaming about these questions for years. One of the primary architects behind the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, David envisions floating streets, pervious pavement, planting bioswales??living with water? rather than pushing it down and pumping it out.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of St. Joseph convent in New Orleans was under 8 feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightning. The Sisters prayed for a sign. And in walked David Waggonner with a vision.

The Mirabeau Water Garden will become one of the largest urban wetlands in the country and a campus for water research and environmental education, demonstrating best practices for construction and urban water management in the city's lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The 25-acre parcel was donated to the City of New Orleans by the Sisters of Saint Joseph on condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood to ?evoke a huge systemic shift in the way humans relate with water and land.?

The Peabody Award winning Sonic Memorial Project, an intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood, through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voicemail messages and interviews.

The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series. We came together?radio producers, artists, construction workers, bond traders, secretaries, ironworkers, elevator operators, policemen, widows, firefighters, archivists, public radio stations and listeners to chronicle and commemorate the life and history of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood. We opened a phone line on NPR for listeners to call in with their stories and audio artifacts relating to the September 11 attacks and the history of the World Trade Center. Hundreds of people called with testimonies and remembrances, music and small shards of sounds.

In addition to these personal messages and remembrances you?ll hear interviews with: Guy Tozzoli, Director of the World Trade Center of New York; Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who designed the World Trade Center; Philippe Petit, the aerialist who walked a tightrope between the twin towers; Leslie Robertson, World Trade Tower structural engineer; Herb Ouida, Executive Vice President of the World Trade Centers Association; Professor Kenneth T. Jackson, Director of New York Historical Society; historian Robert Snyder; and sound artists and musicians who recorded and performed at the Trade Center including Stephen Scott, Ben Cheah, Nadine Robinson, Stephen Vitiello and more.

The Sonic Memorial Project was produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with NPR, Ben Shapiro, Jay Allison, Joe Richman and independent radio producers, artists, writers, archivists, historians and public radio listeners throughout the country. Hosted by writer Paul Auster.

Picture this: 131 young people, 13 to 26 years old, from 37 countries?youth activists from around the globe? students, writers, poets, marchers, community leaders all gathered together in San Juan, Puerto Rico in August 2019, the week after the scandal-ridden government of Governor Ricardo Rosselló fell. A government brought down in large measure because of the resolve and activism of young people across the Hurricane Maria-battered island.

This wasn?t part of the plan for the second meeting of the International Congress of Youth Voices. It was pure coincidence. But here they all are, coming from across the planet?jet lagged and lit from within?to learn from one another and an array of artists, writers and activists, to create a network, to tell their stories, to listen and to understand the forces that led this island to erupt.

Politics of the world affect young people as much as anyone else, and they have little to no voice as major decisions are made. The International Congress of Youth Voices was founded as a means to amplify their ideas and energy and to unite young people for a weekend of collaboration.

The International Congress of Youth Voices, founded by author Dave Eggers (co-founder of 826 National) and nonprofit leader Amanda Uhle, gathers the world's most inspiring teen writers and activists. They come from all over the world, including: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the United States, Colombia, Guatemala, Cuba, Australia, Denmark, Nepal, Russia, England, Thailand, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, Uganda, Pakistan, Burundi, France, India, and Puerto Rico.

Student delegates are chosen based on their commitment to leadership and social justice and their passion and eloquence as writers. The event is designed to provide a path to leadership for all delegates and represents a continuum from students who have exhibited potential in local writing and tutoring programs to writers and activists who have already made notable achievements at a very young age.

Youth on Fire: The International Congress of Youth Voices was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton, Brandi Howell, Rachel Templeton & Teddy Alexander. Mixed by Jim McKee. Story Intern: Jonathan Hsieh. Special thanks to Dave Eggers & Amanda Uhle and to all the delegates from around the country and around the world who came to Puerto Rico and shared their stories with us. Check out more on our new social media series #YouthOnFire.

This story begins our new series Youth on Fire, stories of young activists and visionaries from around the world. We would love to hear from you if you are or if you know one. Podcasts, social media, poetry, playlists, manifestos? let us know what you?re doing. You can reach us @kitchensisters on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and at kitchensisters.org.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX. Thanks to Sakara for sponsoring this episode.

Funding for work of The Kitchen Sisters comes from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The TRA Fund supporting our Intern Program, and Listener Contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

On Tuesday August 4th, a massive explosion devastated Beirut, shattering the port and the heart of the city. Over 150 people have lost their lives, some 5000 people have been injured, hundreds of thousands have lost their homes ? all while the people of Lebanon are facing catastrophic levels of the coronavirus and devastating economic collapse.

Our love and our sorrow are with the people of  Beirut. In 2015 Davia traveled to Lebanon for our Hidden Kitchens series to chronicle the work of the Lebanese kitchen visionary, Kamal Mouzawak ? an astounding man who builds community through food throughout the country. His Beirut restaurant, Tawlet, that employs dozens of village women cooking their traditional village dishes, was destroyed in the explosion.

Kamal Mouzawak and his restaurant team have been at the forefront of the Beirut rescue efforts in collaboration with Chef Jose Andres and the World Central Kitchen. Kamal?s kitchen prepared the first fresh meals for local hospitals, isolated seniors, and first responders throughout the city. Hummus sandwiches, kefta sandwiches of yellow onion, sumac, parsley and hummus and molokhia, a traditional Sunday meal of chicken that reminds everyone who knows it of home.

In homage to the people of Lebanon, The Kitchen Sisters Present a journey through the hidden kitchens of Lebanon with kitchen activist and restaurateur Kamal Mouzawak, a man with a vision of re-building and uniting this war-ravaged nation through its traditions, its culture and its food. We visit farmer?s markets, restaurants and guest houses known as Souk el Tayeb that he and his kitchen community have created.

This story, produced by Samuel Shelton Robinson and The Kitchen Sisters, is part of Hidden Kitchens: War and Peace and Food, a series of stories about the role food plays in helping resolve or cause conflict between nations and communities.

In honor of the many people who work in nail salons across the country who are struggling to keep their businesses from going under during these long closures, The Kitchen Sisters Present French Manicure ?Tales from Vietnamese Nail Shops in America, a story produced as part of the Lost and Found Sound series on NPR.

Currently it is estimated that more than 40% of the nail salon technicians in America are Vietnamese women. In California the numbers are estimated at more than 75%. The majority of these women are Vietnamese immigrants. Arriving in this country, Vietnamese immigrants, like those from other countries, have looked for a place to make their own economic niche. Many found one taking care of people?s hands and nails.

The training is short ? sometimes as little as three months. They not only acquire a new set of professional skills, but a new identity as well. Sound plays a part in merging into a new life?American TV and radio, language study tapes, naturalization tapes, the soundtrack of new citizenship and a new life. Then there are the lost sounds of home ? music cassettes brought from Vietnam, Vietnamese videos from the Saigon bookstore in a San Jose shopping mall. These audio artifacts merge with stories from manicurists in Vietnamese salons. One such story comes from Shirley Nguyen at JT Nails.

Shirley: I came here in 1983. Just by myself at 14. I escaped by boat to Thailand, to Philippines, then came here. Supposed to be a whole family come together but we separate to small boats. Some make it some didn't make it, get caught by the communists. We separate. And I was wondering, I asked "Where's my mom, where's my mom?" The owner say, "She will be here, she will be here." Gone.

As she polishes, she tells her stories - how she got here - what to do about dry cuticles - how she learned her English from tapes - why French Manicure is better than silks - how she lost her family in Vietnam - about the "sad songs" of Vietnam and the sounds of Saigon streets. About how she got her name.

Shirley: [In the U.S.], I lived with a foster parent. I have my own room and a TV she let me have it. Usually I watch a lot of Shirley Temple. I like Shirley Temple a lot. I watch a lot of her movie. She's happy. She's dancin' tap. And she's very pretty lady ... When I become US citizen I change directly to Shirley Nguyen. My Vietnamese name kind of like difficult to pronounce, Hang - H-A-N-G. I changed to Shirley."

Contributors to this program include: Shirley Nguyen, Tina Truong and Jackie LE of JT Nails Salon in San Francisco; Betty Ha, May An Quang, Boi Ha and Tina Nguyen of Fancy Nails in Berkeley, Calif.; Dian Dinh of Cole Valley Nails in San Francisco; Tina Perry, Leonette Motta, Maria Elena Alvarado, Hien Hong and Nancy DeGroat of Hilltop Beauty School in Daily City, Calif.; Sophia Tran, Nhung Tran and Lan Xuan Thi Truong of Evergreen Beauty College in San Jose, Calif.; Alan Cox, Helene Luc Tran, Mrs. Nu and Mrs. Chu La of Hayward Beauty College, Hayward, Calif. Special Thanks also to: Ellen Sebastian Chang, Flawn Williams, Chris Tsakis and Janet Dang.

Louis Jones, Field Archivist, is a Keeper. For 27 years he has worked building and caring for the largest labor archive in North America?the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit?s civil rights movement, women?s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.

Born in New York City, the grandson of a Pullman porter, Louis Jones takes us through the archives with stories of the UAW, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph and the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Special thanks to the Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Nancy Beaumont and the Society of American Archivists (SAA); Paulina Hartono; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and supporters of The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 95,000 names. Gert never planned it this way, but over the decades she has become the Keeper of the Quilt and has stewarded it, repaired it, tended it, traveled with it and conserved it for some 33 years now. Gert knows the power of sewing.

In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Gert was one of the first Bay Area citizens to begin sewing masks?PPE for nurses and health care workers who were lacking proper protection?masks she makes from fabric left over from the making of the AIDS Quilt. The comfort, outrage and honoring of an earlier pandemic being used to protect people from a new one.

In January of 2020 The AIDS Memorial Quilt, now part of The National AIDS Memorial, returned home to the Bay Area after 16 years in Atlanta. It took six 52-foot semis to get it there. The over sixty tons of quilt, is made up of about 48,000 panels, each 3 x 6 feet, the size of a grave. The extensive AIDS Archive, which Gert gathered, collected and protected since its earliest days, is now part of The American Folklife Center at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

The story of Gert McMullin and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco, Harvey Milk, The White Night Riots. With interviews with LGBT Rights activist Cleve Jones who worked with Harvey Milk and conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and John Cunningham, Executive Director of the National AIDS Memorial.

November 14, 1960, New Orleans. Three six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new school for the first time?McDonogh No. 19. Leona Tate thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail Etienne thought they were going to kill her.

Four years after the Supreme Court ruled to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education, schools in the South were dragging their feet. Finally, in 1960, the NAACP and a daring judge selected two schools in New Orleans to push forward with integration?McDonogh No.19 Elementary and William Frantz.

An application was put in the paper. From 135 families, four girls were selected?Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, Gail Etienne and Ruby Bridges (who attended William Frantz Elementary). They were given psychological tests. Their families were prepared. Members of the Louisiana Legislature took out paid advertisements in the local paper encouraging parents to boycott the schools. There were threats of violence.

When the girls going to McDonogh No.19 arrived in their classroom, the white children began to disappear. One by one their parents took them out of school. For a year and a half the girls were the only children in the school. Guarded night and day, they were not allowed to play outdoors. The windows were covered with brown paper.

The story of integrating the New Orleans Public schools in 1960 told by Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost Williams, and Gail Etienne Stripling, who integrated McDonogh No.19 Elementary School, and retired Deputy U.S. Marshals Herschel Garner, Al Butler, and Charlie Burks who assisted with the integration efforts at the schools. We also hear from archivist, historian and pastor of Beecher Memorial United Church of Christ, Brenda Billips Square and from Keith Plessy, Co-Founder of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation.

We produced this story a few years back. We want to put it out there again a because it seems critical, particularly now, to remember and pay tribute to the many Keepers of the archives, the stories, the truth about our past and the long fight for what is fair and just.

Eel Pie Island, a tiny bit of land in the River Thames has a flamboyant history involving King Henry VIII, Charles Dickens, The Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend, Rod Stewart, Anjelica Huston, Trad Jazz, Rock and Roll? and eel pie?a disappearing London delicacy.

The story goes that Henry VIII in the 16th century would be rowed up the Thames on the Royal Barge and would stop at the island for an eel pie. Charles Dickens immortalized it in his novel Nicholas Nickleby. In the 1950s a jazz club was started on the island featuring Skiffle and Trad Jazz with people like Ken Colyer, Acker BIlk, and Lonnie Donegan.

?Eel Pie Island was where they used to fish out the eel up through the 1960s. The eels would be sold in the front of fishmonger shops, big, fat, some as thick as your arm, lying around on the marble slabs,? remembers actress Anjelica Huston who grew up in London in the 60s and made the pilgrimage to Eel Pie Island, an early rock and roll mecca.

Eric Clapton did a lot of his early playing on the island. ?When I was a beatnik back in the early 60s, that was the only thing there was.?

?The hotel stood alone, I remember it a little bit like a Charles Addams drawing,? recalls Huston. ?It was a time when a lot of the old ways were meeting new ways out of the rations and the hardships of WWII and the blitz, and the hunger. Eel Pie Island, the eels that had been cut up on the white marble slabs since the days of Henry the VIII were suddenly meeting the Youth Quake.?

Ronnie Wood, who would later join the Rolling Stones, called it a great melting pot. ?You might bump into Mick Jagger in the bar, Pete Townshend came by, Ray Davies, Keith, Bowie?? Paul Jones who played in the 60s band Manfred Mann said, ?Any band that was worth its salt had to play there. Till you ticked off that one on your itinerary, you hadn?t really arrived.?

The place was proclaimed a health hazard in 1967 and forced to shut down. Squatters immediately came into the space and the UK?s largest hippie commune was born. The building eventually burned down and eighteen townhouses were constructed in its place. Today, Eel Pie Island has a couple of hundred inhabitants. Artists and craftspeople maintain studios on the island along with some boat works.

?Eel Pie Island, it?s a very specific little place in space and time,? says Huston. ?A little point of liberation on the Thames. But very alive, just like the eels.?

An intimate, inspiring, hopeful conversation with Mexican chef and cookbook author, Pati Jinich, host of the James Beard Award winning PBS series Pati's Mexican Table and resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington D.C.

On a walk through Oaxaca's Enthnobotanical Garden, Pati tells stories of her Jewish grandparents immigration to Mexico during WWII, her upbringing in Mexico and her move to Texas and Washington D.C. as a young mother. She shares her thoughts on immigration, The Wall, life choices and how she found her way into the kitchen.

Al Gore is back and he?s got a new slide show. Better take heed. Last October the former Vice President, Nobel Prize-winner and Academy Award-winner for An Inconvenient Truth, together with activist, restaurateur, and founder of The Edible Schoolyard, Alice Waters, gathered farmers, ranchers, scientists, chefs, researchers, policymakers on Al's family farm in Carthage, Tennessee for a riveting set of conversations about the role of food and regenerative agriculture in solving the climate crisis. They called the two day event, The Climate Underground.

Along with the conversations, some of Nashville?s hottest chefs and dedicated regenerative farmers joined Alice to create a sustainable organic school lunch for the 350 participants to highlight the power of local, school supported agriculture in nurturing the health of children and the land.

This event happened long before the moment we all find ourselves in right now, as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the planet. But it holds the seeds and hope for a different approach to our future and the fate of the planet we all share.

In honor of Earth Day, The Kitchen Sisters Present...The Climate Underground.

April 1993: A small village in Sicily prepares for the first visit of 78-year-old baseball legend Joe DiMaggio to the town where his parents were born and raised. Fishermen, artisans, grandmothers ? some 3,000 villagers brush up on The Yankee and Marilyn Monroe. Italian and American flags are strung from the buildings, two thousand baseballs are purchased for Joltin? Joe to autograph. A feast of sea urchins, calamari, pasta sarda and marzipan is cooked in his honor. Nearly the entire annual budget of the town is spent preparing to celebrate the homecoming of the Yankee Clipper. The Mayor, the City Council, the Police Commissioner and hundreds of other Sicilian well-wishers gather at the airport in Palermo waiting to greet their ?native son.? But he never comes.

The Keepers, from The Kitchen Sisters and PRX with host, Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand. Stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Guardians of history, large and small. Protectors of the free flow of information and ideas. Keepers of the culture and the culture and collections they keep.

In this hour, Bob Dylan?s Archive, Henri Langlois? legendary Cinémathéque in Paris, The Keeper of the National Archives, Nancy Pearl: the first librarian action figure, The Dark Side of the Dewey Decimal System and stories of Prince?s epic Vault in Minneapolis. All these tales and more.

The Keepers, from The Kitchen Sisters and PRX with host, Academy Award-winning actress, Frances McDormand. Stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Guardians of history, large and small. Protectors of the free flow of information and ideas. Keepers of the culture and the culture and collections they keep.

In this hour, stories of the Hiphop Archive at Harvard, the Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky, the Lenny Bruce Archive, the Internet Archive and more striking and surprising stories of preservation and civic life.

Lou Reed?music icon, poet, photographer, Tai Chi master, vital force in the cultural life and underworld of New York City. Lou died in 2013 and left not a word of instruction about what he wanted done with his archive of
recordings, instruments, gear, his Tai Chi swords, jackets?from his days with The Velvet Underground, through his solo career and last recordings. He left everything to his wife, artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Over
the next six years Laurie and a team of Lou?s ?keepers? created a vision.

In March 2019, on the occasion of his birthday, The Lou Reed Archive opened to the public at the New York Library for the Performing Arts with parties, friends, family, fanfare and a drone concert at the largest cathedral in the world. During that week and beyond we spoke to many of Lou?s archivists, family, and friends ? Laurie Anderson, Curator Don Fleming, Jason Stern and Jim Cass who worked with Lou, drone wizard Stewart Hurwood, Producers Tony Visconti and Hal Willner, Carrie Welch from the New York Public Library, Curator Jonathan Hiam and a devoted crew of librarians and archivists at the New York Library for the Performing Arts, and Lisa Shubert at Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Many thanks to all.

The Keepers, stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, historians and collectors, is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton & Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. Special thanks to story interns Sydney Stewart and Josh Gross.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia Podcast Network from PRX. Support for The Kitchen Sisters comes from Radiotopia, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Grammy Museum Foundation, The Marin Community Foundation/ Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, Cowgirl Creamery, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The Robert Lee Hudson Foundation, the TRA Fund and listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

?These are really terribly rough times and we really should try to be nice to each other as possible.?  Lou Reed.

In celebration of truckers everywhere and of Radiotopia?s new show Over the Road, The Kitchen Sisters visit some of their favorite Texas pitstops. First up ? a truck stop in Carl?s Corner, Texas off I 35 between Dallas and Austin where Willie Nelson first introduced his BioWillie fuel in 2004.

Willie?s friend, Carl Cornelius, founded Carl?s Corner in the early 1980s in order to sell liquor in a mostly dry county. He opened up a truck stop ?a trucker?s haven and tourist attraction ?with hot tubs, dancing girls and 10 foot high dancing frogs atop the pumps. In 1987 Willie held his legendary 4th of July Picnic at Carl?s Corner. But a few years later, following a fire and some set major backs, the place fell on hard times. That?s where our story begins?with Willie Nelson bringing in BioWillie biofuel to save Carl?s Corner Truck Stop. We hear from Willie Nelson, Kinky Friedman, Carl Cornelius, Joe Nick Potaski, truckers and biodiesel disciples. And we visit a bio-diesel home brew class, where recipes are shared on how to make your own, in a blender, the kitchen way.

Next stop ? Fuel City, downtown Dallas?with its long horn cattle, oil well, waterfalls, bikini clad ?pool models,? DJs, and the best Texas tacos for miles around. Robin Wright talks about her family in Venus,Texas. And we visit the Conoco gas station and it?s gourmet Chef Point Cafe in Watauga, Texas.

When Sam Phillips sold Elvis? contract in 1955 he used the money to start an all-girl radio station in Memphis, TN. Set in a pink, plush studio in the nation?s third Holiday Inn, it was a novelty?but not for long. He hired models, beauty queens, actresses, telephone operators. Some were young mothers who just needed a job. WHER was the first radio station to feature women as more than novelties and sidekicks. The WHER girls were broadcasting pioneers. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the women?s movement, Vietnam, and the death of Martin Luther King?the story of WHER follows the women who pioneered in broadcasting as they head into one of the most dramatic and volatile times in the nation?s history. ?WHER was the embryo of the egg,? said Sam Phillips. ?We broke a barrier. There was nothing like it in the world.?

This encore broadcast of one of the stories closest to our radio hearts is in honor of the women of WHER who have passed on since we interviewed them twenty years ago?Becky Phillips, Marge Thrasher, Janie Joplin, and Bettye Berger who passed on to that big radio station in the sky just last week.

Bettye was a pistol. A beautiful, blonde, smart, savvy business woman, she was one of the first WHER disc jockettes?hired by Sam Phillips in 1955. Later in her career she became an artist manager and booking agent?one of the few women in the field in the 1950s and 60s. She formed her own company?Continental Talent Agency representing stars like Charlie Rich, William Bell, Ivory Joe Hunter. She launched her own record label, Bet T. Records, in 1959. And she was a songwriter?writing songs for Ivory Joe Hunter and Rufus Thomas. Bettye was a pioneer in broadcasting and in the history of Memphis rock and roll and soul. She will be missed.

The Archive House, The Listening House, The Stony Island Arts Bank, The Dorchester Projects. Theaster Gates is a keeper of Greater Grand Crossing, his neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures with clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of urban neighborhoods into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for and of the community. Gates resurrects old dilapidated neighborhood buildings, transforming them into living archives, institutes of music, culture, film and gathering, preserving and renewing neighborhoods that have been ignored, overlooked and underserved. The proceeds of these unusual, imaginative endeavors are used to finance the rehabilitation of entire city blocks and the communities that inhabit them.

This story was produced by Alyia Renee Yates in collaboration with The Kitchen Sisters.