We first met Heidi Holtan, Radio Producer at KAXE in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, after a long and scenic 3 day drive from Grand Junction, Colorado. We were just in time to see the Dahl’s Sunrise Dairy truck pull up to the radio station for its weekly milk drop off. Right now, I am enjoying a cup of 1% milk out of a glass bottle that has to be returned to the milkman next Wednesday.

Grand Rapids has a population of less than 8,000 people. There are over 100 volunteers at KAXE, a grassroots radio station in Northern Minnesota. KAXE used to be located at a local college, but has moved to a beautiful one-level building designed by an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright. The kitchen is the best part, featuring bright green walls, a bottomless coffee pot, and the largest collection of communal Tupperware I have ever seen.

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_{Fellow Facilitator Kate Brown with participants at a recent Memory Loss Initiative recording day}

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

Her son also remembered her devotion to her children and the love for theater she instilled in him. She was quiet and unresponsive during the interview but dazzled everyone near the end with a smile and the words, “Them were the days.” While her voice barely registers on the recording, she is present in the voices of loved ones as they narrate her story. Read the rest of this entry »

“How has your life been different than you imagined?” Brianna asked her mother.

“I didn’t imagine that I would be in the forefront of new genetic revolution to diagnose more diseases than ever, but not be able to treat those diseases.”

On our first day of interviews in Springfield, Massachusetts, Brianna and Therese came to the booth to talk about their lives with Mitochondrial Disease. Therese was not diagnosed with the disease until 2001. Since then, she has become an advocate for the disease, organizing and educating locally and nationally.

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The MobileBooth was filled with oodles of new mommy love as Tara Luce and Amber French told the story of the birth of their daughter, Isabel. Although Isabel is only 3 months old and may not remember this conversation when she grows up, it will be waiting in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to refresh her memory.

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On August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. According to U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, “Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a modern day pulpit. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations.”

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Looking for a bright spot in a slumping housing market? Well, feast your eyes on Sophie Santino, 85 years young today. On Tuesday, July 15, 2008, the Topeka, Kansas native closed on her first home, a Brooklyn cooperative purchased with her savings and the aid of her four children, Sandra, Mark, Gina and lastly Claudia, who brought her by our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth the next day to commemorate the delayed milestone.

Sophie didn’t start out as the most enthusiastic storyteller. As she confessed in the final minutes of their conversation, she gave Claudia “hell” for making the StoryCorps appointment without her knowledge.

I said “How could you do that!” And I was actually mad. I kept my face in the window of the subway.

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When Minnie sat down and I began to adjust the microphone, she emphatically told me, “Just don’t make me sing.” At first I didn’t understand, but as Minnie and her daughter Nanette began their conversation, I soon learned why Minnie no longer sings. In public, at least.

_{Minnie Virgilio (R) and her daughter, Nanette Virgilio (L)}

Last week, Facilitator Anna Walters, Memory Loss Initiative Coordinator Perri Chinalai, and I packed up our rental car (very early in the morning!) and traveled to Nanuet, New York for a day of recording with the Alzheimer’s Association Hudson Valley/Rockland/Westchester, NY Chapter. StoryCorps was able to visit Nanuet through the Memory Loss Initiative, a special initiative to record the stories of people living with Alzheimer’s and other illnesses that cause short and long term memory loss.

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Goodbye, Grand Junction. For 2 ½ weeks we have appreciated the Western Colorado landscape: Pinyon pines, junipers, cliffs, plateaus and peach trees.

On one of my last nights in Grand Junction, I drove the winding road to the Colorado National Monument to watch ET on the outdoor projector at Glade Park Store. I sat on a tarp with my cardigan wrapped around my knees, shivering. It was a relief when a nearby couple let me borrow their orange sleeping bag. (Hospitality like this is not uncommon in Grand Junction.) I smiled as I sat alternating my gaze between the clear starry sky, the film and the community of families – children nestled in blankets, passing kettle corn back and forth.

Driving back down the mountain, my mind was alive with the landscapes and people that shaped the MobileBooth West experience in Grand Junction. For the first time in my life I have an appreciation for hiking. The people here recognized the beautiful convenience of having the Colorado National Monument at their doorstep. Whenever I asked, “What should I do here?” to test sound at the beginning of the interviews, most people would simply say, “There is so much to see!”

Here is a sampling of some of the faces and landscapes that formed the StoryCorps team experience in Grand Junction:

Mayuran Tiruchelvam and RJ Maccani, co-founders of Regeneración Childcare NYC, came to StoryCorps to document in their own voices why they provide childcare for low-income folks of color who are active in movements for social change in their communities. Their passion for this work is infectious. These are young people who should, by the standards of the day, be totally absorbed in their individual pleasures. Instead, they have committed themselves to the care and development of children.

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Last week, Facilitator Rose Gorman and I visited the American Farm Bureau conference in Indianapolis, Indiana to record interviews and give a presentation about StoryCorps.

Most of our participants grew up on farms and are now working in offices for their respective states’ farm bureaus. They described their memories of farm life and how the sense of hard work and family is still with them today. One participant told me he’s never understood why some people can’t manage to get to work by 9am. “9am is the middle of the day!” he said. So it was no surprise that events started early at this conference, and that everyone was milling around well before 8am, having coffee, chatting about the day’s upcoming events.

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