I was finishing up my last days in the New York City offices in early January before shipping out for our East Los Angeles Historias stop, when I received a phone call from Shifra Teitelbaum, director of a youth organization in South Los Angeles named “youTHink.” She was interested in getting her youth involved in Historias, our initiative to collect stories from Latinos. After a few hours, we had made a plan to record for a day at Southern California Library — a people’s library dedicated to documenting and preserving the histories of communities in struggle for justice.

Recently those plans became a reality. At the library, students from youTHink came with family members and friends to talk about their experiences living in Los Angeles. Iabeth Briones came with his brother, Eliseo Monclova, and talked about the time he spent living on the streets with his mother.

“I remember we lived in a car for a while and we were parked across [from] my favorite taco spot [called] ‘Chavelitas’, and we were there for one or two weeks. I was the smallest one and I slept in the back seat with all of that space and I think it was a way that [mom] was still trying to give me the best that she could by trying to keep me comfortable. I’ve always been with my mom, but I never really grew up with a father and I always looked at my mom as a pillar of strength. She kept us going and we kept each other going.”

Iabeth is currently a junior in high school and he’s also a poet. He has recently begun attending workshops with Street Poets Inc., an organization dedicated to the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation.

I want to give a special thanks to Shifra Teitelbaum for bringing this wonderful day of recording together, and to the Southern California Library for allowing us to record and for answering all of my questions about this very unique independent library!

As part of an ongoing collaboration with MoCADA (the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts), New York City StoryBooth staff completed a day of recording in the basement of the building that is home to both StoryCorps and the museum in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Curator Dexter Wimberly worked with StoryCorps to bring in a diverse group of artists to talk about their work, life, and inspirations, which led to the opening of the exhibition “The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” at MoCADA on February 4th.

While I was away, super StoryBooth interns Charlotte Okie and Liam Pierce attended the event to work the crowd, dish about StoryCorps, snap a few photos and take names.

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There is a lot of love in Pensacola, Florida. I don’t remember the last time so many pairs of fiancées came to the MobileBooth to talk about their impending nuptials.

Amanda Miller and Scott Greenberg met at the party of a mutual friend. Amanda had just returned from the Czech Republic and was not looking for a relationship, but Scott was not daunted, he wooed her until they became “official” three months later. The true test of the relationship came a few years later when the couple moved to Miami and had to manage job searches, law school, and living on a tight budget in an expensive city. “It was easy for the relationship between [Amanda] and me,” says Scott. “It was just the external circumstances that were difficult and we teamed up and made it through.” Amanda agreed, “That was the hardest point for me, but I think that it was the best time too because it was when I actually realized that when things did get hard we were going to be fine.” Amanda and Scott get hitched on April 10, 2010.

When Penny Steffens first met Melissa Featherstone she thought, “OOOOH! I can’t stand her!” Melissa thought Penny looked at the world through rose-colored glasses, but eventually, with the help of their mutual friend Pearl, the two got to know each other a little better and started going on sailing adventures and beach excursions. Now those rose-colored glasses are one of the things that Melissa loves about Penny the most. “We had no idea that we had a future together beyond friendship,” says Melissa. Penny and Melissa say “I do” on June 11, 2010.

After meeting at a photo shoot, disc jockey Dallas Peel and journalist Keri Holt had a very rocky start to their relationship. Dallas served as the model for the photo shoot and Keri wrote the article that accompanied the photos. She misspelled Dallas’s name in the article and when he discovered the error he told the listeners of his radio show that he would give a pair of  concert tickets to the first person who identified the mistake. Apparently there was more than one mistake, which led to heavy criticism of the article on the air. Keri fought back in a fiery response article, and the war was on. After a few weeks of battling over the air waves and via the printed word, Dallas offered an olive branch and asked Keri and her coworkers to a conciliatory dinner at an Italian restaurant. Keri’s coworkers bowed out at the last minute but Keri forged ahead. It was over dinner that Keri and Dallas buried the hatchet and on June 26, 2010 they’ll be tying the knot.

Sonia and Nolia Lozano

During the month of March, StoryCorps Door-to-Door  traveled uptown in New York City to record interviews for the Historias Initiative at El Museo del Barrio, one of the City’s leading Latino cultural institutions.

El Museo, located on Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, has been a fixture of El Barrio since 1969, thanks to founder Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Our first participant of the day, a very lively Nolia Lozano, 90, who came with her daughter Sonia, remembered vividly the beginnings of El Museo.

“I came here with my children all the time,” Nolia reminisced in Spanish, “I always brought my kids here, and we’d sell empanadas and pasteles. They were in all the programs.”

Nolia was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States in her 20’s. While talking with Sonia, Nolia fondly remembered El Barrio of her youth: a neighborhood where everyone knew each other, and where families freely used fire escapes as a balcony extension of their living rooms.

“People slept with their doors open, didn’t they Mami?” Sonia asked

“Yes. It was beautiful! That’s why I’ve never wanted to leave this neighborhood.” And at 90, Nolia is still an active member of her community, still going to El Museo as often as possible. After having raised her four children in Spanish Harlem, Nolia likes to watch her neighbors play dominoes on the weekends and just have a good time with her friends.

“This is like my backyard,” Nolia said while jauntily walking out of the newly renovated Museo, “and it’s still beautiful.”

Traveling the country year round, we hear all kinds of stories from all kinds of people as Mobile Facilitators. We bear witness to moments of joy, sorrow, and spontaneity between loved ones, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and the like. By listening closely to these stories and conversations coast to coast, I often find myself thinking, “Hey! I want to do that with my own family!” StoryCorps participants remind me daily of the importance of preserving my own family stories. In fact, participants often ask, “Have you ever done your own recording?” Luckily, I have had the opportunity to record conversations with my grandmother through the StoryKit program, and my godmother at the Lower Manhattan Booth in New York City. Up until last week, though, there was still one very important person I knew I wanted to participate with: My mom, Mary Culver.

Tempted by the warmth of the Sunshine State and eager to get an inside look at what I’m up to everyday, my mom made the trip from our home in Guilford, Connecticut to the East MobileBooth in Pensacola, Florida. In preparing for our conversation, I soon understood why participants often come into the experience feeling nervous about how they will possibly be able to pack in all they want to talk about in just 40 minutes! There was so much I wanted to ask my mom – both to hear old stories retold, and to ask some questions I had never thought to propose in the past. She gladly rehashed the story of meeting Julia Child and humored me by singing the songs she and her siblings made up about their childhood pets. More than anything she said though, the entire experience reminded me of just how special my mom is. She is a jack-of-all trades – an avid knitter, an incredible cook and baker, and a talented artist, among many other things. More importantly, my mom is loving and unbelievably selfless. I think she sometimes gets down on herself for being a stay-at-home mom, but I am quick to remind her that what she did, and continues to do (raising my sister, brother, and myself) is work too -  not only hard work, but incredibly meaningful and important work as well. I tried to ask her how she got to be such a good mom, in hopes of discovering some secret formula I could use if and when I become a mom, but I think it just comes naturally to her.

Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps, StoryCorps’ new book, arrives in bookstores on April 15, 2010 – just in time for Mother’s Day! Help StoryCorps in celebrating American mothers from all walks of life and experiences. I know I’ll be celebrating mine!

StoryCorps Door-to-Door recently went to West Virginia to visit Genesis HealthCare’s Marmet Center, a wonderful center that provides patients and residents clinical care in a warm and comfortable setting. We recorded twelve interviews as part of StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative.

One of the interviews recorded was between Jennifer Jones and her mother, Mary Pletka, who shared memories of her childhood, 1970s fashion, having children, and her career in vacuum sales. The women also discussed how Mary’s diagnosis with early on-set Alzheimer’s disease affected her work and life with her family. Initially, Mary resisted the idea of a future in which her children would take care of her; she had always been the one to support them. “What I learned is don’t worry about tomorrow,” she said. “Worry about today only, and take each day one at a time.”

Sometimes, a mother’s strength of character can be seen in her personality and in the family she has raised. But sometimes, it is just by letting go and accepting the love of her family that makes a mother stronger for her family.

In 83 years Callye Fears Chatman’s life has undergone dramatic changes. From her beginnings as the daughter of sharecroppers (“It was my job to carry water to the workers and to ring the dinner bell”), to her educational journey at Clark College in Atlanta, to her work as an educator, to her and her husband’s decision to move their family to a white suburb so their children could attend better schools, Mrs. Chatman witnessed the social, economic, and political changes that shaped the South in the 20^th century. Yet, when Mrs. Chatman and her daughter, Faye Capers, participated in the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative, Mrs. Chatman did not come to talk about the social and political changes she had lived through. Instead, she wanted most to talk about her mother, who had died a month earlier at age 103.

“It was a true blessing to have five generations and everybody able to communicate with each other,” says Mrs. Chatman of her life with her mother, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. When Faye asked what Mrs. Chatman would write in a letter to her mother, the words sprang forth immediately:

“Dear Mom, how are you doing with the saints up in heaven? I know you are still singing, especially your favorite song,  ‘How Great Thou Art.’ We really miss you, but we know you are there with the rest of your family, your eight siblings, your mother and father, and all your friends who passed on before you. So we are looking forward to joining you as well.”

The East MobileBooth made its way to the Panhandle and is now parked in downtown Pensacola, Florida. Spain, France, Great Britain, the Confederacy, and the United States have all claimed the city at one time or another during its 450-year history, which is why Pensacola is now known as the “The City of Five Flags.”

Opening day was hosted by both First United Methodist Church and our friends at WUWF  88.1 FM and featured guest speakers Nancy Fetterman, a community activist and coordinator of the Public History program at the University of West Florida (UWF), and UWF Associate Professor of History, Dr. Patrick Moore. Both speakers shared their thoughts on the value of telling stories and the impact the practice has made on their lives and on the communities in which they have worked.

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March 7, 1965. It’s been almost 45 years since Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten and tear gassed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. She was attempting, along with up to 600 other marchers, to cross the bridge from Selma to Montgomery to protest the earlier shooting of a protestor, as well as advocate for voting rights for Selma’s Black citizens. Now, approaching 99 years of age, Mrs. Boynton Robinson and her friend, Genise Kemp-Brown, came to the Atlanta StoryCorps recording day at the Auburn Avenue Research Library to tell Mrs. Boynton Robinson’s story of courage, determination, and eventual triumph.

“The air was thick with tear gas,” Mrs. Boynton Robinson remembers of the Sunday that became known as ‘Bloody Sunday.’ She said she was gassed so much that almost 45  years later her throat still burns. Front-page pictures the day after the march show Mrs. Boynton Robinson lying unconscious on the bridge. When she woke up  in the hospital the next day, Mrs. Boynton Robinson resolved, “I’m going to fight more than I ever [have].”

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Pilar Hernandez de la Rosa arrived at our East Los Angeles MobileBooth nervous about what to say. It’s a normal feeling for participants to have when we usher them into our slightly cramped—but charming—recording studio. Yet, it wasn’t long before Pilar began reminiscing about her native Tepec, Mexico telling her daughter, Loana del Pilar Valencia, about her mischievous childhood activities, her mother’s strict code of conduct, and growing up in a family of eight.

The conversation took a turn when Loana asked her mother about her love of music.

Pilar said, “Empezó cuando escuché a Elvis Presley por primera vez en Acapulco, MX.” [It all started when I first listened to Elvis Presley in Acapulco, MX.] “Mi mamá me decía, ‘¡Pilar, ni entiendes lo que está cantando por que no entiendes inglés!’ Y yo le decía que no me importaba. ¡Me gusta la música!” [My mom would tell me, 'Pilar, you don't even understand what he's singing because you don't understand English!' But I would tell her, 'I don't care. I love the music!']

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