Sonam Lama was trained as a stonemason in his native Tibet. He worked as a volunteer apprentice to a master stonemason rebuilding monasteries after the cultural revolution. When Sonam moved to Massachusetts over 20 years ago, he started by volunteering to rebuild an old New England stone wall for a friend, and from there his reputation grew. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Bloom’s father grew up in Lithuania at a time when all young men were subject to the draft. Like many Jews, he had to hide in his basement to stay safe. After marrying, he and his wife escaped across the border, crossing an icy river that reached up to their necks, and eventually traveled by boat to meet up with his father, a Hebrew teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts. Paul’s father became a peddler, selling thread, needles, and other products door to door. Wanting to move up in the world he went to New York to learn to repair umbrellas. At that time, people spent good money on umbrellas, sometimes buying ones with handles of silver and gold.

Photo: Paul Bloom/Jewish Historical Society of Western Massachusetts

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Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
- Dr. Seuss

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

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Springfield, Massachusetts is known as the birthplace of basketball. During StoryCorps’ visit to Springfield, we parked the MobileBooth outside of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Paul Lambert, who gave us a great tour of the Hall, recorded some of his stories about the history of the game.In December 1891, James Naismith invented a simple game for his students at the Springfield YMCA Training School to play between fall and spring games. His students loved the game so much, they had rules published and took the game to YMCA school around the world. By 1894, young people were playing the sport in China. By 1936, 40 years later, it was an Olympic sport. At the time there were also young women who were students at the YMCA school who wanted to play the game and Dr. Naismith encouraged them. Basketball is now the fastest growing sport among young people world wide. “The joy of basketball’s expansion around the world is a remarkable story.” said Paul. Read the rest of this entry »

Photographer and Longmeadow, Massachusetts resident John Reuter stopped by the MobileEast Booth while we were in neighboring Springfield. He brought along his friend, colleague and fellow photographer Jennifer Trausch to talk about the very unique camera with which they both work in New York City. “John and I work together operating a large format camera,” says Jennifer. “We have a rental facility that artists and photographers rent to use this very special camera. The camera itself is 239 pounds and it shoots a 20 x 24 image that is on Polaroid film. There were six of these cameras built between the years of 1976 and 1978 and three of those are in a similar situation where its a rental facility, we make it easy for people to come in and use the camera, but the New York Studio has always been the largest in this business, so we facilitate about 80 to 85 percent world wide of all 20 x 24 Polaroid use.”

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The first New England Transgender Pride March and Rally was held on June 7, 2008 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Organized by members of the trans and gender variant community and their allies, the event was dedicated to educating and building awareness about the movement against gender-based discrimination and to celebrate and affirm the diversity and strength of the trans community. Documentary videographer Carlyn Saltman invited DanicaMarie Ali, one of the organizers of the march, to tell her story at the MobileEast Booth during our stay in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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“I was the kind of person who got her first pair of sneakers at 25.”

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

Eileen and her husband Jamie

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

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

“It’s taken a long time to describe myself as a traveling poet, but really that’s who I am and that’s what I do,” declared Verandah Porche, a teacher, poet and self-professed muse for hire. When Christian McEwen found out that StoryCorps was coming to Springfield, Massachusetts, she asked her good friend and colleague, Verandah, to join her in the booth to talk about her poetry and poetic collaborations with others.

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

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“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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