The Kitchen Sisters: Recent Episodes
The Kitchen Sisters
The Kitchen Sisters, Peabody Award winning radio producers Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, chronicle the hidden parts of history, the traditions and rituals people carry with them from one country to another, across one generation to the next. Stories of sonic pioneers, local kitchen visionaries, neighborhood heros, groundbreaking girls and path-finding women—people with a mission, a purpose, a story to tell.
Our productions include the duPont-Columbia Award winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, the Peabody Award winning NPR series Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project, The Hidden World of Girls, and The Making Of... {What people make in the Bay Area and why}, along with hundreds of other stories for public media.
Building Community through Story Telling
Meet Itumeleng “Itu” Banda — a young, South African activist, award-winning radio host, and undeniable role model. A boundary-breaker and a storyteller. We met Itu at the 2019 International Congress of Youth Voices in Puerto Rico and recorded her stories.
Motivated by a deep sense of responsibility for her community, and by personal experience with gun violence, Itu is committed to forging a future that is safer for people like and unlike herself.
In her radio work, Itu is blazing a trail as a voice for young people, and making a point to open up space for female speakers and listeners. Here’s Itu.
This story was produced by Teddy Alexander with The Kitchen Sisters. Hear more stories from the International Congress of Youth Voices on our podcast, The Kitchen Sisters Present...
The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted routines in every corner of the globe. Photographers have been quick to document how the world looks different: public squares, streets, and airport terminals devoid of people. But one composer wants to capture what that shift sounds like. Pete Stollery is an electro-acoustic composer living in Scotland and he sees this as a rare moment to listen to the noises the world makes in lockdown and to create a living archive of the moment we're in.
Produced by Nina Sparling.
Explore the map and submit your sounds here: https://sound-scotland.co.uk/news/covid-19-sound-map
KeeperoftheDay – Latino Public Radio Consortium, an affiliate of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force.
Here is a clip with astronaut Jose Hernandez from the Historias de Si Se Puede series: “sixty-second radio stories about immigrants and second generation Latinos, who through persistent struggle have found success in music, the professions, politics, community involvement, and are now an inspiration to countless others.”
https://latinopublicradioconsortium.org/
KeeperoftheDay – Pacifica Radio Archives an affiliate of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force. “Chronicling the political, cultural and artistic movements of the second half of the 20th century.”
Here’s a gem from the archive. A 1956 interview with Rosa Parks. https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb0566
Episode Title: Commentary of a Black Southern busrider / Rosa Parks Series Title: Commentary by Sidney Roger PRA Archive #: BB0566 Description: Discussion of Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat to a white man and the resulting bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The interview was conducted by Sidney Rogers with Rosa Parks in 1956. Station: KPFA Date Recorded on: April 1956. Date Broadcast on: KPFA, 20 Dec. 1962. Item duration: 1 reel (16 min.) : 7 1/2 ips, mono.|16:30 Keywords: These terms will not bring up a complete list of all items in our catalog associated with this subject. Click here to search our entire catalog. Roger, Sidney. Blacks — Civil rights. Protests, demonstrations, vigils, etc. — Montgomery (Ala.). African Americans–Civil rights–History Roger, Sydney Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005 Contributor: Sidney Roger Role: Host Distributor: Los Angeles : Pacifica Radio Archive, 1962.
Josh Shepperd, Director of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress called The Keeper Hotline to tell us about this incredible undertaking.
"Radio history is pretty endangered and it turns out to be one of the largest and unexplored and unpreserved archives in the United States..."
Learn more: https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-plan/about-this-program/radio-preservation-task-force/
Earlier this week, the San Francisco Public Works’s Bureau of Urban Forestry honored poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti with their annual signature tree. Lawrence, who turns 100 on March 24, is being feted all over town. We were delighted to be there for the tree-planting ceremony and to sprinkle some fresh soil (with a gold-plated shovel) onto the luscious olive tree’s root. The tree is just across the street from Via Ferlinghetti in North Beach. On the sunny side of the street, of course. Pay it a visit when you’re next in town.
Listen to the speech from Carla Short, Superintendent of the Bureau of Urban Forestry, at the ceremony.
A call from The Keepers Hotline.
"Hi guys, my name is Steve Gainer. I am a cinematographer and curator of the American Society of Cinematographers Camera Museum in Los Angeles. Our collection is probably the most complete camera collection in the United States having to do with cinematographers. We don't just collect cameras because they're old and rare. We collect them because they have something to do with our previous members or current members..."
Do you have a keeper you want to nominate? Call The Keeper Hotline and leave a message: 415-496-9049.
Listener RJ Ramey called The Keepers Hotline to tell us about Monroe Work (1866-1945), who was hired by Book Washington as Director of Research and Records at Tuskegee Institute and worked to document every known lynching in the United States. Ramey created a website, monroeworktoday.org, to share Work's story.
KeeperoftheDay - Le Musée de f.p.c.
"We just started collecting slowly, not intentionally and we wake up 30 years later and we have this beautiful collection…”
Listen to Beverly McKenna, who co-founded McKenna Museums with her husband Dr. Dwight McKenna, talk about Le Musée de f.p.c., the historic house museum honoring the legacy of New Orleans' free people of color. https://www.lemuseedefpc.com/
KeeperoftheDay for Valentine's Day - The Kay Johnson Public Library in Valentine, Texas.
Listen to this story produced by Andrea Gutierrez for the Transom Traveling Workshop in Marfa, Texas about Valentine librarian Lety Navarrete.
"I’m a writer and former educator turned radio producer in Los Angeles. In summer 2018, I headed to Marfa, TX for the weeklong Transom Traveling Workshop, where radio maestro Rob Rosenthal showed a pack of us audio newbies how to tell a story with sound. After my original interview fell apart the last minute (the guest ghosted me), I drove 30 miles west to the town of Valentine, where I remembered seeing a tiny library when I passed through on the way to Marfa. It was my luck that librarian Lety Navarrete was there and, after some hesitation, willing to chat with me." -Andrea Gutierrez
KeeperoftheDay - Mrs. Conti’s Florist Shop
Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero talks about his childhood library in North Beverly, Massachusetts, located in the neighborhood florist shop.
Do you have an idea for Keeper of the Day? Call our Keeper Hotline: 415-496-9049, or send us a note on Twitter or Instagram: @kitchensisters or on our website: http://www.kitchensisters.org/keepers/
KeeperoftheDay - Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives at Oregon State University
Tiah Edmunson-Morton called The Keeper Hotline to tell us about the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives, the first of its kind in the nation. She collects records of hops and brewing in the Northwest, highlights the experiences of women working in brewing, and has done 108 oral histories to date of people working in hops and brewing. The oral history collection has "become a really important record of the industry over the last five years,” says Tiah.
This piece was produced by our intern Lauren Schechter.
"My favorite person, my hero, is a clerk in the State Department named Stephen Pleasonton. Who, the night before the British burned the town and the Capitol in the War of 1812, realized that the charters were at risk. He rolled them up, stuffed them into linen sacks, commandeered a wagon on the street and took them into the hills of Virginia. The only reason that the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have survived is because of Stephen Pleasonton.” -David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States
"FDR I’m convinced was a closet archivist himself. He called the Archives his baby. He designed a box to house his papers which is the prototype of the boxes we use now at the National Archives. From the very beginning the intent was that the American people needed to be able to access the records in order to hold the government accountable for its actions. And that’s what 'keeping' means.”
Listen to David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, talk about FDR and the beginnings of the US National Archives.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions. https://www.sessions.blue/
DJ Spooky aka Paul D. Miller aka That Subliminal Kid is a composer, a multimedia artist, a writer, a keeper, an “exchanger” who takes on big environmental and social issues in his work. We are huge fans of his music and his way of thinking. He came by our studio this week to talk about his new multimedia concert experience, Quantopia: The Evolution of the Internet, an homage to the 50th anniversary of the Internet and “a tribute to the depth and high stakes of free speech and creative expression involved in our daily use of media.”
Quantopia was commissioned by the Internet Archive with funding from a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission. And is a big collaboration with Greg Niemeyer, Classical Revolution, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, MEDIUM Labs, Sozo Artists and more. The world premiere is tonight, January 25, at YBCA in San Francisco. Tickets: https://tickets.ybca.org/24699
We talked with Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus about the group’s upcoming performance of DJ Spooky’s Quantopia: The Evolution of the Internet, a multimedia hip hop concert experience about the history and exponential growth of the Internet. Commissioned by the Internet Archive. Catch the world premiere at YBCA Friday, January 25 in San Francisco. Get tickets: https://tickets.ybca.org/24699/24700
We interviewed writer Eliza McGraw for The Keepers podcast episode, the Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky. She told us about other keepers in her life, including her Uncle Bill who "compulsively does dairy histories.” He and Eliza’s mother-in-law opened a dairy museum in Maryland which they call the MOOseum. Take a listen.
Zora Neale Hurston January 7, 1891 - January 28, 1960
Keeper of Culture, Zora Neale Hurston, was an anthropologist and the author four novels, including Their Eyes were Watching God (1937) and more than 50 published short stories, plays and essays. In 1939 during the depths of the Depression, she the went to work for the Florida Writers Project and worked with folklorist Stetson Kennedy and others to chronicle and preserve the songs and culturally rich traditions of Southern Florida.
In this clip Zora Neale Hurston sings and describes an African American railroad track-line chant she learned at a railroad camp in North Florida in 1935, Library of Congress Collection, https://www.loc.gov/collections/zora-neale-hurston-plays/about-this-collection/
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” Zora Neale Hurston
“Every story matters. The challenge is getting that story to the historical record. Simply putting it into the archive is maybe not enough.” -Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries.
Listen to this story about the power of oral history to make connections across continents and across history.
KeeperoftheDay No. 36
"Hi Kitchen Sisters. My name is Lindsay Smith Zrull and I'm a curator of astronomical photographs here at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. We have over 500,000 glass plate photographs of the night sky that were taken between 1885 and 1992...But the thing that's the most amazing at least in my opinion is that during the late 1800s and early 1900s we had a team of women who studied these stars that were preserved on the glass and they made revolutionary discoveries in the field of astronomy. This team collectively was known as the Harvard Women Computers..."
While recording stories for The Keepers we had the honor and pleasure of interviewing French director Agnès Varda. We sought her out for our story Archive Fever: Henri Langlois and The Cinémathèque Française because she knew Langlois back in the day.
We went to her home/production office in Paris—the apartment was filled with the scent of red peppers roasting. A bouquet of roses Martin Scorcese had given her upon receiving her Honorary Academy Award graced the table. Agnès talked about the Cinémathèque, but the interview veered off in other directions and became a kind of meditation on keeping, on cinema, on life. As her films have across the decades, she gave us much.
“Agnès Varda: Keep Faith in Art” was produced by Selene Ross & The Kitchen Sisters. Mixed by Jim McKee.
Aaron Swartz Day co-founder Lisa Rein talks about about her work with the annual hackathon. Founded in 2013 after the death of activist and programming wunderkind Aaron Swartz, the event draws attention to Aaron’s story in hopes of protecting others from similar circumstances and offers a yearly showcase of the many projects initiated by Aaron as well as new projects inspired directly by him and his work.
Lisa also talks about her background as archivist for Chelsea Manning: “When I learned more about Chelsea, without getting into whether you agree with what she did or what she didn’t do, she definitely followed her heart and wanted to improve the world and that's an Aaron Swartz Day thing.”
Produced by Michal Wisniowski and The Kitchen Sisters
KeeperoftheDay No. 18: Radio Haiti Archive.
Laura Wagner from the Radio Haiti Archive at Duke University called The Keeper Hotline to tell us about this "trilingual digital archive of Haiti's first independent radio station, Radio Haiti Inter." The project is "salvaging and preserving the original tape—more than 5300 programs—and digitizing the entire archive and describing every recording in English, Haitian Creole, and French." Explore this amazing collection at https://repository.duke.edu/dc/radiohaiti
KeeperoftheDay No. 15: Our Children’s Trust / #youthvgov
Beatrice Bowles called The Keeper Hotline to nominate Our Children’s Trust for Keeper of the Day. “I am so impressed with the young people who have brought a case to court—to the Supreme Court—defending their right to stand up for the environment.”
Learn more about these keepers of the environment at http://ourchildrenstrust.org
KeeperoftheDay No. 13 - Emma Goldman Papers Project.
Emma Goldman was a woman ahead of her time, an anarchist, a Jewish immigrant to America. Born in the Russian Empire, her time in the United States was mostly between1885 and 1919. Goldman was a fierce and eloquent public presence, a speaker and organizer about the issues of injustice, poverty, women’s independence and freedom, about birth control, labor rights, and education. Her vision was one of egality, harmony, beauty and individual action. Goldman was deported from America in 1919 for speaking out against involuntary registration into the draft for WWI but even more so because she was an immigrant and a radical.
What began decades ago as a passion for justice and a need to know more about this revolutionary woman who spoke fiercely for human rights and beauty became the Emma Goldman Papers Project, now 38 years old, founded and directed by Candace Falk and housed at UC Berkeley. Candace and her team have spent decades documenting Goldman’s life, including her correspondence with Chinese anarchists, Mexican anarchists, and her circle of comrades and friends including novelists Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, HG Wells, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Agnes Smedley, and figures as varied as Albert Einstein, Lady Astor, Eugene Debs, Peter Kropotkin, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Carlo Tresca. Candace tells us, “We have been collecting organizing and editing the papers, letters, surveillance materials, trial transcripts, newspaper clippings, unpublished writings and published writings of Emma Goldman and have some 22,000 documents related to her life in this amazing archive preserving the history of a woman whose voice is really needed now.”
In this clip, Goldman speaks to a reporter on her return to the United States after an exile of 15 years.
We talk with Nicholas Meriwether, the first curator of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, about the band’s incredible collection of fan art.
“I’ve come to realize that the art movement that accompanied the rise of the Dead is as much a part of what we became in the public eye as the songs and our playing of them.” – Robert Hunter, Lyricist, 2003
“If you want to know how the Dead was built, this is where you would go…the archive tells the whole story.” – Mickey Hart, Rolling Stone Magazine, April 1, 2010
KeeperoftheDay No. 8
Hilary Swett, an archivist and librarian at the Writers Guild Foundation called The Keepers Hotline to tell us about her collection. “As an archivist I think of myself as keeping the stories of America's storytellers, movie and TV writers…. My collection speaks to the history of entertainment industry, of course, but they also correlate to the history of labor and capitalism in twentieth-century United States, not to mention the McCarthyism of the 50s that struck screenwriters particularly hard, like the Hollywood Ten who were jailed during that period were screenwriters. Screenwriters have always had a little bit of an activist bent and been very politically minded and kind of a catalyst for change."
Home Movie Day, a global preservation celebration of people and their home movie collections, began in 2003. October 20, is the 16th Annual Home Movie Day and there are screenings,events and preservation parties around the world. Here’s an oldie but goodie, a story The Kitchen Sisters produced the year Home Movie Day launched. We hope you pick up a camera or camera-like object and film your people today. #keeperoftheday
KeeperoftheDay #2. A message from The Keeper Hotline:
"Hi, my name is Dr. Derek Fox. I'm a veterinary orthopedic surgeon calling from Columbia, Missouri. The details of a story are certainly not mine, and I'm no expert on this individual or even the field that she represented. It just seemed to me that her story would be one that you guys would be interested in pursuing for your Keeper series. Elizabeth Hawley who was an American born in 1923 and died in January of 2018, so just this year at age 94.
"What makes her truly remarkable is that at the time when she really started what would become her career it was essentially unheard of for women to be adventuring the way she did. She grew up in America, got her Master's and became a researcher for Fortune Magazine, but became quite bored and started traveling as a result of some intense wanderlust that she had. After several years of traveling around the world and going on many adventures as a single young woman, she landed in Kathmandu and and settled in Nepal around 1957.
"Quickly she became fascinated with Mount Everest, even though she did not like hiking and didn't really particularly like trekking or have any interest in climbing the mountain herself. What she was fascinated by was chronicling the expeditions that were climbing Mount Everest and in very short order she became in charge of and the main keeper and chronicler of all the records and the data for all expeditions going up Mount Everest. This chronicle, this overall collection of her records became the Himalayan database and in very short order the world leading mountaineers and alpinists started to come to her because she had collected so much data and information and records on the mountain that if you wanted to climb an eight thousand meter peak, you probably needed to go to Elizabeth Hawley."
Today, The Keepers continues with the launch of "Keeper of the Day," our new daily, year-long social media series featuring keepers from around the world. {Kind of like baseball cards}. #KeeperoftheDay will arrive in an array of modes—radio, podcasts, photographs, graphics, videos, quotes….
Along with more stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians, we’ll be featuring keepers of all kinds—river keepers, seed keepers, climate keepers, peacekeepers—stewards of culture, civil liberties, the land, the free flow of information and ideas—people who take it upon themselves to preserve and protect.
Keeper of the Day (#keeperoftheday) will appear on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, kitchensisters.org, emails, and beyond. We’ll be telling in a medley of mediums. Daily for a year. A keeper a day.
We begin this wing of the series at the Internet Archive in San Francisco. Twas there we met him.
Keeper #1: The Free-Range Archivist: Jason Scott, the public facing mouth of the Internet Archive. Listen and you’ll see why. This story was produced by one of our mighty interns, Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo, in collaboration with The Kitchen Sisters. This is Juliet’s first story. She took the reins and we were knocked out by what she did. Jim McKee mixed.
"My archival calling was, I believe, part of my spiritual calling." -Brenda Billups Square
Last week, we shared a story from New Orleans. The story of Leona Tate, who as a six-year-old was one of the first African American children to integrate an all-white school in New Orleans. Today we share a moment from a story about Brenda Billups Square, co-pastor of Beecher Memorial Congregational United Church of Christ and an archivist documenting New Orleans.
In 2018, we will be spending many hours with people like Brenda, as we embark on a new series for NPR called The Keepers — stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, curators and historians — keepers of the culture and the culture and collections they keep.
We are asking for your support to help create this rich, surprising, timely series about the people and stories behind collecting and protecting our history and culture.
November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail Etienne thought they were going to kill her. Listen to the entire story at kitchensisters.org/present
Thad Vogler, that pioneering spirits visionary, has written a beautiful new book — By the Smoke and the Smell: My Search for the Rare & Sublime on the Spirits Trail. We interviewed him years back because he’s so wise and mesmerizing. Here’s a taste.
In 1983 Prince hired LA sound technician, Susan Rogers, one of the few women in the industry, to move to Minneapolis and help upgrade his home recording studio as he began work on the album and the movie Purple Rain. Susan, a trained recording technician with no sound engineering experience became the engineer of Purple Rain, Parade, Sign o' the Times, and all that Prince recorded for the next four years. For those four years, and almost every year after, Prince recorded at least a song a day and they worked together for 24 hours, 36 hours, 96 hours at a stretch, layering and perfecting his music and his hot funky sound. Yesterday we interviewed Susan, who is now a Professor at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, for our upcoming NPR series, The Keepers — about activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, curators and historians. It was Susan who started Prince’s massive archive during her time with the legendary artist who died a year today. Here is small smattering of the stories she told that will be heard on The Keepers and our podcast. We thank you Susan. We thank you Prince.
"Humanity will be cured and saved by an orchard" -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Awhile back we were at Leila’s Shop in the East End of London, interviewing Leila McAlister, neighborhood kitchen activist, cook and grocer about her efforts to build community through food, when a beautiful Russian woman suddenly appeared balancing a high stack of beautifully illustrated candy boxes from a town called Kolomna, some 70 miles east of Moscow. Leila lit up, put down the prosuitto and began to tell us the remarkable history of Kolomna Pastila a nearly lost tradition of apple sweets, a tradition dating back to the time and orchards of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, now being revived by a group of Russian women, Natalia Nikitizna, Elena Dmitrieva and Elena Shampanova. They call the project the Kolomna Museum of Forgotten Taste. The revival of the candy factory of Kolomna has not only brought pastila to world at large, but has helped revive the once thriving town of Kolomna and is now taking the women on The Apple Road - in search of rare apples and lost orchards around the world to collaborate on reviving heritage breeds of apples and lost cultural traditions. An international project that brings people together from around the world in their love of apples, orchards and stories.
We had yet to make a story about this encounter, but this summer, Kitchen Sisters intern, David Fuchs from Middlebury, heard this orphan tape, and crafted this story — The Apple Road: A Hidden Russian Kitchen as part of our series, Hidden Kitchens: War and Peace and Food. Thank you, David.
This season of Hidden Kitchens was inspired by an issue of the magazine, Public Diplomacy centered on the concept of “gastrodiplomacy,” the idea of sharing a country’s cultural heritage through food, food as a medium of cultural engagement, the use of food as a diplomatic tool to help resolve conflicts and foster connections between nations. Korea it turns out, is one of the nations most involved in branding itself through its food, in using food as a part of it’s “soft power.” The philosophy of the Korean government is to help spread its influence through supporting Korean people to go and open Korean restaurants throughout the world and helping to export and by helping to export and popularize that most ubiquitous of foods—kimchi.
You've heard of the San Francisco gold rush. But that rush spurred another, lesser-known event: the egg rush. The legions of miners who swept into the region in the 1850s hoping to strike gold all had to be fed. And they needed protein to stay strong. But when food shortages hit, wily entrepreneurs looked for eggs in an unlikely source: the Farallon Islands.
Sylvan on the influence of World War II and poverty on Japanese cuisine by The Kitchen Sisters
In Japan, nearly every interest has a manga dedicated to it, whether it's sports, music or shooting pool. So it's no wonder that food, which has always been tied to Japan's cultural identity, has skyrocketed as a genre of manga, which represents about 40 percent of all books published in that country.
Lisbon is a city of plazas, parks, overlooks and gardens. For more than a century, these beautiful public spaces were graced by Art Noveau and Moorish-style kiosks — small, ornate structures that provided chairs and shade and served traditional Portuguese snacks and drinks.
These quiosques de refrescos (refreshment kiosks) were the heart of public life in the city. But, under the long dictatorship of Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, which started in the 1930s, laws actually discouraged public gathering and conversation. Many restaurants closed down and the kiosks fell into disrepair and all but disappeared.
That was, until Catarina Portas, a native of Lisbon, former journalist and entrepreneur stepped in.
James Fox has been going in and out of San Quentin Prison for 13 years, teaching yoga and mindfulness to prisoners.
"Often buildings speak to you.” -Leslie E. Robertson, structural engineer responsible for building the original World Trade Center, from the Sonic Memorial Project featured this week on our podcast Fugitive Waves. http://kitchensisters.org/fugitivewaves
In honor of actor Martin Milner, who recently passed on, here’s an excerpt from our story about Route 66 featuring Milner, George Maharis and show creator Sterling Silliphant talking about the show's cult following and the social impact it had in 1960s. Listen to the entire two-part story of Route 66 on our podcast, Fugitive Waves: http://kitchensisters.org/fugitivewaves
Curtis Carroll discovered the stock market in prison. Through friends and family on the outside, he invests from San Quentin State Prison in Northern California, and he's also an informal financial adviser to fellow inmates and correctional officers. Everyone in prison calls him Wall Street.
Our intern Max Savage Levenson interviewed filmmaker Roman Coppola about the story behind "Molto Groovy Christmas," his recent album of new interpretations of Christmas standards.
Hidden Kitchens England - Turnspit Dogs: The Rise & Fall of the Vernepator Cur by The Kitchen Sisters
In recent years, the effort to bring the Mafia under control in Sicily has spilled over into the world of food. Today a movement of small organic agricultural cooperatives has sprung up across the island to farm land once confiscated by the Mafia and bring these goods to a global market.
1- The Rise And Fall And Rise And Fall And Rise Of Thomas Alva Edison by The Kitchen Sisters
Look around your daily life. There's a little piece of Thomas Edison almost everywhere.
Lou "The Glue" Marcelli died at 3:00 this morning. He was 85. Lou was the "Commodore" of the Dolphin Club, one of the oldest swimming and rowing clubs on the West Coast, open since 1877. Lou lived at the club and cooked nightly for the old timers, the bachelors, for those without a family to go home to. His calamari was legendary. Every day he would put on his bikini trunks, bathing cap and goggles and plungeinto the cold waters of the bay. "The main thing is to look it in the eye and go," Lou told us as we shivered on the shore and took our first swim with him. "You don't have to swim to Alcatraz, just go." Swim in Peace, Lou.
Leslie Cockburn is a journalist and documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on 60 Minutes, PBS' Frontline, and in the New Yorker and Vanity Fair.
She's just written her first novel, Baghdad Solitaire, a thriller about a female trauma surgeon set in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Davia Nelson of The Kitchen Sisters sat down with her recently to talk about becoming a first time novelist after a 30-year career in journalism.
Jeremy Mayer is a sculptor who disassembles typewriters and reassembles them into full-scale, anatomically correct human figures. He does not solder, weld or glue and only uses parts that come from typewriters. He lives and works in west Oakland.
Laser cutters, 3D printers, sewing machines, injection molders, welders, notchers, planers, lathes, hand tools, computers. Enter TechShop, San Francisco—three vast floors of every kind of maker’s tool imaginable.
Beck’s latest album, Song Reader, echoes a time when popular songs were played at home, around the parlor piano. Existing only as loose-leaf sheet music, Song Reader is an album for listeners to play for themselves. We take a look at various ways people are making music with Song Reader.
If you had one hour, one table and a rapt audience, what would you demo at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? On Thursday & Friday, May 30 and 31st, The Making Of… goes live at SFMOMA. Visit http://kqed.org/makingof to submit.
A look inside the painted world of Judith Belzer as she prepares her new show, Edgelands, up now at the Morgan Lehman Gallery in NYC. This story was produced with Lauren Benichou & Ashley Richardson.
The Kitchen Sisters take us behind the scenes into rehearsal, sound check, and the making of Way To Blue, the new Nick Drake tribute record.
We visit San Jose and meet Ryan and Christine Sebastian founders of Treatbot: the karaoke ice cream truck.
Host Willie Nelson, Dallas-born actress Robin Wright Penn, singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Los Lonely Boys, and some extraordinary tellers take us across Texas and share their own hidden kitchens. Stories of cowboy kitchens, ice houses, chili queens, the tamale lady at Fuel City in Dallas, the birth of the Frito, the birth of the 7-Eleven, the birth of the frozen Margarita, the first barbeque pit on the moon, cotton picker's kitchens, deep fried fuel from biodiesel kitchens, and so much more. It's radio that tastes real good.
The Hidden World of Girls listens in to two teenage girls contemplating Freida Kahlo’s art and love life. The girls were practicing their miking techniques in one of our Kitchen Sisters workshops, when Monica Guerra pulled out her iPod touch to show Zoe Solnave some of her favorite paintings. A seldom heard girls-eye-view on art history and life.
The Hidden World of Girls Claudia and Patricia Bernardi grew up in Buenos Aires playing in their parents' lush garden, digging in the earth, caring the ants—making tiny clothes for them to take far down into their tunnels and chambers.
The sisters' story carries them through Argentina's "Dirty War" and its grim aftermath, into regions of mass killings and exhumations of graves in El Salvador—Patricia as a member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, and Claudia as an artist, both working for human rights for victims of war and violence around the world.
Paul's Hat Works is a 100-year-old hat shop in San Francisco's Richmond District run by four women, where every hat is a story waiting to be told. Produced by Lauren Benichou for The Making Of...
Fadimata Walett Oumar, leader of the band Tartit from the Tombouctou Region of Mali, talks about the life of the nomadic Taureg people, coming of age and attitudes about love and divorce.
Traverse the 600-mile trail that connects California’s 21 missions. Peer behind an ornate mission altarpiece that, for more than two centuries, has hidden murals painted by the Ohlone Indians. Uncover the mysteries of Mission Dolores’ ancient cemetery.
CyArk, a non-profit digital scanning company based in Oakland, is creating the digital El Camino Real, documenting some of the oldest buildings and historic sites in California using new 3D technology.
We go South of Market in San Francisco where industrial designer, Scott Summitt, is blurring the line between medical devices and sculpture. He calls what he is making the Fairing.
"My name is Ignacio Gonzales. People call me Notch. I build hot rods and I’ve got a thing for tiki bars. I build tiki bars on the side. I’m always moving around. I’m always twitching." From The Making Of... http://www.kqed.org/makingof
"Cardboard boxes, coffee cans, plastic water bottles...anything I find on the street, I turn into an instrument." --Marilyn McNeal, musician and instrument maker
Persis Karim from Berkeley called The Making Of... story line to tell us about how her mother inspired her to make jam from her backyard plum tree. Here is her story.
Oakland-based Juniper Ridge creates perfume, soap, and sachets from wild plants, collected by them or the clients themselves... https://www.juniperridge.com/
Remo Del Tradici, 92, began making violins in his 70s. Inspired by a neighbor, a volunteer for AmVets, and the memory of his brother who perished during WWII, he began giving away his violins to vets.
Hugh Schick is a chef and builder of food and beer trucks. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Cari Borja makes clothes. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Nancy Wahl-Scheurich is CEO of Little Footprint Lighting in Santa Cruz and has made a heron LED task light. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Natasha Zaslove makes raw chocolate. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Daniel Raffel made an IPhone app called Snap Guide. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Joseph Kinyon makes maps. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Patricia Bulitt is a performance artist and maker of wearable art. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Louise Laemmlen has 3 daughters and wrote the book, "Failed Feminist to Woman Warrior: A Rise to Motherhood." What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Sandra Hall started an after school creative writing workshop called "Take My Word For It!" at Chabot Elementary School in Oakland. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
April Martin Chartrand is a poet, fiber alchemist, and artist who has lived in the Bay Area for the last 20 years. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Stephanie Herman teaches dance classes in Menlo Park, California. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Robert vonKepner makes life size drawings in the style of the Renaissance masters and resides in Jenner, California. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
International Orange is an exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sound artist Bill Fontana went underneath the bridge to create a live sound and video installation.
International Orange is an exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. Photographer David Liittschwager dove in the waters beneath the bridge to photograph the thousands of organisms living there.
Peter Conrad makes analog comics in Silicon Valley. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Brooke Budner has a farm in the Mission District. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Tad Hurst is an emergency physician in San Jose. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Jennifer Carden is a cookbook author and her husband Matthew Carden is a food photographer. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Jaime Jenett has started an ice cream CSA in Oakland. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Alex Friedman is a tapestry weaver in Sausalito. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Chris Buchholz makes scale model airplanes. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Caroline Warner from Woodacre is making a project called Enough to Love. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Loretta Warner is making hand-loomed clothing. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
Olivia Christian is making comedic e-cards. What are YOU making? Call The Making Of... storyline: 415-553-3362.
The Kitchen Sisters take a ride with Lynnee Breedlove and the other drivers of the Homobiles, a not-for-profit ride service for the LGBTQQ community and their allies.
From Katherine Forrest who is working on creating a cohousing community in the Silicon Valley.
JD Beltran and Scott Minneman talk about their incredible invention, the Cinema Snowglobe
Persis Karim from Berkeley called with this beautiful message about her mother and the making of plum jam.
We got this call about motorcycles being made at Mullins Chain Drive in Richmond, California. http://www.mullinschaindrive.com/
The World's Champion One-handed Pool Player. "It just got in your blood like a man on dope, or drinking whiskey, you gotta have it. I'd die if I didn't get to play every day a little bit. The football shot, I'll show you that in a minute..." Ernie Morgan traveled the pool halls of America shooting exhibition pool nightly, telling his life story.
Some of the most surprising contributions to the Sonic Memorial project were the many tales of romance and marriage that took place at the top of the World Trade Center. We share some of those tales in this story.
The Kitchen Sisters and KQED are launching The Making Of... a new series that explores what people make in the Bay Area and why. What are you making? Call The Making Of... phone line and tell us your story: 415-553-3362.
The Making of a Beat. A call from Dr. Elliot Gann who co-founded Today's Future Sound a non-profit that teaches beat-making to youth throughout the Bay Area. http://todaysfuturesound.bandcamp.com/ What are YOU making? Call 415-553-3362 or visit http://kqed.org/makingof
WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts. The first all-girl radio station in the nation. From our Peabody Award winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound.
The Kitchen Sisters and KQED Public Radio are launching a new series, The Making Of...
What people make in the Bay Area and why.
The making of the Bay Bridge, the making of the iPhone, a jar of jam, an opera, a surfboard...
What are you making? Call The Making Of... phone line and tell us your story: 415-553-3362.
The Making Of...coming soon.
A story of transportation, civil rights and glitter, coming soon to The Making Of... a new multimedia community documentary project produced by The Kitchen Sisters and KQED Public Radio. This is an excerpt of a work-in-progress.
The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, take us to Eel Pie Island, a tiny slice of land in the middle of the River Thames. Now a small bohemian community of artists, inventors, river gypsies and boat builders, Eel Pie Island has a flamboyant history that stretches from Henry VIII to the Rolling Stones.
The Hidden Kitchens hotline received hundreds of messages from across America. We share some of the stories about food and the fellowship it fosters.
On July 11, American cooking legend, Marion Cunningham died. She was 90. Elegant, down-to-earth, a lover of life, people, iceberg lettuce, waffles, desserts and the family table, Marion helped transform American home cooking. Hand-picked by James Beard to revise the Fannie Farmer cookbooks, Marion began her career at 50.
An elegant woman, long skirt, silver pony tail, big laugh, wicked twinkle in her blue eyes. Marion drove a fast Jag and swam daily into her 80s. She was funny and wise and everyone in the food world sought her advice and opinion. The Kitchen Sisters were lucky to know Marion, to eat her waffles, brainstorm the Hidden Kitchens series with her, and to sit down with her to do an oral history. We have been weaving some of that tape into an audiobook we are producing, 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering by Alice Waters and Friends, for Audible.com. There is a chapter devoted to Marion. In her honor, we share some of her story with you now.
"We met through our boyfriends, Peter Barnowsky and Robert Mapplethorpe.... In the Summer of '68, we became friends. At first Patti and I spent our afternoons drawing. When I started to photograph her, it seemed as easy as sharing colored pencils. It was simple. Patti liked being photographed.... Patti and I were friends the way children are friends. With Chirpy little voices, we daydreamed a future. I found a cassette Patti and I made in '69. We were making a long-since lost 8mm movie in my tenement apartment in Brooklyn." -Judy Linn from her book of photographs, "Patti Smith 1969-1976"
Listen. It's 6:30 pm in Montevideo. The streets are full of traffic, and the radio is on everywhere. Tune into CX22 Radio Universal AM 970 and you can hear Elena Fonseca present Nunca en Domingo (Never on Sunday) her daily women's radio show. Elena is 81 years old, elegant and on fire.
Sam Robinson, from London, has been interning with The Kitchen Sisters. He heard the tape we brought back from Uruguay and was as taken by Elena as we were. Sam produced this story.
We began our conversation with Elena with the same question all Kitchen Sisters interviews begin with...
A group of babushkas, or elderly women, who live in Buranovo, Russia, have become a musical sensation. They sing Beatles tunes and songs by iconic Russian rocker Viktor Tsoi. They fly around the country for concerts. And it all started because they turned to music during tough times. Produced by David Greene.
In 2011, Amira Al-Sharif came to New York City to document the lives of young American women. The 28-year-old was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Yemen and was the first person from her family to graduate from university. And while western journalists often document Arab women, Al-Sharif wanted to flip the script. Produced by Shereen Marisol Meraji.
Gen. Vang Pao, an exiled leader from the Hmong hill tribe in communist Laos, was a CIA ally during the Vietnam War. Now, shortly after his death and six-day funeral in California, NPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao — Vang Pao’s grandniece — is delving into her family history. Who was Vang Pao, and what stories can his surviving sisters share?
The termite queen may be the mother who makes the ultimate sacrifice for her swarms of children. Isolated in an earthen capsule, she lays more than a quarter-billion eggs in her lifetime. On the eve of Mother’s Day, NPR honors this species’ story of struggle, rebirth and death below ground.
About 1 million Muslim women live in America; 43 percent of them wear headscarves full time. But now, a generation of Muslim women is taking off the headscarf, or hijab. For many, their choice is an attempt to balance their private lives with a very public symbol of their religion. Produced by Asma Khalid. Edited by Steve Drummond
Many girls fantasize about horses, dolphins and unicorns. One theory about why is that it helps them express their power. Others say the animals — real and mythical — symbolize dreaming and achieving. Still for many, it’s a way to run away with their imaginations.
In a country with millions of orphans and widows, officials say it’s tough to make women who are seen as criminals a priority, which means they’re basically ignored by everyone. Reported by Kelly McEvers and Isra’ al Rubei’i.
Although gays and lesbians can be imprisoned for life in Pakistan, rarely are such charges brought to court. Pakistani lesbians say it is often easier for them to engage in a sexual relationship because society simply doesn’t perceive women to have sexual desires. Produced by Habiba Nosheen.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service there are some 300,000 female hunters under the age of 16. We travel to Wayne Country, Mississippi to meet a girl who hunts. Reported by Tamara Keith and produced by Leah Scarpelli
Within the walls of the Afghan-Canadian Community Center in Kandahar, girls and young women throw off their burqas as they laugh and study together. Many of them want careers. But they know the danger in the Taliban heartland is real. “We want to be brave,” says student Tahira Sadisaidi. Reported by Renee Montagne and Produced by Jim Wildman for NPR's Morning Edition and The Hidden World of Girls.
We take a look at the life of Theresa Sparks, the former San Francisco Police Commissioner who last year ran for a seat on the SF Board of Supervisors.
Brook Spotted Eagle called us from the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. She told us about the Brave Heart Women’s Society and invited The Kitchen Sisters to their Isnati Coming of Age Ceremony for Girls.
A look into the created characters of today’s rising pop artists. Produced by Zoe Chace for NPR Music and The Hidden World of Girls.
Young brides in Northern Sudan have been performing the Bride Dance on, or near, their wedding nights for thousands of years. Today, plenty of Sudanese women reject it, saying they don’t want to debase themselves. Produced by NPR's Gwen Thompkins for The Hidden World of Girls
After the violent murder of her mother, photographer Deborah Luster takes thousands of haunting formal portraits of men and women incarcerated in Louisiana’s prisons. Working with poet CD Wright, she creates a project called One Big Self.
Science fiction writer Pat Cadigan sent us an email that inspired this story about her secret life with her best friend Rosemarie. It also includes selections from The Hidden World of Girls phone line.
Nigerian writer Chris Abani’s story about his English-born mother enlisting him at age 8 to be her translator in Nigeria as she travels door to door through the villages teaching women the Billings Ovulation Method of birth control.
Travellers. The people of walking. Sometimes called the gypsies of Ireland. They speak of non-Travellers as “the settled people.” Mistrusted for the most part and not well-understood. Nomads, moving in caravans, living in encampments on the side of the road. We listen to the stories of young Traveller women and explore some of the ancient and modern rituals clinging on the edge of the Celtic Boom.
Every culture has its idealized woman, its standard of beauty that is valorized. And everywhere around the world women are altering themselves in small and major ways to achieve the celebrated look. History is full of body altering cosmetic methods, both medical and homegrown, that help women attain this ideal — foot binding, corseting, liposuction, face lifts… In this story we travel to Jamaica, to the streets of Kingston, where women have come up with their own unique beauty enhancement techniques.
Groundbreaking writer, actress and comedian, Tina Fey comes to Public Radio to host The Hidden World of Girls, two new hour-long Specials inspired by the NPR series heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. From the dunes of the Sahara to a slumber party in Manhattan, from the dancehalls of Jamaica to a racetrack in Ramallah, Tina Fey takes us around the world into the secret life of girls and the women they become. Sound-rich, evocative, funny, and powerful--stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities. Of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide. These specials are produced by Peabody Award-winning producers, The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), in collaboration with NPR reporters and foreign correspondents, independent producers and listeners around the world.
Groundbreaking writer, actress and comedian, Tina Fey hosts The Hidden World of Girls, two new hour-long specials inspired by the NPR series heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. From the dunes of the Sahara to a slumber party in Manhattan, from the dancehalls of Jamaica to a racetrack in Ramallah, Tina Fey takes us around the world into the secret life of girls and the women they become. Sound-rich, evocative, funny, and powerful--stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities. Of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide. These specials are produced by Peabody Award-winning producers, The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), in collaboration with NPR reporters and foreign correspondents, independent producers and listeners around the world.