The ANNOTICO Report

If the Story Corps is coming to your City, it is your RESPONSIBILITY to get
on audio tape your Italian American remembrances for the benefit of future
generations.

Check the Schedule below!!

StoryCorps, an ambitious attempt to capture the recollections of folks
across the U.S., is based on the idea that `everybody's got a story'

Chicago Tribune
By Siobhan McDonough
Associated Press
May 20, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A grandson asked his granddad what made him most proud. A
paramedic talked about washing bottles as a kid so he could buy cocoa. A
sister told of being so close to her brother "sometimes I think I am him."

Theirs were among the recollections shared Thursday at the start of a
24-city tour to gather memories from the young, old and all in between.

"In America, people matter, and everybody's got a story," said Dave Isay,
creator of the project, which is called StoryCorps.

The project began in New York and until now had been confined there. People
age 5 to 103 told their stories over 18 months and are continuing to do so.
Laughing and crying, Chinese-Americans related tales in their own tongue.
Reunited with their biological parents for the project, foster children
interviewed them. Homeless men told of their lives.

Nationwide tour

To take the program national, two Airstream trailers outfitted with
recording studios are to roam the country after a 10-day stint in
Washington. Sessions last 40 minutes and involve either an interviewer
talking to the subjects or family members or friends interviewing each
other. About 100 interviews will be done in each location. The traveling
studios will be in Chicago in late August and early September.

A digital photograph is taken of the participants after the recording.

At the end of the session, participants get a CD of their interview. A
second copy will go to the American Folklife Center at the Library of
Congress where it will become part of a digital archive.

Isay is a radio documentarian and founder of Sound Portraits Productions, a
radio production company in New York. He said he hoped the project would
help engage communities, teach participants to become better listeners and
help Americans appreciate the strength in the stories of everyday people.

`What are you proudest of?'

Ezra Awumey, 12, of Alexandria, Va., stepped into the trailer Thursday with
a list of questions for his grandfather.

"What are you proudest of?" he wanted to know.

Sam Harmon, 75, of Dayton, Ohio, replied that, besides his family, he is
most proud of helping raise the money that built a community college in Ann
Arbor, Mich.

Harmon said he signed up for the StoryCorps project because he wanted to
talk about being born during the Depression, his early school years, his
time in the Korean War and his work in Africa.

"I have seven children," he explained. "They began to wonder about my early
life."

His grandson said, "I wanted to do this so future generations can hear my
grandfather speak about his life, and so I can hear my voice too."

Sue Mingus, 76, wife of the late jazz composer Charles Mingus, taped a
session with her brother, Richard Graham, 86. She remembered her brother
leaving their home in Milwaukee when she was 8.

The taping session "was an opportunity to bind us," she explained. "We
think extraordinarily alike."

Mingus, of New York City, shared a little about her time married to an
Italian sculptor and later to Charles Mingus, who died in 1979. But mostly
she talked of her brother, a former Peace Corps chief in Tunisia who hasn't
lived in the same city as his sister since childhood.

"It's interesting to go over the arc of your life with someone you are
close to," Mingus said. "I love my brother so much I sometimes think I am
him, myself."

Unlike some who had signed up in advance on a Web site to be taped, Antonio
Kimbrough, 45, a paramedic, was walking by the trailers and asked if he
could go on the record.

He talked about growing up in the Adams Morgan section of Washington. He
said he would wash bottles for money so he could buy a hot cocoa at a local
cafe and go skating.

Annie and Danny Perasa shared the story of their engagement: It happened on
their very first date. The Brooklyn couple recounted the warmth of their
27-year marriage during a taping session in New York and came to Washington
to help promote the project.

"Being married is like a color television set," explained Danny Perasa, 66.
"You never want to go back to black-and-white."

Their first date was at a restaurant on the 43rd floor of a building in New
York.

"I was scared of elevators," Annie Perasa said. "I faced the back of it."

A carriage ride followed, then he popped the question.

"I knew you were going to do it," she said.

All these years later, she says, "He writes me a love letter every day.
Things like, `Good morning, princess ... things will get better."'

National Public Radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Saturn
Corp. are sponsoring the program.

- - -

For openers

Organizers of the StoryCorps oral history collection have a long list of
questions to encourage people to open up when they record their memories.
Some are asked by an interviewer, others by family members or friends who
talk to each other as the tape rolls. A sampling:

- For anyone: How would you describe a perfect day when you were young?

- For a child interviewing a parent: Was there a specific moment when you
thought of me not as a child but as an adult?

- A child interviewing a grandparent: When did you know that grandma or
grandpa was the one?

- A friend interviewing a friend: Was there a time when you didn't like me?

- A friend interviewing a friend: What is your first memory of me?

- Siblings: Is there something that you've always wanted to tell me but
haven't?

- A young person interviewing an old person: What do you miss most about
the way it used to be?

- For anyone: Is there something about yourself that you think no one knows?

- For someone interviewing a terminally ill person who is comfortable
talking about the disease: How do you imagine your death?

-- Associated Press
 

Where and when StoryCorps stops

May 19-28: Washington, D.C.
May 30-June 13: Charlottesville, Va.
June 2-6: Milwaukee
June 9-20: Madison, Wis.
June 16-20: Morgantown, W.Va.
June 23-July 1: Charleston, W.Va.
June 23-July 10: Minneapolis
July 5-25: Columbus, Ohio
July 14-24 Bismarck, N.D.
July 28-Aug. 15: Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich.
July 27-31: New Town, N.D.
Aug. 4-22: Missoula, Mont.
Aug. 18-Sept. 5: Chicago
Aug. 25-Sept. 5: Moscow, Idaho
Sept. 7-26: Seattle
Sept. 8-26: St. Louis
Sept. 29- Oct. 10: Paducah, Ky.
Sept. 29-Oct. 17: Portland, Ore.
Oct. 13-31: Memphis
Oct. 20-Nov. 7: Medford, Ore.
Nov. 3-21: Tuscaloosa and Selma, Ala.
Nov. 10-28: San Francisco

http://www.chicagotribune.com/
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