The Keepers: Radio/Podcast/Social Media Project, Season Two
FAIN: TR-269730-20
Kitchen Sisters Productions (San Francisco, CA 94133-5107)
Nikki Silva (Project Director: August 2019 to present)
Production
of the second season of The Keepers,
including eight podcasts for National Public Radio and fifty-two short stories
for the website and social media.
The Kitchen Sisters request NEH support for Season Two of their award-winning series THE KEEPERS, a radio, podcast and social media project exploring the rich, hidden world of archivists, librarians, collectors, historians, curators—keepers of the culture and the cultures they keep. Building on the work of scholars, with nationwide input and ideas from archivists, librarians and the public, the series creatively brings diverse narratives to life deepening public awareness and understanding of the humanities, through skillful storytelling, a range of diverse voices and perspectives, oral histories, archival audio, music and natural sound. The series digs deep into complicated histories, neglected stories of traditionally marginalized people, and the lives and work of The Keepers, guardians of history, large and small, protectors of the free flow of information and ideas. We are requesting $100,000 to produce 8 radio/podcast stories and 52 Keeper of the Day web and social media stories.
Associated Products
95,000 Names—Gert McMullin, Sewing the Frontline—The Keeper of the AIDS Quilt and Beyond (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: 95,000 Names—Gert McMullin, Sewing the Frontline—The Keeper of the AIDS Quilt and Beyond
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 95,000 names. Gert never planned it this way, but over the decades she has become the Keeper of the Quilt and has stewarded it, repaired it, tended it, traveled with it and conserved it for some 33 years now.
In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Gert was one of the first Bay Area citizens to begin sewing masks—PPE for nurses and health care workers who were lacking proper protection—masks she makes from fabric left over from the making of the AIDS Quilt. The comfort, outrage and honoring of an earlier pandemic being used to protect people from a new one.
In January of 2020 The AIDS Memorial Quilt, now part of The National AIDS Memorial, returned home to the Bay Area after 16 years in Atlanta. It took six 52-foot semis to get it there. The over sixty tons of quilt, is made up of about 48,000 panels, each 3 x 6 feet, the size of a grave. The extensive AIDS Archive, which Gert gathered, collected and protected since its earliest days, is now part of The American Folklife Center at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
The story of Gert McMullin and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the Gay Rights Movement in San Francisco, Harvey Milk, The White Night Riots. With interviews with LGBT Rights activist Cleve Jones who worked with Harvey Milk and conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and John Cunningham, Executive Director of the National AIDS Memorial.
Date: 6/19/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9mcbx8ikgncpo1p/KSP_95_95_000-Names_GertMcMullin_SewingOnTheFrontLine_OK.wav?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
Louis Jones, Field Archivist, Detroit (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: Louis Jones, Field Archivist, Detroit
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: Louis Jones, Field Archivist, is a Keeper. For 27 years he has worked building and caring for the largest labor archive in North America—the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit’s civil rights movement, women’s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.
Born in New York City, the grandson of a Pullman porter, Louis Jones takes us through the archives with stories of the UAW, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph and the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Date: 6/14/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lrkni0h8tklx4xc/KSP_145_LouisJonesFieldArchivist-07.13.2020-OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
The International Congress of Youth Voices — A New Generation of Keepers (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: The International Congress of Youth Voices — A New Generation of Keepers
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: Picture this: 131 young people, 13 to 26 years old, from 37 countries—youth activists from around the globe— students, writers, poets, marchers, community leaders all gathered together in San Juan, Puerto Rico in August 2019, the week after the scandal-ridden government of Governor Ricardo Rosselló fell. A government brought down in large measure because of the resolve and activism of young people across the Hurricane Maria-battered island.
This wasn’t part of the plan for the second meeting of the International Congress of Youth Voices. It was pure coincidence. But here they all are, coming from across the planet to learn from one another and an array of artists, writers and activists, to create a network, to tell their stories, to listen and to understand the forces that led this island to erupt.
Politics of the world affect young people as much as anyone else, and they have little to no voice as major decisions are made. The International Congress of Youth Voices was founded as a means to amplify their ideas and energy and to unite young people for a weekend of collaboration.
The International Congress of Youth Voices, founded by author Dave Eggers (co-founder of 826 National) and nonprofit leader Amanda Uhle, gathers the world's most inspiring teen writers and activists. They come from all over the world, including: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the United States, Colombia, Guatemala, Cuba, Australia, Denmark, Nepal, Russia, England, Thailand, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, Uganda, Pakistan, Burundi, France, India, and Puerto Rico.
Date: 8/25/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9cfeeqou1i07gw/KSP_Youth_Congress_Streaming_20200821-OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
Floating City —The Mirabeau Water Garden, New Orleans (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: Floating City —The Mirabeau Water Garden, New Orleans
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: We go to New Orleans for a kind of biblical reckoning. A story of science and prayer, with a cast of improbable partners—environmental architects and nuns—coming together to create a vision forward for living with water in New Orleans. Mirabeau Water Garden, one of the largest urban wetlands in the country designed to educate, inspire and to save its neighborhood from flooding.
New Orleans. Surrounded by The Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, besieged by hurricanes and tropical storms, permeated with man made canals, levees, pumping stations …. Water is a deep and controversial issue in New Orleans. What to do with it. Where to put it. How to get rid of it? How to live with it?
David Waggonner, of Waggonner & Ball Architecture & Environment has been thinking and dreaming about these questions for years. One of the primary architects behind the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, David envisions floating streets, pervious pavement, planting bioswales—Keeping the Water—“living with water” rather than pushing it down and pumping it out.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Sisters of St. Joseph convent in New Orleans was under 8 feet of water. A year later, on a clear blue day, the building was struck by lightning. The Sisters prayed for a sign. And in walked David Waggonner with a vision.
The Mirabeau Water Garden will become one of the largest urban wetlands in the country and a campus for water research and environmental education, demonstrating best practices for construction and urban water management in the city's lowest-lying and most vulnerable neighborhoods.
The 25-acre parcel was donated to the City of New Orleans by the Sisters of Saint Joseph on condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood to “evoke a huge systemic shift in the way humans relate with water and land.”
Date: 9/21/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q03hx5gcv01ucg8/KSP_150_Floating%20City-Mirabeau%20Water%20Garden_OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
A Plea for Peace: Leonard Bernstein, Richard Nixon, and the Music of the 1973 Inauguration (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: A Plea for Peace: Leonard Bernstein, Richard Nixon, and the Music of the 1973 Inauguration
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Producer: Brandi Howell
Abstract: Music and poetry were powerful headliners at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signaling change and new beginnings. This was not the first time the arts have reflected the mood of the country and a new administration.
In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein performed in an "anti-inaugural concert" protesting Richard Nixon's official inaugural concert and his escalation of the war in Vietnam.
In 1973, the United States was reaching the concluding stages of our involvement in Vietnam. And while the war would soon come to an end, the weeks leading up to the second inauguration of Richard Nixon were met with some of the most intense and deadly bombing campaigns of the war.
The anti-war movement was unhinged. They had marched, they protested — to seemingly no avail when it came to changing Nixon’s foreign policies. So what to do next...
Leonard Bernstein, a “Keeper of Peace,” gathered an impromptu orchestra for an “anti-inaugural concert”— a concert for peace—following his belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists had the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace.
Date: 1/26/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gja48mzfgi7ixwh/KSP_158_A%20PleaForPeace-LeonardBernstein%20RichardNixon_OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
Winona LaDuke—First Born Daughter—Keeper of the Land (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: Winona LaDuke—First Born Daughter—Keeper of the Land
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: For Winona LaDuke the best part of running for Vice President in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket with Ralph Nadar was meeting so many people who really want to see a democracy that works—who really want to vote for someone they believe in. At rallies women would bring their daughters up to Winona saying, ‘We want them to grow up and be like you.’
Ojibwe leader, writer, food activist, rural development economist, environmentalist, Harvard graduate, —Winona, which means first born daughter, is a force to be reckoned with. She’s the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and the executive director of Honor the Earth. Most recently she was a leader at Standing Rock fighting the Dakota Access pipeline. She’s a visionary and a fighter and she’s in it for the long haul.
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Oregon, Winona moved to White Earth, her father’s reservation, after she graduated from Harvard in 1982. When she first arrived, she worked as the principal of the Reservation’s high school and became active in local issues. Seven years later, she started the non profit White Earth Land Recovery Project, dedicated to restoring the local economy and food systems and preserving wild rice.
Today Winona LaDuke operates a 40-acre industrial hemp farm on the White Earth Indian Reservation with the idea of creating textiles for the people and the planet — of working towards a non petroleum based future. And she’s started 8th Fire Solar, operated by Anishinaabe, manufacturing solar thermal panels.
“According to Anishinaabe prophecies, we are in the time of the Seventh Fire. At this time, it is said we have a choice between a path that is well-worn and scorched, and a path that is green and unworn. If we move toward the green path, the Eighth Fire will be lit and people will come together to make a better future.”
Date: 10/27/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8twcuz6vtks0l4c/KSP_152_WinonaLaDukeFIrstBornDaughter_OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
The Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic—Keepers of Community (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: The Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic—Keepers of Community
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: As the pandemic raged, PPE was scarce and the supply chains were breaking down. Every hospital was scrambling to find enough masks, gowns and face shields. A New York Times headline caught our eye: Sugarcreek, Ohio. “Abe Make a Sewing Frolic” — In Ohio The Amish Take on the Coronavirus.
This isolated, centuries old, self reliant Amish community—Keepers of Community and a fast disappearing way of life—was rising to the occasion and collaborating with the world outside to fill the PPE needs of the massive Cleveland Clinic and beyond.
In the attempt to record this story in Amish country in the midst of social distancing and the ever deepening pandemic, a new collaboration was born — artist Laurie Anderson, Ohio-born designer Stacy Hoover and producer Evan Jacoby all joined with The Kitchen Sisters to bring these voices to air.
Date: 12/22/2020
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cw1uxdds0dkb29u/KSP_156_TheAmishPandemicSewingFrolic_OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
Chido Govera—The Mushroom Queen of Zimbabwe (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: Chido Govera—The Mushroom Queen of Zimbabwe
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: A mushroom farmer, food activist, business entrepreneur, foster mother to more than a dozen girls—Chido Govera is a kitchen visionary in Zimbabwe—a pioneer in the cultivation of mushrooms throughout Africa and the world.
Chido was orphaned at 7 when her mother died of AIDS. As a girl, who never had enough to eat, she began cultivating mushrooms when she was nine. Some people look at a mushroom and see a mushroom. Chido looked at a mushroom and saw a weapon for social change, a path out of hunger and poverty to empowerment and income for herself and other orphaned girls.
The Keeper and founder of The Future of Hope Foundation, Chido has promoted mushroom cultivation as a sustainable source of food and income in impoverished regions of the world.
We met Chido in Sao Paolo at FRUTO, an international gathering of chefs, farmers, activists, fishermen, Amazonian tribal women organizers, botanists and more—organized by Brazilian chef Alex Atala, famous from Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Speakers from around the world delved deep into issues of food, zero waste, the destruction of coastal waters, agriculture and climate change, the rights and foods of indigenous people of the Amazon. The conference was profound—a global eye opener.
Date: 1/12/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnncc9gmsz9rw3n/KSP_157-Chido-01.11.2021-OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File
North Beach Citizens—Keepers of Community (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)Title: North Beach Citizens—Keepers of Community
Producer: The Kitchen Sisters
Abstract: Francis Ford Coppola talks about homelessness, life, friendship, neighborhood history, and his ideas about the future as he tells the remarkable story of North Beach Citizens, Keepers of Community—the volunteer organization he spearheaded twenty years ago to help grapple with the lives and needs of homeless and unhoused people living in his neighborhood in San Francisco.
This month marks the 20th Anniversary of North Beach Citizens. Normally at this time of year some 400 people gather in the church basement of Saints Peter & Paul near Washington Square Park for an epic community dinner that raises the funds to keep NBC’s vital series of services available. Like everywhere, the pandemic has been hard on the unhoused and raised their numbers by some 64% in North Beach alone. The need is great.
As a frontline service provider, NBC is distributing nearly 3 times more food to the community than this time last year through daily meals "to-go,” and Wednesday Community Food Pantry. As a beacon of support for the neighborhood, they ensure that people who are living close to the margins know that they are part of a caring community and connected to support that meets their individual needs.
Our story takes us deep into the North Beach community with interviews with North Beach Citizens, volunteers, staff, clients—food writer and long time North Beach resident Peggy Knickerbocker, poetry and stories of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the supporter and Guardian Angel of North Beach Citizens, and more.
Date: 4/13/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9unzswd2pbx39p/KSP_163_NorthBeachCitizens_OK.mp3?dl=0Format: Radio
Format: Digital File