The Kitchen Sisters Present

It was Friday, April 10th, 2020. The pandemic was really starting to roar. PPE was scarce and the supply chains were already breaking down. Every hospital was scrambling to find enough masks, gowns and face shields. It was already every state, every institution for itself.

Frances McDormand talks about her extraordinary new film—Nomadland directed by Chloe Zhao, based on the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving in the Twenty First Century by Jessica Bruder. A tale for our times.

The story centers on the very “now” many Americans find themselves in. People uprooted from their old jobs and old neighborhoods, places they've called home for decades, now living in DIY customized vans, migrating for work with the seasons. Christmas near the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Virginia, the sugar beet harvest in North Dakota, cleaning latrines and being campground hosts in National Parks. They were already on the road by the thousands before the pandemic uprooted even more.

Frances McDormand plays Fern, a woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, sets out on a journey through the Midwest living as a van-dwelling itinerant worker — a modern day nomad.

Frances talks about the making of the film and her experiences in the van-dwelling community with clips from director Chloe Zhao, author Jessica Bruder, van-dwelling guru Bob Wells, and clips from the film.

“…Zhao’s fable speaks to us, in 2020, as John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath did to audiences eighty years ago.” Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

With all of us thinking of home and family and of all the things we love and miss, we thought we’d spend some time with Angelo Garro – a Sicilian blacksmith living in a forge in San Francisco with a passion for hunting, foraging, opera, cooking, pickling, curing salamis, making wine and generously tending and feeding his friends and community. A Thanksgiving gift.

The Kitchen Sisters join Angelo along the coast of Northern California as he follows the seasons foraging fennel in the spring, wild turkey hunting in November, olive picking, eels, mushrooms, and when it rains it’s ducks.

“Angelo is a center of gravity for people from just about every class and every job,” says his friend Xavier Carbonnet. “The forge is like the Old Country. Like a piece of Italy frozen in time in the middle of San Francisco.”

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In 1966, a young Marine took a reel-to-reel tape recorder with him into the Vietnam War. For two months, Michael A. Baronowski made tapes of his life and his friends, in foxholes, in combat and sent those audio letters home to his family in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Then he was killed in action.

Thirty-four years later, Baronowski’s friend Tim Duffie, shared these tapes which were used to produce this story as part of the NPR series, “Lost & Found Sound,” created by Jay Allison and The Kitchen Sisters.

This episode also features Jay Allison and The Kitchen Sisters talking about the creation of the Peabody Award winning series Lost & Found Sound and about the production of Baronowski’s story produced by Tina Egloff and Jay Allison. The piece won the first Gold Award at the Third Coast Audio Festival and was one of the most responded to stories ever to air on NPR’s All Things Considered.

“The Vietnam Tapes of Lance Corporal Michael A. Baronowski includes live field recordings from the war that are incredibly honest, genuine, unrehearsed, visceral, funny, devastating…. In short, they’re remarkable.” Transom.org

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Sign up for Notes from The Kitchen Sisterhood.

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.

When we visited Winona on the White Earth Reservation in 2004 for our Hidden Kitchens story Harvest on Big Rice Lake she spoke to us about her family, her life and work—about running for Vice President, about harvesting wild rice on the lakes of Minnesota and creating jobs on the reservation, about how her Ojibwe father met her bohemian/artist/Jewish mother in New York City, how her dad went on to Hollywood to star in the Westerns and how he later became the New Age spiritual leader called Sun Bear.

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.”

Sometimes we find the story, sometimes the story finds us. Such is the case with this tale of two Keepers from the Pacific Northwest, the official/unofficial archivists for Pearl Jam. Caroline Losneck, a radio producer in Maine heard our Keepers series about activist archivists and rogue librarians and said to herself, “Hey wait a minute, what about that mythic vault in Seattle I’ve been hearing about for years filled to the brim with 30 years of Pearl Jam, who's keeping that?”

Today Caroline Losneck and The Kitchen Sisters Present... Pearl Jam: It’s a Rock Band, Not the Smithsonian

Produced in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Mixed by Jim McKee. 

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—“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.”

The Peabody Award winning Sonic Memorial Project, an intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood, through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voicemail messages and interviews.

The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series. We came together—radio producers, artists, construction workers, bond traders, secretaries, ironworkers, elevator operators, policemen, widows, firefighters, archivists, public radio stations and listeners to chronicle and commemorate the life and history of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood. We opened a phone line on NPR for listeners to call in with their stories and audio artifacts relating to the September 11 attacks and the history of the World Trade Center. Hundreds of people called with testimonies and remembrances, music and small shards of sounds.

In addition to these personal messages and remembrances you’ll hear interviews with: Guy Tozzoli, Director of the World Trade Center of New York; Minoru Yamasaki, the architect who designed the World Trade Center; Philippe Petit, the aerialist who walked a tightrope between the twin towers; Leslie Robertson, World Trade Tower structural engineer; Herb Ouida, Executive Vice President of the World Trade Centers Association; Professor Kenneth T. Jackson, Director of New York Historical Society; historian Robert Snyder; and sound artists and musicians who recorded and performed at the Trade Center including Stephen Scott, Ben Cheah, Nadine Robinson, Stephen Vitiello and more.

The Sonic Memorial Project was produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with NPR, Ben Shapiro, Jay Allison, Joe Richman and independent radio producers, artists, writers, archivists, historians and public radio listeners throughout the country. Hosted by writer Paul Auster.

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—jet lagged and lit from within—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.

Student delegates are chosen based on their commitment to leadership and social justice and their passion and eloquence as writers. The event is designed to provide a path to leadership for all delegates and represents a continuum from students who have exhibited potential in local writing and tutoring programs to writers and activists who have already made notable achievements at a very young age.

Youth on Fire: The International Congress of Youth Voices was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton, Brandi Howell, Rachel Templeton & Teddy Alexander. Mixed by Jim McKee. Story Intern: Jonathan Hsieh. Special thanks to Dave Eggers & Amanda Uhle and to all the delegates from around the country and around the world who came to Puerto Rico and shared their stories with us. Check out more on our new social media series #YouthOnFire.

This story begins our new series Youth on Fire, stories of young activists and visionaries from around the world. We would love to hear from you if you are or if you know one. Podcasts, social media, poetry, playlists, manifestos… let us know what you’re doing. You can reach us @kitchensisters on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and at kitchensisters.org.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX. Thanks to Sakara for sponsoring this episode.

Funding for work of The Kitchen Sisters comes from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The TRA Fund supporting our Intern Program, and Listener Contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

On Tuesday August 4th, a massive explosion devastated Beirut, shattering the port and the heart of the city. Over 150 people have lost their lives, some 5000 people have been injured, hundreds of thousands have lost their homes — all while the people of Lebanon are facing catastrophic levels of the coronavirus and devastating economic collapse.

Our love and our sorrow are with the people of  Beirut. In 2015 Davia traveled to Lebanon for our Hidden Kitchens series to chronicle the work of the Lebanese kitchen visionary, Kamal Mouzawak — an astounding man who builds community through food throughout the country. His Beirut restaurant, Tawlet, that employs dozens of village women cooking their traditional village dishes, was destroyed in the explosion.

Kamal Mouzawak and his restaurant team have been at the forefront of the Beirut rescue efforts in collaboration with Chef Jose Andres and the World Central Kitchen. Kamal’s kitchen prepared the first fresh meals for local hospitals, isolated seniors, and first responders throughout the city. Hummus sandwiches, kefta sandwiches of yellow onion, sumac, parsley and hummus and molokhia, a traditional Sunday meal of chicken that reminds everyone who knows it of home.

In homage to the people of Lebanon, The Kitchen Sisters Present a journey through the hidden kitchens of Lebanon with kitchen activist and restaurateur Kamal Mouzawak, a man with a vision of re-building and uniting this war-ravaged nation through its traditions, its culture and its food. We visit farmer’s markets, restaurants and guest houses known as Souk el Tayeb that he and his kitchen community have created.

This story, produced by Samuel Shelton Robinson and The Kitchen Sisters, is part of Hidden Kitchens: War and Peace and Food, a series of stories about the role food plays in helping resolve or cause conflict between nations and communities.