I actually don’t remember the first time I listened to a StoryCorp interview. Which is funny because I used to be able to remember every intersection, every cross-roads, every meeting, every date and almost every name for every person I’d encountered on this beautiful green and blue globe. (I blame having children for my reversion to simple memory.)

I don’t remember the first STORY I heard on StoryCorp either, but there have been so many now, that this is no surprise either. But I do REMEMBER almost every story I’ve heard.

StoryCorp was begun in 2003 by David Isay, longtime documentary film and radio producer. Winner of a MacArthur genius award, and personal story champion extraordinaire!

Isay and his team set up what they called a ‘listening booth’ in Grand Central Terminal, New York, New York. The booth was a small sound studio, where you were invited into a comfortable room by a story facilitator, lights dimmed for ambiance, and given 40 minutes to record whatever you wanted about your life, times, or personal story.

The objective was not only to record personal interviews, but to capture interviews between two people who knew each other well– husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends and close co-workers, or you and the guy you’d been drinking coffee next to at the same neighborhood cafe for 20 years. Intimate conversations between family, friends, loved ones. Isay’s purpose was to record the voices of the PEOPLE. These interviews would then be archived in the Library of Congress. The Big Grand-daddy of all other Library’s. The Library in America’s Capitol. The place that holds some of the most treasured works of writing and sound on earth.

THERE, in that edifice to learning, the interviews will be kept so that in 100 years, someone’s great-grandchild could go in and request to hear the interview between their mother and a facilitator about the day her ex-husband called from the 103rd floor before his death in the World Trade Center attack, a grand-niece or nephew could pull up a recording of their uncle and his friend remembering the day they were left alone to care for an entire assisted living facility when everyone else walked off the job, a man describing to his wife what it felt like to serve in Afghanistan, or a police officer interviewing a boy he had talked down from a bridge jump 10 years previous. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

You can hear an in-depth (about an hour) description of how Isay came to produce StoryCorp here, here, and here (it’s in three parts). This was a conference address Isay gave to the International Feature Conference in London, 2012. One of the most important take aways from that presentation was a story that David told about one of the sparks that sparked the idea that became StoryCorp.

In brief: Isay did a film project which was later turned into a book focusing on Sunshine Hotel. Sunshine Hotel was a flop house in the Bowery neighborhood of NYC, a hold-over from a huge homeless population that lived in there from the depression era through much of the 50s and even 60s.

Guests of Sunshine Hotel could stay at the hotel for $5.00 a night, and sometimes that night stretched into two years of nights. The narrator Nathan Smith, describes the fact that Sunshine Hotel has its own microcosmic societal universe– a laundry service, a guy who will clean your room for you and Rick, a Vietnam vet who will run your errands for tips.

The cast of characters is colorful to put it lightly, and Isay describes the moment when he took the galleys of the book based on his film work there at Sunshine Hotel BACK to show some of the residents still living there. One gentleman grabbed his picture from the pages of the galley and took off down the hall of the hotel yelling, “I exist, I exist!!” Waving his picture over his head as he ran.

This so impacted Isay, the idea that someone would be so moved, so touched, so excited, so legitimated, so real to themselves by seeing their own picture and story taped and in print that he dedicated his life to preserving the stories of others. Something he was already doing in his film and radio work, but something he dug deeper to the CORE of with StoryCorp.

If you get nothing else from this post, I hope you will listen to/watch the love story of Danny and Annie Perasa. Danny and Annie were some of the first people to be interviewed in that first listening booth in Grand Central Terminal (Isay estimates somewhere within the first 30 days).

Their story is simply beautiful. And because Danny and Annie visited in StoryCorps early days, they actual came back many times to record interviews with one another as well as many, many people they brought with them.

Here is their STORY:

https://youtu.be/WNfvuJr9164

My EXPERIENCE with StoryCorp was cemented over and over again on the commute between our tiny 600 sq. ft. apartment in Alexandria, VA and the campus of The George Washington University where I studied for my Masters Degree, and L St where my husband worked in D.C.

An interview is played every Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition. If you haven’t ever heard of StoryCorp you should check out their website. You can like their page on Face Book and link to every Morning Edition interview, or read the book of interviews, Listening is an Act of Love, Isay published in 2007, or go to the Library of Congress and ask to listen to one of the interviews that’s been archived.

That listening experience has been concreted over and over and over again. Partially through some of my own research into personal natrative and StoryCorp, but mostly from hearing those interviews broadcast Friday upon Friday.

I heard one just last week that brought tears to my eyes. The truth is that these words, these interviews, are the most true and pure essence of the human spirit I have ever come across. They are real, raw recording of people like you and me. They are poignant, and as Isay points out time and time again– they are poetry. The poetry of human existence. Today, instead of that first sound booth in Grand Central, you might record your interview with your loved one in a fully outfitted Air Stream mobile booth.

StoryCorp has taken their initiative to the road and criss-crossed America capturing over 100,000 interviews around the country– all archived at the Library of Congress.

But there’s more, and I’m going to be sharing those exciting updates surrounding StoryCorp on Friday. David Isay won the 2015 TED prize, and what he did with that prize will astound you.

I promise that this affects you MORE THAN YOU THINK. Maybe more than you will ever know. I hope you’ll have a listen.

See you back here Friday! (And hopefully every day in between 🙂

XX, Megan

Our children are on polar opposite ends of the picky-eater scale, almost as far apart in preference as you can get. Our oldest will eat almost everything. This is a kid who was downing legitimate sushi at 3, friends. I couldn’t have been more thrilled as a parent, and I’m sure I patted myself on the back on one too many occasions. Because child #2 really couldn’t have come MORE picky.

I’ve related here (in my Camping with Kiddos post) that he would gladly have eaten chicken nuggets every meal of every day if we had allowed it. He woke up asking for chicken nuggets for breakfast, and honestly, he almost ALWAYS had chicken nuggets for dinner. Sushi? Are you kidding me? Pasta? No way! Sandwiches? I’ll pass. Salads? Yeah, right.

Things went on this way with Chicken Nugget for nearly two years. in his second year of life we subscribed to The Scramble*, and I found myself making two dinners every night. Which, I guess, wasn’t that different from what we’d been doing before. I mean, we didn’t fall whim to his palate and start eating chicken nuggets every blessed day. Eventually I was tired of the two-dinner tango. Even if it only meant that we had to throw some chicken nuggets in the microwave.

It was time to rip off the band-aid. We simply allowed #2 to eat chicken nuggets for lunch EVERY DAY (without exception), but when it came to dinner we let him know that he didn’t have to eat what we were serving but that THERE WOULDN’T BE ANY CHICKEN NUGGETS or other food stuffs offered later (without exception).For the most part, this has worked.

This salad is a perfect example of something the #2 would not have taken one bite of two years ago. Turn up the nose, ask for a nugget. That was his M.O. Now, in the present, the food is eaten. Sometimes varying portions, sometimes a squinty expression, sometimes some actual whining (however, people at our table are invited to spend time in their bedrooms if they don’t want to eat). Man, this makes us sound like we are hardcore, but I promise we are nice about it. Nice, but firm.

On to the salad!

Ingredients for main dish

• 1 – 1 1/2 lb. chicken tenderloins, or use sliced portobello mushrooms
• 8 oz. balsamic vinaigrette dressing, (store-bought or homemade, see Note below)
• 8 oz. mixed salad greens
• 1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds or shelled pistachios, lightly toasted, if desired
• 10 fresh basil or mint leaves, sliced (optional)
• 1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola or blue cheese
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels, or use kernels off of 2 ears of corn

Marinate:  This recipe doesn’t actually call for extended marinating time. I just like the flavors to really mesh with my meat. So I marinated my 1 1/2 lbs. of chicken overnight in 6 oz. balsamic vinaigrette in a baking pan. (You can reserve a few oz. to dress your salad with after it is assembled.)

Homemade Orange Balsamic from The Scramble: To make orange balsamic vinaigrette, in a large measuring cup, thoroughly whisk together 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar and 2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard. Add ¼ – ½ tsp. garlic or dried herbs, if desired. BOOM!

Bake: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Put the entire pan of chicken into the oven for 10-15 minutes. (Alternative remove chicken from the marinade and grill it for 3-5 minutes each side depending on the temp of your grill.)

Toss: Meanwhile, throw all of the other ingredients– greens, cherries, almonds, basil or mint– except the corn in to a salad bowl. When your chicken is almost cooked, warm your corn kernels for 2-3 minutes in the microwave (or simmer it stovetop). Add them to the mix. Slice the cooked chicken and add it to your salad. Toss the entire salad with the remaining dressing to taste.

Eat!

I don’t have a picture here of #1 happily chowing down on his salad, but his reaction was positive, I assure you. #2 ate three or four bites of this delicious fare, and I count that as a win. Every bite. Every time. If it’s more diverse than micro zapped chicken pound, it’s a win for us with Chicken Nugget!

Have a Fabulous Friday!

XX, Megan *The Scramble is a meal planning service to which you can subscribe here. For a fantastic price you will receive 5 weekly meals which means 5 recipes, complete grocery list, the ability to tweak the number of people you are making for, and full nutrition facts. PLUS tips as to how best to PREP your meal beforehand, add a punch of FLAVOR, and how to SLOW COOK almost every recipe if you’re especially slammed that night. This wonderful service really does live up to it’s name. You can come home at 6 p.m. and be sitting down to a DELICIOUS, HEALTHY, HOME COOKED meal by 6:30 p.m. most nights.

Because my schedule is flexible, I am usually able to prep our meal at 4:00 p.m. HOWEVER, if you are a busy professional parent, remember that you can go through your weekly menu and do a ton of prep on the weekend. Recipes always say how long you can keep the prepared dish in the fridge or whether or not you can FREEZE the meal. Win, WIN! You can read a little more about our introduction to The Scramble on my ABOUT page.