The Kitchen Sisters Present

She rose every day at dusk and rehearsed, performed, ate and drank until dawn. Then slept all day, woke up and began to create and unravel again as the sun went down. Nearly every song Edith Piaf sang came from a moment of her life on the streets of Paris. She would tell her composer and musician lovers a story, or describe a feeling or show them a gesture and they would put music and words to her pain and passion, giving her back her own musical autobiography. Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai, Georges Moustaki, Henri Contet, some of France’s great musicians and writers recall their nights with Edith Piaf. The Nights of Edith Piaf was produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Don Drucker, mixed by Robin Wise for Soundprint in collaboration with Raquel Bitton, who hosts and translates the program.

Hidden Kitchens, the duPont-Columbia and James Beard Award winning radio series on NPR’s Morning Edition, explores the world of unexpected, below the radar cooking, legendary meals and eating traditions — how communities come together through food. With host Frances McDormand this collection of stories chronicles kitchen cultures, past and present including: An Unexpected Kitchen—The George Foreman Grill; Georgia Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere—A Secret Civil Rights Kitchen; A Prison Kitchen Vision; the Ojibwe Harvest on Big Rice Lake; Hidden Kitchen Calling from from around the country, and more. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and Jay Allison and mixed by Jim McKee. Made possible by in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and contributors to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

One hundred-twenty-five years after he was arrested for sitting down in a whites-only train car, Homer Plessy may be pardoned for his crime. In 1896 his landmark case, Plessy V. Ferguson, went before the Supreme Court which ruled to uphold "separate but equal" racial segregation which remained in effect until 1954. In June,1892, Homer Plessy, a mixed race shoemaker in New Orleans, was arrested, convicted and fined $25 for taking a seat in a whites-only train car. This was not a random act. It was a carefully planned move by the Citizen’s Committee, an activist group of Free People of Color, to fight a new law being enacted in Louisiana which threatened to re-impose segregation as the reforms made after the Civil War began to dissolve. The Citizen’s Committee recruited Homer Plessy, a light skinned black man, to board a train and get arrested in order to push the case to the Supreme Court in hopes of a decision that would uphold equal rights. Homer’s case was defeated 7 to 1. The case sharply divided the nation racially and its defeat “gave teeth” to Jim Crow. The “separate but equal” decision not only applied to public transportation it spread into every aspect of life — schools, public toilets, public eating places. For some 58 years it was not recognized as unconstitutional until the Brown V. Public Education case was decided in 1954. Homer Plessy died in 1925 and his conviction for breaking the law remained on his record. Now, 125 years after his arrest, the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously to recommend that Homer Plessy be pardoned for his crime. The pardon was spearheaded by Keith Plessy, a descendent of Homer Plessy, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great, great granddaughter of John Howard Ferguson, the convicting judge in the case. The two have joined forces digging deep into this complex, little known story – setting the record straight, and working towards truth and reconciliation in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the schools of New Orleans and across the nation. The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation is responsible for erecting plaques throughout New Orleans commemorating African American historic sites and civil rights leaders. This episode also delves into the story of one of these markers commemorating the integration of the McDonogh 19 Elementary School by three 6 year old African American girls in 1960.

Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather, the Reckoning at Standing Rock—a journey into the deep rich world of photographer Camille Seaman. Born to a Native American father and African-American mother, Camille Seaman has been bearing witness and sounding the alarm through her powerful, other worldly photographs for more than 20 years. Her photographs and vivid stories document her journeys to the Arctic and Antarctic over the past two decades, her work as a storm chaser in the midwest, her documentation of the Standing Rock water protectors, and her ongoing project “We Are Still Here,” photographing Indigenous people around the country, in all walks of life, along with messages to their future ancestors. Camille was raised by her Shinnecock grandparents in Long Island and inspired by her grandfather’s teachings about our interrelatedness with nature. She attended the “Fame” High School of Music and Performing Arts in New York City, living from couch to couch, working as a bicycle message and a one-hour photo lab operator.  Her award winning photographs have been published in National Geographic, Time, Newsweek and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. She is a TED Senior Fellow and a Stanford Knight Fellow, and she was honored with a one person exhibition, "The Last Iceberg" at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. The Kitchen Sisters interviewed Camille Seaman as part of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s 2021 Season. Her imagery was featured at the Festival as part of a piece entitled MELT, a lament on climate change with music composed by Sean Shepherd.

Julia Morgan, the first woman architect to be licensed in California, designed over 700 buildings in California including Hearst Castle in San Simeon. Despite her prolific career her architectural genius was overlooked by history for almost 100 years before she posthumously earned the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. Morgan was the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. She designed many buildings serving women and girls, including a number of YWCAs, Women’s Clubs and buildings for Mills College. She pioneered the use of reinforced concrete in many of her buildings, a material that proved to have superior seismic performance in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. Julia Morgan’s almost forgotten story has been lovingly researched and passed down over the years by a remarkable linage of “Keepers” and is chronicled in “Finding Julia Morgan,” the pilot episode of New Angle: Voice, a podcast about the lives and careers of pioneering Women in Architecture. Produced by Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, directed by Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA, and radio producer Brandi Howell.

The Braveheart Women’s Society, a group of Yankton Sioux grandmothers and tribal elders, have re-established an almost forgotten coming of age ritual for young girls—the Isnati, a four day traditional ceremony on the banks of the Missouri River in South Dakota. This year the 24th Isnati ceremony took place. Eleven summers ago The Kitchen Sisters were invited to document this ceremony for our Hidden World of Girls Series. It was a mind expanding experience. The grandmothers, mothers, aunties and older sisters teach the girls to set up their own teepee, collect traditional herbs and flowers used for remedies. The girls are not allowed to touch food or feed themselves for four days; they are fed and given water by their mother or other women at the ceremony. They are being treated as babies for the last time in their lives. Throughout the days, the elders talk to the girls about modesty, courtship, pregnancy — and suicide, a serious problem on the reservations. One of the grandmothers, Theresa Heart, makes each girl a special dress. On the last day of the ceremony, the girls, one at a time, go into the teepee with their mother or auntie who bathes them, dresses them, does their hair, and paints their forehead. The elder tells the girl stories about what she was like as a baby, how beautiful she is and about the hopes and promises for her future.The girls prepare sacred ceremonial food and feed their community. She is given a new name and is presented to the the community as a woman. We hear from grandmothers Faith Spotted Eagle, Theresa Heart, and Madonna Thunder Hawk who speak about Indian boarding schools, activism, and the importance of re-establishing traditions and rituals in their community. Special thanks to the grandmothers, Brook Spotted Eagle and all the young women who have participated in the Isnati Coming of Age Ceremony. Thanks also to the WoLakota Project.

Betty Reid Soskin, the nation's oldest serving Park Ranger, works at the Rosie the Riveter Home Front World War II National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. Her tours and talks are hot ticket items. As a Black woman who worked in the segregated war effort, her perspective helps reveal a fuller, richer understanding of the World War II years on the home front as experienced by women and people of color. In celebration of Betty Reid Soskin’s 100th year we’ve curated a kind of mix tape of Betty stories—stories gathered and preserved by producers and archivists over the years. Betty was born September 22, 1921. Her Creole / Cajun family was from New Orleans and her great grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846. Betty grew up in Oakland in the 1920s and 30s, raised four children in the highly segregated Diablo Valley area where the family was subject to death threats. During WWII she works as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36, a Jim Crow all black union auxiliary. She and her first husband, Mel Reid, owned one of the first Black record shops west of the Mississippi located in Berkeley. Betty is an activist, a singer, songwriter, poet musician. She was a Field Representative for California State Assembly women Dion Aroner and Lonnie Hancock. Special thanks to: This is Love Podcast and creators Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer; The San Francisco Public Library and Shawna Sherman of the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library; and A Lifetime of Being Betty, a Little Village Foundation recording release produced by Mike Kappus. Thanks also to Betty’s son, musician and songwriter Bob Reid.

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 was produced by The Kitchen Sisters in collaboration with NPR, independent radio producers, artists, writers, archivists, historians and public radio listeners throughout the country. The Sonic Memorial Project began in October 2001 as part of the Lost & Found Sound series. We opened a phone line on NPR for listeners to call in with their stories and audio artifacts relating to the Sept. 11 attacks and the history of the World Trade Center. Hundreds of people called with testimonies and remembrances, music and small shards of sounds. Combining interviews, voicemail messages, audio contributions from listeners, oral histories, home videos and recorded sounds of all kinds, the Sonic Memorial Project team created a series of stories for broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered. Now, these stories and contributions from listeners across the country can be heard at the Peabody Award-winning website SonicMemorial.org where you can explore the archive, contribute your own sounds and stories, and immerse yourself in the Sonic Browser, an interactive soundscape of stories and audio fragments.

In the early morning hours of August 16, 2020, 12,000 lightning strikes exploded across northern California, igniting more than 585 wildfires. In the Santa Cruz Mountains scattered blazes grew into one massive burning organism — The CZU August Lightning Complex Fire — eating all in its path, scorching some 86,000 acres, destroying over 900 homes and Big Basin Redwoods, California’s first state park. A year later the fire is still burning deep in some of the roots and stumps of ancient trees. In the aftermath, The Kitchen Sisters turned their microphones on the region, looking for what was lost and what has been found since lightning struck. This story grew out of a collaboration with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. People who lost their homes in the blaze were invited to bring in artifacts found in the ashes to be photographed by award winning photographer Shmuel Thaler and interviewed by The Kitchen Sisters about the fire, their homes, the environment, their lives. These stories and photographs are part of an exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and mixed by Jim McKee in collaboration with Grace Rubin, Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Special thanks to photographer Shmuel Thaler, The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, The Amah Mutsun Land Trust and Stewardship Program, UCSC Professor Dana Frank, California State Parks, Mark Hylkema, Martin Rizzo Martinez, Jennifer Daly, and all of the many who shared their stories for the historical record. With support from The California Humanities and The National Endowment for the Arts.

John Steinbeck called it the “Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup described it as the route to get your kicks on. And Mickey Mantle said, “If it hadn’t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.” For the Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s, for the thousands who migrated after World War II, and for the generations of tourists and vacationers, Route 66 was “the Way West.” Route 66, the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in America for almost fifty years. From Chicago, it ran through the Ozarks of Missouri, across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, up the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, and down into California to the Pacific Ocean. The first road of its kind, it came to represent America’s mobility and freedom—inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show. Songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit Get Your Kicks on Route 66; Gladys Cutberth, aka Mrs. 66 and members of the old “66 Association” talk about the early years of the road. Mickey Mantle explains “If it hadn’t been for US 66 I wouldn’t have been a Yankee.” Stirling Silliphant, creator of the TV series “Route 66” talks about the program and its place in American folklore of the 60s. Studs Terkel reads from “The Grapes of Wrath” and comments on the great 1930s migration along Highway 66. We hear from Black and white musicians including Clarence Love, head of Clarence Love and his Orchestra, Woody Guthrie, and Eldin Shamblin, guitar player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys—who remember life on the road for musicians during the 1930s. We travel the history of the road from its beginnings as “The Main Street of America,” through the “Road of Flight” in the 1930s, to the “Ghost Road” of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and road side attractions of another era. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and narrated by actor David Selby.