We celebrate all kinds of things in this country; Birthdays, superbowls, mid-week happy hours and good grade-point averages. Many acknowledge and pay respect to a pivotal historical moment or sentiment, many are simply an exotic spice to dress up the bread and butter realities of everyday life. And then there are the moments when these two worlds collide; a celebration rooted in historical relevance that over time becomes…..well, whatever you want it to.

As I made my way through the sea of people to the StoryCorps booth at the gay pride celebration, I kept thinking ‘If I didn’t understand what this celebration is about, I would be mighty confused right about now’.

I didn’t realize until later that I, in fact, had no idea what the celebration is actually about.

A little backround: in 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar on Christopher Street in Manhattan. In response to this seemingly unprovoked attack, protestors rioted for several days after. This is widely considered to be the event that unified and accelerated the gay rights movement. But like so many other celebrations, it is easy to miss the historical implications of the day and focus simply on the excesses of the moment.

But in looking beyond the bright colors, far-out get ups and cheap beer lies a very real, tangible energy that has nurtured hope and provided community to so many. The gay pride celebration is no longer simply a commemoration of a single past event, it is a reminder to everyone that the future has more struggles in store on the road to equality. And it couldn’t have been a better place for StoryCorps to have been. If there were ever voices that need to be heard, they are the thousands upon thousands of people who were crammed into downtown San Francisco to celebrate the causes of justice, social equality and freedom of expression.

StoryCorps was lucky to have been a part of the gay pride festivities. Thanks to our partnership with the Contemporary Jewish Museum, we were able to reach out to a host of people in the LGBTQ community who would have never heard of StoryCorps otherwise. A big thank you goes out to all who came out in support of such a worthy cause.

StoryCorps is working to launch a new initiative, StoryCorps OutLoud (storycorps.org/outloud), in order to capture even more stories from the LGBTQ community. Be sure to make a reservation at our San Francisco StoryBooth and come tell your story!

Santiago Iñiguez recorded his story with his son Ricardo at the MobileBooth in Wenatchee, Washington. Santiago’s father taught him the value and honor of hard work on their farm in Santa Elena, Mexico. Although his father did not have much formal education himself, he made sure his children learned to read. “Mi papa tenia una Biblia, y allí me enseñe yo mas a leer en esa Biblia, no había mas libros.”  My father had a bible and that is how I learned to read, it was the only book we had, said Santiago.

Santiago left Mexico and traveled to the United States, as he said, “para buscar una cosa diferente,” to find something different. While working on the farms of the Yakima Valley in Washington state, Santiago saved his money and brought his family to start a new life.

Many years later Ricardo asked his father how it felt to watch each of his eleven children graduate from high school and go onto too college.  Santiago responded, “Me emociono tanto ver como las cosas pueden mejorar con esfuerzo,” I am so excited to see how things can improve with effort. “Eso para mi era como un milagro, haberme yo con tan poquita escuela, tan poquita oportunidad. Me han negado mucho por la falta de la escuela, pero a mis hijos no.” That for me was like a miracle, having so little school, so little opportunity. I have been denied many things for my lack of education, but my children will not be.

Santiago strongly believes that, “La mejor herencia es la escuela.” The best inheritance is school.

When Muriel and Lucien Blais’ grandchildren come to visit they always request the same thing for breakfast: blueberry pancakes with Papa’s syrup.

The Blais have been sugaring — that is, making maple syrup — for three generations.  Muriel’s great uncle Lazarre Bisson started tapping sugar maple trees in the ’20s with his nephew Armand Bisson and the Bisson Sugar House was born.  That was back in the day of hand cranked drills and metal buckets.

Lucien and Muriel Blais when they first started making syrup

Sugaring season starts around March and April when the weather turns warm during the day but still freezes over night.  “Warm” in the north country is around 40 degrees.  On average, it takes 40 to 50 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup.

Little at Bisson’s Sugar House has physically changed since Lazarre and Armand first started. There are still the same benches, same sign, same wood-burning stove, same smell of split birch logs and sap.  Sure, technology has advanced — Muriel and Lucien no longer collect sap in buckets, but use a system of plastic tubing to tap the trees — but for Berliners, Bisson’s remains a fixture in the community.

And the syrup, well, let’s just say that I have been eating a lot of pancakes lately.

Manischewitz jello-shooters anyone?

On Thursday June, 4th, StoryCorps participated in the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s first ever Oy Vey Thursday event. Outside the museum, in Jessie Square, event-goers danced to the all-gal old-time stylings of the Stairwell Sisters before enjoying the aforementioned signature cocktail and joining StoryCorps Facilitators to listen to some of our favorite clips. No kvetching occurred and a fantastic time was had by all!

Marie Magnuson with a picture of her Aunt Nora

This week Liz Forrer interviewed her friend Marie Magnuson in Wenatchee to learn a little bit more about her friend, and her timing couldn’t have been better. It turns out that Marie’s Aunt Nora was the founder of Father’s Day! Marie’s father’s father, William Jackson Smart, and his wife lived in Eastern Washington with their 11 children. When his wife died suddenly, William was left to care for his children alone. Marie remembers him as a doting grandfather, who even gifted her a horse. Marie’s Aunt Nora was so grateful for her father who had raised her and her siblings so tirelessly, she thought that he deserved a day as much as mothers. And so she fought and advocated to honor all father’s with a day.

StoryCorps  is in Berlin, New Hampshire!  It’s pronounced BER-lin and not Ber-LIN (the emphasis on the ‘BER’ as opposed to the way you might pronounce the capital of the nation of Germany).   The pronunciation was changed, according to participant Paul “Poof” Tardiff, during World War I as a patriotic stand against the German enemy.

Poof is a resident historian here in Berlin, which is also know as “the town that trees built.” Berlin is a paper mill town.  During its heyday in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, five mills ran full time churning out paper goods.  Each spring, according to Poof, men drove logs down the Androscoggin River to supply the mills with lumber.  These men wore spiked boots and worked the fallen trees down river, separating the logs to be delivered to each mill by use of a series of boom piers, or man made islands, which still dot the Androscoggin River.

Paul “Poof” Tardiff

After long, harsh winters in the woods,  loggers and river drivers flooded into the big city during log-driving season, transforming Berlin into a lively - and sometimes rowdy - place. Log drives ended in the 1960s and the last paper mill closed in 2006.

Today, Berlin is the throes of a new phase transitioning from a booming mill town into a smaller, quieter place.  What is next for the town that trees built?  We have three weeks to find out…

Marcia Page had a different childhood experience than most of us. Instead of playgrounds and parks, Marcia and her family lived on the grounds of state mental hospitals. Her father, Curtis “Duke” Page, was a psychologist who worked at a variety of state institutions in the Midwest.

Marcia told her daughter, Sabrina, about her most memorable childhood home at the Fergus Falls State Hospital in Fergus Falls, MN. In 1954, when Marcia was 5 years old, her father was hired as the chief clinical psychologist and housing at the hospital was provided with the job.

Fergus Falls State Hospital (courtesy KirkbrideBuildings.com)

Playdates at the hospital were infrequent because Marcia’s friends’ parents “weren’t too keen on having their kids come up and play.” So instead of other children, Marcia made friends and played with patients who lived at the hospital.

Evelyn was one of Marcia’s best friends at the hospital. She was in her 20s and they played together almost everyday. Marcia remembered: “I asked my dad why [she was] there and he would talk to me like an adult. My dad told me Evelyn was a paranoid schizophrenic.”

Marcia’s father was Evelyn’s therapist, and he told Marcia that she “probably did more therapy with her than he did. We walked and we played. She was just Evelyn….I knew that they were patients at the hospital and they couldn’t take care of themselves somewhere else, but they were just people and that was a pretty profound experience to have.”

Marcia Page and her daughter, Sabrina Bender

Even though stigma surrounded these institutions, Marcia’s memories are positive. She said the patients who lived at the hospital “had pride in taking care of their hospital and their community….The really positive thing was that they were living their lives and being productive, while being cared for. ”

Marcia and Sabrina’s interview was recorded in partnership with the San Luis Obispo County SELPA.

Wenatchee is known as apple capital of the world and, not surprisingly, we have already heard many stories about orchards. From the MobileBooth we look across the wide expanse of the Columbia River to the sprawling cherry and apple orchards of East Wenatchee.

Pictured above are the festivities just outside the MobileBooth, at the Wenatchee Performing Arts Center,  which Northwest Public Radio organized to greet StoryCorps to the city. The opening day shindig was complete with baskets of apples on every table. NWPR has also put together a slide-show with an audio clip from the first interview with Harriet Bullitt and Wilfred Woods. The Woods family shares a three-generation legacy of running the Wenatchee World, one of the few remaining family-owned newspapers in the country. Wilfred Woods’ father played an instrumental role in making Wenatchee the apple capital by advocating for the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, which irrigates much of the region, as well as providing hydroelectric power.

Today Facilitator Carl Scott and I talked about StoryCorps with two other local radio stations, La Super Z, , and Apple FM. We are looking forward to hearing more stories from the folks that live and work in the Wenatchee Valley.

StoryCorps recently went to Monterey, California for a special interview to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous interviewed his mother Ann Todd Jealous and grandmother Mamie Todd.

Mamie remembers her first job teaching beginner’s algebra in 1939 at an all black school in Prince George County, Petersburg , VA:

“The students didn’t have any new books or materials to work with,” says Ms. Todd. “The children would have to sit together in the same seat and use a book that had missing pages, (there was) not enough pencils and papers. We weren’t paid very much at all and I had to share everything with them. ”

Her husband to be, who was also a teacher, brought her pencils and paper from his class to help them get by. Mamie complained to the principal about the lack of materials to no avail. She was forced to do the best she could with what she had.

One day two men stood in the back of her class room with their coats and hats on and didn’t say a word. (”I thought they were building inspectors.”)

The principal later informed Ms. Todd that one of the visitors was the Superintendent of Schools - and she had ignored him. The Superintendent returned to her class the next day and requested that she come to his office.

When she arrived, the secretary informed her, “Colored teachers come around the back. ” But Ms. Todd was determined:

“Well there’s his desk right there and here’s the swinging gate…so I walked on through and went to his desk.

I really leveled with him. He was a human being too. I knew we had that much in common. I always knew that people could change. I had been taught that. I trusted that if he knew like I knew…that he couldn’t sit behind that polished desk and do nothing about it.

By 10:30 the next morning a pick up truck came with everything I could think of that the school needed.

I wasn’t afraid of him. The worst he could do was fire me.”

Later, her daughter Ann wondered if Mamie had ever been afraid of anyone. Mamie paused as if to consider the question for the very first time.

“I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

This week, the StoryCorps MobileBooth East left Lincoln Center and traded the bustle of midtown Manhattan for a view of the White Mountains and the sound of the Androscoggin River in the heart of New Hampshire’s North Country.

We kicked off a month of recording in our host city of  Berlin with an ice cream social in Veteran’s Park, hosted by station partner New Hampshire Public Radio.

With cones of “Moose Tracks”-flavored ice cream, we welcomed people of all ages to see the MobileBooth and sign up to record a story.  Above, StoryCorps’ Sara Esrick chats up three Berlin Junior High eighth graders.

The MobileBooth East team will be in Berlin until June 25.  We look forward to listening to stories from young and old alike and to soaking up the fresh air of summer in the North Country.