Mozart's Hidden Kitchen

It's Mozart's 253rd birthday today.

That got us thinking about a Hidden Kitchen story we did two years ago when impresario and activist Peter Sellars created the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of Mozart's birth. Peter agreed to produce this Festival as long as there was not a note of Mozart in it. Instead, he wanted to present people from around the world who are creating art in the revolutionary spirit of Mozart -- musicians, dancers, filmmakers, sculptors, installation artists, farmers, chefs, school lunch ladies...

It was the part about the farmers, chefs and school lunch ladies that made us travel to Vienna to see how culture and agriculture link to each other and to the beauty and vision of Mozart.

"Mozart's Hidden Kitchen & The Tables of New Crowned Hope"

Have a listen

Inauguration Day Potluck

We are full. Full of hope and wonderful food from our OBAMA Inaugural celebration potluck dinner last night. This Obama Jello American Flag was one of the many great dishes that arrived. If you had a potluck too - send us your photos and tell us your story. We'd love to hear from you.

What do you hope for? What's the change you wish to see in the world? Kiss the Paper is gathering your hopes and dreams.

Too Full To Eat

We recorded this story in Washington, D.C. on the eve of the inauguration and wanted to share it. Listen to Martha's story.

Alice Waters' Vision for Obama

LISTEN to Alice Waters talk about her vision of an organic victory garden on the White House lawn.

The Kitchen Sisters Interview

Poet C. D. Wright

For those of you in the Bay Area, poet C.D. Wright is speaking at City Arts & Lecture series at the Herbst Theatre, in San Francisco, Wednesday evening January 7, 2009 at 8PM.

We'll be interviewing Wright as part of a story we're producing about photographer Deborah Luster for our series about the secret lives of girls.

Luster and Wright collaborated on One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, a book featuring a collection of haunting, sepia tinted photographs taken by Luster of Louisiana's incarcerated men and women. Wright's poems accompany the self-posed portraits to "ward off forgetting."

This photo was taken
by Luster at a women's
prison in Louisiana.

Here's one of Wright's poems from One Big Self.

Dear Prisoner,

I too love. Faces. Hands. The circumference

Of the oaks. I confess. To nothing

You could use. In a court of law. I found.

That sickly sweet ambrosia of hope. Unmendable

Seine of sadness. Experience taken away.

From you. I would open. The mystery

Of your birth. To you. I know. We can

Change. Knowing. Full well. Knowing.

It is not enough.

Poetry Time Space Death

I thought. I could write. An exculpatory note.

I cannot. Yes it is bitter. Every bit of it, bitter.

The course taken by blood. All thinking

Deceives us. Lead (kindly) light.

Notwithstanding this grave. Your garden.

This cell. Your dwelling. Who is unaccountably free.

Photographer Deborah Luster describes her her collection of inmate photographs in video by Doug MacCash, Times Picayune Art Critic.