Kitchen Sisters Workshop

WHAT: Kitchen Sisters Recording, Interviewing & "Sound Doctor" Workshop WHEN: Thursday, October 27, 2011. 10 AM—1 PM WHERE: La Selva Beach, CA (Near Santa Cruz) COST: $115 (payable to Kitchen Sisters Productions)

Dear Friends, Nikki Silva of The Kitchen Sisters, award winning producers for NPR, is conducting a recording, interviewing, and "sound doctor" workshop on Thursday, October 27 in La Selva Beach (at the commune where she lives) just south of Santa Cruz. This three-hour session is designed for people who want to acquire and hone their skills for radio, online storytelling, oral histories, audio slide shows, family histories, museum exhibits, news, documentaries, podcasts, and other multimedia platforms. The workshop will cover miking techniques, sound gathering, use of archival audio, field recording techniques, how to make interviewees comfortable, how to frame evocative questions that make for compelling storytelling, how to listen (which is harder than it sounds) and more. We'll talk about creating audio and multimedia content for the web, and self-publishing projects. Nikki will also give a quick tour of her studio and ProTools editing set-up. The workshop will be customized to fit your project and interests. People who attend come from many mediums and work worlds (from radio stations to detective agencies and beyond). The groups are lively and good contacts are made. You are invited to bring a work-in-progress, a past work, or an idea you'd like to brainstorm during the "audio doctor" part of the session. Nikki will play excerpts from a few Kitchen Sisters stories that are illustrative of various problem-solving techniques. The session will be limited in size so that everyone can fully participate around the table at La Selva. A snack will be provided. If you, or someone you know is interested, email kitchen@kitchensisters.org. Please pass this along to a friend. See you there, The Kitchen Sisters

Updates

For updates about The Hidden World of Girls, visit: hiddenworldofgirls.org or facebook.com/hiddenworldofgirls

For updates about The Kitchen Sisters visit: facebook.com/kitchensisters or twitter.com/kitchensisters

A look inside Bay Area's YOUTH RADIO

We love Youth Radio and are thrilled to see this new book emerge that takes you inside and behind the scenes of this dynamic youth-driven production company based in Oakland, California.

Drop That Knowledge is written by Elizabeth Soep and former Youth Radio participant Vivian Chavez (now a professor at San Francisco State University), Drop That Knowledge is the first book to go inside Youth Radio.

Read more and buy a book and then tune into Bay Area's own Youth Radio!

Here is Elizabeth Soeps Blog

Listen to a conversation about the book interwoven with entertaining Youth Radio stories on KALW at kalwnews.org!

Hidden World of Girls Launches!

Today on NPR's Morning Edition and this evening on All Things Considered the first stories of our new series Hidden World of Girls airs.

We'd love you to call the NPR message line with your story ideas—202-408-9576.

We're also looking for photos, videos, audio. Find out how to participate at hiddenworldofgirls.org

Women In the World

This weekend we are attending Women in the World: Stories and Solutions, a summit sponsored by The Daily Beast, showcasing dozens of powerful women and activists from around the world.

The Daily Beast is streaming the entire conference live on their website. You can watch the events as they happen here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/womenintheworldlivevideo

Lois DeDomenico

We were just sent a blog post about Lois DeDomenico, who we interviewed for our Hidden Kitchens story, Rice-A-Roni. Lois will be a judge at Ultimate Chef America, "Iron Chef for the senior set." Read the post here (which includes Lois' Crunchy Granola recipe).

And listen to the Hidden Kitchens story with Lois here.

Christina Kim Installation at the Brandenburg Gate

Designer Christina Kim, one of the artists we are following for our new series about girls around the world, sent us this photo from Berlin of the epic curtain she is creating using recycled movie posters hanging at the Brandenburg Gate for the 60th Berlin Film Festival.

Charo on Latino USA

Maria Hinojosa, one our favorite people at KUT Austin has an extended, intimate conversation with the incomparable Charo on her show NPR's Latino USA. Listen here.

"Women Taking to the Streets" , another series of moving stories aired last week, includes interviews with ‘Just Associates,’ a pro-feminist organization active in Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa and a moving piece on Esther Chavez Chano, one of the leading voices against the femicide in Juarez.

Since 1993, NPR’s Latino USA has been documenting one of the most incredible transformations of American life and reality—the exploding Latino population and its integration in the a changing America.

Title Contest Submissions

Recently we sent out a call for stories and a contest to name our new series about the secret life of girls around the world, girls and the women they become. So far we have received hundreds of title submissions and we wanted to share some of them. Here is The List:

The Permanent Rose Project
Our Stories, Our Truth
Our Shared and Common Destiny
Hear Our Voices
Listen, Over Here
Over Here
Congratulations, it's a girl! (Or just: It's a girl!)
Spinning Straw into Gold (Or just: Straw into Gold)
And Jill came tumbling after
Let the girl do it
That's what girls do
The Shape of a Women
Sister Songs
Sister Secrets
Girlhood
unrealistic expectations
the girl nextdoor
Secret Spaces
The Secret Lives of Babes
The women they became
Sister's Garden
Girlstuff
Dolls, Damsels and Darlings: a journey to becoming a woman.
The Unsilencing of Girl Voices
Girls To Women
Who Are Girls
Spotlight On Girls
The Story of Girls
Girl Time
Girls Ave
Time for Girls
Ladies First
In their Words: girls and the women they've become
In our words
From Our Worlds, In Our Words
Wise Word
High Heels to Bare Feet or (Foot) Chronicles
Bare Feet or (Foot) to High Heels Chronicles
SisterSpeak
FemaleFactor
Shattered Ceilings or The Shattered Ceiling(s) Stories
This is My Story
Mountain High Valley Low
Girl Meets
World Meets Girl
The Global Diaries
The Chatter Bible
Girls Spill
Storied Endings
The Reflective Raconteur
All Ears Storytelling
Every Girl Has a Story
Global Gossip
Now Hear This
Storytelling Unleashed
Babble
Tracking the Truth
Operation Story
Tracking the Truth
Global Reflections
Every Life Tells/Has a Story
Daisy Chains
The Forget-me-knot Chronicles
Our Stories, Ourselves
She, the People
Ophelia's Tales
Ophelia's Dreams
Ophelia's Secrets
Wendy's Neverland
The Bridge to Neverland
Purple Nightshade Diaries
Under the Purple Nightshade
Cherry Pits
Cherries: Pits and Blossoms
Sugar and Spice
Silent Keepers
Hush
Muse
Ain't I a Woman
Marienetta
Celine
All about Eve
Just like a Woman
Hear her Sing
Her Secret Story
The Jill Project
In Her Words
Fertile Voices
Tracing Emily
The Amiga Project
Inheriting the secrets of women's lives
The inheritance of women's secret lives
The secret inheritance of women's lives
Heirlooms of stories by women and girls
The secret heirlooms of our fair sex (sexist context?)
The secret inheritance of fair young maidens (sexist context?)
Heirlooms of women's secret lives
Hidden heirlooms of women's lives
Heirlooms of Secret Lives:
Heirlooms of women and girls, Lost and Found
Secret heirlooms lost and found: revelations of women and girls
Buried heirlooms of women and girls: found throughout the world
Buried heirlooms unearthed by women and girls around the world
More and more
Beneath the Veil
Turn the Stone
Beneath the Stone
Hearing Athena
The Quiet & Wild Roads of Girls
Becoming Ourselves: Stories of Trailblazing Ladies
Growing Inside Out
Secrets Out Loud
The Life & Times of Girl Dreams
Limelight Moments
Girl Stories
Growing Up a Girl
Grown-up Girl Stories
The Dreams of Ladies
Trails We Blaze
Blazing Girls
What girls have to say
Boys Drool and Girls Rule
Go Girls
Queen for a day
Great yarns
The Complexity of Girls
Don't Know Much About Her-story
The Double X Files
The XX Files
The XX Project
XX no Ys
XX
XX World
Table Fables
Table Talk
Chewing the Fat
Table Tales
Tales from the Table
From Tale to Table
The Daily Bread
New Wives Tales
Girl Talk
Brown Bag Talk
Women Catching Fire
Women Stir the Pots
Wise Maria’s Kitchen Tales
Shall We Gather in the Kitchen?
Cooking Up Her Story
Kitchen Wisdom
Stirring Up Stories
Women’s Kitchens, Women’s Lives
Growing Up in the Kitchen
In Memory’s Kitchen
Stories from the Soul Kitchen
Rattling Our Pots and Pans
Recipes for Memory
Speaking from the Hearth
Hidden Women
Girls in the Mist
Bivouac
The Two Muses
The Muse Project
The Calliope Chronicles
The Hidden Life of Girls
Not So Tall Tales
Short Tales
Girl Tales
The Girl Chronicles
Girl Talk
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Friends
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something You
She said/She said
Speak for Yourself
Sister Speak
True Fables
True Tales
What You Said
Outskirts
I Have No Country
My Country
Sheroes
Untold Story Inside
Gadiola Light
Sprung From Memory
Her Voice
Thy Name is Woman
Pandora's Box
Pandora's Vox
All About Eve
Just Like a Woman
Hear Her Song
Her Secret Story
The Jill Project
In Her Words
Fertile Voices
Tracing Emily
The Amiga Project
True North
Period Piece
Girls Undone
The Girls Network
Being a Girl
The Sister Next Door
Girl Culture
Who's That Girl?
On Becoming Women
Finding Her Voice
This One's for the Girl
Girls World
Girl Life
Let's Hear it for the Girl
Girls, Girls, Girls
Just Like a Woman
GirlView
1001 Kitchen Secrets
Stories Rising
Cook Until Tender
Voices from the Kitchen
Kitchen Voices
Secret Servings
The Story Feast
The Story Banquet
Steeped in Story (Stories)
The Kitchen Table Project
1001 Ways to Cook a Secret
Sisters at the Table
Feast of Secrets
Story Sisters
Story Sirens
Scheherazade Tells All
Every Daughter Has (or Tells) a Story
Mother Tongue
The Global Muse
Project Muse
Sister to Sister
Secret Sisters
Sisters of Secrets
The Secret Lives of Global Girls
The Secret Truths of Global Girls
My Name is Scheherazade
What She Said
Girls Gone Candid
Real Girls to Real Women
Girls Just Wanna Grow Up
I Enjoy Being a Girl
Evolution--from Girl to Woman in Non-Easy Steps
Becoming Real--Girls Grow Up
More than Lipgloss--What It Means to Become a Woman in the Twenty-First Century
Womanhood Defined--Girls Coming of Age
The Unveiling Project
The Blossom Project
Amelia's Secret
Life on Venus
Womanhood Confidential
she will tell you: stories from girls & women around the world
WOMYN
Women Underground
A Girl’s Story
Women of Influence
She, Me, Her
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Women: Lost & Found
Secrets and Lives: The Incredible True Stories of Women and Girls
The Lost Girls: True Stories of Hidden Heroines and Everyday Warriors
The Secret Society of Hidden Heroines
Forgotten Girls Found
The World Girls Club: The Secret Society of Hidden Heroines and Underground Rituals

Thank you to the following for their submissions: Deborah Pardes, Marsha Weiner, Eve Epstein, David Wilson Burnham, Kate Jessup, Mina Kim, Sara Blumenstein, Eliza Hotchkiss, Venus Brown, Kate Blood, Chris Altwegg, Michelle Ito, Jolene Ketzenberger, Mika Gans, Malaika Horne, Catherine Gund, Sasha Vasilyuk, Brooke Miller, Carla Eckels, Catherine Price, Mark Bell, Sheryl Kraft, Jan Bell, Emelie Gunnison, Liza Mock, Andi McDaniel, Summer Brenner, Julie Bien, Judy O'Shea, Amy Tan, Bettina Birch, Rachel Vandagriff, Catherine Dauer, Lisa Busch, Laurie Fabiano, Catherine Pantsios, Chris Strachwitz, Henry Cordova, Mark Bell, Larry Corwin, Jenny Tonks, Jennifer Morla, Tracy Alverson Euler, Ahri Golden, Catherine Stifter, Susan Freinkel, Allison Barlett, Denise Emanuel Clemen, Carolyn Krause, Karen H. Phillips, Catherine Haley Epstein, Mae Maracek, Robert Seibert, Eloise Melzer, Rae Umsted

If you have a title idea you would like to submit, send it to kitchen [at] kitchensisters.org

The Futurist Cookbook

A new Hidden Kitchens story airs tonight on KALW 91.7 in San Francisco at 5:00 during Crosscurrents. You can listen live online at kalw.org.

The story, produced with Roman Mars takes a look at F.T. Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook, first published in 1932, and how a group of contemporary chefs and artists are realigning "the movement's arguably fascist palate with a more sustainable approach to life."

Los Angeles Times Feature

The Kitchen Sisters were featured in the Los Angeles Times Food Section. Take a look here.

Help Support The Kitchen Sisters

"People need stories in hard times. They go to storytellers when times are hard like these." - Bruce Springsteen

Dear Friends,

We've always said our microphone is a stethoscope listening to the complicated heart of the nation. Recently, we sent out a call for stories to our email list for our upcoming NPR series about girls and the women they become, and the stories started pouring in:

“I received your email about your new series about girls around the world…who doesn’t have a story to be told? Take my Aunt Sally for example..." “My friend Shakundala is a painter of women. Most of the women she paints are prostitutes in India…” “You need to go to the all-female firehouse inside the California Women’s Prison and talk to the inmate/firefighters…” “I've passed this call on to our 14 year old daughter. Thank you for making this series for her, for all of us.” “My 3 sisters and I each adopted girls from Haiti and have developed a new family with the 22 girls that are their orphanage sisters. We invite you to Haiti to document these girls yourselves…”

Our new NPR series goes on air in March 2010 in honor of the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day. We'll be opening up an NPR Phone Line on Morning Edition this January inviting listeners to call in with more stories and ideas.

Donate now to support our new international multimedia collaboration that will be heard by millions.

Your donation will directly support our work for the next year: creating on-air and online stories about women and girls around the world; developing a new series of international stories for Hidden Kitchens World; developing WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts, the Broadway musical; producing the Cabrillo Music Festival multimedia project based on our women and girls series; teaching audio workshops (over 100 people took part last year) and mentoring young interns and emerging producers.

We are independent producers, not on NPR's payroll. No doubt you have heard of the steep cutbacks and layoffs at NPR. It is even harder to make it as an independent in these tight times. When our community supports us, granting agencies and corporations are far more likely to give significant funds to make our work possible.

In a world that needs education, health care, housing, good food, justice and peace, it's hard to come asking for money for storytelling. But storytelling has the transformative power to illuminate and address serious issues in ways that seep into the soul, that find the common threads of our humanity, that stir people to action. That is our mission, and what we can accomplish with your support.


No amount is too big. No amount is too small. Your donation is tax-deductible.
Thank you for supporting our efforts to chronicle little-known stories of our community, culture and history—stories filled with possibility. Think of all we can do together in the coming year.

We thank you for being part of The Kitchen Sisterhood.

Peace,

Davia & Nikki
The Kitchen Sisters

To contribute by check please make payable to: The Kitchen Sisters Productions, 916 Kearny St., San Francisco, CA 94113

The Kitchens Sisters Productions is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) media organization. All contributions are tax-deductible

Aminatou Haidar

The story of Aminatou Haidar just recently come to our attention. We hope you will take a moment and see what is happening with her right now. This message came from Sairica Rose who we are working with on our upcoming series about girls around the world.

Aminatou Haidar is a peaceful non-violent activist known as the Saharawi people's Gandhi. She is a former political prisoner, human rights defender and recipient of the 2009 Civil Courage Prize, for championing non-violent resistance and the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

Today, November 24th, 2009 marks Aminatou’s 10th day on hunger strike, confined to Lanzarote Airport in Spain’s Canary Islands after Morocco forcefully expelled her from her home in the Western Sahara Occupied Territories on November 14th.

She is in a wheelchair and doctors fear for her health as she suffers a stomach ulcer. Aminatou will not abandon her demonstration until the Moroccan and Spanish Governments allow her to return to her home in El Aaiun, the capital of the Saharawi Territories.

The Western Sahara was the last Spanish colony, under Franco. It was abandoned by Spain in 1975, as the dictator lay dying and simultaneously invaded by Morocco, violating United Nations resolutions and international law.

From that day to this, The Saharawi people have been waiting for a referendum on self-determination. They’ve been waiting for 24 years.

Aminatou has tirelessly, peacefully demonstrated for the return of this land to her people via referendum and the creation of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Since 1975, the Saharawi people have lived with terror, torture and kidnappings in the occupied territories. In the 2000’s, secret prisons and torture houses and mass graves were discovered in the occupied territories, including El Aaiun. Hundreds more Saharawis have simply “disappeared.”

When Morocco invaded, Algeria allowed the Saharawis that fled into Tindouf. The Refugee Camp that stands there now is home to 150,000 refugees, separated from their family members by The Moroccan Wall.

This monstrous 2700km structure is the world’s longest wall after the Great Wall of China. It is heavily guarded by Moroccan troops and mines and has divided the Saharawi population for over 30 years. They live in two separate territories, in equally horrific conditions, united by their cause.

So how come we’ve never heard about all this?

Because nobody talks about it.

The Moroccan government is “sensitive” about letting journalists in; The UN has had a “ceasefire”, in effect (ineffectively) since 1991. Not surprisingly there’s been a strategic reluctance from France or Spain to ruffle Morocco’s feathers.

All Amanitou wants to do is go home and continue passively demonstrating for what she believes in. Please help her, and help us to help her by raising awareness and persuading the Spanish and Moroccan governments to let her go home to her family, her people and her cause.

“I am very grateful to all the kindness and affection signs. I am receiving calls and messages from all over the world. I believe firmly that the Saharawi peaceful struggle is a fair cause and, as Gandhi did. I have absolute faith in non-violence for a better world and for a real peace.”
–Aminatou Haidar November 22nd, 2009.

A Call for Stories and a Contest

The Kitchen Sisters are looking for stories and images and videos and writings.

We're launching a new multimedia series on NPR this January, a listener collaboration in the tradition of Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound, and The Sonic Memorial Project. This one's about girls. Girls and the women they become. Stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities. Of women who crossed a line, broke a trail, changed the tide.

Small everyday stories, dramatic life and death stories. Stories from the middle of the city, to the middle of nowhere.

What women should we know about? What girl's story should we tell? The famous, the infamous, the unknown, the untold. Women with public lives. Women with secret lives.

Call our NPR Storyline at 202-408-9576 and tell us your story, or the story of someone we need to chronicle. Or email us at kitchen [at] kitchensisters.org

And here's The Contest. We want you to help us name this new NPR series. We've called it The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, The Scheherazade Project, 1001 Stories, all names we like but can't go with for one reason or another. So, we turn to you to join our brainstorming sessions. You can call or email us with your suggestions. Whoever picks the title will be featured on our website, get the full line of Kitchen Sisters products and productions, a wild boar dinner with forager, Angelo Garro, and the deep satisfaction of hearing the title you came up with on NPR throughout the year.

This soon-to-be-titled project will be full of richly layered sound and striking images, created by people around the world who help capture these stories of eccentric, trailblazing women and ground-breaking girls.

Join The Kitchen Sisterhood and help launch this new multimedia collaboration.

Operation Frontline's Mobile Classroom Kitchen

We met Catherine Luu of Operation Frontline at our recent Hidden Kitchens event at the California Endowment in Los Angeles, "Who Glues Your Community Together through Food?" We thought we'd share the information Catherine sent us about what she and Operation Frontline are up to in the Los Angeles area:

Operation Frontline (OFL) is a national, volunteer-based program of Share Our Strength, which provides hands-on healthy cooking and nutrition education classes to low-income families. OFL trains and mobilizes local culinary and nutrition professionals to volunteer their time to lead these courses.
Our class kitchen is “mobile” and travels to various cities throughout Lost Angeles—Glendale, Hollywood and Long Beach—offering courses to low-income adults, teens and children. This means that every week, I pack my car with groceries and several crates of cooking supplies and head to various agencies, churches, and clinics to get cooking! It has been a fascinating experience to gather participants from many different cultures and traditions into the same kitchen.


Since our official program launch in May, we have graduated six Operation Frontline classes, four for adults, and two for children ages 8-12. With the help of our team of volunteers, we have directly impacted over 75 families with our hands-on healthy cooking and nutrition classes. Our wonderful volunteers are the heart of our program, and our healthy cooking classes would not be possible without them.

We are always looking for new volunteers! Cooking supplies, groceries and monetary contributions also help in our efforts to reach more families throughout Los Angeles County.

For information, you can visit our website www.ccafs.org/operationfrontline or email Catherine.luu@ccafs.org.

Two New Recording & Interviewing Workshops this Fall

Davia is conducting two basic recording and interviewing workshops in San Francisco. Thursday, October 29 and Thursday, November 5 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The three hour workshop is for people who want to acquire and hone their skills for an array of projects--radio, online storytelling, oral histories, audio slide shows, family histories, and other multimedia endeavors.

We will cover miking techniques, sound gathering, use of archival audio, how to make interviewees comfortable, how to frame evocative questions that make for compelling storytelling, how to listen (which is harder than it looks), how to use interviews in conjunction with images, field recording techniques, recording equipment and more. The workshops are customized to fit the projects you are working on.

People who attend come from radio, newspapers, photography, oral history, historical societies, farms, music, writing, libraries, web design and beyond. The groups are always lively and good contacts are made.

The fee is $115. Of course, there will be a snack. The workshops are held in Francis Coppola's historic Zoetrope building in North Beach.

If you, or someone you know is interested, email kitchen@kitchensisters.org and let us know which of the two workshops you would like to attend.

See you there.

Biscuit Tour 2009—Birmingham

Just returned from Birmingham, Alabama where we presented an oral history and audio production workshop as part of the series Dialogue on Food at Birmingham-Southern College. During this year-long cross-disciplinary discussion, students will be reading, writing, and creating multi-media projects about what we eat and why. Opening the series was Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet the book published in 1971 that is considered the "blueprint for eating with a small carbon footprint."

Jones Valley Urban Farm, Birmingham

Our visit coincided with an Outstanding in the Field dinner at Jones Valley Urban Farm, an unlikely secret garden tucked into a square city block surrounded by freeways, railroad tracks and public housing in Birmingham. Jones Valley Urban Farm—three acres of arugula, sunflowers, hericot vert, waxy red peppers, sweat and possibility.

The farm grows food enough for an after-work farm stand during the summer, a food box CSA program, and fresh, seasonal vegetables for a handful of local restaurants. It has community garden plots for the neighborhood and a program for school kids to plant, harvest and learn about how gardens can change their community.

The mastermind behind the Jones Valley project is Edwin Marty (left), an Alabama native, who studied organic farming at University of Calfornia Santa Cruz. All roads seem to lead back to UCSC's visionary agroecology program. It’s been going on for 40 years and has graduated an army of disciples who have become the base of today’s organic farming and food movement. Edwin had visions of moving to China to teach organic farming until a friend pointed out that his home state might be a better place to start. Alabama has the second highest rate of obesity in the country. (Luckily, there’s Mississippi who comes in ahead of us, Frank Stitt told us).

Frank Stitt, chef and owner of Birmingham's Highlands Bar and Grill, Bottega and Bottega Cafe, and Chez Fonfon, was the chef for our meal in the field. He worked with farmers throughout the region who provided the food.

Here's the menu:

McEwen & Sons deviled eggs (Helen & Frank McEwen)

Jones Valley Urban Farm sweet and spicy peppers, roast eggplant craklin' cornbread & Snow's Bend snap peas

Lady Pea Pilau with Snow's Bend butternut squash, Soul's Food Organic's cherry tomatoes (Linda & Michael Dean), okra & basil (David Snow and Margaret Ann Tooey)

Porchetta with Sequatchie Cove Farms pork (Bill & Miriam Keener), McEwen & Son's stone ground grits & JVUF collard greens & turnips

Petals from the Past apple cake with rum creme angalise

Davia interviews Chef Frank Stitt and Farmer Bill Keener of Sequatchie Cove Organic Farm & Dairy, TN. Bill (far right) and his wife Miriam raised the pig roasted for our meal.

Would love to hear about other urban farm projects and farm to table community dinners. What's happening in your part of the world?

Tour of the La Selva Commune

A few months back Vanessa Bertozzi, our colleague and friend who worked with us on The Sonic Memorial Project, wrote us with a "little bit of a crazy proposal." She's now working for Etsy, an online marketplace for things handmade, and wanted to know if we'd take part in a series they're creating for their blog about peoples' homes and collections. So videographer Eric Beug spent the day at La Selva with Kitchen Sister Silva creating this piece for their series "There's No Place Like Here."

July Notes from The Kitchen Sisterhood

Dear Friends,

So much crosses our desks and our microphones. Only so much of it makes it to the air. Here are some collaborations and projects that have recently caught our attention we thought you'd want to know about.

Keep the faith,

The Kitchen Sisters

Archives we're visiting

Free Music Archive. "It's not just free music, it's good music."

Rock'n'Roll Public Library: A five-week free archival "civic endeavor" of The Clash's Mick Jones. "These 10,000 items are relics of the last century. A part of British musical history." London, July 16-August 25

Books in our pile

Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner

Farm City by Novella Carpenter

I-5 by Summer Brenner

Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela by Anna Trapido

Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano

How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons by Sam Barry

Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Events on our Calendar

Puckerbrush Potluck, Iowa State Fair, August 19

Eat Real Festival in downtown Oakland, August 28-30. A tribal gathering of taco trucks, hot dog stands, and mobile food vendors all using locally sourced sustainable ingredients.

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Santa Cruz, CA, August 2-16. Marin Alsop conducts.

Movies to see

Tetro

Corner Store: A work-in-progress documentary feature

Away We Go, written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida of 826 Valencia

Websites we're browsing

Obama Foodorama

Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles

Mapping Main Street: A collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through stories, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets.

Yes, We Can: A community canning project

Music on our turntable

Lura, a singer from Portugal and Cape Verde

Orquestra Imperial from Brazil. A Samba big band fronted by Caetano Veloso's son Moreno and his friends Alexandre Kassin and Domênico Lancelotti

High Wide and Handsome. Loudon Wainwright III's tribute to Charlie Poole

Darling Just Walk by Tess Dunn

Dai Lam Linh. Our friend Nguyen Qui Duc sent us this startling new music from Vietnam.

Organizations we're tracking

Share Our Strength's Operation Frontline in Los Angeles

Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

Carecen: Central American Resource Center Cuerpo Sano/Healthy Bodies Program

CCROPP: Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program

Music National Service Initiative, a new social enterprise that supports and expands the use of music to meet important civic and social goals.

Rest In Peace

Artist, David Ireland

Activist, Luke Cole

Actor, Luis Saguar

"People need stories in hard times. We’ve had an enormous moral, spiritual, and economic collapse. People go to storytellers when times are like that." -Bruce Springsteen

"The Kitchen Sisters have done some of the best radio stories ever broadcast" -Ira Glass

Radio producers we hope you'll support

The Kitchen Sisters. Click here to donate.

Mark Arax

For our most recent Hidden Kitchens piece, The Breadbasket Blues: A Central Valley Kitchen Story, we interviewed former Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Arax, author of the new book West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State. Take a listen to this web exclusive audio clip of Mark talking about family, food, and farms of the Central Valley: Listen.