Podcast
Features
Comments Photo: Lex Gillespie |
August 2002
Produced by Amy Dorn
Written by Alex
Kotlowitz
(A series produced for WBEZ’s Chicago Matters program)
Intro by Jay Allison
WBEZ in Chicago has, for years, produced a series called Chicago Matters. It’s local, but it’s emphatically of “national caliber,” drawing on the best writers and producers in that town and bringing in the best from around the country. The series has spawned some of the finest documentary work done anywhere. But it’s local.
Listen to this sampling of local pieces from WBEZ‘s series on housing — presented
here for an international audience. They come from the acclaimed writer Alex Kotlowitz
and are produced by Amy Dorn. Join
the discussion about this work and the meaning of localness in radio.
 One of Milton Reed’s wall murals. You can see more at the Inside Housing Website.
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The Stories
Milton Reed: Panthers and Palm Trees
A mural painter enlivens the walls of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. He finds himself not only decorating interiors, but painting portraits of the residents’ intimate relationships and drawing the details of their imaginations.
Patsy Evans: Healing
A middle-aged woman is assaulted while jogging along Chicago’s lakeshore. In the months following the attack, she doesn’t leave her home, her singular place of security. By retreating into the safety of the inside, she recreates a space where she can heal.
Notes from the Creators
From Alex Kotlowitz
Radio’s like my second home. I neglect it for long stretches, and then find
my way back there. It’s a welcome break from writing. Last winter, WBEZ, the
local public radio station in Chicago, asked if I’d be interested in
producing 12 essays for a series they were doing on housing. I told them I’d
do it if I didn’t have to deal with any housing issues, if I could just find
ways to talk about home from the perspective of personal stories.
Because I didn’t want to do any narration (remember this is a break from
writing), I had to think lots – before and during the interviews – about
getting folks to tell their story with some cohesion, and from someone who
lives a messy, incoherent life at times, that wasn’t always easy. Anyway,
enjoy.
From Amy Dorn
Radio just may be my long-sought after home, after several sojourns in other
areas.
Producing these “stories of home” presented many challenges: finding the
essential story within the many narrative threads given by someone trying to
explain their experience; editing for clarity and consistency and yet
remaining honest to the conflicted, often unclear emotions of those sharing
their stories; and wondering, really struggling, actually: would the
addition of elements such as music or ambient sound distract and detract
from the bare elegance of an individual voice, or would these elements help
create a more clear, listen-able and unified story?
Our solutions are here for you to sample. Enjoy.
About the Creators
Alex Kotlowitz
Alex Kotlowitz is the author of “There Are No Children Here” and “The Other Side
of The River.” He’s at work on his third book. He has written for the The New
Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, and contributed to This American
Life.
Amy Dorn
Amy is currently associate producer of Chicago Public Radio’s annual public
information series, “Chicago Matters”. Prior to working in public radio, Amy researched documentary film
productions, edited commerical video, conducted ethnographic research, and
served as a women’s health educator and midwife’s assistant.
There is research in public radio indicating that the term "local" may not be perceived as a high value by some listeners, that they feel it contains overtones of the parochial, the second-rate, that "Local News" has come to connote graphic crime or mindless fluff. Of course, if a public radio station is doing its job well, this "local" thing is a problem of perception, not fact. You could even make a case that public radio stations will be valuable only in their ability to be valuable locally, once new delivery systems make national programming easily available. Those of us interested in the survival of public radio at the local level need to think carefully about this.
WBEZ in Chicago has, for years, produced a series called Chicago Matters. It’s local, but it’s emphatically of "national caliber," drawing on the best writers and producers in that town and bringing in the best from around the country. The series has spawned some of the finest documentary work done anywhere. But it’s local.
Listen to this sampling of local pieces from WBEZ’s series on housing — presented here for an international audience. They come from the acclaimed writer Alex Kotlowitz and are produced by Amy Dorn. Join the discussion about this work and the meaning of localness in radio.
Until last night, we had three of these pieces set to feature on Transom, but one of them aired on All Things Considered yesterday, which is great news, but to honor our promise not to showcase work that has already aired nationally, we had to pull it.
You can hear that piece and some others from the series at the
Inside Housing site at WBEZ
I’m a little confused as to what this meaning of localness thing is all about. Isn’t everything local to someone or local relative to somewhere else? These pieces do not scream local, least not to my ears. Could be New York, Philly, LA… Could even be voices from a smaller community. As long as a piece contains information about action, event, moments in life, it IS local, isn’t it? Or am I being way too simple-minded and literal? If work is good and worth hearing it’s good and worth hearing. If it doesn’t resonate strongly enough to hold meaning for someone in another part of the country, then it’s too local, is that it? So is local just code for not the highest caliber work? Explain to me…I’m confused.
However you want to dissect the local thing, radio is the place for it because we get to form our own pictures, we get to make someone else’s local OUR local, fit someone else’s story into our known world or imagine one. Radio is seductive in that way, whereas with TV, it’s so easy to stop listening when your eyes aren’t engaged.
(In the full disclosure spirit, I once worked on the Chicago Matters series — as editor for personal essays that were written and read by a "local" person about their personal experience. Also, I’m a friend of Patsy Evans.)
Hello Alex and Amy! Good work. I know how difficult it can be to mesh your own sense of what a piece could or should be with the material you manage to cull from your subjects. And the time constraint is a mother. Could one or both of you talk specifically about these two pieces. Did Milton and Patsy come to this with firm ideas about what they wanted to say? Did you, Alex, have an idea of where you wanted these pieces to go?
I liked the use of music in both, though Milton’s didn’t feel like it needed any, while Patsy’s did. Felt Milton’s piece worked better and I’m not sure why. Maybe because he offered so many pictures. Patsy’s felt more generic and distant in a funny way. Maybe that’s because I know her. Maybe the distance is part of the point.
How did you come to choose these folks and why did you think they’d make for good radio?
Though Alex, you considered this a break from writing, I’m wondering if you weren’t occasionally frustrated at not being able to jump in and make a point.
Sydney, When I began collecting these home stories, I thought of more predictable subjects (like someone who’d spent years renovating a home), but I found them to be just that, too predictable. So I began thinking about home in a broader sense, about how home shapes people’s lives. Maybe it sounds a bit highfalut’n, but I was just looking for stories in which home serves as a kind of centripetal force. One of the stories, for example, is of three African-American men, all now in their late fifties, who were taken in and raised by a white woman on the city’s West Side; another is of three sisters whose father had gotten terminally ill, and spent his last weeks holding court from a makeshift bed in thier living room. Milton Reed, the muralist, I’d met a couple of years earlier while working on a magazine piece on the demolition of public housing. I spent maybe five minutes with him, but was quite taken with his art work. To be honest, I didn’t know what I’d find when I tried to track him down again. I had no sense whether he had stories to tell or whether in fact he was a good storyteller. (For every interview that aired, there was another one that didn’t work out for one reason or another.) But when we met up, it was clear that Milton, in some sense, had been waiting for someone to come along and ask him about his work. The toughest thing with that interview to be honest was to keep from laughing while the tape was rolling. Which brings me to your second question: no, it wasn’t tough not intervening in some way. I’m always doing that in my writing — and in fact doing that in many of the radio pieces I do. But there can be (it doesn’t always work) a certain purity and clarity to hear stories told firsthand by others. You, of course, would know that as well as anyone. You can’t do this with most stories, and I’m not sure we succeeded in all of our pieces. But with someone like Milton, my presence would’ve been totally unnecessary.
Finally, on the local issue. These stories were local in that they were, at least initially, presented to a local audience. But you’re absolutely right. There’s such power in the smallness (or localness) of stories. The best of them speak to universal concerns. It’s what good storytelling, good narrative is, in the end, all about.
Great pieces, very soothing, slow and digestible, like chewing on thick gum, but not too sweetened (sorry, hungry). Dull to talk about the compliments, so I wanted to share the thoughts that are on a little post-it next to me. Panthers: I’d like to have heard the actualities earlier, starting in the home, etc. This one seems like a chance to get away from the dominate somber mood of the stories and so something happier, so the music seemed sluggish, maybe a jazz/sax sort of thing, more representative of the subject than the producer. Peeing next to Jesus funny. Projects sad, find the fun. Healing: felt long, maybe my attention span (wha?), great music choice. I know these are professionally produced, clean, so hope these comments from a civilian radio dabbler are somewhat appreciated if not entertaining. Thanks for taking us into the difficult-to-access-and-tell space that is the ‘home’.
I must confess at first I thought the Housing series would be too local and irrelevant to me but as Syd points out – good radio is good radio – and this is an example of how "local" radio can transcend the boundary and the prejudice.
Let’s say it WAS just about living in the projects in Chicago. Unfamiliar territory to me – I live in a nearly rural setting, I might pass by a story if it were in the newspaper. Instead, looking through Milton’s glasses and their unusual view, I not only get a closer sense about the projects, the darker, dangerous side, but I get to see how a person creates their own castle, in the middle of dreary concrete and so I also rise up above the projects – go beyond the stereotype, proud to be part of the species with each crazy or admirable story he told.
My favorite description was of the woman who had herself painted against the "picture window" kicking her man off the ledge. survival inside survival. Milton was a gold mine and lovely – never condescending but amazed sometimes at what the world is made of. Kind of like a genie, affectionately shaking his head.
and the ending was brilliant in terms of yanking at our concept of what a good physical home is – former clients wanting the old project painted in their new homes…
Music? To be honest, if I don’t recall the music, the content was so good I didn’t need to notice. Such is the case with Milton. Also, I didn’t need to digest in segments as I did with Patsy. I needed a moment to let her experience sink in so I was grateful for the music.
The Vines was the piece we couldn’t put on the Transom but I recommend it – it stretches the edges of what we think home is or isn’t.
I bet creating a series like Inside Housing is tricky – once you establish the idea that it won’t be the predictable – it runs the risk of becoming just that. (I think of the homeless man sleeping in moving vans as a "given" for unpredictable home story) But for the most part Alex, you avoided that primarily because the angles were all so different – but I am wondering if you were obligated to do a certain number of pieces – or if you had lots more and had to make hard choices.
Howdy,
I love this series. I love the sound and feel of it. I grew up in Chicago and I thought I’d have an advantage as a listener but I wasn’t because these pieces completely transcend the local fafactor.To reiterate what others have said–these pieces work because the particular becomes the universal.
Milton is a gem. What I love most about this piece is that we never find out about his home, we don’t know what’s painted on his walls–using his artistry as a means to see so many places in his community is great. And the production is amazing. I love the omission of narration–it gives these pieces a sense of immediacy and in turn it gives them a real urban identity.
With Patsy I like the inversion of convention: The outside is her home–now she’s forced to seek refuge in her literal home and you wonder is she ever going to feel "at home". How does one define home? And all of this, among many other things, is addressed in such a subtle way. I’m amazed at how you edited this together. I’d love to see the Pro-Tools session of these pieces.
Amy, Alex, can you talk about the production process. How many hours of audio did you work with ? And how did you collaborate on these? And Alex how did you conduct these interviews? Did you ask lots of questions and edit yourself out or did you simply say ‘tell me your story?’ and take it from there?
May thanks for this wonderful radio.
It is an interesting 2 you have paired together.
One is about creating a fulfilling home environment by sometimes bringing an (imagined) outside in. The other is about needing a home to be precisely where the outside isn’t. She needs this home because of fear & because she is healing from trauma, whereas in the first piece, which explores public & section 8 housing, there is no mention of fear.
It is a thought provoking dichotomy.
For me the music in both felt imposed, not organic.
The first piece is so very vivid – black and gold panthers, dolphins and fish in people’s "washrooms," "most of em wanted Jesus white," "let me try and make you feel good," "it spread like a disease through the project." This one, I thought, ended abruptly. I listened while not watching the time and was surprised when that was it.
I thought of office workers with their landscapey screensavers and computer wallpaper. I thought of the publication Nest & how perfectly these would fit there.
In response to the discussion regarding local: what local pieces don’t transcend the ‘local factor?’
And, does local mean vernacular or does local mean not necessarily representative, not necessarily authorized?