Middletown NJ: A Town Reels in Grief (2001)

The soldily middle class town of Middletown New Jersey is a peaceful suburb populated largely by people who left the city for a quieter life of green lawns and Little League.  Many residents work in Manhattan and take the ferry or the New Jersey Transit train home.  On September 11th 2001, upwards of 45 residents lost their lives in the World Trade Center, devastating the town, which tried to cope and help its own. This is a profile of several residents and officials soon afterward.

It is followed by a mini-doc of similar length which I made near the first anniversary of September 11th 2001 in which I interviewed many of the same people, in order to chart and report on their trajectory of continued grief and healing.


Posted in Americana, History, September 11th and Its Aftermath Tags: , , , , , , ,

Migrant Farmworkers: How They Live and What They Do

If California were a nation of its own, it would have the twelth largest economy in the world; agriculture would be a huge percentage of it. Much of the labor that produces is done by migrant farm workers who come to the US, sometimes illegally, and follow the crops, before returning home to Mexico and places even further south. I spent some time with migrant farmworkers in California’s immense – and immensely fertile – Central Valley, and filed this report for the VOA.


Posted in Americana, Immigrants and Ethnic Life Tags: , , , , ,

Mister Spoons: Big Apple Flatware Virtuoso

There are hundreds of musicians, good and bad, tooting and strumming and bowing and belting in the New York subway system, but Mr. Spoons is sui generis. Not only is he fantastic at playing the spoons, he has an outsize character to match. I spent some serious time with him, and filed this report for VOA.


Posted in Americana, Music, New York, Profile Tags: , , , , , ,

Montana’s Blackfeet Indians: Tradition Meets Today

Native Americans are far more likely than their mainstream counterparts to die young and be poor along the way. This story examines, through interviews and sound, how the Blackfeet Tribe of western Montana are trying to hold on to traditional ways while bettering themselves economically.


Posted in Americana, Health, Immigrants and Ethnic Life, Religion, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Nature and New Yorkers

There is nature IN New York, there is nature as TRANSMUTED through the sensibility of New Yorkers, and there is New Yorkers AS nature herself. This piece explores them all. Another love letter to my Gotham home.


Posted in Americana, New York

NYC “Cricket Crawl”

Artists meet Canoe in search of Crickets

In which Adam goes out with an intrepid group of artist-citizen-scientists as they explore Brooklyn’s  Gowanus Canal on canoes looking for seven species of crickets and kaydids. Also includes some Madison Square Park exploration.


Posted in Americana, Science Tags: , , , , , , ,

Old-Time Communists Reminisce (May Day)

People often think of the American Communists of the 1920s and 30s as angry political types alone. There is no denying that the systems that grew out of the Bolshevik and other revolutions failed miserably, largely discrediting Communism in practice. Still there a powerful spiritual vision underlying the embrace of Communism — equality, justice, brotherhood (generically understood), and a day when people would help each other without the self-interested and hamfisted mediation of the politicians, the police or the priests. For this interview connected with May Day 2004, I interviewed two darling octogenarian women living who remember their youths in Communist New York during the 1930s. The fact that I did it for the Voice of America heightened its appeal for me.


Posted in Americana, History, Holidays-Season Specific, New York, Oral History-oid, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , ,

Profile of A Moonshiner (VOA 1999)

Folk all over the world have their own versions of homemade liquor that will blow the top of your head right off.,  but “White Lightning” from the stills of Appalachia have their own appeal for Americans who have heard about it through family lore and popular culture, or tasted it in a parking lot or next to a trailer or at a wood burning stove.  During a trip to the back-country road trip through Tennessee and North Carolina, I sought out a real “moonshiner,’ and I sure found one in the person of “Popcorn Sutton.”   With his long beard, beat up old hat, and impossibly thick mountain accent, he fit the stereotype to a “T.”  His booze ain’t bad ‘nuther. I still have some underneath the kitchen sink you are welcome to try.  Banana flavored!


Posted in Americana, Profile Tags: , , , , , , ,

Profile: Art Spiegelman “Maus” Creator & Comics and Graphics Novel Artist

Art Spiegelman is most famous for his Pulitzer Prize winning work “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust in which Nazis are portrayed as cats, and Jews are depicted as mice.  In this profile, Spiegelman talks about his roots as a Mad Magazine afficionado, underground cartoonist, and his experience growing up in a Queens NY family overshadowed by the Shoah.


Posted in Americana, Arts, Books, History, Immigrants and Ethnic Life, New York, Profile Tags: , , , , , , ,

Profile: Barney Rosset, Publisher and First Amendment Activist-Hero (VOA 2009)

This is a profile of the entrepreneurial publisher and First Amendment activist Barney Rosset. During the mid 20th century Rosset tirelessly fought America’s anti-obscenity laws in order to publish now-classic works by D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs and scores of other non-Establishment writers, several of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize.  Barney talked with Adam in the labyrinthine Greenwich Village apartment he shares with his wife Astrid, and the Evergreen Review offices.


Posted in Americana, Books, History, New York, Profile Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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