Audio by Adam

Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of Cape Cod was once home to one of the thriving Portugese communities anywhere in the world outside Portugal (and the Azore Islands, where most of those “Portagees” come from). Fishing was their livilhood (once mixed with whaling) was their livelihood.  But with the near decimation of the North Atlantic fishing stock, the price of real estate, the out-migration of youth, and the town’s growth as a gay resort town, these Provincetown Portuguese and their culture are disappearing. This story focuses on those who remain, what they remember, and what they see as their prospects.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:21 — 6.7MB)

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It may be hard or many of us to imagine the glitter and the sometimes risque fun associated with the old nightclubs, burlesques and vaudeville houses of the 1920s and 1930s, especially in New York, where such entertainment reached a certain height of glamor. But what was that life like for those on the other side of the footlights? For this piece, I spoke with the late Dorshka Rafaelson, formerly of the Ziegfeld Follies, and Isabelle Powell,  widow of Adam Clayton Powell, who graced Harlem’s Cotton Club.  Both were  still-beautiful, and beautifully spirited, women.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:25 — 5.0MB)

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Meet David Isay, a humane and immensely talennted radio documentary maker and oral historian who has probably won every broadcasting award out there.  Isay has dedicated his career to celebrating the lives of everyday Americans by recording their stories, and chronicling the experiences of underdogs and colorful characters, many of them living outside the American cultural mainstream.  We meet him, and sample some of them, in this profile.

See also “Listening is an Act of Love” and “Storycorps” stories also in this blog.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:29 — 6.9MB)

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