True stories of everyday people
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Michael O’Brien
Michael Obrien talks about training to go to India with the Peace Corps in 1973, how growing up in a large family on a Wisconsin dairy farm helped prepare him for that work and how stories and language affect our world view.
Paul Francis Smith
Paul Smith grew up in a Navy family. In the 1960’s when he was a teenager they moved from Athens, Georgia to Monterey, California. Paul talks about the challenge of fitting in and learning to be true to himself.
Sally Jane Perkins
Reflecting on her path to professional storytelling, Sally Perkins tells of preparing to tell a flannel graph story at church, before she knew how to read, at the age of five! She has been telling stories in public ever since.
Georgeanna Marie Tryban
Georgeanna Tryban tells about being a young American exchange student in Osaka, Japan with Youth For Awareness in the 1960’s. A fearless, eager student, she attended traditional Japanese cultural training along with her Japanese host family sisters.
Bryan Hudson
Tired of negative media content in 2000, Bryan Hudson used a Lilly Endowment Grant to establish a Media Camp so that African Americans and other young people could benefit from positive mentoring and learn to be media producers.
Gwendolyn Julia (Judy) Kelley
Gwendolyn Kelley tells about seeing the change in Indianapolis during the civil rights movement and the legacy of her poem about Martin Luther King Jr., “The Dream In You.”
Celestine Bloomfield
Celestine Bloomfield talks about her early love of reading and the realization that school integration in Gary, Indiana was not working well for African Americans
Letha &Tisha Pletcher
Letha Pletcher tells her granddaughter Tisha about living near the railroad in Pierceton, Indiana during the 1930’s; playing in grain elevators, air that smelled of peppermint, and feeding the hungry.
Ben Thomas Asaykwee
Take the classic literature of Edgar Allen Poe and turn it into successful modern musical theatre. Absurd? That is exactly what actor/musician/playwright Ben Asaykwee did. Ben tells the story of why he created Cabaret Poe in Chicago and brought it to Indianapolis...