August 2005 Articles

Honky Tonks, Hymns and the Blues

Get ready for two foot-tapping, smile-on-your-face hours featuring legendary musicians and the stories behind the sounds. Based on the original Honky Tonks series that aired on NPR News' Morning Edition, these specials are perfect for August evenings.
The first program traces the meteoric rise of The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers. In the second hour, we listen as America's country music electrifies, diversifies, and teaches its strings to swing. This fascinating history of rural music is hosted by NPR reporter Paul Brown.

From Field Recordings to Superstars
Sunday, August 7, 8 p.m.
In 1927, dozens of rural, mostly amateur musicians from the mountains of the upper South streamed into Bristol, Tennessee by horse and wagon to try out at a mega recording session organized by Victor Records. Their desire: to get that big break, and get off the farm. The company's idea: to find new talent for its roster of hillbilly artists.
Victor made two huge discoveries: The Carter Family, with a riveting, wholesome sound driven by great singing and powerful guitar work; and Jimmie Rodgers, a carefree, yodeling, guitar-picking railroad man who broke away from his string band to try a few songs on his own and who would become the first true superstar of country music. As we tell our story, the connection between Delta blues players and ladies' parlor music of the elite Northeast starts to emerge, and we'll hear the start of the evolution of the guitar in America, the dominant instrument in popular music.

Raising the Roof
Sunday, August 14, 8 p.m.

It was small, and portable. It could sing like a bird or wail like a bluesman. Musicians from all across the European continent brought the fiddle when they came to America, and gave it fresh, new voices as they melded European and African influences. We'll hear the haunting sounds of early white and African-American fiddle bands and find out about aces like Eck Robertson and Fiddlin' John Carson, who showed the record companies that rural music could sell. We'll meet a charismatic Texan named Bob Wills who came from a sharecropper's childhood to redefine the fiddle sound and pack dance halls with his Texas swing.
As shown by the collaboration of Bob Wills with Texas Playboys guitarist Leon McAuliffe, the guitar evolved along with the fiddle. We'll hear how the guitar was first electrified by Bob Dunn. At that time, the accordion was squeezing its way into the scene as well, driven by Cajun, Mexican, German and Czech influences. Father and Son accordion legends Flaco and Santiago Jimenez, and Pearly Sowell add their music and insight.

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The New York Pops
Sundays at 9 p.m.

The New York Pops is comprised of more than seventy of New York City's top musicians from the worlds of symphonic music and Broadway. By bringing together some of New York's best musicians with some of the world's finest guest artists, The New York Pops raises public awareness and appreciation of America's rich and diverse musical heritage. And what a heritage it is! Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim-these are just some of the giants in American popular music that form the core of The New York Pops' repertoire.

August 7 - The Great West: The Plow That Broke The Plains
Actor William Hurt is the narrator and guest artists are Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers and Brad Paisley. Music: "The Plow That Broke the Plains," "Faded Love," "All the Gold," and "I Wish You'd Stay."

August 14 - Jerome Kern: A Symphonic Portrait
Guest artists are Keith Buterbaugh, baritone and the Juilliard Choral Union.

August 21 - Hammerstein Without Rodgers
Guest artists: Susanna Phillips, soprano; Juilliard Choral Union. Music includes: "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," "I'll Take Romance," and "Stout-Hearted Men."

August 28 - Opening Night At Carnegie Hall: Tribute To Irving Berlin
Artist: Skitch Henderson on piano. Music highlights: "I Love a Piano," "Say It with Music," "Blue Skies," "Always."

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The Changing World

The Aid Trap
Sunday, August 21, 8 p.m.
Following July's G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, Britain had been lobbying hard for a major international effort to address developing world poverty. One central component of Britain's campaign was a call for the world's richest nations to triple the amount of development aid. But is aid really a solution to the causes of poverty?
A growing chorus of economists, and even some in the aid community itself, challenge the idea that aid offers an escape to poverty. Some say it creates a trap of dependency and corruption all its own. In this program we visit two of the countries most obviously in need, Liberia and Sierra Leone, defined by the United Nations as the world's two poorest nations. Mark Gregory hosts.

Rats
Sunday, August 28, 8 p.m.
The rat is one of the most feared and attacked animals alive. Rats' teeth are so tough they can chew through walls, concrete, plumbing and even bricks. Man and rat-both intelligent and highly successful-compete for the same space. New York is the city of skyscrapers but also of hundreds of miles of sewers, earning it the nickname "Ratropolis." The World Health Organization has fingered the rat as mankind's Number One four-legged enemy, carrying diseases ranging from plague to typhus.
In this program Mark Lewis investigates the real relationship between humans and rats. Do rats entirely merit the image they have in the human mind? Are they more a symbol of evil and danger than a real threat? Why is it that in some cultures, rats are regarded as a tasty source of protein?
We travel from city to countryside, from plague-ridden villages to training camps for mine-seeking rats, from kitchens to sewers, from harbors and fields to laboratories, creating a portrait of the relationship between man and one of nature's most loathed creatures.

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Community Events

WFIU is the media sponsor for the following event. Find more information on this and other activities on the calendar page of our Web site: www.wfiu.indiana.edu.

Jazz at Burham Woods
Saturday, August 20, 5 to 8 p.m.
Burnham Woods Nursery
6775 North Hudoff Road
Bloomington

This annual event raises funds for the Bloomington High School North Band Program. A catered gourmet dinner and desserts will be provided by the chefs from the Bloomington Cooking School, accompanied by wine from the Brown County Winery cash bar. Award-winning jazz combos and individual musicians from Bloomington North and the IU School of Music will perform in several locations tucked around the beautiful gardens at Burnham Woods.
Guests will park at University Elementary School, 1111 Russell Rd., and catch one of the many continuous shuttles providing transportation back and forth to Burnham Woods. Shuttle service will begin at 4:30 pm and will run every 15 minutes all evening long. There will be no parking available at Burnham Woods.
Tickets are $40 per person, and are available for sale at Burnham Woods Nursery, Goods for Cooks, and Bloomington Hardware. ($30 is a tax-deductible donation.) All proceeds from the event will benefit the Bloomington High School North band department.

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Musical Highlights for August
by Adam P. Schweigert

Artist of the Month
WFIU's Artist of the Month for August is Wendy Gillespie, who currently teaches early bowed string instruments and is the interim director of IU's Early Music Institute. She has performed with ensembles worldwide ranging from the English Concert to Ensemble Sequentia and has participated in more than 70 recordings for Harmonia Mundi, EMI, Virgin Classics, and others. This month we'll sample several of her recordings. We'll start off on Thursday, August 4th, at 7:07 p.m. with William Byrd's In Nomine a 5 Nos.1-5 as played by Gillespie with the acclaimed viol consort Fretwork. On Monday, August 8th, at 7:07 p.m., Fretwork returns with music of William Lawes-his Consort Sett a5 in F major. Then on Wednesday the 17th at 10:12 p.m., Fretwork joins forces with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, all under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner, in a performance of Dietrich Buxtehude's monumental Membra Jesu Nostri (BuxWV 75), a cycle of seven cantatas each addressed to a particular part of Christ's body after his crucifiction. A new work commissioned by Fretwork in 1992 from American composer Michael Nyman brings us into the modern era. That's on Sunday, August 28rd at 11:08 p.m. To close out the month, there's the music of Orlando Gibbons on Wednesday, August 31st, at 10:12 p.m. We'll hear his Fantasies a6 as performed by another of Gillespie's ensembles, Phantasm.

New Releases
This month we're pleased to offer our listeners four wonderful new releases. Our first offering is a new EMI classics release of Beethoven's Triple Concerto in C, Op.56 and Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54 with Martha Argerich, piano; Renaud Capuçon, violin; and Mischa Maisky, cello with the Orchestra of Italian Switzerland under the direction of Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky. The Schumann will air on Monday, August 1st, at 7:07 p.m. and the Beethoven on Wednesday, August 17th, at 10:12 p.m. Next comes another EMI release of tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake performing songs of Debussy, Fauré, and Poulenc. On Wednesday, August 3rd, at 7:07 p.m., we'll hear Debussy's Fêtes galantes, set 2; on Tuesday, August 16th, at 11:13 p.m., we offer Poulenc's Tel jour telle nuit; and finally on Monday, August 29th, at 7:07 p.m., the Belcea Quartet joins Bostridge and Drake for a performance of Gabriel Fauré's La bonne chanson. Next we'll sample a new cycle of Bartok String Quartets on Naxos as played by the Vermeer Quartet. We'll hear the String Quartet No.4 on Tuesday, August 9th, at 11:13 p.m., and two weeks later, we'll hear the late String Quartet No.6, also at 11:13 p.m. on Tuesday, August 23rd. Last but not least, be sure not to miss a new Virgin Classics release of virtuoso cantatas by Antonio Vivaldi as performed by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and Ensemble Artaserse. We'll hear three selections from this disc: On Wednesday, August 10th, at 7:07 p.m., tune in for Qual per ignoto calle, RV677. We'll follow that up on Wednesday, August 24th, also at 7:07 p.m., with a performance of Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede, RV676, and we'll wrap up the month with Vivaldi's Cello Sonata No.1 in B-flat, RV47 as performed by Ensemble Artaserse's cellist, Emilio Gliozzi-that's on Wednesday, August 31st, at 7:07 p.m.

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Profiles
Sundays at 7 p.m.

August 7 - Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer
When President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, senators as ideologically diverse as Barry Goldwater and Edward Kennedy applauded the decision. O'Connor, who retired from the Court in July, encountered enormous obstacles in pursuing a career in law and became the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Her memoir "Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest" is a reminiscence about three generations of her family's life in the southwest.
Stephen Breyer has worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as a special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Donald Turner, as an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation, and as the Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In 1994, President Clinton appointed him to serve on the United States Supreme Court, where he become known for thoughtful and independent opinions based on careful and thorough scholarship. In conversation with Orville Schell.

August 14 - Robert Bly and Donald Hall
Two poets, 50 years, 2800 letters. Robert Bly and Donald Hall are two of the leading men in American letters. Bly is a National Book Award-winning poet, a storyteller, a translator, and a voice of resistance; he has most recently published "The Insanity of Empire: Poems Against the Iraq War." Hall has written numerous books of and poetry and prose and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His most recent book, "The Painted Bed," examines his grief at the loss of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, and explores the life he has lived since. They spoke with Garrison Keillor at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul as part of the Literary Friendships series.

August 21 - Sally McKinney
In her 20 years as a travel writer, Bloomington resident Sally McKinney has visited 33 countries in five continents. Her books include "Adventures in Nature: New Zealand," "The Indiana University Experience," and "Hiking Indiana." She's dined on crocodile cabobs and pit pit (an edible grass), hiked with the Maoris of New Zealand, rafted down rivers in Fiji, and cruised by clipper ship from Phuket to Singapore. She talks about how she started her career in mid-life after leaving a "conventional" lifestyle. Adam Schwartz conducts the hour-long interview. (repeat)

August 28 - Patricia Pizzo
Patty Pizzo was awarded the 2005 Arts Advocate Award by the Bloomington Area Arts Council. The award recognizes her leadership, service, and financial support of the arts. Patty Pizzo has selflessly supported the arts in Bloomington since the 1950s. She founded the IU School of Fine Arts Bookstore and has volunteered thousands of hours there. She helped establish the Friends of Art at IU; and has been actively involved with other area arts and cultural organizations, such as the IU Theatre Circle, IU Society of Music, the Lilly Library and the IU Art Museum. Pizzo served on the board of the BAAC for some fifteen years. She speaks with Shana Ritter in this hour-long interview. (repeat)

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The Radio Reader
with Dick Estell

"Manse"
by Wilton Earle
Begins: Thursday, August 31

Was he a Rebel hero or renegade killer? "Manse" is the riveting biography based on the life and legend of Manson Sherrill Jolly, who was either the greatest hero of Reconstruction South Carolina-or its deadliest murderer.
During the Civil War, Jolly served as a Confederate cavalry scout in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee. But it was not until the war ended, and he returned to his farm in South Carolina, that he became famous as a hero of the Confederacy . . . and infamous as an outlaw.
Author Wilton Earle has employed extensive research to bring to life a complex man, and evoke those years of turmoil called Reconstruction when the Confederate States were a defeated nation occupied by the United States Army.
"Manse" is a story of struggle and intrigue, corruption and brutality, love and honor, and one man's inexorable path from battlefield horrors to trauma-induced madness.

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Robert Lumpkin Bids Adieu to WFIU

In July WFIU's Music Director Robert Lumpkin left behind the secular world to become a candidate for the monastic order of the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery. Robert had been contemplating the move for a long time.
"I've been attracted to a monastic life for many years," Robert says. "Over the last couple of years the yearning for a more deeply lived spiritual life has grown to the point where I needed to see if joining an order were still possible. I had been interested in the Trappists at Gethsemani for some time, and after visiting with them and talking over the situation, we both agreed it would be worth a try." Robert had been our music director/programming operations coordinator for six years.
Robert earned a doctorate in piano performance from IU in 1993. He has played concerts in Europe and taught piano in Essen, Germany (he speaks and writes fluent German). He even spent time in Europe as what he calls a "wandering minstrel." He particularly enjoyed accompanying singers on the piano. "I found song repertoire very beautiful in itself and also very satisfying pianistically," he says.
Robert started at WFIU as a self-described "white-knuckle beginner." He credits his WFIU colleagues and particularly George Walker for guiding him through the learning process.
"Thank goodness south-central Indiana has been very patient with me," he says. "I remember saying (on-air naturally!) that NPR was 'slowly' rather than 'solely' responsible for something, and once I played a movie review in place of a news actuality."
Robert has performed a variety of jobs at the station, culminating in music director, a role he has "enjoyed immensely."
Robert main activities at the monastery, which is located in Kentucky, will be prayer, both private and in choir.
"There will be more manual work than I'm used to at first," Robert says, "but I'm sure that will be good for someone who's main posture has been sitting for so many years."
Robert expects to be doing anything from "boxing fruitcakes, to stirring a new batch of fudge, to checking on the ripeness of the aged cheese-pass the clothespins, please!" He could also help with administrative tasks or get sent out on special projects. "I hope I can make some contribution in any area where it's needed."
There's even a chance that Robert will be called on to use his musical ability.
"If the guys are completely out to lunch, they may ask me to accompany their services on the organ, but I will try to dissuade them. One of the organists there, though, might be brave enough to try to show me the ropes. Another of the brothers with a fine tenor voice has expressed an interest in doing some classical songs, so we'll see."
Upon hearing that Robert was leaving, Station Manager Christina Kuzmych commented, "Robert has been the heart and soul of WFIU for close to ten years. His music programming and internal coordination were superb. And of course, we will miss that trademark mellifluous 'Support comes from . . .' heard in our underwriting messages throughout the day. For me it has been the greatest pleasure working with Robert."
The first person Robert met when he came to WFIU was George Walker, who interviewed him for a part-time job as an announcer.
"Even in the first minutes of our interview," George recalls, "I thought to myself, 'This is a voice that people are going to love hearing.'"
"The voice was just a starting point for Robert as he worked to become a very competent board operator and announcer," George continues. "I had made up a manual for announcers to use, and some new announcers looked at it briefly, but Robert went and photocopied it for himself."
For many announcers, George notes, learning which buttons gets pushed on the on-air board-and the order in which to push them-are stumbling blocks.
"Robert worked out a system with little paper arrows to help him. At first, I chuckled over this exercise in zeal. After a while Robert no longer needed them, but every now and then when I'm feeling a little rusty, I make up a set of those arrows for myself."
When Robert increased his responsibilities as music director, according to George, "His broad knowledge of music and musicians with his keen ear for radio were very much in evidence. Robert began to record creative and sometimes teasing introductions for our evening programs. One of my favorites began with, 'Okay, It's Mahler, so it's going to take a while . . .'"
Robert will begin as a postulant at the monastery for six months to gain a sense if the cloistered life is suited to him. That period will allow him and the monastic community to see if they're right for each other.
"After that comes a two-year novitiate," he says. "During this period, I move more deeply into the community, taking an active part in services, learning more about the order and the monastic life in general and finding out what talents I have that might be of service. After the novitiate, if we all agree I should continue, I'll take simple vows each year for three years, committing myself to the group for that year each time. Finally after these five and a half years, I take solemn vows for life."
Once initiated into the order, monks are not permitted out of the monastery except for special projects. Visits from outsiders are allowed, however.
"I'm looking forward very much to the silence," Robert says. "The dark mornings and the early nights, the structure of work and prayer. I'm sure I will meet unexpected challenges, but I believe I will find the strength to face them.
"I have to say I'm truly filled with joy at the prospect."

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Scott Simon on his First Novel

Weekend Edition Host Scott Simon released his first work of fiction this spring. Inspired by his work reporting from Sarajevo, "Pretty Birds" is a tale of the harsh realities of life in a city under siege. Through the eyes of Irena Zaric, Simon shows us a world where even teenage girls become killers. Using the sensitivity, perspective, and humor that make his Weekend Edition essays popular, Simon brings readers into a startling, intensely human story of hard choices and cataclysmic consequences.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about this book?

A: It's the story of two teenage girls on the same high school basketball team in Sarajevo when the siege begins in the spring of 1992. Irena is Muslim, Amela is a Serb, but none of that that has ever meant as much to them as sports, music, and the antics of Irena's parrot, Pretty Bird. They wind up on opposite sides of the city they love. The book is the story of how Irena, her family, and the city struggle to keep going. An old high school teacher who remembers her athletic skills and poise recruits Irena into deadly work. She eventually reconnects with Amela in a set of circumstances you'd call remarkable-under ordinary circumstances.
Features of the story can be grim, but also funny. A sense of humor was often the only armor left to the people of Sarajevo.

Q: You've written a memoir, a biography, and now this novel. What inspired you to write a work of fiction, and why this particular work of fiction?

A: I wanted the challenge of a novel. As an admirer of the form, I feel novels can reach people in ways that journalism doesn't, and I might reach an audience that doesn't know me from my journalism. I hope that people who might otherwise never buy a book about Bosnia might be interested in Pretty Birds as the story of two teenage girls in a treacherous, remarkable place.
Interestingly, each of my books has had a great city as the protagonist. My memoir, Home and Away, was clearly Chicago's book. Jackie Robinson's biography belongs to New York, Brooklyn especially. Pretty Birds is dedicated to Sarajevo.

Q: Why is there no reporter in the book? Most reporters who write novels use a reporter as their narrator.

A: I have read too many books by reporters that center on reporters. People set books in Bosnia and Rwanda-and they wind up writing about themselves. What navel-gazing! Why bother? In every great story I have covered, I've learned that even the most intimate journalism can penetrate only so deeply into the lives of others. I wanted to use my imagination to try to write a book that might burrow beyond that.

Q: How does your approach to writing differ for each of your various writing endeavors (essays for Weekend Edition, memoir, biography, novel)?

A: I hope that my prose style is recognizable in each form. But news stories-even long NPR ones-are short sprints. A novel is a marathon of imagination. At first, I didn't even know how to make up the names of characters. I tried taking the names of people on our Weekend Edition staff and Bosnia-izing them. The results were ridiculous (i.e, Zara Bierczele for our director, Sarah Beyer Kelly). My wife, Caroline, finally went through Bosnian books and made lists of names for me: male, female, first, last, Muslim, Serb, etc., so that I could put whole names together, like ordering a holiday deli platter.
The characters in novels are like two-year-old children-they demand all of your attention during the day, and disturb your sleep at night. When I was writing Pretty Birds, I'd wrestle with the characters all day.

Q: When and where do you do your best writing?

A: Over years in the news business, I have written in hotel rooms and airplanes, by candlelight, flashlight, and in sunlight, on desks, tables, sandbags and crates, on computer, typewriter, and by hand. You learn not to rely on special surroundings.
I took weeks off to devote to the novel, rather than write just in spurts. Therefore much of Pretty Birds was written in Paris and London. We had a lovely apartment in Paris overlooking the Musee Picasso, with a sun-washed nook where we set up my laptop. It looked like you could write Ulysses in an afternoon in that nook. But it was so beastly hot that summer, I wound up writing mostly in the smoke and clatter of neighborhood cafes. When it's going well, the commotion is actually comforting. When it's not going well, you just change cafes.
I try to begin quite early-5 a.m.-before anything else enters the day. I do like to have on music, as the Weekend Edition staff will report. During the writing of Pretty Birds, I saturated myself with music my characters like-Madonna, The Clash, Genesis, Sting, Peter Tosh . . .
I do need coffee. I travel with tubes of French Nescafe, so that I am not caught short anywhere in the world. My longtime companion in war zones, Peter Breslow, remembers me sprinkling Nescafe granules over my tongue, then gulping down some bottled water, to avoid having to wait for an actual brewing process.

Q: Do you think your background and experience as a journalist affected your telling of this story?

A: I had to both build on and get past my experience. I wanted to use what I remembered to stimulate my imagination. Journalism can teach you a lot about narrative and detail to carry a story. But a novel has to take on its own life. If you begin with people and places you've actually seen, you have to let those characters and circumstances grow into people and situations you scarcely recognize.

Q: Will people who heard your stories from Sarajevo read Pretty Birds and remember certain things?

A: Well, we profiled a teenage girl, Irena, and her best friend, Amela. Our driver and fixer were named Miro. Those are the names of the book's principal characters. But I named those characters in tribute to them. Pretty Birds is not their story, except that parts of it are the story of all Sarajeavans.
Several of the scenes in the book derive from my reporting. One of the girls has to let go of her family's parrot-that was from one of our stories. Bosnians trick a Serb artillery unit into bombing their own building, the Bread Line Massacre, burning furniture and eating grass soup, sniper roosts, dark jokes, and references to Michael Jordan-all of that was in our reporting, too.

Q: It was in Sarajevo that you saw a teenage girl who was a sniper for the Serbian Army. You'd covered war stories before, but was this a particular shock to you?

A: A lot more was more shocking. Women turn out to be very desirable snipers. They tend to be meticulous in ways boys often are not. The whole Sarajevo story was a shock. But ultimately, an inspiration, too. The murder going on there every day, and the genocide in Bosnia, was widely reported. Most of the world turned away. Sarajevo shook up my convictions about the world, what I was doing, and what I believed. But the poise, pluck, and ingenuity of Sarajeavans also flabbergasted me. They didn't wail, wring their hands and wait on the rest of the world to rescue them. They helped themselves.

Q: It has been ten years since the end of the siege in Sarajevo. Can you tell us what's happening there today?

A: The city is smaller and duller than it was before the war. The wounds of war are still visible and raw. But it is also a place of culture, diversity, and even joy. My wife and I stayed in the same hotel where our engineer, Manoli Wetherell, and I stayed during the siege. But it was the first time I used the elevator or taken a shower-there was little electricity and no water during the war. When Caroline and I walked through the Old City, or down what had been Marshal Tito Boulevard-Sniper's Alley-I kept saying, "This is new. . . this is new. . . this is new. . ." At one point Hamel, our local guide, smiled at a group of school kids running past us. "The children," he pointed out. "They are new, too."

Q: Is there a fiction writer whom you admire?

A: I admire anyone with the nerve to write a novel. It enlists all the intellectual senses, and exposes the author like no other. My favorite novelists are Graham Greene, John LeCarre, V.S. Naipaul, Mark Helprin, Nick Hornby, and Mordecai Richler. I admire Scott Turow as a citizen-novelist-his novels are always about something, and subtly different.

Q: Can we expect more works of fiction from you?

A: I hope. Realistically, it depends on the success of Pretty Birds. I've had a rich life as a reporter and I'd like to make creative use of my experiences all over the world.

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Broadcasts from the IU School of Music

JANÁ?EK-SINFONIETTA: Allegretto; Edmund Cord/IU Brass Choir
Airs: 8/1 at 7 p.m., 8/2 at 10 a.m., 8/5 at 3 p.m.

PIAZZOLLA-HISTOIRE DU TANGO: Three Movements; Trio Indiana
Airs: 8/8 at 7 p.m., 8/9 at 10 a.m., 8/12 at 3 p.m.

WAGNER-DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG: Introduction and Chorale; Edmund Cord/IU Brass Choir
Airs: 8/15 at 7 p.m., 8/16 at 10 a.m., 8/19 at 3 p.m.

TIPPETT-Divertimento on "Sellinger's Round"; Ronald Zollman/IU Ch. Orch.
Airs: 8/22 at 7 p.m., 8/23 at 10 a.m., 8/26 at 3 p.m.

WOLF-Italian Serenade in G; Ronald Zollman/IU Ch. Orch.
Airs: 8/29 at 7 p.m., 8/30 at 10 a.m., 9/2 at 3 p.m.

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NPR presents This I Believe: A National Dialogue

About fifty years ago, Americans faced difficult questions and challenges as they entered a new era brought about by a series of historical events, including the onset of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racial tensions.
That was when radio journalist Edward R. Murrow launched This I Believe, a series of radio essays in which both prominent Americans and everyday citizens expressed their core values in short radio segments.
Essayists included Presidents Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, and Albert Einstein. The words expressed by famous and everyday Americans alike brought comfort to a country troubled by the state of affairs at that time, and the project was an amazing success.
Now, This I Believe has been revived for the 21st century.
Since April, NPR has featured This I Believe on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Each three-minute essay is read by its author and introduced by producer Jay Allison.
"As in the 1950s, this is a time when belief is dividing the nation and the world," says Allison. "We are not listening well, not understanding each other-we are simply disagreeing, or worse. Working in broadcast communication, there's a responsibility to change that, to cross borders, to encourage some empathy."
Co-producer Dan Gediman say one of the goals of the series "is to create a safe, respectful space where Americans from all walks of life can participate in a dialogue with the potential to inform, inspire, and transform. Murrow realized people needed this in the 1950s, and we certainly need this today."
WFIU listeners can participate in the series by submitting essays. If you are interested in sharing your passion, beliefs, and values through the This I Believe project, visit npr.org/thisibelieve where you can find details on the essay submission process. There, you'll also find audio and transcripts from the new This I Believe as well as from the first series.
When Gediman compares the original essays with the new ones, he observes common ideas.
"There's fear about the challenges the country and the world faced with possibility of atomic warfare, of increasing consumerism and a loss of spiritual values," he says. "Yet, with all that, we also hear tremendous optimism about the future. We hear parents writing essays that are letters to their newborn children expressing the hopes and dreams they have for them."
Jay Allison believes that the essays from the first series are relevant to today's audience.
"I think they give more than just a snapshot of an era," he says. "They let us feel the hearts of the people who lived in that era. This task of writing your core beliefs in a short statement was so intensely personal and yet so public that people were clearly challenged by it. Some said it was the hardest thing they ever did. With that kind of task, it is no wonder that the words and ideas abide."
Adds Gediman, "So much of what we see and hear in the media today is based in conflict, argument and debate. We're inundated with feelings and dogma. We want to take a step back and encourage people to listen to one another."

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Last updated: Sunday, July 31, 2005
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