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The Contemporary Jewish Museum
Last month, StoryCorps San Francisco opened up the booth for some very special participants: The security staff at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. We have worked for over a year at the museum with these guards and became intrigued by their varied origins, diverse backgrounds, and unique stories.
On a day when the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) was closed to the general public, the museum put on a holiday reception for the security staff and their guests. There was food, drink, and music. We were also able to record five conversations in our StoryBooth with the guards, their family, and friends.
This event not only gave these co-workers a chance to find out what we do as StoryCorps Facilitators, but also gave us the chance to get to know some of the amazing stories behind these familiar faces. In addition to English, interviews were recorded in Swahili and Tagalog.
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Here in San Francisco, California we have some really great news:
Due to popular demand—and the generosity of our host, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, our StoryBooth has been extended through October, 2010!
To celebrate, we’re having a party.
Please join us at the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Sunday, November 8th from 2-4pm to listen to never-before-heard highlights from year one of our San Francisco StoryBooth—and toast to year two!
More information can be found here, on the Museum’s website. We would love to see you there.
In addition, reservations at the San Francisco StoryBooth are now open through February, 2010. We still have some open slots on the calendar, so now is the perfect time to make a reservation to record a conversation with a family member over the holiday season or schedule a Valentine’s Day surprise. Reservations can be made through our website or by calling 1-800-850-4406. Interview times go quickly, so make sure to sign up now.
It has been a true honor to listen to Bay Area stories for the past year, and we are beyond thrilled to have the chance to preserve even more stories from this incredibly diverse community.
Come visit us at the booth one of these days, okay?
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Ever since I started working with Frank Kingman at the San Francisco StoryBooth, I couldn’t wait to hear some of his stories. He claims he has none, then whips out a tale about working on the railroad and earning the nickname ‘iron man’ because he would do the most difficult and most hated jobs. This sort of detail changes the way you think about a spry 63-year-old who does yoga and brings you bags of delicious peaches from a friend’s orchard.
The opportunity arose to hear more from Frank when he brought his niece, Jo, into the StoryBooth. Frank and Jo spoke honestly about regrets and second chances in life. Frank told Jo that having her in his life is a ‘wonderful gift.’ The love and understanding he and his niece explored during that 40 minutes was a beautiful thing to witness. It strongly reinforced why it is so incredibly important to sit down with the people you love and have a conversation.
I can only say how honored I felt to be a part of it and to have an opportunity to know my colleague and friend better.
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The St. Anthony Foundation is a refuge where thousands of people come each day in need of some form of help. Whether it be food, clothing, medical attention or technology training, the Foundation has been striving for the last 50 years to ensure that San Francisco’s Tenderloin residents have access to resources and a community they can depend on. It’s an experience to walk down Golden Gate Avenue, where the Foundation is located, on any given day and take in the surroundings: people sleeping in doorways, waiting for hours outside the Dining Room in a line stretching around the block at lunchtime, ambulances and cop cars whizzing by every so often.
Outside of StoryCorps, I work at St. Anthony’s Technology Lab where our mission is to educate people and familiarize them with the technological tools of the 21st century. Many of the clients who come in have served sentences in prison, are recovering addicts, or have just never had the confidence to actively learn how to use a computer—much less navigate through the internet. I like to think of the Lab as a melting pot; from Cairo to Kyoto, Sweden to New Orleans, it is as if 60 people from across the globe were selected at random and placed on the 3rd floor of 150 Golden Gate Ave. In other words, it is a perfect place for StoryCorps to capture a wealth of experience and emotion.
(Chris Mardirosian)
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