The Kitchen Sisters

#KeeperoftheDay No. 13 - Emma Goldman Papers Project. Emma Goldman was a woman ahead of her time, an anarchist, a Jewish immigrant to America. Born in the Russian Empire, her time in the United States was mostly between1885 and 1919. Goldman was a fierce and eloquent public presence, a speaker and organizer about the issues of injustice, poverty, women’s independence and freedom, about birth contr...

We talk with Nicholas Meriwether, the first curator of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, about the band’s incredible collection of fan art. “I’ve come to realize that the art movement that accompanied the rise of the Dead is as much a part of what we became in the public eye as the songs and our playing of them.” – Robert Hunter, Lyricist, 2003 “If you want to know how the Dead was built...

#KeeperoftheDay No. 8 Hilary Swett, an archivist and librarian at the Writers Guild Foundation called The Keepers Hotline to tell us about her collection. “As an archivist I think of myself as keeping the stories of America's storytellers, movie and TV writers…. My collection speaks to the history of entertainment industry, of course, but they also correlate to the history of labor and capitalism...

Home Movie Day, a global preservation celebration of people and their home movie collections, began in 2003. October 20, is the 16th Annual Home Movie Day and there are screenings,events and preservation parties around the world. Here’s an oldie but goodie, a story The Kitchen Sisters produced the year Home Movie Day launched. We hope you pick up a camera or camera-like object and film your people...

#KeeperoftheDay #2. A message from The Keeper Hotline: "Hi, my name is Dr. Derek Fox. I'm a veterinary orthopedic surgeon calling from Columbia, Missouri. The details of a story are certainly not mine, and I'm no expert on this individual or even the field that she represented. It just seemed to me that her story would be one that you guys would be interested in pursuing for your Keeper series. El...

Today, The Keepers continues with the launch of "Keeper of the Day," our new daily, year-long social media series featuring keepers from around the world. {Kind of like baseball cards}. #KeeperoftheDay will arrive in an array of modes—radio, podcasts, photographs, graphics, videos, quotes….  Along with more stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians, we’l...

"My archival calling was, I believe, part of my spiritual calling." -Brenda Billups Square Last week, we shared a story from New Orleans. The story of Leona Tate, who as a six-year-old was one of the first African American children to integrate an all-white school in New Orleans. Today we share a moment from a story about Brenda Billups Square, co-pastor of Beecher Memorial Congregational United C...

November 14, 1960 — Four six-year-old girls, flanked by Federal Marshals, walked through screaming crowds and policemen on horseback as they approached their new schools for the first time. Leona thought it must be Mardi Gras. Gail Etienne thought they were going to kill her. Listen to the entire story at kitchensisters.org/present

Thad Vogler, that pioneering spirits visionary, has written a beautiful new book — By the Smoke and the Smell: My Search for the Rare & Sublime on the Spirits Trail. We interviewed him years back because he’s so wise and mesmerizing. Here’s a taste.

In 1983 Prince hired LA sound technician, Susan Rogers, one of the few women in the industry, to move to Minneapolis and help upgrade his home recording studio as he began work on the album and the movie Purple Rain. Susan, a trained recording technician with no sound engineering experience became the engineer of Purple Rain, Parade, Sign o' the Times, and all that Prince recorded for the next fou...

"Humanity will be cured and saved by an orchard" -Fyodor Dostoyevsky Awhile back we were at Leila’s Shop in the East End of London, interviewing Leila McAlister, neighborhood kitchen activist, cook and grocer about her efforts to build community through food, when a beautiful Russian woman suddenly appeared balancing a high stack of beautifully illustrated candy boxes from a town called Kolomna, s...

This season of Hidden Kitchens was inspired by an issue of the magazine, Public Diplomacy centered on the concept of “gastrodiplomacy,” the idea of sharing a country’s cultural heritage through food, food as a medium of cultural engagement, the use of food as a diplomatic tool to help resolve conflicts and foster connections between nations. Korea it turns out, is one of the nations most involved...

Nicole Choi on Korean Cornbread by The Kitchen Sisters

You've heard of the San Francisco gold rush. But that rush spurred another, lesser-known event: the egg rush. The legions of miners who swept into the region in the 1850s hoping to strike gold all had to be fed. And they needed protein to stay strong. But when food shortages hit, wily entrepreneurs looked for eggs in an unlikely source: the Farallon Islands.

Sylvan on the influence of World War II and poverty on Japanese cuisine by The Kitchen Sisters

In Japan, nearly every interest has a manga dedicated to it, whether it's sports, music or shooting pool. So it's no wonder that food, which has always been tied to Japan's cultural identity, has skyrocketed as a genre of manga, which represents about 40 percent of all books published in that country.

Lisbon is a city of plazas, parks, overlooks and gardens. For more than a century, these beautiful public spaces were graced by Art Noveau and Moorish-style kiosks — small, ornate structures that provided chairs and shade and served traditional Portuguese snacks and drinks. These quiosques de refrescos (refreshment kiosks) were the heart of public life in the city. But, under the long dictatorship...

War and Peace and Coffee by The Kitchen Sisters

Operation Hummus by The Kitchen Sisters

Tony Ramy talks about his Lebanese restaurants and hummus by The Kitchen Sisters

Ra’anan Alexandrowicz discusses hummus of his childhood by The Kitchen Sisters

Hummus Day by The Kitchen Sisters

James Fox has been going in and out of San Quentin Prison for 13 years, teaching yoga and mindfulness to prisoners.

"Often buildings speak to you.” -Leslie E. Robertson, structural engineer responsible for building the original World Trade Center, from the Sonic Memorial Project featured this week on our podcast Fugitive Waves. http://kitchensisters.org/fugitivewaves

In honor of actor Martin Milner, who recently passed on, here’s an excerpt from our story about Route 66 featuring Milner, George Maharis and show creator Sterling Silliphant talking about the show's cult following and the social impact it had in 1960s. Listen to the entire two-part story of Route 66 on our podcast, Fugitive Waves: http://kitchensisters.org/fugitivewaves