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A Dateline report recorded about two months into 2002 with the work crews tasked with clearing the debris from Ground Zero, sorting through it for human remains, and making it ready to be put on barges to be floated for disposal in Fresh Kill. The stress, sadness and nobility of the men there were quite amazing.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:44 — 8.0MB)
After articles about the President and “dog bites man,” the obituaries are among the most popular articles the New York Times features. Part news story, part profile, obits attempt to sum up a person’s life and significance, and no more. Indeed, how many “column inches” a person is expected in the paper to get when he dies is closely guarded knowledge at the Times. In this story, I crash the gates of Hell, and spend some time with the people who make the Obit Section work, and their overseers. As with many of my stories, Chopin is included at no extra charge.
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Oysters may seem like humble shellfish, but ecologically, they tower above many other species. They are a tasty food source for a variety of creatures, including humans. But more importantly, oysters help to filter pollutants from coastal estuaries, places where fresh river waters and ocean salt waters co-mingle.Fourteen out of 20 of the world’s largest cities are built near estuaries, and urban pollution, development and other factors are now threatening these delicate ecosystems. In response, some grassroots groups, are using oyster beds to help restore and stabilize damaged estuaries. New York and New Jersey Baykeeper is one of them.
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I was living in Washington at the time of the September 11th 2001 attacks, but was able to get the first train into Manhattan when the island opened on the morning of September 12th. I worked 17 hours a day in the week following, chronicling the human impact of the World Trade Center attacks on the city I love and have always loved. This story was one of several I filed in those first days.
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A sound-rich look at the ways the Jews in America have influenced what Americans find funny, while expressing themselves and their take on life at the same time.
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Labor Day in America is a day most Americans associate with a three day weekend and a farewell to summertime. However, this national holiday is also a time to honor workers and the central place their labor has in our lives. For this report, Adam asked a range of New Yorkers about what “work” means to them.
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There are hundreds of musicians, good and bad, tooting and strumming and bowing and belting in the New York subway system, but Mr. Spoons is sui generis. Not only is he fantastic at playing the spoons, he has an outsize character to match. I spent some serious time with him, and filed this report for VOA.
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People often think of the American Communists of the 1920s and 30s as angry political types alone. There is no denying that the systems that grew out of the Bolshevik and other revolutions failed miserably, largely discrediting Communism in practice. Still there a powerful spiritual vision underlying the embrace of Communism — equality, justice, brotherhood (generically understood), and a day when people would help each other without the self-interested and hamfisted mediation of the politicians, the police or the priests. For this interview connected with May Day 2004, I interviewed two darling octogenarian women living who remember their youths in Communist New York during the 1930s. The fact that I did it for the Voice of America heightened its appeal for me.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:59 — 4.8MB)
Art Spiegelman is most famous for his Pulitzer Prize winning work “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust in which Nazis are portrayed as cats, and Jews are depicted as mice. In this profile, Spiegelman talks about his roots as a Mad Magazine afficionado, underground cartoonist, and his experience growing up in a Queens NY family overshadowed by the Shoah.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:56 — 7.3MB)
This is a profile of the entrepreneurial publisher and First Amendment activist Barney Rosset. During the mid 20th century Rosset tirelessly fought America’s anti-obscenity laws in order to publish now-classic works by D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs and scores of other non-Establishment writers, several of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize. Barney talked with Adam in the labyrinthine Greenwich Village apartment he shares with his wife Astrid, and the Evergreen Review offices.
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