Salt Radio Program
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From LAID OFF: Tony Capone in front of a dormant Great Northern paper mill. Photo by Andrew Reilly, courtesy the Salt Archive.
Click Image for Full View. |
About Salt
From Donna Galluzzo ~ Executive Director, Salt
Pam Wood started Salt in 1973 as a folklore & oral history course at Kennebunk High School in Maine. Students conducted interviews, took photographs, and edited the first issues of Salt magazine. In 1976, students led the effort to incorporate Salt as a nonprofit Maine corporation. Not long after that, Salt moved its headquarters to a Kennebunk boatyard and added boat-building courses to its list of offerings.
The first semester offered to undergraduate students was in 1982. Salt moved a few more times before relocating, in 1989, to 19 Pine Street in Portland. The move to its current location at 110 Exchange, The Salt Building, was made in 1999. Now, graduate and undergraduate students from around the country and the world attend Salt for a 15-weeks of intensive studies in either documentary photography, writing, or radio.
Salt magazine was a quarterly publication for several of these years. Salt also published several books, including The Salt Book and Salt II and, more recently, Maine: A Peopled Landscape.
Much of Salt's success can be traced to Pam Wood, whose vision shaped Salt and guided it through its first 28 years. Her tenacity, her commitment to teaching and to students, and her belief that "less is more" are important aspects of Salt today.
Johnny Comes Home
Produced by Rupa Marya
PRODUCER NOTES:
Portrait of Iraq War veteran John Marchelletta Photo by Danee
Voorhees, courtesy the Salt Archive. |
John Marchelletta's story is one we are not hearing in the mass media. Aside
from the daily escalating number of US casualties in Iraq, there is an
increasing population of people who are returning home physically unharmed, but
still suffering emotionally from the combat experience. A 24-year old Marine veteran, John tells us why he has trouble
sleeping at night now that he is home safe in Maine. He tells us how he
tries to find peace with a horrible incident in which two Iraqi girls were
accidentally killed. Produced in the fall of 2003, his story is one that almost every returning veteran shares, in one version or another.
Jaz, The Cleaning Lady
Produced by Jamie York
PRODUCER NOTES:
Jaz came in every day for lunch at the café where I worked after I graduated
from college. She had the light in her eyes and a voracious appetite for
conversation. While she ate we'd talk about whatever she was studying and
only later did I learn that she funded her academic learning by professionally cleaning. When I came back to Portland to go to Salt I thought first of Jaz and she agreed to let me record in her slipstream. Produced in the fall of 2000, this was the first radio piece I ever made and I hope I did her justice.
Laid Off
Produced by Rebecca Griffin
PRODUCER NOTES:
My collaborating photographer, Drew Reilly, found the guys in "Laid Off." He
was talking to people in a little restaurant in downtown Millinocket. The
town's paper mill had been closed for several months and guys from the mill were
spending a lot of time downtown. Drew is from New Jersey, so when he heard Tony
Capone's Brooklyn accent leaping out from all those Maine accents, he felt
like he'd stumbled on someone from home. Tony is always telling stories, and he
had a way of making the mill layoffs sound like a great epic.
Drew introduced me to Tony and Gerry and we spent a lot of time with those
two guys over about three months. We had dinner at Gerry's house with his wife,
went to class with them and just spent time hanging out in Tony's apartment,
where he makes leather belts. Tony and Gerry had really become friends after
the mill closures because they were in algebra class together. Gerry's Maine
accent fits in perfect contrast to Tony's voice. When I was editing the tape, I
thought of Gerry as telephone poles -- sturdy, solid posts on which to hang
Tony's colorful story telling.
Roadway Renaissance Man
Produced by Carla Neufeldt
PRODUCER NOTES:
I was struck by the ways in which Tom Nunes engaged with his work. He has
an amazingly healthy perspective on--and relationship with--his job. Tom
appears to see it for what it is. While he harbors no illusions about toll
collecting as a life-altering, universe-stopping kind of a job, he has found
the places where he can push the envelope a bit, and so he does. Not for
the sake of being a difficult employee (which he isn't--his supervisor and
colleagues all seem to adore him), but in order to make his work more
meaningful while he's there. And when he goes home at night, he shelves his
toll job until he shows up at his booth the next day. He honestly doesn't
stew about his work in the way so many of us do. Nor is his identity
wrapped up in what he does for a living. God, people can spend years in
therapy trying to achieve this kind of balance--and for Tom, it really seems
effortless.
The Producers
About Rupa Marya
Rupa Marya came to radio as another step in her work in humanism.
The American-born daughter of Indian immigrants who spent part of her childhood in France, Rupa's sense of place in the world has made her at home
everywhere and nowhere.
As an undergraduate, Rupa double-majored in theater and biochemistry and
pursued additional studies in philosophy, beginning her formal studies of
people from the minute molecules to the masses. She spent time after college
writing and performing original music in San Francisco and Atlanta before
she went to medical school at Georgetown University. There she learned how
to integrate some of her work in art and science in caring for patients
holistically. After graduating medical school and returning home to do residency
at University of California, San Francisco, she wanted to take a hiatus
to develop her humanistic side after the long hours of internship when young
doctors become doctors. Rupa went to Salt to do just this. Her stories at Salt demonstrate the theme of how global
policies have deeply personal effects on seemingly ordinary individuals. She
hopes to develop this theme in her future work as she returns to San
Francisco to complete residency in tandem with continuing radio documentary
work at UCSF, following a new flexible track in training physicians that
allows time for both pursuits.
About Jamie York
Jamie York attended Salt in the Fall of 2000. His radio career began at
Sound Portraits, where he helped produce the Youth Portraits series and The
Execution Tapes. More recently, he was the New York Coordinator for The
Sonic Memorial Project, taught WNYC's Radio Rookies and produced a special
for American Radio Works. He is a recipient of an emerging leader grant from
the Ford Foundation.
About Rebecca Griffin
Two years ago, I was a newspaper reporter. I came to Salt because I'd been
harboring this secret wish to make radio documentaries out of my newspaper
stories. I was so clueless on how to do this that I was embarrassed to tell people
what, exactly, I was going to school to learn.
But there's no place like Salt for getting you to face your fears. You just
get out there with these headphones and a huge microphone and say, "Hey! I make
radio stories! Want to talk to me?"
Since Salt, I've moved to Medford, Massachusetts, where I live with my
boyfriend Matt. I've interned at Living on Earth and I've become an official Car Talk Lackey (a production intern). Basically, I help screen calls at Car Talk. I'm also working on a few independent radio stories and riding my bike a lot.
To pay bills, I'm a hospital telephone operator, where I hear lots of interesting voices and stories, but I have to process calls in about 30 seconds -- so they're all "shorts," so to speak.
About Carla Neufeldt
Carla Neufeldt's parent's cut the family's cable subscription when she was
seven. Frustrated, Carla eventually found herself listening to old episodes
of Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, A Prairie Home Companion, and other campy
radio programs. She's been entranced by radio ever since. While at Smith College, Carla took time off to attend Salt, where she enthusiastically dove into documentary radio. Her work has aired on Maine Public Radio and San Francisco's KQED.
Related Links
Salt Institute Website:
www.salt.edu
Salt on The Public Radio Exchange:
www.prx.org/group/salt
...
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Learn more about Salt from its director and former participants.
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