Hear About National Listening Day?

Listening To Ourselves



by Terry Plumb

One way to make a newspaperman wince is to request publicity for a day of observance. Hardly a day goes by when someone isn’t promoting a day or week dedicated to, say, the fight against cancer or the importance of eating more blueberries.
So when my younger daughter requested a column in support of National Listening Day, my initial reaction was lukewarm. When I learned that the third annual event would take place Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I was even more dubious. Every real American knows that’s the day we rush, lemming like, to the nearest mall. What was she thinking?

The more I thought about it, however, the merits of a designating a day for listening during Thanksgiving made sense. Despite the best efforts of supermarket chains and greeting card companies, Thanksgiving remains largely unsullied by commercialization. And with the possible exception of Christmas, it’s the holiday most associated with family.

First some background: National Listening Day is the creation of StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization that provides people the opportunity to record and share the stories of their lives. It’s best known for the sometimes humorous, often gripping interviews that National Public Radio airs on “Morning Edition” each Friday.

StoryCorps is the brainchild of Dave Isay. A former radio documentary reporter, Isay believes passionately that the story of America is best told – not by politicians or talking heads who fill the airways with their ego-centric ranting – but by ordinary people speaking to someone who cares about them. The art of listening, he maintains, can be mastered by anyone and has the potential to enrich our lives, both as individuals and as a nation.

I first became familiar with StoryCorps several years ago while visiting our daughter in New York City. She took my wife and I to Foley Square, where StoryCorps maintains a permanent booth. She interviewed us for 40 minutes, asking such questions as how we met, what we remembered about our childhoods and what she and her older sister were like as children. At the end of the interview, we were handed a CD of the interview and, with our permission, a copy was sent to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, where it’s preserved for posterity along with more than 30,000 similar interviews.

In the interest of disclosure, I need to say that our same daughter later would go to work for StoryCorps. She now manages the StoryCorps office in Atlanta.

StoryCorps doesn’t charge for its services, although donations are welcome. For National Listening Day, however, the organization isn’t asking for anything other than that people record their own stories, using tape recorders, cell phones or any other recording devices they may have around the house.

Typically, interviews are between family members, but I’ve heard excerpts of moving conversations between co-workers and neighbors. The only essential ingredients are curiosity about another human being and a willingness to listen to what they have to say.

To facilitate participation, StoryCorps has created a Web link, nationaldayoflistening.org, where visitors may find tips on how to conduct an interview, find advice on choosing equipment, etc.

Best of all, there is a list of favorite StoryCorps questions that are likely to evoke fruitful responses. Some are designed for specific relationships. For example, you may want ask your mother, “If you could do everything again, would you raise me differently?”

There are sample questions for friends, questions about working, serious illness and military service – among others. War veterans are notorious for not wanting to talk about their battlefield experiences, but many will open up if asked, “How did war change you?”

Isay would say that just as there are no wrong answers, there are no wrong questions. Indeed, the use of such open-ended questions is a technique that journalists have long employed. Some experts say the best question a reporter can ask is, “What do you think about that?”

We seldom are asked that question. Even more rarely do we ask it of ourselves. Why bother when public opinion pollsters are constantly ready to tell us what we think.

National Listening Day won’t provide a cure-all for what ails we Americans, but it’s the least bitter medicine I’ve heard prescribed lately.

Related articles

• Thanksgiving a time to share stories (philly.com)
• National Day of Listening (npr.org)
• You: Day of Listening to include oral histories from Yoko Ono, Native Americans (washingtonpost.com)
• Yoko interviews son for 'Day of Listening' project (ctv.ca)
• LISTEN: Grandmother Tells Granddaughter What It Was Like To Fall In Love With Her Partner (huffingtonpost.com)
• National Day of Listening (daringyoungmom.com)

Glen Greenwald Column

Cover via Amazon

Published on Saturday, November 14, 2009 by Salon.com

The Right's Textbook 'Surrender to Terrorists'

"We're too scared to have real trials in our country" is a level of cowardice unmatched in the world.

by Glenn Greenwald

Understanding and Combatting Terrorism, USMC Major S.M. Grass, 1989:

Terrorism is a psychological weapon and is directed to create a general climate of fear. As one definition cogently notes, "terror is a natural phenomenon, terrorism is the conscious exploitation of it."  Terrorism utilizes violence to coerce governments and their people by inducing fear.

William Josiger, Fear Factor: The Impact of Terrorism on Public Opinion in the United States and Great Britain, 2006:

At its heart terrorism is about fear. While terrorist attacks destroy, maim and kill, the intended audience for these attacks is almost always the whole body politic and the terrorist's goal is to strike fear into their hearts.

• Continue Reading

GOP House Leader John Boehner, condemning Obama's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial, yesterday:

The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.

This is literally true:  the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists."  It's the same fear they've been spewing for years.  As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers.  Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system.  They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice.  Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings.  The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London.  Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali.  India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents.  In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials.  As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are.   Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive:  the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded.  Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world.  It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

© 2009 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.