News & Politics
Weekend America on News & Politics
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Bringing Poetry Home
Home is a subject poets have been scribbling about in stanzas since the days of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey." This year, some poets put their own spin on the topic at City of Asylum Pittsburgh's annual jazz and poetry reading. Two of those poets come from very different places: Liberian-born Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, and native South Carolinian Terrance Hayes.
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Every Bunk Tells a Story
Sometimes the most unlikely places feel like home. There's not much that's warm and cheery about the troopships that took young soldiers to war in Vietnam in the late 1960s. The ships were hot, sweaty and packed with up to 5000 men at once. But some soldiers saw these troopships as a last secure refuge before the uncertainties of war.
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Conversations with America: Moustafa Bayoumi
In Brooklyn, there are several different neighborhoods that have relatively large concentrations of Arab Americans and of Muslim Americans. Probably the most important one is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And then the older neighborhood in Brooklyn where there are a lot of Arabs and Muslims would around Atlantic Avenue. They sell a lot of cassette tapes and pamphlets, and there's Chinese food that's halal.
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After the Projects
The Ida B. Wells housing projects on Chicago's South Side opened in 1941, when housing segregation was still legal. By the '70s and '80s, Wells was caught up in the violence and squalor that became synonymous with Chicago public housing. Michael Whitehead's six-story building was no exception.
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The Tragedy of Stuff
Your house becomes your home when you have your stuff in it. But what if you have a lot of stuff? So much that your home starts to feel like a storage unit? That's what happens to people sometimes referred to as hoarders. They collect things and have a hard time organizing them and letting go. Cathy Duchamp was married to someone she prefers to call "chronically disorganized." Here's her story.
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From Projects to Suburbs
In the 1970s, the government funded a desegregation plan to move more than 3,500 black families from Chicago to the suburbs. One of those early pioneers was Valencia Morris. She moved to a suburb called Woodridge with her three daughters. Laurie Stern of American RadioWorks picks up the story of one of those daughters 32 years later.
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Homes for No Pay
When we think about home, of course, we usually think about houses. The companies that build residential homes rely on Hispanic workers, many of them foreign-born. Much of that work has dried up with the housing bust. There's still work to be found--for less money, and in some cases, no money at all.
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Saved by a Succulent Garden
When the fierce Santa Ana winds died down last Tuesday, fire fighters quickly gained control of the huge blazes that left most of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Orange and Ventura counties shrouded in smoke last weekend. One of the only surviving houses in a posh Santa Barbara neighborhood was saved, perhaps, by its garden. Ben Adair explains.
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JFK World
Forty-five years ago this weekend, President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie landed at Love Field Airport, got into the presidential limousine, and emerged onto the streets of Dallas. We all know what happened minutes later. It's been nearly half a century, but the world's interest in the JFK assassination has hardly waned. But there's one place where its resonance is oddly muffled: Dallas.
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Falling Gas Prices
Gas prices have fallen precipitously since last summer. Great! Or is it? Weekend America host John Moe speaks with Chris Farrell, senior economics correspondent for American Public Media, about what the falling cost of oil means for American consumers.
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Brazilians Leaving Boston
The tough economy hits everyone in America in different ways. But a Pew Hispanic Center report shows that immigrant incomes are falling faster than others. For some, that's tipped the scale, and they're leaving. There is no reliable snapshot of how many immigrants are going home. But in the Boston area, Weekend America's Kara Oehler talked to one immigrant group that's shrinking fast.
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Survivors of Suicide
Today is the 10th Annual National Survivors of Suicide Day. For survivors, getting over the grief, anger and the lingering questions left after a suicide can be difficult. Doug Merrill has lived through the suicide of eight people - most of them teens - in the bedroom community of Bowling Green, Ohio, just south of Toledo. Weekend America's Desiree Cooper went to hear his story of survival.
