The Kearns family funeral business was founded in New York City in the year 1900. Over 120 years, the family has seen a lot of history. Patrick Kearns and Paul Kearns-Stanley are the owners. After 4 months, they finally had a chance to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it's looked from their corner of New York. They sat down together on a recent evening — at the end of a long work day — in their funeral home in Queens. This is our final installment of Hunker Down Diaries, at least for now. If you’ve enjoyed the series, tell a friend! And tag us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and “Hunker Down” by Big Dudee Roo.

Radio Diaries

The Final Frontline

COVID-19 has forced many families to improvise childcare. For some, it's been like a four month long 'bring your child to work' day. Paul Montanaro runs a pizza shop in the Bronx. That's where his 11-year-old daughter Francesca has been spending her days since her school shut down in March. Both of Francesca's parents are essential workers - her mom is an ICU nurse at a hospital in Manhattan. For our Hunker Down Diaries series, we asked Francesca to keep an audio diary as she finished up 5th grade in the pizzeria. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and “Nunca Es Suficiente” by Los Angeles Azules and Natalia Lafourcade.

Quarantined in the Pizzeria

Coronavirus cases are on the rise across the country and the five largest clusters of the virus are in correctional institutions. This isn’t a surprise. Prisons are often overcrowded, social distancing is difficult, bathrooms and public spaces are shared by hundreds of inmates. Guards are constantly going in and out. In a pandemic, prison is probably the worst place a person could be. Robbie Pollock spent 8 years in New York state prisons. Recently, he spoke with his friend Moe Monsuri, who has been incarcerated since 2007. Monsuri is currently serving his time at Sing Sing, a maximum security prison in upstate New York, where four inmates have died of COVID-19. This story was produced by reporter Daniel Gross as part of our new series Hunker Down Diaries. You can find more of Daniel’s work at The New Yorker. Image by Acroterion. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Lockdown in Lockup

Back in March, as the pandemic hit, many people across the country found themselves without a safety net. Naida Lavon was one of them. Naida is 67 and a former school bus driver. She was recently furloughed from her part time job at a rental car company. For the past few months, Naida’s been living in her car on the streets of Portland, Oregon. As part of our Hunker Down Diaries series, we bring you her story. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and “Home Again” by Michael Kiwanuka.

Home is Where You Park Your Mini Van

Renault Robinson was one of Chicago's few black police officers in the 1970s. He was a founder of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League. We first learned about Robinson from Studs Terkel's book Working. Studs went around the country in the 1970s interviewing people about their jobs. Robinson's interview is one of the most powerful parts of the book. He is incredibly honest and blunt about what it was like to be a black police officer, and about the tensions between the police and the black community. A few years ago, we interviewed Robinson for our series "Working, Then and Now." When you listen to his words from the 1970s, and from 50 years later, what's most striking is how much things haven't changed.

The Words of Renault Robinson, Then and Now

Gali Beeri and Joshua Boliver both live in New York City and they were both single back in March when the city was preparing to lock down. Then they decided to quarantine together, after their very first date. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration with NPR, bringing you stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. If you have an idea for the series, write to hunkerdown@radiodiaries.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions, Yo La Tengo, and “Blaze & Sybil's Lullaby” by Alia Shawkat & Ben Dickey.

Love at First Quarantine

Most of the country is social distancing in public, but some people are doing it under the same roof. Robert Jackson is 71 and had a kidney transplant four years ago. His immune system is severely compromised. His wife, Wendy Jackson, is a pediatric emergency room physician. She runs the risk of being exposed to the coronavirus at work. So the couple made the difficult decision to live together... six feet apart. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration with NPR, bringing you stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. If you have an idea for the series, write to hunkerdown@radiodiaries.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter. This episode also features the series “Our Show,” produced by Erica Heilman of the Rumble Strip Podcast, in collaboration with Transom.org.

Love from Six Feet Apart

Joe Newman is 107 years old. He was 5 during the flu pandemic of 1918. Today, he lives in a senior apartment complex in Sarasota, Florida with his fiancé, Anita Sampson. The complex is on lockdown, so we sent them a recorder and they interviewed each other on Anita's 100th birthday. This story is the first in a new series called Hunker Down Diaries, surprising stories from people thrown together by the pandemic. Produced in collaboration with NPR. In the coming weeks we’ll be bringing you more stories about a teenager in foster care, the daily life of hospital workers, and a couple who decided to quarantine together after their first date. If you have an idea for the series we’d love to hear from you. You can send your quarantine stories to info@radiodiaries. Or find us on Facebook and Twitter. Series art by 13milliseconds. 

Centenarians in Lockdown

There’s a long history in America of white people imagining black people’s lives - in novels, in movies, and sometimes in journalism.  In 1969, Grace Halsell, a white journalist, published a book called Soul Sister. It was her account of living as a “black woman” in the United States. Lyndon Johnson provided a blurb for the book, and it sold over a million copies. Halsell was inspired by John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, which came out in 1961. That was inspired by an even earlier book in the 1940’s. It’s hard to imagine any of these projects happening now. It seems like a kind of journalistic blackface. But Halsell’s book raises a lot of questions that are still relevant today - about race, and the limits of empathy. This episode is a collaboration with NPR’s Code Switch.

Soul Sister

Busman’s Holiday: When William Cimillo, a NYC bus driver went on a 1,300 mile detour to Florida. This story originally aired on This American Life. Our episode is part of a network-wide project to welcome Over the Road, Radiotopia’s newest show, into the family. *** This episode is sponsored by LightStream. To get a discount on a credit card consolidation loan, go to lightstream.com/diaries.

The Long Haul: Busman's Holiday

You know the story of Rosa Parks. But have you heard of Claudette Colvin? Claudette grew up in the segregated city of Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, when she was 15 years old, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the exact same thing. Parks, of course, became a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement. But Claudette Colvin has largely been left out of the history books. In 1956, about a year after Colvin refused to give up her seat, her attorney Fred Gray filed the landmark federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. This case ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama. Claudette Colvin was a star witness. This is her story.

History Had Me Glued to the Seat

Nowadays we’re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally: voice-mail. We combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love. You can see photographs of the voice-o-graphs on our website: http://www.radiodiaries.org/a-voicemail-valentine/

Voicemail Valentine

Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager. I met Laura when she was 19. I gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her attempts to live a normal life - with lungs that often betrayed her.

My So-Called Lungs

Back in the 1990s, Joe Richman gave tape recorders to a bunch of teenagers and asked them to report on their own lives. These stories became the series “Teenage Diaries.” 16 years later, in “Teenage Diaries Revisited,” we check back in with this group to see what’s happened in their lives. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever

The Teenage Diaries Revisited Hour Special

We first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans did. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi’s diary, and we introduce listeners to Thembi’s daughter, Onwabo. **** Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. #RadiotopiaForever

Thembi's Diary, Revisited

First-person diaries, sound portraits, and hidden chapters of history from Peabody Award-winning producer Joe Richman and the Radio Diaries team. From teenagers to octogenarians, prisoners to prison guards, bra saleswomen to lighthouse keepers. The extraordinary stories of ordinary life. Radio Diaries is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm

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Radio Diaries

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