At the turn of the century until the 1930s in the cigar factories of Tampa and Ybor City, a well dressed man in a panama hat with a loud and beautiful voice sat atop a platform and read to the cigar workers as they rolled. These readers, known as Lectores de Tabaqueres, read Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne…. It was the voices and words of these lectores, before radio and mechanization, who informed, organized, and incited the cigar workers, who labored by hand until the 1930s, when both the rollers and readers were replaced by mechanization. A lost tradition of story and smoke.

In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 110,000 names. The quilt is made up of some 50,000 panels, each 3×6 feet, the size of a grave. It weighs 60 tons. End to end, it would stretch out more than 50 miles.

Olivia Wilde. Actor. Director. Producer. Olivia made her directorial debut in 2019 with the raunchy, hilarious, high school comedy Booksmart and since then she’s swung from acting to directing to acting to directing. This week Olivia’s third feature, The Invite, premieres around the country — a tight, surprising, sharp-witted film starring Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton, Seth Rogen and Olivia herself. Four characters, one location, a dinner party that goes way off the rails with one of the best scores of the year. 

John Steinbeck called it “The Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup said it was where to go to get your kicks. Mickey Mantle swore, “If it hadn’t been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.” The Kitchen Sisters spent the summer of 1984 traveling every inch of this storied highway — “The Main Street of America” — as it was closing, recording just about everything that moved between Chicago and LA and made a series of epic radio documentaries to commemorate the legendary road and what it meant to the nation.

Deep thanks to all of you who support the work of The Kitchen Sisters. Without your collaboration and contributions, our stories, internship, and mentoring program would not be possible.

Deep thanks to all of you who support the work of The Kitchen Sisters. Without your collaboration and contributions, our stories, internship, and mentoring program would not be possible.