“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”
— Elvis Presley
Dear Friends,
Greetings as the year turns. We write to wish you well and to ask for your support for a new year of strong stories — stories full of heart, truth, empathy and surprise.
A new strand of Kitchen Sisters stories is ahead in 2020, the election year, one of the most critical in our nation’s history. Along with continuing to chronicle the nation’s Keepers, we are beginning a series of stories of youth activists and visionaries from around the world.
In August we traveled to Puerto Rico with Dave Eggers for the second gathering of The International Congress of Youth Voices — 137 young activists and writers from 26 different countries focused on pressing, pulsing issues around the world — climate change, gun control, human rights, the arts, LGBTQ rights, race, food, immigration, governance… We are staggered by the voices, stories and imaginations of fearless, funny, activated young people around the globe and we’ll be turning our microphone in their direction in the year ahead.
We write to ask for your support and your collaboration to bring these new, provocative stories to air in this monumental coming year. The heart of our work, and a central part of our mission is to bring new voices and perspectives into the public discourse, to grapple with big issues in profound, unusual and inspiring ways.
We close 2019 with the launch of two new hour-long, sound-rich, hope-filled Keepers Specials narrated by that Academy Award-winning wonder, Frances McDormand now being broadcast by PRX, NPR and public radio stations nationwide. Check your local stations to find out when The Keepers airs in your town. We thank you for making these startling and surprising stories of archiving, keeping and the free flow of information and ideas possible.
Also in 2019, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned us to produce San Francisco: Stories From the Model City, an unusual look at the cascade of issues bearing down on the Bay Area and cities everywhere — tech, housing, homelessness, gentrification, city planning, neighborhood activism. Roman Mars featured this hour-long Kitchen Sisters documentary on his path-breaking design podcast, 99% Invisible. Take a listen.
Our Radiotopia podcast, The Kitchen Sisters Present… is brimming with rich, deeply layered stories — of keepers, of gutsy girls, pioneering women, sonic pioneers, of food visionaries and kitchen cultures. If you haven’t already, please subscribe. The more subscribers, the more stories we can tell. Stories that ignite and engage.
The Keepers continues in 2020 — Lou Reed’s Archive, the repatriation of 1890’s Oglala Lakota recordings from the Library of Congress to the tribe in South Dakota, Theaster Gates: Keeping the South Side. Food and climate will be a focus as well. This past year we recorded a remarkable series of interviews at FRUTO in Brazil, a gathering of activist chefs, farmers and indigenous peoples, and at The Climate Underground Summit at Al Gore’s farm on the role of soil and regenerative agriculture in combating climate change.
We’re all in this together. Thank you for being such a vital part of The Kitchen Sister and Brotherhood, for supporting the stories and our internship, training and mentoring program. Your participation, your tax-deductible contribution, the stories you share with us, the music you make, the causes you tell us about… all of it adds up. All of it stirs the pot.
Wishing you and your family peace and a fair election in the coming year.
Keep it rolling,
Davia & Nikki
The Kitchen Sisters
