Pilot This!

So now we're getting closer... closer... closer.

This week we reach a milestone: We're going to produce our first "pilot." These are demo shows that we produce and distribute to member stations to help them decide whether to pick up the program. OK, who are we kidding? We only want to "help" them decide one thing: yes.

We want them to pant for it.
We want them to fight over it.

So we're trying to make it as strong as can be??? and that's where we are going to put our energies this week (check out our behind-the-scenes pics). We've been posting two or three segments a week, but this week we're just going to put up a feature on Thursday (one, in particular, I think you'll like -- if I say so myself. More on that later in the week).

And, yes, we will post the pilots at some point -- at least some of the segments. As usual, we want to know what you think. It will be a bit rough (as in "Rough" Cuts) because we don't have a final music score and we're still working out some details, like how the intros and the little breaks between segments should sound. But we're getting there. Keep your fingers crossed and thanks for all the help, encouragement and tough love so far.

Speaking of help: Do you belong to a book club? What are you reading right now? We are very interested in having book clubs as a regular segment -- featuring book clubs and what the club members are reading, author interviews and all of that. But we want to know: What's hot right now?

We are especially curious to know if you are reading books that speak in some way to the multicultural experience. The nontraditional. Earlier this year, we interviewed author Rebecca Walker who wrote the intro to a collection of short stories called Mixed, a collection of short fiction by mixed-race writers. That would be a good one. I know there are book clubs that explore interfaith dialogue (I know because I did a story on one). What are you reading? Let us know??? and do we even need to say it? We get the impression that most book clubs are by and for women. But men -- we love you, too -- if you have a book club, tell us what you've got on your list.

And finally... we still haven't found our "Diversity Coach" -- someone who can help us with a segment on how to smooth out the kinks in multicultural, interpersonal relations. If you've ever had an etiquette class or a protocol class or read a column by somebody whose advice impressed you in this area, won't you drop us a line?

Michel Martin

5:46 PM ET | 02-27-2007 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

 

A Special Visitor

This particular piece isn't part of our "Who Knew Them When" series, but it very well could be someday...

We get visitors all the time here -- authors and experts, dignitaries and the like -- those who claim to be in the "know" about who's who and what's what in our world.

But, I'd like you to meet someone special. She is 13-year-old Aujeanette Jones-Staunton. Last week, she shadowed me and the Rough Cuts team for a school project. Well, we found her so interesting that we figured you'd want to meet her, too!

About Aujeanette: She's an eighth-grader at Thornton Friends School in Silver Spring, Md. (The school is based on Quaker principles. How cool is that?) She's very energetic, bright and has lots of creativity. So it should come as no surprise that we quickly adopted her as a part of our production family.

During her visit, she sat down with one of our team members, Lee Hill, for a little one-on-one about why she's such a radio fan, her first impressions of NPR and what makes her school so unique:

Lee: So what brings you here?

Aujeanette: I'm doing an eighth-grade project for my school. I'm supposed to be opening up new possibilities by shadowing someone to see what they do.

Lee: Why Michel Martin (and the Rough Cuts team)?

Aujeanette: She's in radio, and I like radio.

Lee: And why do you like radio?

Aujeanette: I love music, and music lives on the radio... I wanted to see (here) what other types of radio there was.

Lee: How do you know about NPR?

Aujeanette: A family friend listens in the car.

Lee: And what was your first impression?

Aujeanette: Boring. But now that I've been here, it's actually pretty cool...(NPR has) pretty useful information.

Lee: Tell us about your school.

Aujeanette: It's Quaker-based. We go by all the Quaker standards. It's peaceful. Everyone's a community. It's a small school. Twenty-four students.

Lee: Interesting. What have you learned from hanging out with us?

Aujeanette: You have to be patient with all of the things you (all) do -- sending e-mails, cutting audio files and writing -- but then, in the end, it makes a great show... or blog... or whatever!

Lee: Anything to share with our younger listeners and/or bloggers?

Aujeanette: Everything is hard before it is easy! That's my motto.

Great motto, I must add. We wish Aujeanette all the best in her studies. And if she's reading this entry, don't be a stranger!

Michel Martin

4:02 PM ET | 02-26-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

Rough Cuts Discussion Guidelines

We've received hundreds of comments on the Rough Cut blogs, and the vast majority of them have been useful and insightful. Occasionally, though, we get a post that's problematic for one reason or another, so we thought we'd post some discussion guidelines to help you understand where we're coming from:

Every website has its own rules, and these are ours. If you break them, don't be surprised if we block your comments.

First things first: If you can't be polite, don't say it. Of course, we don't want to stifle discussion of controversial issues. Some topics require blunt talk, and we're not always going to agree with each other. Nonetheless, please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities. No name calling, slander, comments about someone's mother, comparisons to notorious dictators - you get the idea. And under no circumstances should you post anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, sexist or racist.

Don't use obscenities -- even if the word in question is often used in conversation. We're not going to list the words we object to; you know what they are. Remember, this is a public forum and we want everyone to feel comfortable participating.

Anything you post should be your own work. You're welcome to link to relevant content and to quote from other people's work with attribution. But that doesn't mean you can copy and paste wholesale.

Please stay on topic. Think of it this way -- if you hosted a book club meeting at your house, you wouldn't want someone to show up and insist on discussing reality TV shows.

Rambling is the kiss of death. We don't want to place a word count on how long your comments should be, but anything beyond a few paragraphs had better be very, very interesting to the larger community. We reserve the right to edit for brevity as well as clarity.

Please respect people's privacy. We love to learn about new and interesting individuals, but most people will not be happy to have their phone numbers or e-mail addresses published. If you need to share someone's contact information, please submit it through our contact form.

Feel free to share your ideas and experiences about religion, politics and relevant products or services you've discovered. But this is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, soliciting or proselytizing. We understand that there can be a fine line between discussing and campaigning; please use your best judgment -- and we will use ours.

We appreciate the news tips members of the public send us. However, NPR reserves the right not to publicize allegations, conspiracy theories and other information which we know to be false or unsubstantiated.

Please don't use public forums for private communication. Most of our forums have a link (it's on the right side) for sending private messages to a blogger or host. Similarly, if you have comments about NPR coverage or policies generally, please don't use the blog discussion threads to air them. For issues regarding NPR editorial content or policies, write to the office of the ombudsman. To contact an NPR program or any of our business and technical departments, use the NPR contact form

If you want to know even more information on what is and isn't allowed on NPR.org, please see our very official Terms of Use page.

So that's about it. Just follow these guidelines, and we'll be good to go.

Michel Martin

1:37 PM ET | 02-26-2007 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

 

Dispatches from the Continent

"He cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath. 'The horror! The horror!'" Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad, 1899

"We have heard stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true."
Things Fall Apart -- Chinua Achebe, 1958

What is Africa to you? Is it Joseph Conrad's tale of colonial occupation, Achebe's angry rebuke? Is it the home of Angelina Jolie and Madonna's adopted babies? Nelson Mandela's triumphant walk to freedom? Is it AIDS, famine, coup d'etats? Boy soldiers? The Motherland? Inspiration for black identity? The origin of humankind? World Cup 2010?

Of course Africa is all that. It is also a new source of hip-hop, a place of emerging (and struggling) democracies. Some of the most totalitarian regimes and some of the world's most exciting female leaders can be found among Africa's 53 sovereign nations. All of that is Africa today; all of that is exciting to us. All of that is grist for our weekly feature Dispatches, where we plan to bring you the best and most interesting reporting from NPR's stellar correspondents plus up-to-the-minute information from a growing network of bloggers, broadcasters and commentators from the region.

We are also interested in Latin and Central America -- and the Caribbean. At a time when news organizations around the country are cutting back on so called "foreign" news, NPR has made an amazing commitment to bringing you what you need and want to know about the world. I put "foreign" in quotes because -- let's face it -- one of 10 U.S. citizens is born elsewhere. To many, these countries are not "foreign" at all -- just more distant suburbs!

You may want to know why we aren't talking about Asia and the Middle East. Asia, after all, is the largest and most populous continent. It's pretty simple: We think these regions are the priority of other shows and news outlets, whereas we feel Africa and the Caribbean are made less of a priority. We think Latin and Central America are somewhere in between, but we think our listeners are particularly interested in those regions.

In this week's feature, NPR's amazing Ofeibea Quist-Arcton gives us the latest from the West African nation Guinea, which is in the throes of a political crisis. How many kids do you know who are named Sekou or Toure in honor of that country's first post-independence leader? She'll tell you what's going on right now. And as always, let us know what you think.

Michel Martin

1:58 PM ET | 02-23-2007 | permalink | comments (15) | e-mail post

 

We Knew Them When...

"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I bet many of you think all reporters feel that way, but we don't. We really don't. We're gossips and snoops (of course) but that doesn't mean we're nasty about it (all the time). Which brings me to the presidential race. Can you believe how early this thing has started? We are up to something like 18 candidates -- it seems like half the Senate is running, along with the former "somethings." How to keep track? How to figure out who's who and what's what?

Everybody has his or her own yardstick. When people ask me why we write about one thing or another, I always say that the voter registration card doesn't come with instructions. You use it any way you want: to support a policy, a character attribute, a religious preference. Whatever anybody else may think of the way you cast your vote, that's your business. As reporters we are often guessing about the kinds of things that may become relevant to the candidate's job, very often taking cues from the kinds of things voters say they want to know.

And what a lot of people say is that they really want to know what makes a candidate tick, because positions and issues change. But big-time politics is so managed, so scripted these days, it's hard to catch those moments that make you feel like you know the person behind the image.

That's why we thought it would be fun to begin talking to people who knew the candidates before they became the big cheeses they are today. We plan to cover every declared candidate, hopefully more than once. It won't escape your attention that the first group of people to put their hands up are those who really like these guys (and gals).

We start with Cassandra Butts, who was a law school classmate of Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois and now a presidential contender.

Did this conversation offer new insights into the candidate? Which candidate would you like to hear about next? And certainly, if you have ideas for good guests, do tell.

Michel Martin

11:10 AM ET | 02-22-2007 | permalink | comments (22) | e-mail post

 

'When Dreams Come True ...'

You think the Dixie Chicks were the story of the Grammys? Think again.

After singing for a half-century, she finally won her first Grammy last week. She's Irma Thomas. The "Soul Queen of New Orleans" won Best Contemporary Blues Album for her latest CD After the Rain at the awards last Sunday.

Amazingly, the pieces for this album were selected before Hurricane Katrina ... and if you get a chance to hear it, you will understand just why I am amazed: "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor," "In the Middle of It All," "Stone Survivor," "Shelter in the Rain" ... Could there ever be a work of art that better expresses the joy and sadness that is New Orleans?

Consider this our weekend sendoff ... a conversation with Irma Thomas, still on cloud nine from her Grammy win last week.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Michel Martin

11:44 AM ET | 02-16-2007 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

 

Postcards

In the age of e-mail, does anybody remember postcards? When I was growing up, my cousin Barbara had the most glamorous job -- she was a flight attendant for British Airways and she really was "all that." Looking back, her apartment must have been tiny, but I remember it as filled with treasures: a big bowl of foreign coins (which we were allowed to sift through and maybe pocket one or two); beautiful carvings and tapestries and knick-knacks from all over the world. Europe, Asia and Africa -- she saw it all. Best of all, Cousin Barbara never failed to send postcards from her travels. I can't remember a single line she wrote, but I do remember her travels inspired me to want to follow in her footsteps.

And in a sense I have. As a journalist, I have been privileged to see a lot of the world. I still haven't seen as much as I want to, but I have already seen more than I ever dreamed as a kid growing up in Brooklyn.

I like to say that the best thing about traveling as a journalist is you often don't see the things that everybody sees, but you do get to see the things nobody else sees. You may not get to the Taj Mahal, but you get inside the home of a Polish dissident turned member of Parliament; you don't get to shop in Singapore but you do get inside the Blue Palace, the South Korean president's heavily-guarded residence. You get inside places. You get to see, feel and taste things. You try to get close to the real deal, as it is lived by those whose experiences you are trying to capture.

With that, I'd like to introduce another of our regular features. They are called, simply enough, "Postcards," and ideally they will come from you, our listeners. Have you had a travel experience that rocked your world? Have you gotten on the inside? It could be a short vacation jaunt or an extended overseas journey, but did something about it make you see the world differently? If so, we'd like to know about it.

Our first two postcards come, not too surprisingly, from journalists, but that's because we happened to hear about their experiences and asked them to craft these pieces. Hopefully, these pieces will give you an idea of what we're looking for.

The first comes from freelance documentary television producer Kate McMahon. She and her husband Shawn decided to live in Barcelona for a couple of months. They lived off the grid, so to speak, maintaining their U.S. employment with the help of Internet phones. But they happened to be in Spain at the height of the immigration debate in the U.S. last summer, and that caused Kate to compare circumstances....

The second is from travel writer and NPR contributor Gwendolyn Glenn. She went to Costa Rica for the rainforests, but while there she discovered paradise was hiding a dirty little secret.

So, take a listen and let us know what you think by posting here on the blog.

Then ... have you had a travel experience you want to tell us about? And we really don't mean complaints about the food, hotel or airlines, but something richer than that, something that tells us something about the way our worlds collide. We want to know. Next time you get on a plane, think of us....

If you have a postcard "experience," submit it through our contact form.

Remember, postcards -- or in this instance, E-postcards -- are BRIEF ... no more than three minutes in length (time yourself reading it with a stopwatch). Impressions, not dissertations. Ideally from places most people haven't been to, or unique impressions and insights. Original work only, please. Bon voyage!

Michel Martin

11:50 AM ET | 02-15-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

Hey, Where's the Ring?

OK, OK, we know. Valentine's Day is a made-up, commodified, Hallmark-sponsored holiday. But, we love it! Since we are journalists as well as romantics, we decided that this was an occasion for digging into one of the more interesting facts to come out of our country's rich database of census information, which is that married families with children are now a minority of U.S. households. Those of us who study social-science trends have been aware for some time that marriage rates have been declining among African-American households. But now it's all households. Why might that be? While we know that a lot of social scientists have addressed this question (and we asked one), we were equally interested in what the thoughtful non-experts had to say. So, we asked two writers -- one married (E. Ethelbert Miller), one single (Yolanda Young) -- who have written about marriage.

They were both a bit downbeat (to be honest), so we also asked Dr. Linda Malone-Colon, co-author of report, The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans, who has taught a course on marital relationships, for her view on why marriage still matters. Also, we wanted to get some man- and woman-on-the-street wisdom. A team of our producers went to Dupont Circle here in Washington, D.C., to ask: What should you know before you tie the knot?

And because not all of us are married, or partnered, we thought it only right and fair to get a take on Valentine's Day from Jasmyne Cannick, someone who is not only single, but newly single, for a very complex reason: Her beloved was in the closet and she, well, wasn't.

We hope you get roses from somebody. And yes, Happy Valentine's Day.... Smooches....

Michel Martin

11:59 AM ET | 02-14-2007 | permalink | comments (15) | e-mail post

 

Culture Coaching 101?

Sometimes, we all could use a little bit of coaching. At our morning editorial meeting we were talking about the various advice coaches that many programs now feature...there are money coaches (to help you manage your finances), there are executive coaches (to help you get your career goals together), and there are relationship coaches (we all know what they do). Well, we were thinking about creating a feature with another type of coach - a "diversity coach." Yes, that's a terrible title, but, how do you navigate the tricky, and sometimes awkward, waters of intercultural relationships?

Let's say you're invited to a SuperBowl party and it turns out the hosts are mainly white country music fans and you're the only black guy who loves Prince, and no one wants to watch him at halftime? What does etiquette require? Or, let's say you're going out with a group of black friends and you're the only white guy, and you're the only one wearing jeans? (...or vice versa) Go to the club? Or not? What jokes wouldn't be funny? We thought this feature could be fun as well as enlightening...and we also bet that many of you who've experienced cross-cultural immersion (have you ever been a foreign service officer or a missionary, for example?) could offer us some great insights.

What do you think? What kinds of questions would you ask your "diversity coach"? Would you make a good coach? Let us know if you would enjoy this kind of feature. Or, what type of coach do you need? Your turn....

Michel Martin

11:57 AM ET | 02-14-2007 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

 

'Best Believe This...'

OK, so we need to add a note about our January 26 blog entry "What's in a Name?" We've learned that if there's a prize (dinner on me!), then, technically, we should clarify some "rules." Who knew? So, here goes:

- Don't forget to include your name and e-mail address (one that you actually check routinely) when posting your suggestion so we can contact you if we select your program title suggestion!
- If more than one of you suggests the "winning" program name, you're both (or all) invited to dinner in Washington, D.C. And, I promise, no fast food. That would just be wrong! Remember that if you suggest the winning program title, you will need to get yourself to Washington, D.C., for dinner. We will schedule dinner for a date that works for both of us; please give us plenty of time to plan.
- Understand that we may not choose any of the suggestions for our program title. In that case, we won't take anyone to dinner.
- We're excited to have a broad audience, but if you're under 18, you'll need to get permission from your mom, dad and/or legal guardian before sending us a suggested program title. (Adults, you might also wish to check with your spouse... j/k)
- Each person who submits a program title suggestion consents to the use of his or her suggested program title, name, photo and/or likeness by NPR, over the air, on the NPR Web site, and in all media and manner, now or hereafter known, throughout the world, in perpetuity, without compensation.

Whew... Now we hope our lawyers are happy. Let the posts resume! The suggestions have been great - even a bit entertaining. (Hence, the title of this entry...) We're closing the door, though, on Friday, Feb. 16, 2007 at midnight Pacific Standard Time. So, hurry. Best believe this...

Michel Martin

4:19 PM ET | 02-12-2007 | permalink | comments (117) | e-mail post

 

Know Your History

If you have a child in school, you might have helped out with an essay or two about Harriet Tubman, or Rosa Parks, maybe George Washington Carver ... and they are so important ... and we are so grateful ... but there is so much more to black history. The last 30 years has seen an explosion of scholarship about so many people whose struggles and triumphs had been buried in time. I went to a conference a couple of months ago about a woman named Harriet Jacobs.

She was a former enslaved American, who hid for nearly seven years in the attic of a freedwoman's home so her children wouldn't be sold away to another plantation. After finally escaping to the North, she was reunited with her children, and then -- get this -- just 10 years out of slavery she wrote her own story: "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself." It was published in 1861, and with the celebrity she gained, Jacobs raised money to help other enslaved Americans, who had escaped behind Union lines. What an incredible story! But the received academic wisdom was that Jacobs couldn't have written this herself -- it had to have been either a novel or an "as told to" -- until 1987. That's when a scholar named Jean Fagan Yellin -- herself an unlikely academic hero -- was able to establish that indeed Jacobs had told her own story.

I love that story. And I love that it was Yellin -- a transplanted Midwesterner who took the commuter train home to cook dinner for her husband and three kids every night -- who was the one who figured it out. She explained in a paper she presented at the conference that she considered herself too old and settled to get into new-wave feminism in the way that her younger colleagues did, but she took it upon herself to reread old texts and to see if there was a new perspective to be gained. There sure was.

History lives. Probably because I am a journalist I live so much in the present, the people who make history come alive are heroes to me. That's one reason we wanted to bring you today's feature about two people whose passion for black history has become, well, a little obsessive, I think. But they are passionate about sharing what they've learned with the rest of us.

And then we thought ... this stuff can get so heavy ... can we lighten it up just a bit? So we talked with comedian Paul Mooney, who has a new DVD called, conveniently, "Know Your History: Jesus Was Black, So Was Cleopatra." Mooney was Richard Pryor's head writer, and he is one of the most influential comedians alive today -- judging by the people he's worked with or whose careers he has helped launch. Just so you know -- he is not to everybody's taste. No comedian is. I have interviewed him before and I thought his serious/funny take on black history was worth hearing.

As always, tell us what you think. Some people have a problem with the whole Black History Month idea -- they think it's patronizing or exclusive but to me, it's just another reason to look at stories we might not consider otherwise, like history buffs. What do you think? Did you know that May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month and September 15 begins Hispanic Heritage Month?

... I'd be inclined to do programs related to those, too. Any others? Ideas?

Michel Martin

2:09 PM ET | 02- 9-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

 

Teens, Sex and the Law

People often want to know how we "get" stories. Does somebody assign them to us, do we read them in the paper, do we hear about them from other people, do we go out and find them or stumble across them? The answer, of course, is all of the above. Increasingly, though, there's another source, which combines elements of all of the above. That source is the Internet. For good or for ill, the Internet plays an increasingly powerful role in getting stories in front of the public.

Here's the downside of that: There's ever more unsubstantiated stuff flying around at a faster and faster clip. It offers a vehicle for people to grind their ideological axes ever sharper without regard for the facts. The facts usually catch up, but it can take a lot of time before they do.

Here's the upside: You can more easily become aware of stories that you might not otherwise see. And if those stories resonate -- if you see that people are responding to them by passing them around -- then you often have a decent indication that there's grist for a bigger conversation.

The story we're about to bring you is one of those.

Several of us kept hearing about this case from people we know -- and even people we don't know. A friend of a friend sends it to an uncle, who sends it to you -- that kind of thing. A woman who lives in another city sent an article to a woman on our staff, another mom, with a note saying, "I'm not letting my kid out of the house until he's 30." Another correspondent, here at NPR, sent me a detailed story from a regional magazine saying, "Why hasn't this become a national story?"

It has become a national story, but we still felt we could add to the reporting.
The short facts: A Georgia teenager named Genarlow Wilson is now serving a 10-year prison sentence because when he was 17, he attended a party where a 15-year-old voluntarily performed oral sex on him. She wasn't intoxicated, she hadn't used drugs and she didn't want to press charges. It turns out that Georgia law is quite strict on what teens are allowed to do sexually even if there's a slight difference in age between the parties. Although the law has changed somewhat since Genarlow Wilson was convicted, and a lot of people don't think he belongs in prison for what he did, the situation hasn't changed so far.

We tackle a number of angles on this story: We talk to the lawyer who is handling Wilson's appeal. The prosecutor declined to give us an interview, but he referred us to others he has given. You can read his comments here.

But we wanted to dig deeper. We wondered what Wilson's peers think about his situation, so we asked four teens -- two boys and two girls -- from his former high school to give us their take on teens and sex, and the law. The girls are 14 and 15; the boys are age 17, the age Wilson was when he got into trouble. Some of you may find yourself troubled by what the kids have to say, but I hope we all agree that it's better to know than not to know.

We also talk to Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post reporter and author of the book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both. Stepp has done extensive work on how kids see sex these days; she's taken a lot of heat for her candid reporting, but she tells us the real deal that parents often don't know.

We were so deeply intrigued by the legal and legislative wrangling surrounding Wilson's prosecution that we've posted an additional segment as a Web exclusive (audio): We talk to American University law professor Angela Jordan Davis about how and why prosecutors bring charges like these, and Emanuel Jones, a Georgia state senator who wants to change the law.

You may wonder why we didn't talk to Genarlow Wilson or the young woman with whom he had oral sex. Wilson has given a number of interviews. You can watch one here and here. Frankly, we thought that B.J. Bernstein, his lawyer, was a better person to tell us what we wanted to know about the law and how it worked in his case. As for the young lady, she never wanted this matter to become public, and we felt the roundtable was a better way to handle those kinds of issues.

This is a long post, but we're covering a lot of ground in this program. Tell us what you think. Are there any angles you wanted to hear but didn't? Is there anything else we could have done to deepen this story or make it more compelling? How do you feel about the open discussion of oral sex and teen sexuality in general? We figured this is a podcast, so you're choosing to listen to it. But if this were an on-air broadcast, would you find the language and tone acceptable?

Michel Martin

12:36 PM ET | 02- 8-2007 | permalink | comments (40) | e-mail post

 

Conversion Stories

Often, when I hear catch phrases, my reporter's hackles rise. When people say something is "the largest" ... "the first" ... "the only" ... My first thought is usually: "Oh yeah? Says who?" So when I read that this is the most religiously diverse Congress in history, I immediately had to check. It turns out that it is true.

You probably heard about the fact that for the first time, a Muslim is serving in the U.S. Congress ... that would be Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). He is an African-American convert. But there are also two Buddhists, one of whom, Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), is also an African-American convert.

That got us to thinking that religion is more than just practice and belief. It is also culture. And we were intrigued by the experiences of those who have moved into a religious practice that not only introduces a new way of thinking and perhaps being, but also, for some, requires a change in the familiar patterns of daily living. For some it means dietary changes -- for some it means changing the day of worship -- for some it means giving up cherished family rituals. But for those who convert to a religion that is often not associated with his or her own ethnic group, there is the added dimension of sticking out, not only in his or her own family but also in his or her own new community.

That's the personal side, but there's also a political side. It hasn't always been this way -- obviously 9/11 has a lot to do with this -- but I bet if I asked you to quickly name a convert to Islam, what might come to mind first is negative -- Jose Padilla or Richard Reid. So, what's it like to live with those associations?

That's why we invited three people who have converted or who are in the process of converting to a new religion, to talk about their experiences with us. Cheryle Bryant is an African-American woman who is studying Orthodox Judaism. Farhanahz Ellis, who is of Panamanian-American heritage, has been a Muslim for 13 years. And Darshan-Kaur Khalsa, who is white, was raised in the Protestant tradition and she and her husband embraced Sikhism more than 30 years ago. I hope you find their conversation about their own individual faith journeys interesting.

Just to tell you about the process of choosing guests -- we had also wanted to talk to the members of Congress we mentioned above; neither would speak to us for this program. One just never responded and the other's press rep said he considers religious matters "private."

What do you think? We were interested in doing this because many of you have told us you are interested in spiritual matters, and so are we. I am also interested in figuring out how to cover issues pertaining to spirituality both within and outside the framework of traditional religious groups. Ideas welcome.

Michel Martin

5:43 PM ET | 02- 5-2007 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

 

It's Groundhog Day

Feb. 2, Groundhog Day. On the train with Sue and Marie heading back from New York, where I was sitting in for Farai Chideya at News & Notes. We were the first "live" broadcast out of New York bureau (yay). There's no way to describe how much work went into that move. Boxes were still being unpacked, equipment still being set up.

But everybody's attitude was amazing -- even when we arrived for the show at the crack of dawn. They could not have been nicer, more accommodating or more "can do." Now, though, my evil side has to come out. These people not only have fabulous new digs ... with a fab view of the Empire State Building ... they also have an AMAZING sandwich shop right next door. How messed up is that? And don't even get me started on the great shopping down the street. Life is so unfair.

Check in with you from DC next week....

Michel Martin

5:56 PM ET | 02- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

 

On the Mic

Greetings from the Big Apple! Just a quick note to tell you that I am hosting News & Notes on Friday, Feb. 2 from NPR's brand spankin' new studio in New York. We just got here this morning (between you, me and the fence post ... I am so filled with rage and envy; they have the most awesome view of the Empire State Building). Don't get it twisted, I'm a native New Yorker -- a girl could get used to this. Bright lights, big city. ...

Michel Martin

1:50 PM ET | 02- 1-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post