The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright

In this hour, stories of healing, hope, and heart. A birthday celebration, a dream job, the importance of an heirloom and chance encounters when we need them the most. This hour is hosted by Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. Storytellers: Katya Duft goes camping for her 15th birthday. Aditya Dakshinamourtay learns a lesson about negotiating. Brenda Williams finds meaning in a set of pots and pans. Alistair Bane finds a kindred spirit in his horse, Bo. Kathi Kinnear Hill has hard conversations on the campaign trail. Jason Schommer has a chance encounter in a grocery story. Podcast # 707

• 0:14Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, and in this episode, stories about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, bright futures in dark times, and hope even when things seem hopeless. Our first storyteller is Katya Duff. Katya told this story at one of our open-mic Story Slam competitions in Los Angeles, where we partner with public radio station KCRW. Here's Katya, live at the Moth.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  When I was 14 years old, my parents decided it was a great idea to get me out of school and moved a million thousand miles away from the far east of Russia, close to Moscow, so I could go to a great college several years later. I didn't want any of this. I liked my school, I liked my skiing, I liked my rope climbing, my friends. So when they just moved me to Moscow, I got very depressed. In addition to everything, once we moved, we had a little bit of savings, but they suddenly all disappeared because of a financial crisis. So when I came to my new school, not only we were poor, but also I had no friends.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  I mean, it's all my fault. I was very grumpy about moving, and I didn't want any friends. But the first year in the new school was extremely miserable. So for my 15th birthday, my dad told me, "I know what you'd like as a birthday present. Let's go camping with a bunch of other adults and kids, and this way you can climb the tallest mountain in Europe." You know, most girls for 15 years old, at 15, they want probably a dress or a pair of shoes. For me, it was an amazing idea. "Yes, I really want to climb the tallest mountain in Europe." So we go on this trip. Which was not very well planned, honestly, because it was ten parents and about fifteen kids. And we didn't bring enough food for all of us.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  And it was non-stop camping for a month. We lived in tents, bathing in rivers. And for the last two weeks of our trip, we completely ran out of food and we were in the mountains. So we had to stop by different villages, asking Highlanders for cheese and milk. And that was our diet for about ten days. We all lost about ten pounds, I'd say. And we were completely emaciated. But for my birthday, I said, "I'm still climbing that mountain." So we spent the night in a wooden house, all of us. And they tell me, "Katya, the weather doesn't look very well." You know, they promised like a little bit of rain for tomorrow and maybe a little bit of a storm. I say, "No, we are going.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  It's my birthday, I absolutely have to do it." So next morning, when I get out, I realized that there is no electricity because all the electric cables lay on the ground after a storm. My dad tells me, "Katya, you... We are not going. No, you're not doing this." I say, "No, it's my birthday. I'm fifteen. My life has been crap for the last year. I absolutely have to do it." So when my dad turns away, I put all the equipment on this special metal shoes and I bring a metal stick and I started climbing. Good thing my dad got out of the house and he saw me on the horizon and he was like, "Oh, God, she decided to do it." So he starts chasing me with other adults. They grab me on the mountain. They bring me back to the house. They say, "Katya, you don't want to die

• 3:39Speaker 01

  on your fifteenth birthday." And that's when I started bawling and saying, "Oh, my life just sucks. It's been non-stop for years. It's so bad, I'm so depressed. Why, why, why? Why did you take me away from my friends? You started this." And then my dad looks at me, he says, "Katya, but you know what? This is the worst event of your life, you think? Then, after all, it can only get better. So look forward to going back to Moscow, going to a new school. And it will all be amazing from now on, I promise you." Except when we get on the train and listen to the radio, the first thing we hear, "There is a coup d'etat in Moscow. It's 1991. It's the collapse of the Soviet Union."

• 4:27Speaker 01

  The train trip takes 36 hours. And every minute of the trip, we listen to updates. And they say, "Oh, Gorbachev was arrested and taken away. Oh, now there is a provisional government. All the power is taken away." And the minute the train gets into Moscow, we see tanks on the streets, people with guns, explosions, black smoke everywhere. I look at my dad and I say, "Dad, you promised that... You promised my birthday was the worst thing ever. What is going on?"

• 4:59Speaker 01

  So, when we come home and turn the TV on, they say, "Okay, coup d'etat was a failure, but Soviet Union has collapsed anyways. But it's not gonna be that bad." But for me, it was more than bad. And I actually, I got so sick with flu. My temperature was like 103 or something. And for two weeks, I don't remember anything. When I got out of this condition, I felt different. I felt like I was suddenly stronger or something. Because, to be honest, it's been, what, now 28 years since that happened. And no matter what happened in my life after that 1991 summer, nothing shocked me anymore.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  And I think that really made me a strong person as I am now. Thank you.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  That was Katya Duff. She is the author of the public transit blog Tales From the Bus. She's a linguist, fluent in English, Russian, and French, and works in subtitling and translating. She's a frequent participant in storytelling shows and contests in Los Angeles, and is a Moth Story Slam winner. Katya says, "To this day, this remains the most challenging camping trip she's ever been on." To see a photo of Katya and her father shortly after their trip, visit themoth.org.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Up next, we have another moth slammer, Adichie Daxshinamoti. Adichie told his story at the Bell House in New York City, where we're presented by Public Radio Station WNYC. Live from Brooklyn, here's Adichie.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not really proud of admitting this, but one of the biggest breakthroughs I've ever had in my life is to get an interview from the Greyhound of the skies, Spirit Airlines. I'm not sure if any of you know, but getting a job as an international student here in the US is very hard. In fact, most companies have it in their policy not to hire internationals. And I was painfully made aware of that in my first year here in the US as a student. Probably applied for over 100 jobs, zero callbacks. Every recruiter I spoke to would say, "Good resume, but we don't hire internationals." But in hindsight, it's not really a surprise that Spirit Airlines is the first company to give me an interview, is it? They probably tried hiring regular Americans here, and they didn't want to work for them. So they're coming after desperate folk like me.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  But that didn't matter to me, you know? I came here not just to get a master's, but also to get a job and then live and work here. So I was ready for this. This is what I've been waiting for. And they came through my university, which meant I had a head start over the others, you know, by default, because I was living up to my Asian student stereotype. I had a 4.0 GPA, and I was the darling of my professors. So they put in a very good word for me. The first round of interviews was on campus. I feel like I did that pretty well. Second round, they invited me down to their headquarters. Went there, again, feel like I did pretty well there. Two nervous weeks go by, and then I get a call from the recruiter. And she says, "Hey, you know, thank you for coming down. Feel like you'd be a great addition to the team. We'd like to offer you the job."

• 8:19Speaker 02

  And as she's saying that, I'm on this side going...

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And then I calm myself down and I say, "Oh, I'm so glad to hear that." Um, you know, I'm very excited. And then she tells me what the salary is going to be. And that was less than what they had advertised when they were coming to my university. And I took issue with that. You know, why? Why is it less? She said, "Okay, give me a couple of days. Let me talk to the management." She calls me back and she says, "Hey, I spoke to the VP. Turns out, I don't think he's gonna, he's gonna move." And I was like, "I said the same thing, but you said you were gonna give more." Uh, and it was a couple of minutes, a couple of seconds of silence, and she goes, "Okay, but are you still interested in the job?" I was like, "Are you kidding me? You're the only one to interview me, let alone give me a job." "Of course I'm interested." And then she says, "Okay, can I send you the offer letter?"

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Now, I wasn't really sure why she asked that, but in my mind, because I grew up in India, nothing is official till it's on paper. So I thought this is her wanting to get everything that we spoke on paper. So she sent me the email with the offer letter. I respond back with my counter offer, stating the exact same things. And a few days go by, I think it was the long weekend or something, and, uh, and the next Monday I get again a call from them. This time it was the, it was the recruiting, the hiring manager, and he says, "Hey, is this audio?" I was like, "Yeah." And he says, "Uh, I just wanna let you know that we're rescinding the job offer." And I'm like, "Wait, what? What happened?" I mean, he said, "Well, we're taking back the job offer. We're going in a different direction." I was like, "Well, is it because I asked for more money? Uh, it's okay. I'll take whatever we gave earlier, you know? I'm sorry, don't do this."

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And he's like, "No, it's too late. We're going in a different direction." And, and I was actually sleeping when that call came. Uh, not really a good way to be woken up. And then I was like, walking around my room yelling, "What the fuck happened? How did I screw this up?" I, I just couldn't understand. And then I texted my professors immediately and, and said, "Okay, don't panic. We'll try to find out what happened." And the next day, uh, went to their, one of their offices, and he said, "Well, turns out you, you went back on your word." I was like, "What do you mean?" "Well, turns out you accepted the offer on the phone, and then you renegotiated once you got the offer." And I tried to explain to him, "Well, well, that's because I'm in the culture and the country that I grew up in, nothing spoken is official. Official things start only when things are on paper."

• 10:34Speaker 02

  And, and he kind of had this like, you know, sad look on his face, but he said, you know, "I'm sorry, I think this is it. Can't help you here." And I walked back slowly to my car. I remember I sat in that parking lot for about forty-five minutes. My eyes were welling up and I felt like I have screwed up my best chance to get a job here. I don't know if I'll ever get that chance. And I was terrified and I just didn't know what to do. But that was only like half of the problems or things in my mind at that time. You see, in just that long weekend, I threw a party for all my friends because I had just gotten a job at Spirit Airlines.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  I put it on social media, on Facebook, that, "Hey, everyone, all thousand of my friends all over the world, I'm gonna be working for Spirit Airlines in Miami." I didn't have Twitter at the time, otherwise I would have tweeted at Spirit Airlines as well. I told my mom, I told my girlfriend, I told my dad, like, everybody knew. And I was thinking, "Man, this is messed up now. Now I gotta walk all of it back and also try to find another job. This is gonna be fun." Things eventually worked out well for me. I went on to work for Southwest Airlines, which is a much better company. And this time, I did not negotiate past the phone.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  For those of you who thought I would have never negotiated, if you fuck up something the first time, next time you do it right. You don't not do it. And I waited one whole month till after I got the job to tell anyone that I now got a job. Thank you.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  That was Aditya Dukshina Morti. Aditya is an airline professional, storyteller, and DJ. He grew up in South India before moving to the US for his masters and currently calls New York City home. He has appeared in Moth Story Slams, as well as many other storytelling shows throughout the US. We followed up with Aditya to find out more about his experience job hunting as an international student without a work visa.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  There's always this, "Can they hire me?" question that goes into your head before, you know, "Am I a good fit for this role?" So there's a lot of shot in the darks and the first thing you tend to ask anyone is, "Do you sponsor for Visa?"

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Um, and most of the time, the answer is no, and the conversation ends then and there. You have to probably try way more than you normally would. You cannot be picky at all, uh, because you don't know who will sponsor um, and who won't, so you might have to take a job that's not necessarily what you really want.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  So are you still working with Southwest?

• 13:38Speaker 03

  No, so I actually had to leave Southwest and the US, uh, because I couldn't get a visa. Then I left Southwest thinking I will never come back to the US and it's all over. And I took a job in a Middle Eastern country called Qatar, working for an airline there. And six months into my job there, they asked me to move back to the US completely out of coincidence. So I ended up back in New York, like within the next year. That's what happened after.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  So where did this dream of like wanting to work for an airline come from? When did you start, um, when did you start knowing that that was what you wanted to do?

• 14:19Speaker 03

  So I'm an only child and I was, I mean, you could call me a spoiled child when I was growing up and that's not a bad characterization at all. Uh, so for me to get a sense of the real world, uh, my parents sent me one summer to live with, uh, my cousin, he was living in Bangalore at that time. It was close to um, an aviation manufacturing company in India. And while I was there, I would see fighter jets taking off and landing and commercial aircrafts taking off and landing and I grew up in like a very small city in South India where you don't see airplanes often, like they are like mythical creatures.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Um, you, you see one and you just stop dead in your tracks, um, at least I did every single time. I loved everything about them. They fly, they make a loud noise, um, and they seemed not accessible, which is why I really wanted them. So at that point, I decided I wanted a career that had to do something with airplanes. And that's what I did.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  That was Aditya Daksina Morty, speaking with moth producer Emily Couch.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  When we return, two more stories from our slam series about the things that inspire us to move forward.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

• 16:10Speaker 05

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• 17:58Speaker 06

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• 18:11Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, and this episode is all about looking ahead to what promises to be a brighter future. Next up is Brenda Williams, who told this story at a New York slam presented by WNYC. Here's Brenda.

• 18:29Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 18:29Speaker 08

  You're welcome.

• 18:31Speaker 07

  Hello, I'm Brenda, and I'd like to share with you how worth came to be defined in my family by a set of pots and pans. And we have to go back to when I was about three years old, growing up in London. My parents emigrated from Jamaica to England before I was born, and there was never enough money. So my mom would go to Freddie the Butcher, and she would get these scraps and turn them into these really delicious savory stews and soups. And at that age, I thought it was some kind of sorcery, some kind of kitchen magic. Total mystery. And it was around that time that the door-to-door salesman came calling, and he came with

• 19:16Speaker 07

  these stainless steel pots, lots of them, with every imaginable insert, broiling, steaming, you know, everything, whatever. Anyway, I don't know what it was about these pots, but they ignited in my mom some kind of fierce longing. Enough that she entered an installment arrangement with this man that she could in no way afford. So she struggled through it. And I was about six years old when the box arrived. And I had elder siblings who were not interested in the box, but I was. And I remember my mum made me wash my hands.

• 19:59Speaker 07

  So I washed my hands and we opened the box. And we took out the pots, one by one. And we oohed and aahed over their magnificence. And I figured that the kitchen magic at this point would take on some kind of upgrade. But my mum had a different idea. She took the pots, put them back in the box, and put them on top of the fridge. And that's where they stayed. And I remember just every year, once or twice a year, I would beg, "Oh, mummy, mummy, can we look at the pots?" And she would take them down

• 20:37Speaker 07

  from the box. Ooh. Ah.

• 20:43Speaker 07

  Back in the box. Up on the fridge. And I realise now that she felt the pots were too good to be used. Or more specifically, too good for her to use.

• 20:58Speaker 07

  But I was little and I fretted. I thought the pots were lonely up there. I was really afraid that they would be sad that they weren't being used for their proper purpose.

• 21:10Speaker 07

  Then I became a tween and a teenager, and I stopped thinking about them altogether. Until, when I was 14, my family emigrated to America. New Jersey. Land of all good things.

• 21:28Speaker 07

  And yeah, New Jersey. And so my mum packed up all her precious things, including the pots. And the box was dilapidated by then. So she got a new box. And they went on top of the fridge in our New Jersey apartment.

• 21:49Speaker 07

  And at that point, I asked her, "Mum, you know, why don't you just use them? Just use them?" And she gave me this little smug smile. And she said...

• 22:02Speaker 07

  Not just yet.

• 22:06Speaker 07

  So, in the meantime, she trained to be a nurse in England but could only get night work. And so I took over making the family dinner, which was truly awful. You know, we're talking tuna casserole, hamburger helper. Until eventually, I learned some of her skills. I also learned that the key to kitchen magic, it's in the hands that do the work. It's in the love that goes into the process. And it's also in the imagination in terms of how you work the ingredients. So, remember not just yet. That became a reality when at thirty-one, I married a highly educated man.

• 22:52Speaker 07

  And my mum gifted us the box of pots

• 22:57Speaker 07

  on my wedding day. And my highly educated groom, he looked askance at the spots. They were much more, you know, sophisticated brands, all clad, Le Creuset, whatever. Anyway, I felt that my pots would not feel welcome in my fancy new home.

• 23:20Speaker 07

  And so we didn't use them. And eventually, I did not feel welcome in that home. And it took fourteen years of marriage before I got my divorce. And I packed up my precious things, including my box of pots, which had been unused for forty years.

• 23:44Speaker 07

  And I now use them every day.

• 24:03Speaker 07

  Thank you, thank you. I experiment with them, I bang about, I singe their bottoms all the time. And my friends and family, they sigh around my dining room table. They breathe in those savory scents and they often eat much more than they plan to, which thrills me. You know, I've adjusted my thinking. It's still the hands and it's still the love and it's still the imagination. But for me, the kitchen magic is also those pots. And I am finally worthy, as my mother always was, even if she didn't know it.

• 24:48Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Brenda Williams is a writer and human resources executive who lives in Brooklyn. Many of her stories focus on Caribbean immigrants in New York and London. Brenda says that when her mother gave her the pots, she was thrilled to have that piece of her family history and thrilled that they would finally be put to use. Her mother has passed away, but not before knowing that Brenda was using the pots regularly. She's still using them, and she says her cooking continues to evolve.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Next up with a tale of finding hope is Alastair Bain. Alastair has told many stories at The Moth from slams to the main stage, and here's one from an open mic story slam we produced in Denver where we partner with public radio station KUNC. A note that the story contains the use of a homosexual slur. Here's Alastair Bain live at The Moth.

• 25:58Speaker 09

  When I was thirteen, I got my first horse. His name was Bo. He was a half an inch over pony class. A chestnut with sort of anonymous breeding history. Not very well-trained, a little bit mean and shaggy-coated. But I didn't mind because he was mine. And I was willing to put the hours I knew it would take to train him in. Because he was the one part of my life that didn't feel dark and dangerous. At that point, my dad had dropped me off with my mom in a small town in central Illinois.

• 26:37Speaker 09

  She had enrolled me in a Catholic school where I was the only native person at otherwise white school. I felt different, but that wasn't the only reason. The kids had another name for the reason I was different. Words like fag, queer, it, and freak. I heard that all day. The teachers told me if I didn't act so weird, maybe I wouldn't get in trouble, being bullied. And when I went home, although my mom's words weren't quite that crude, her sentiment was the same. Everything I did, how I walked, how I talked, seemed disappointing.

• 27:19Speaker 09

  But every afternoon, I would get to go to the stable and saddle up Bo and go for a ride. I spent so much time grooming him and training him that within a few months, the first time we went into the dressage ring, he was flawless. And we walked out with a long shiny satin blue ribbon in front of everyone who had thought that we were misfits. And for just that moment, everything felt good, like a story of redemption. But over the course of the next few months, as I entered eighth grade, it seemed like the bullying got worse.

• 28:01Speaker 09

  And at home, I had decided that it was time that I finally said it out loud to my mother. I came out. And her reaction was everything I feared it would be and more worse. I could almost feel her disapproval through the walls in the house.

• 28:24Speaker 09

  And at that point, it seemed like even when I was at the stable with Bo, those rides, that time I had with him, weren't enough. And there was this darkness that was encroaching on my very spirit. A voice inside me that said, "Maybe there was no place I would ever belong, and no use going on." One Saturday morning, I found myself in the bathroom, looking in the medicine cabinet at my mother's newly refilled prescription of tranquilizers, thinking that it would be so easy that night before bed to take them all. The kids would have no one to bully on Monday.

• 29:05Speaker 09

  My mother would have no one to say was embarrassing the family. I left them there, knowing they'd be there, and went out to the stable. And I saddled up Bo. I decided that day I was going to do something good for him, something to make him happy, because even if I felt like I couldn't feel happiness anymore, he could. So I rode him down by the airport where there was a long dirt road. I take him down there and let him just run to his heart's content. As we got near, I could feel him getting excited. He knew what was coming next. As we turned the corner onto that road, I stepped in my stirrups like I was a jockey in the Kentucky Derby.

• 29:50Speaker 09

  I let him have his reins, and he took off. I had heard someone say once, "If you're a true horseman, there comes a day when the communication between you and your horse ceases to be the tug of a rein, or the nudge of a knee, and you simply become one with that animal." And as he ran flat out down that road, I began to feel that happen. It was as if he and I could speak without any cues from myself.

• 30:28Speaker 09

  He ran faster and faster, and as we approached the end of the road, there's a dead end sign. But I didn't have to rein him in, he knew what to do. He slid to a stop, pivoted on his back legs, and ran back the other direction. And as he did, it felt almost like that little horse's joy of being alive on a fall day, running full out under a crisp blue sky with the smell of the dried corn in the field next to us, came up through those reins, and ran through my body like electricity. And so that everything was suddenly quiet and clear and beautiful.

• 31:13Speaker 09

  We reached the end of the road, and standing there was a woman outside our car. She'd stopped and was watching us. She smiled, waved at me, and said, "You and that horse, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." "Thank you," I said. And that was enough. In my culture, we say horses have the ability to heal. And I know that that's true.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Alastair Andrew Bane is an eastern Shawnee writer, storyteller, and artist. His short stories have appeared in Alone Together, Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19. Alastair's love of animals hasn't waned. These days, he fosters dogs who are feral or who have experienced trauma. Alastair says his dogs have taught him about resilience and healing, that they seem to be able to let go of the past and live in the present.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  After the break, two more stories of optimism against the odds.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 32:55Speaker 10

  Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, board-certified OB-GYN and menopause specialist. My podcast, UnPaused, is the place for bold, unfiltered conversations about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Every week, I sit down with medical experts and leading voices to talk about the health issues that matter most. Because UnPaused isn't just about the years you live, but how well you live them. Listen and follow UnPaused with me, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. In this hour, we're hearing stories from people who have faith in the future, even when the present isn't always so promising. No stranger to working against the odds is Kathi Kinnear Hill, who took a difficult campaigning job in a place she felt unwelcome and unsafe. Cathy told this story at a Moth main stage in Jackson Hole, where we were presented by the Center for the Arts. A quick caution that this story includes the use of a toxic racial slur. Here's Kathi Kinnear Hill.

• 34:09Speaker 11

  It was Kansas City, Kansas, the year 2012. And it was the reelection campaign for President Barack Obama. I was working it. And one wonderful day, I walked into the office and, I'm not gonna lie, I was thrilled to find out that we were gonna Skype with the president.

• 34:43Speaker 11

  He popped up on that screen. And he gave us a pep talk, you know that Obama kind of pep talk. And he thanked us for all of our hard work. And then he said, "Get out of Kansas. We're wasting our time. For those of you who could do this, take this campaign to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Take this campaign to Iowa. And I'm asking you to please deliver Iowa to me, to us."

• 35:24Speaker 11

  Well, yeah, I'll do that. I'd already worked his election campaign a few years before. And when you're campaigning and volunteering, you have duties like putting signs, you know, yard signs up and pamphlets here and there. And having conversations, because the president always would say, "Just have conversations." Conversations after conversations don't stop. And also, we are registering the people to vote. And I will never forget

• 36:06Speaker 11

  looking in to the faces of my African-American elders. And they say to me, "I've never voted. I've never registered. But I'm registering now. Because I have a reason." So, not only do I have a personal reason to be working these campaigns, after reading a little bit about Senator Obama back in the day, I realized that he and I had a couple of things in common. One,

• 36:51Speaker 11

  we were biracial in America and identified as black.

• 36:56Speaker 11

  And we grew up in an era of turmoil where we both had to decide and determine who we were, where we were going. No one could help us and tell us that. We had to go on that journey. Another thing we had in common, and do have in common, is that we were raised by loving white families. So, I'm heading from the suburbs and cities

• 37:33Speaker 11

  of the Kansas City area to campaign in the cities and suburbs of Iowa. And I got in my little Honda every weekend for about a year and drove four hours there and four hours back, and did the same types of things. Hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, knocking on doors, and registering people to vote. And towards the end of that campaign in 2012, I got a phone call and I was asked to be a canvas captain, which is basically just taking a leadership role and doing the same duties that I'd already been doing. But

• 38:18Speaker 11

  they asked me to do this in rural Iowa.

• 38:21Speaker 08

  (laughter)

• 38:28Speaker 11

  So, being that committed person that I am, I said yes. And I'm dropped off, me, a middle-aged African-American woman, and another campaign worker, a little bit older African-American woman, in rural farmland Iowa.

• 38:52Speaker 11

  So we walked into this little teeny campaign office and we got our little clipboards and our pens and all of our papers and put our little buttons on, our little Obama hat, and we're gonna go register people to vote. So, we did, and we walked out of that door and Rita, my partner in campaigning, was, is, one of the strongest and most amazing women I've ever met. A retired schoolteacher. So I looked up to her and I looked over at her and I said, "Um, yeah, we don't, do we, are we gonna, we're gonna do this, right?" And she said, "I am fired up and ready to go. Aren't you? I'm fired up and ready to go. Let's go." And I said, "Well then, yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 11

  I'm fired up and ready to go too." So, we walk, we're walking down Farm Road, and our first stop was a trailer park. And as we're approaching the gate to open it, we looked up and there was a man, a big old man, with a big old rifle. And before we could open that gate, he looked at us and he said, "I didn't vote for your nigger last time, and I ain't voting for your nigger this time. Now you girls better turn around and get."

• 40:21Speaker 11

  And we did. And again, I looked at Rita and said, "You know, we don't, we don't have to do, we don't have to do this." And she said, "Oh, I'm more fired up and ready to go. Let's go." So we did, and we knocked on doors, and we knocked on doors, and we rang doorbells. Nobody, on that day, was ever that horrible to us. We had people, of course, you know, closing the door in our faces, just saying, "Mm, no, thank you." And then, of course, you've got the ones that you knock on their door and you can see the curtain open, and then close.

• 41:02Speaker 11

  And we're like, "Yeah, we know you're there." But we, didn't stop us. We kept walking, and we kept having conversations. And then we get to a farm, and we're walking down this long gravel driveway.

• 41:20Speaker 11

  And approaching us is the farmer who owns that land. And he looks at us and he says, "No, I see what you're selling and I'm not buying." And I remembered our president asking us to have conversations. And I said, "Could we just have a minute?" And before he could answer, his wife opened the front door. And she said, "Ladies, if you're gonna be at my house, you better come in here. Supper's on the table." And we were scared and hungry.

• 42:03Speaker 11

  But I'm thinking, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "But do I really want..." It was a get-out moment. "Do I really want to go into this home farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? I don't know these people." And then the door closes, right? But before my thought was finished, Rita says, "Yes, ma'am, we are hungry." So we went in and we sat down.

• 42:46Speaker 11

  Oh, that food. I could make you drool if I went into detail about it. It was meatloaf that was melting in our mouths, mashed potatoes and gravy, greens, cornbread, and sweet tea. It was soul food. And our conversations with Cecil and Wilma, it was a beautiful time. We talked about a lot of things. They asked us a few questions about the campaign and we talked a little bit about that.

• 43:27Speaker 11

  But mostly, we asked them questions about their lives. And they told us about their kids and their grandchildren.

• 43:40Speaker 11

  They literally breathed for those grandbabies. They lived for those grandbabies. And then they told us about the church down the way where they got married. And before we knew it, it was time to go. So we head to the front door, we thank them for this lovely meal. And Wilma gives us a hug and hands us some food to go. And as we're walking back down that gravel drive, Cecil is walking with us to get us to the road. And when we get to the road, he takes both of our hands, Rita and Kathy. "Thank you.

• 44:24Speaker 11

  Thank you for coming in and sharing this time with us. And thank you for talking to us. But most of all, thank you for listening to us." Now, I probably won't vote for your guy. And we waved and turned around and walked away. And a few steps up, we hear this. "But hey Kathy, I just might. Thank you."

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Kathy Kinnear-Hill grew up in Portland, having been adopted as a baby into a white family in the early 60s. Her dad was a professor at Lewis and Clark College, and her mom taught at Martin Luther King Junior School, where Kathy is an instructional assistant to a class of kindergarteners. Kathy and her husband Dennis have two children and recently became grandparents. To see photos of Kathy working for the Obama campaign, visit themoth.org.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Our final story this hour is from Jason Schommer. Jason told this story at a slam in St. Paul, Minnesota.

• 45:45Speaker 12

  Standing in a sea of organic produce consisting of pineapples, cucumbers, and strawberries, I saw her, standing there, in a wide-brimmed hat, a cardigan that was tan and white, over a summery outfit and flat shoes. Our eyes met, we smiled, I knew, and she knew, that I knew. Now, the fact that I'm at Ralph's Grocery in North Hollywood is surreal at best. A week earlier, I had been offered a job to work behind the scenes on a TV show. So I quit my job, threw everything I owned into a storage unit, and drove cross-country.

• 46:28Speaker 12

  Once there, after working a few days, I was notified that there was going to be some production changes, and it wasn't going to work out. Scheduling issues. Yeah, no grand, "You're fired," no scandalous story, nothing, just scheduling issues. So I had come to Ralph's Grocery to emotionally eat. And the moment I saw her, I was immediately whisked away to a snowy mountaintop. It was Carney Wilson, from Wilson Phillips. Oh my God! Are you kidding me? Carney freaking Wilson?

• 47:13Speaker 12

  Now, if you don't know who Carney Wilson is, let me tell you. She is one-third of the power trio Wilson Phillips, who in 1990 gave the world the number-one anthem for anyone, for anyone who was teetering and on the brink of giving up, to just hold on.

• 47:37Speaker 12

  Now, I love pop culture. I'm a pop culture fanatic. So I, immediately recognizing the magnitude of this, knew I needed to follow Carney Wilson.

• 47:48Speaker 12

  So I did. And it was awkward. She got pork chops. I bought pork chops. I'm a vegetarian.

• 47:57Speaker 12

  She bought flowers. I bought flowers. I'm allergic. She was in feminine hygiene products. I'm a boy.

• 48:08Speaker 12

  So I ducked around the aisle to text my friend Jen to let her know of this moment. Now Jen is a massive Wilson Phillips fan. She actually was in negotiations with their management to have them perform at her graduation. I sent her a text, "Oh my god, I'm at Ralph's Grocery in North Hollywood and I just saw Carney Wilson."

• 48:28Speaker 12

  And that's when Carney Wilson walked right past me and mouthed, "Hello." She didn't say it, she just mouthed.

• 48:38Speaker 12

  Now, if you are a famous singer or an actor and you talk in public, people recognize your voice. She couldn't say hello, she just had to mouth it.

• 48:48Speaker 12

  Because then five people aisles over would have come running over screaming, "Sing, sing, sing." And she would be like, "No, I'm just here to buy yogurt." "Sing." And she would have felt pressured and she just would want to go home. She's not even wearing makeup. And they would have been demanding it. And so then she would have started singing an a cappella version of her number one hit, "Hold On." And then people would have cracked out their phones to record it and put it on YouTube in hopes of it going viral. And then people would have started screaming and losing their minds. And then TMZ would have shown up and it would have been a debacle. Don't ask me how I know these things, I just do.

• 49:21Speaker 12

  So she mouthed, "Hello."

• 49:24Speaker 12

  After following her around the store and acquiring a cart of stuff I don't want her need, they came to check out. She was two aisles over and I watched them scan every item out of her cart. And I was trying to time it perfectly so we could have a moment, her and I, as we left the store. But I had the slowest cashier in the world. She had the fastest.

• 49:44Speaker 12

  She walked past the end of my aisle. She turned around, looked at me, and said goodbye.

• 49:52Speaker 12

  I died. It was just like their song, "Hold On." Someday, somebody's gonna make you turn around and say goodbye.

• 50:02Speaker 12

  I, Jason Schommer, from Little Falls, Minnesota, made Cardi Wilson turn around and say goodbye.

• 50:16Speaker 12

  She got into the elevator to go down to the parking garage, and as the doors started to close, I thought, "Do it." Just reach out and yell, "Hold on!"

• 50:26Speaker 12

  But I didn't. I'm respectful.

• 50:33Speaker 12

  So here we are, chasing our dreams, doing what we want to do. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. We'll go through horrible things in life. We'll fall in love, we'll get divorced. We'll have successes and failures. We'll fall flat on our face, and sometimes we'll pick ourselves up. Sometimes we won't. Sometimes, what unites us all is the fact that we just find that little kernel of hope. Sometimes we find it in a prayer, or a mantra, or a text from a loved one. Just that one little thing that we cling on to. And sometimes, it's seeing a celebrity in a grocery store that sang one of your favorite songs in three-part harmony.

• 51:14Speaker 12

  That gives you the hope to hold on for one more day. Because things will go your way.

• 51:21Speaker 12

  Thank you.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  Jason Schommer is a stand-up comedian and storyteller who spent two years as the opening act for comedian Louis Anderson in Las Vegas, and continues to tour with Louis regularly. Jason has worked in New York City for The Rosie O'Donnell Show and behind-the-scenes in Hollywood on the television series Baskets.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  So that's it for this episode. We hope these stories offer you some comfort and hope. Hope that things can get better, even when it feels like they won't. Please join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Larry Rosen directed the stories in this show with additional coaching from Jennifer Hickson. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Nigel Kennedy and the Croca Band, Soul Live, Michael Hedges, Blue Dot Sessions, and Wilson Phillips. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicky Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

• 53:26Speaker 13

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