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Frank, Joe/Archives

HV057- Roof of the World

Prayer flags at alter on mountain, photo: Scott CarrierHearing Voices from NPR®
057 Roof of the World: In the Himalayas
Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-07-07 (Originally: 2009-05-06)

“Roof of the World” (52:00 mp3):

Tibet and Nepal:

“Mount Kailash: Cricling the Center of Creation” (21:00) Scott Carrier

Walking a circuit alongside pilgrims, yaks and yogis, host treks one of the world’s most venerated — and least visited — holy sites, Mount Kailash. Produced for Stories from the Heart of the Land. Scott Carrier teaches Journalism at Utah Valley University in Orem.

“Letter from Siklis,” (28:00) Larry Massett

And we climb to a remote Nepalese town of going up a mountain and back in time. Technical director: Flawn Williams, narrator: Joe Frank.

Tibetans on Mt Kailash, photo: Scott Carrier

More Scott Carrier photos from Mount Kailash…

HV049- Palestinian Dreaming

Village in Palestine, cover of book: The Lemon TreeHearing Voices from NPR®
049 Palestinian Dreaming: Arabs and Jews
Host: Sandy Tolan of Homelands Productions
Airs week of: 2010-06-09 (Originally: 2009-02-04)

“Palestinian Dreaming” (52:00 mp3):

Israel, Palestine, and the Holy Land:

“Waking Up” (2007 / 12:39) Joe Frank

A nightmare in a city split by three religions, as dreamt by an Jewish soldier, an Arab bomber, and a Mississippi minister; from Joe Frank‘s hour Time’s Arrow. [Music: Air "Alone in Kyoto" Talkie Walkie (2004)].

“The Lemon Tree” (1998 / 38:24) Homelands Productions

Growing a tree and understanding on the property of the same family home, in the same family homeland, shared by an Israeli and an Palestinian family; from Sandy Tolan of Homelands Productions. [Music: Dorothy Wang.]

HV044- Memory Book

Phrenology of the Brain drawingHearing Voices from NPR®
044 Memory Book: Looking Back at Life
Host: Ceil Muller of KQED-FM
Airs week of: 2010-04-14 (Originally: 2008-12-31)

“Memory Book” (52:00 mp3):

Recollections, remembrances, and mnemonics for recalling time:

“Lynchpins” (10:19) Joe Frank

Lester Nafzger recites his litany of lynchpins, memories that lock his life together, excerpted from Joe Frank’s hour Performer.

“Persistence of Memorex” (8:20) Ceil Muller

Host Ceil Muller takes us on a tour of her own memory palace, made with bits of unsued of tape recordings she’s gathered over the years.

“Death in Venice” (26:30) Larry Massett

We roam the beach with retired folk in Venice, Florida, finding seashells, shark’s teeth and distant memories; narrated by Joe Frank, piano by Larry Massett.

“Remember Me” (1:30 excerpt) The Moving Star Hall Singers

From the album Been in the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children’s Games from Johns Island, SC (Smithsonian Folkways).

Drawing at top: Phrenology Symbolized, © 1895– by Prof. Wm. Windsor: The Symbolical Phrenological Head, Showing the Location of the organs of the Brain; from his book How to Become Rich (1898).

Joe Frank FB

By 2010.03.10 tags: , . Comment»
Work by: Joe Frank

Photo of Joe FrankSure Facebook sux. But it has its moments; and many of them are found on Joe Frank’s page, amongst his semi-regular deliciously dark ramblings:

Flying over the Tanganyika Game Reserve in a hot air balloon. My guide is a drunken Englishman from the old colonial school dressed entirely in white. He has a flask of port strapped to his leg. His nose is red and veined. We travel over a savannah, observing herds of wildebeests and zebras below.

hen the colonel removes his clothes and throws them over the side of the basket. He claims the natives collect them and use them to make flags and scarves, which they sell to the tourists.

Dancing in the streets of Rio in a samba club, making our way up Sugar Loaf Mountain to ascend to the statue of Christ that looks over the city. I feel a sense of exhilaration, my heart bursting with joy. I’m wearing a fantastic feathered woman’s mask, eyeballs on stalks, ears on springs, Pinocchio nose supporting a live tree limb filled with songbirds, and joyously dancing in high heeled platform shoes and net stockings, gyrating my hips, a pair of soccer balls attached to my rear…»

Be his FB-fren and read the rest of this, and many other of his flights of freaky.

HV023- This Is Insanity

Howard Dully receiving his Hearing Voices from NPR®
023 This is Insanity: Disturbed Mental States
Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-03-03 (Originally: 2008-08-06)

“This is Insanity” (52:00 mp3):

A survey of disturbed mental states:

“This is Insane” (1:42 excerpt) William S Burroughs

With the music of Disposable Heroes of Hiphopcracy (rapper Michael Franti and percussionist Ron Tse), from the 1993 CD Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales.

“Electroshock” (3:42) Anon.

A first-person account from an anonymous reporter of his experience undergoing ElectroConvulsive Therapy.

“Frontier Psychiatrist” (1:24 excerpt) The Avalanches

Music from the Australian mashup/cut-up artists 2000 CD Since I Left You.

“The Test” (14:53) Scott Carrier

Our host travels the Utah backroads testing folk for schizophrenia.

“Keep Busy” (3:45) Joe Frank

The narrator is pathologically challenged by time, and the stories societies tell themselves, excerpted from the 2006 radio hour “Time’s Arrow.”

“My Lobotomy” (21:11) Sound Portraits

Howard Dully traces the reasons and repercusssions of his transorbital or “ice pick” lobotomy, a radical new procedure in the treatment of mental illness in this country, pioneered and performed by psychiatrist Walter J. Freeman.

Produced by Dave Isay and Piya Kochhar, with help from Larry Blood, Eliza Bettinger, Brett Myers, Jessica Tickten, Anna Goldman, Maisie Tivnan, Colin Murphy and Jonah Engle Narratored by Howard Dully; edited by Gary Covino. Jack El-Hai was project advisor. Special thanks to: Barbara Dully, Andrew Goldberg, Christine Johnson, Lyle Slovick & David Anderson at the GWU Gelman Library archives. Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Joe Frank Facebook

By 2009.11.17 tags: , . Comment»
Work by: Joe Frank

Sketch of Joe Frank

[Fresh from Joe Franks's Facebook page, reprinted by permission…]

Across the alley is an apartment building. You look into one of the windows and see an old black couple arguing in a loving, formulated fashion that they’ve worked for years to perfection. He gestures violently, his left hand holding a half‑eaten turkey leg.

She, continually wiping her hands on her apron, finally balls her fist up and shakes it in front of his face. He turns away in disgust. Who is she? Bessie, mother of many children, daughter of a sharecropper, opens the Bible to the very same verses. Behind her eyes lurk 1,000 dead Ashanti dreams. She possesses the keys to a house in the suburbs. She gets car fare. She takes the early bus to where she wears the same housedress and walks from room to room carrying a radio. She’s never paid taxes — she’s always paid in cash. She has no Social Security number.

She is an angel on earth, the guardian of the house, forever wiping her hands upon her apron, tucking the children into bed, sitting heavily beside them, her breath sweet, her stories bittersweet, her hair a crinkly, soft white tied with a bandana, always weary, never tired, with a great posterior that moves with grace from room to room. Housemaid, housemother, house spirit, protector of children’s dreams. Verses, Psalms. She sings them in a melody that evokes the sound of a great flowing river, of distant banjos, the scent of magnolias, great porticos upon which gentlemen with drooping mustaches sit, feet up, drinking mint juleps.

She knows the secrets of the master and mistress of the house. She knows where he keeps his pornographic magazines, where she keeps the list of lovers that she visits from time to time. She’s found the wife’s recent love letters, airplane tickets to destinations not mentioned in daily conversations, receipts for jewelry the wife does not possess, and deep within a jar of Vaseline, the key to a motel room.

She’s found the cotton handkerchief into which the teenage son spills his seed in the secret moments of his private ecstasy. She’s found a small, brown bottle with white powder in it, the cap of which is attached by a small, brass chain to a spoon, rolled up into a pair of socks in the drawer of the teenage daughter’s bedroom.

—© Joe Frank


Joe Frank: site | wiki | music | wikipedia | wfmu-faq | imdb

JF social: maillist | space | space | face

JF var: 1st-lines | intervu | fresh-air | 3rd-coast | la-weekly | guardian | salon

HV024- Caregiver

Stories1st.org- Breast Cancer Monologues, CD CoverHearing Voices from NPR®
024 Caregiver: Taking Care, Taking Heart
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2009-09-30 (Originally: 2008-08-13)

“Caregiver” (52:00 mp3):

Health caretakers, friends, family, workers and volunteers:

“Dialysis” by Joe Frank: A phone call, kidney failure and a friend indeed; followed by a flight of final fancy, from the hour “Goodbye.”

Three Woman” by host by Dmae Roberts: Three women, a Chicana, African American and Romanian immigrant, describe their different approaches to surviving breast cancer. Produced as part of the “The Breast Cancer Monologues,” with Miae Kim, Anca Micheti, and music by Maria Esteves.

Messages” by Dmae Roberts (of MediaRites): Every 100 days, the producer saves the phone messages of her mom who passed away two years ago as a living memorial. Music by Aaron Meyer and Tim Ellis.

Bad Teeth at King Drew Dental Clinic” by Ayala Ben-Yehuda: a morning at the Dental Divide at a dental clinic of last resort in South LA’s King Drew Medical Center.

A Square Meal, Regardless” by Jennifer Nathan: After John’s wife passed away and his children moved across the country, John turned to Cedric when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Produced for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Hospice Chronicles” (excerpt) by Long Haul Productions: Hospice volunteer Bettie viusits her first patient.

The Person I Admire Most” by Jake Warga: A day with Jenafir in Ethiopia, trying to save the world (video version).

Joe Frank FB

By 2009.07.21 tags: , , . Comment»
Work by: Joe Frank

Photo of Joe FrankJoe Frank has been writing regularly on Facebook. So for those FB-ers among us, check out his oft-updated page.

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