It’s Storycorps‘ second birthday! On NPR’s website you can listen to an excerpt of Studs at the dedication of the first Storycorps booth in Grand Central Station, New York City. Again, it’s better when you hear Studs speak it, but here’s a great quote from his short speech:
“We are celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated – all those working men and women of this country who have made all of the wheels go around… we’re at Grand Central Station now…we know there’s an architect, but who hung the irons? who were the brickmasons? who swept the floors? who kept the trains going? These are the noncelebrated people of our country.
Now we’re at a certain moment when we celebrate “the celebrities” and a great many people live their lives in a surrogate manner, that is, they watch those people on television or in the tabloids or on the radio. and they know about Jo Lo and Ben… I don’t know who Jo Lo and Ben are… I thought Jo Lo was a soft drink. And I thought Ben was a familiar name for Ben Franklin…but are they the ones that make the world go ’round? There’s a great many millions of people who have never expresed themselves…”