Surviving Survival - Sound & Spirit
7am on WNYC 93.9 FM

Ellen Kushner looks beyond physical survival in a tragedy like 9/11 to survival of the spirit and survival of the self. Surviving can be both empowering and devastating. Survivors often find it impossible to forget those who were killed and difficult to deal with their sorrow and the guilt of having lived when others died.
What do survivors do with their sorrow, with their guilt? Some construct memorials: quilts, poems, scrapbooks, Web pages. For many artists and musicians, the combination of art and faith is what provides the anchor.
Surviving Survival features many of these expressions. Bach wrote the "Ciaccona" from his Partita in D Minor as an epitaph for his wife. Many Cambodian refugees, coming to terms with the oppression of the Pol Pot regime, found healing through classical dancing, puppetry, and their Buddhist faith. Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, wrote books and found spiritual redemption in bearing witness to the events he endured.
From the carnage at Treblinka and the devastation at Ground Zero to the inconsolable pain of losing a child, Surviving Survival celebrates the enduring human spirit in the face of suffering and loss.

Studio 360: Memorials
10am on WNYC 93.9 FM

This week in Studio 360, host Kurt Andersen and poet Donald Hall look at the human desire to make present what has been lost. They find memorials joyful and sad, in painting, in poetry, and in totem poles. And they consider the requiem written by composer John Adams in memory of those lost on September 11th. Special Guest: Donald Hall has published fifteen books of poetry, most recently The Painted Bed (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) and Without: Poems (1998), which was published on the third anniversary of his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon's death from leukemia. From 1984 to 1989 he served as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire.

Sonic Memorial
12 Noon on WNYC 93.9 FM and Sunday 9/8 at 9pm on WNYC AM 820

The Sonic Memorial Special is an intimate, historic and sound-rich documentary marking the anniversary of 9/11 through stories, sound and archival audio. The special interweaves elements from Sonic Memorial stories heard over the past year on All Things Considered with voice mail messages, on-site recordings, oral histories, remembrances and stories collected from listeners nationwide who called NPR's Sonic Memorial phone line. The Sonic Memorial Special features stories that focus on little known aspects of the history and life of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood, including Radio Row, the district of electronics shops displaced by the building of the WTC, and the Mohawk ironworkers who helped construct the towers and who returned after 9/11 to disassemble the twisted steel. Stories of the politics and public opinion surrounding the towers are told by the man who masterminded the construction of the buildings, and by the young college co-ed construction guides he hired to educate the public and put a friendly face on the project, in addition to artists, bankers, office staff, elevator and maintenance workers. Each tower had a thousand sounds; every floor had a thousand stories.

Living with Terror: The World Speaks a Year after 9/11
1pm on WNYC 93.9 FM
September 11th reverberated around the globe, spurring reactions from sympathy to fear to celebration. For the first time, people from around the world will be able to call toll-free, speak their minds, and hear other views on living with terror in a post 9/11 world in a special live show Saturday, Sept. 7 from 1-3pm ET. Radio hosts, one from Europe and one from the US, will shepherd a conversation that will likely touch on whether the US is to blame for rising terrorism around the globe, how the US war is affecting others, whether the war on terrorism can ever be won, and how people in places like Ireland, the Basque region, and Israel, have coped with a constant threat of terrorism.

Days of Infamy
3pm on WNYC 93.9 FM

Twice this century, the Library of Congress has sent fieldworkers throughout the nation to collect the reactions of Americans to a surprise attack. The first time was December 8, 1941, the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The second was almost sixty years later, on September 12, 2001. Extensive selections from both sets of tapes will get their first-ever broadcast in Days of Infamy. The two crises and our reactions provide a mirror on our national character and how it has changed over two generations. In 1941, Americans vowed to enlist, ration, and buy war bonds. In 2001, Americans vowed to pray, fly flags, write checks to the Red Cross and “get back to normal.” Days of Infamy combines the recorded reactions with music and insights from prominent Americans who lived through Pearl Harbor and 9/11 - including journalists Russell Baker and Helen Thomas and artists Pete Seeger and Albert Murray. It is an astonishing look at our nation and culture in crisis across sixty years. [Produced by American Radio Works (MPR) & The Center for Documentary Studies]

Thanks to Fred Froehlich for the use of his photos.