Kyle Norris Weblog

A group of military veterans have started their own writing group. Everyone in the group is grappling with mental health issues, and they use writing to help with the process. I got to hang out with the group at one of their meetings.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&id=1575467&pid=144&sid=9

Just finished this story about a former insane asylum. Here are some pix of the redeveloped, former mental hospital in Traverse City. This place aches with history and an intense beauty that slays me every time I am there.

Listen here:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1558825/Michigan.News/Reinventing.a.Former.Mental.Insitution

Building 50

One of the condos on the top floor of Building 50

View from a Turret

Another condo, owned by a painter

All things you can taste on a Michigan food tour.

Listen to my story here:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1548208/Michigan.News/Making.Good.Business.Out.of.Good.Foo

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop

Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down in silence easy
To be born again, to be born again…

–Van Morrison, Astral Weeks

NPR’s All Things Considered recently interviewed Van Morrison about his epic album, “Astral Weeks.” I got to play the promo a ton on my on-air shift, and every time I heard it I got so psyched. I think that excitement boils down to two things: all the good memories I associate with this album (my dad loving Van Morrison, my old flame loving Van Morrison, driving around California wine country with said love, blasting these songs…); and the energy and clarity and vulnerability these songs contain.

I kept wondering how NPR managed to snag Van Morrison, who is famous for denying interviews.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111712776

In the interview, NPR’s Guy Raz says, “This album changed my life.” And his voice gets all tender and magical. Good to hear the realness coming through (although Van Morrison does kind of blow him off.)

Meanwhile all I can do is blast “Astral Weeks” from my car speakers…

Michigan Radio is doing a series/documentary called “Facing the Mortgage Crisis.” This is part of that series.

I interviewed Paula Braun about how her family almost lost the family farm to foreclosure. They managed to save it at the last minute. This was one of those interviews where I was blown away by Paula’s openness, especially when it came to talking about really difficult things. I walked away from that interview feeling opened-up myself, while also feeling more raw and tender then before.

My editor had me mix this so that Paula tells her story in her own words. There were so many powerful things she said that did not make it into the final mix. One thing she told me: during the worst time of all this, her family would go to the grocery store once a month and spend only $30 on food. I asked her what $30 gets at the store, and she explained to me how she would buy discounted food and frozen bread, and how she could make those things last.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1530696

Here’s a slightly slimmer version of my uke piece that played on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Plus NPR used some cool old uke music at the end.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105300850

When times are tough, people cut-back on spending. But one little item has been selling quite well lately. That story here:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1511910/Michigan.News/Ukulele.Helps.Ease.the.Pain

Here’s a selection of ukulele choices available at Elderly Instruments in Lansing. Doing this piece made me fall in love, a little bit, with the ukulele.

Artifacts in the Eloise Museum

I have always been fascinated with the old asylums and mental institutions and poorhouses. I remember my parents pointing out the Kalamazoo State Hospital when I was a kid, and it loomed like a haunted house on a hill. In high school, my dad and I busted into the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane. An “adventure” we’d call it. The energy in that place was heavy, sluggish, and very real.

And I’d always heard murmers about Eloise, the famous institution in Detroit. So when writer Steve Luxenberg got in touch, I jumped at the chance to meet him. He discovered he had a secret aunt who spent most of her life institutionalized behind Eloise’s mighty gates. He wrote a book about it, called “Annie’s Ghosts.”

Here’s the story I did for Michigan Radio:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/.artsmain/article/5/144/1509556/Books/Steve.Luxenberg%E2%80%99s.Quest/

Eloise Grave Marker

Been sifting through old journals filled with quotes I love. I kept a copy of this quote above my desk for years. It truly comforted & inspired me.

“Discontent is at the root of the creative process: the most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way.”

–Eric Hoffer

And then there’s this pretty thing. I’m always thinking about how imagery carries us forward, and that’s something I strive to achieve in my work.

“We go to the writing of the marvelous, and to children’s books, for stories, certainly, and for the epic possibilities of good and evil in confrontation, not yet so mixed as they are in life. But we go, above all, for imagery: it is the force of imagery that carries us forward. We have a longing for inexplicable sublime imagery, and particularly for inexplicable sublime imagery that involves the collision of the urban and the natural, the city and the sea.”

–Adam Gopnick

And Pico Iyer:

“I travel in order to be defeated, to find places that I never leave behind, to be taken from one question to the next, and then to a deeper question…”

Then finally, The Boss:

“You can’t start a fire without a spark. This gun’s for hire, even if it’s just dancing in the dark.”

–Bruce Springsteen

Research.