Hello everyone, February is the month of love, so… I’m so excited about my newest book idea! I always get excited about a great book idea, just like any writer. Fortunately, this one came to me right when I finished writing one book, with nothing else to edit with the other books. Which gives me plenty of time to plan and write before I get writers block again. This story is a romantic…

I am reading Terkel's book Coming of Age. It is a chronicle of interviews he had with people who shaped the 20th Century. These aren't the people you would be familiar with. Stud's hung out with and was friends to the marginalized . He fought against any prejudice aligning himself with Blacks such as Mahalia Jackson, gay and lesbians, downtrodden workers, unionists, and was comfortable with anyone that was open, honest and willing to speak out. He had a Chicago radio program that interviewed people (we would call them podcasts today) from 1952 to 1997. He wrote oral histories of his famous people and of the everyday person. His oral history of people on the home front during WWII won a Pulitzer prize and made me love the way he wrote and spoke and how much he wanted to record the unspoken stories of everyone. He understood that everyone had a story to tell. I am sharing this because if you never heard of Studs Terkel, you are missing an American treasure. Check him out. Here is part of his story from Wikpedia:

A political leftist, Terkel joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, working in radio, doing work that varied from voicing soap opera productions and announcing news and sports to presenting shows of recorded music and writing radio scripts and advertisements. In the late 1940's he voiced characters in WMAQ's Destination Freedom series, written by Richard Durham.[5] His own well-known radio program, titled The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997.[6] The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday during those 45 years. On this program, he interviewed guests as diverse as Martin Luther King Jr., Leonard Bernstein, Mort Sahl, Bob Dylan, Alexander Frey, Dorothy Parker, Tennessee Williams, Jean Shepherd, Frank Zappa, and Big Bill Broonzy.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Terkel was also the central character of Studs' Place, an unscripted television drama about the owner of a greasy-spoon diner in Chicago through which many famous people and interesting characters passed. This show, Marlin Perkins's Zoo Parade, Garroway at Large, and the children's show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie are widely considered canonical examples of the Chicago School of Television.

Terkel published his first book, Giants of Jazz, in 1956. He followed it in 1967 with his first collection of oral histories, Division Street: America, with 70 people talking about the effect on the human spirit of living in an American metropolis.[7][8][9]

He also served as a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the Chicago History Museum. He appeared in the film Eight Men Out, based on the Black Sox Scandal, in which he played newspaper reporter Hugh Fullerton, who tries to uncover the White Sox players' plans to throw the 1919 World Series. Terkel found it particularly amusing to play this role, as he was a big fan of the Chicago White Sox (as well as a vocal critic of major league baseball during the 1994 baseball strike), and gave a moving congratulatory speech to the White Sox organization after their 2005 World Series championship during a television interview.

Terkel received his nickname while he was acting in a play with another person named Louis. To keep the two straight, the director of the production gave Terkel the nickname Studs after the fictional character about whom Terkel was reading at the time—Studs Lonigan, of James T. Farrell's trilogy.

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Katie Puckett – Intern Extraordinaire

Today it’s my pleasure to welcome my talented, super awesome, intern, Katie Puckett to Under A Paper Moon. Katie is from Arkansas and a senior at Belmont University located here in Nashville, Tennessee.

Katie with sweet tea at her elbow.

This past fall, when I approached the department head with a request for an intern, I have to say I didn’t quite know what to expect. But after reading her…