128: Four Corners
Apr 30, 1999
There's a tourist monument called Four Corners, where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. In this episode, we try to tell the story of life in America through portraits of life on four different corners, in four different states across the nation.
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Sarah Vowell has a theory that you can tell the entire history of the United States by standing on one street corner—specifically at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago—and describing all the events that happened within eyeshot of the corner. She covers three centuries of history, from Louis Joliet to Keanu Reeves. (21 minutes)
Correction: In this story Sarah Vowell references The Jungle and mistakenly cites the author as Sinclair Lewis. The correct author is Upton Sinclair. - Writer Mike Paterniti tells a story of dogs and a community of dogwalkers that formed on the grounds of an old cemetery at the corner of Vaughn and Clifford in Portland, Maine. (14 minutes)
- Writer Achy Obejas reads a piece of short fiction from her book, We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (11 minutes)
