Allow us to introduce the 2024 mini-series of letters and documents from the early days of HIV|AIDS. A late 20th century crisis. Most of the material is New Orleans in particular, Louisiana, and then the country at large. This mini-series is produced in partnership with the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and I thank them for their diligence preserving history and for helping in this production.

Each mini launches at noon, Central time, on the following dates and remain available thereafter.

• • June 6 Mark Gonzalez, protest and ACT UP
  • Aug 8 Noel Twillbeck and Crescent Care
  • Oct 3 Brad Ott and underground publishing as activism
  • Dec 5 Aids Hospice, Pierre Rene “Peter” DeLancey & commentary by Hywel Sims.

This is a gently evolving series subject to change.

Listen to this clip from an interview with Jarret Lofstead whose role it was to wade through, and strategically process, thousands, and thousands, of pages of court documents building the Letters Read narrative for the Jospehine Louise Newcomb readings.

Lofstead is a writer/researcher and producer at The Bend Media + Productions. Whose recent release is the documentary film, George Dureau: New Orleans Artist.

Lofstead spends a fair amount of his career dealing with topics in the humanities. Including social justice and jurisprudince. Two prominent Letters Read themes.

Lofstead was instrumental in bringing information and perspective to the full program, Letters of Josephine Louise Newcomb performed live April 13, 2024, and available here.

Recorded Saturday, April 13 2024 in front of a live audience at Catapult in New Orleans.

Featured Readers:
Emcee Chris Kamenstein, Director Nancy Sharon Collins, Shadow Angelina Starkey, and Robert Valley.

H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was established by Josephine Louise Monnier Newcomb (“Jo”) as she was called, 1816 to 1901) as a memorial to her daughter Sophie who died at the age of 15. At a time when women were discouraged from education, an institution devoted to higher learning for women was a revolutionary idea.

Ladies of Mrs. Newcomb’s privileged class were instead taught to have “accomplishments”. Such as parlor entertainments like piano playing and polite conversation. For the lower classes—who had to hire themselves out as domestic help to survive—cooking, cleaning, sewing, nursing, and care giving for other people’s families were their lot. For them, education, such as it were, was learned scrubbing pots on the job.

This program heavily relies on Susan Tucker and Beth Willinger, their scholarship, and superb, online, project, The Letters of Josephine Louise Newcomb.

Additional thanks go to writer/researcher Jarret Lofstead and audio producer Steve Gilliland.

This production was created from material collected during the creation of Drugs, Sex, Rock & Roll: A Year of Magic and Wonder. Which coincided with the project’s director/writer’s move back from New York to New Orleans. Quoting from the script, Collins’s observation was that moving home was “kind of like sleeping with an old lover.”

Meanwhile, significant municipal water issues collided in both cities and, in the Middle East.

Audio production is by Steve Chyzyk, ⁠⁠Sonic Canvas Studio⁠⁠.

Want to support this compelling series, we'd love you to. Go to ⁠⁠https://lettersread.net/donate/⁠⁠.

IMAGE: Henniker, Frederick. Notes, During a Visit to Egypt, Nubia, the Oasis, Mount Sinai, and Jerusalem. London: John Murray, 1823. Shown above is an aquatint fold-out view of Jerusalem “whose precision could let a traveler use it for wayfinding.” —https://www.drawingpalestine.com/jerusalem.htm

Listen to this iteration of an oft-told tale. How easily an innocent out of towner is drawn to the dark side of New Orleans. This specific story, ca. 1985, focuses on one year, one incredibly transformative year. For one man. Emblematic of many lured to the Big Easy, a famously lurid city.

Counter intuitively, this potentially tragic tale resolves itself into a beautiful, tie-dye butterfly. In which a Tulane undergraduate magically emerges going on to a fulfilling queer life and hugely successful, big city, New York City career. Geoff Munsterman reads as the subject named James, just James. Shadow Angelina Starkey reads as Nancy Sharon Collins, the project director. Historic context has been corroborated by consultant, Royd Anderson. Production was performed by Munsterman and Starkey.

Continuing our New York/New Orleans journey, we bring you the only project Robert Moses ever did in the Crescent City. Locally referred to as the ⁠Riverfront Expressway⁠.

Robert Moses, the greatest builder New York has ever known, is so often credited with it. Even though it never happened. As frequently, he is also incorrectly blamed for the Claiborne Expressway. That, horrendously, did.

This podcast is part of the ongoing script development for a fully realized live performance later this year about Moses, his engagement in this project, and the historic outcomes.

The reading is based on primary source research in The Robert Moses Collection at the New York Public Library and Moses’ 1946 Arterial Plan for New Orleans commissioned by the state of Louisiana. Additional information comes from newspaper articles, past and current, hearsay, Facebook, Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, Richard Baumbach and William Borah’s The Second Battle of New Orleans, and Hilary Ballon’s Robert Moses and the Modern City.

For information on the current fight to remove the Claiborne Overpass and links to other resources used for this production, go to lettersread.net/resources.

Introducing Season 7. Letters Read director, stationer, Nancy Sharon Collins talks about this year’s theme: the two very different cities that she loves. And, a lagniappe as they say in south Louisiana. A little something extra to maybe pull at your heartstrings, just a little.

Audio production is by Steve Chyzyk, ⁠Sonic Canvas Studio⁠.