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Submit Your Reflection about "Studs Terkel on Work, Life, and Death."

A Stimulating Conversation (November 27, 2005)
I look forward to your program each week. The last few programs have been exceptionally good — Studs Terkel was exceptionally stimulating and inspirational. I taught the first graduate program in aging and theater this past summer with a colleague at Ohio State; we drew students from a variety of backgrounds. Oral history is so important to this, and he [Terkel] is the master. I particularly appreciate the intelligence of Krista's questions and her thoughtful comments. Your program manages to feed my artistic, spiritual, and educational needs all at the same time!

Joy Reilly
Columbus, OH (WOSU, 820 AM)

I Eat My Words (November 21, 2005)
I think it is important for me to thank Speaking of Faith for introducing me to Studs Terkel's exploration of faith. Some months ago, I had written to you: "I fully understand that this 'lack of faith' point of view is outside the scope of Speaking of Faith — and neither do I listen to the program for someone speaking on my behalf." I was most comprehensively wrong. I will not be so presumptuous to say that Studs Terkel spoke for me. He has the experience and the authority to have weighed and understood things that I have not even begun to muse on. But yet in all that, he expressed some of my feelings more articulately than I ever could. I eat my words, and with pleasure.

Dhananjay Vaidya
Baltimore, MD (WYPR, 88.1 FM)

Finding Beauty in Care, Grace, and Dignity (November 20, 2005)
Krista's interview with Studs Terkel was a continuance of the private conversations, about real subjects, that we need to have with friends. I found Speaking of Faith several months ago as I drove each Sunday to the hospital to visit my husband of 36 years, who had had a severe stroke. The thoughts, introspections, and insights which the show provided were a counterpoint to those of my own at such a painful time. The strength of religious faith was reexamined, retested, and confirmed as I found beauty in the small human interactions of care, grace, and human dignity during my husband's slow passage from this world. As Studs Terkel noted in his interview, the value of life is supported by the continuing pause from distraction of the mundane and trivial, to see the soul and kindness of those who share this earth with us. We need to talk our hearts and to listen to our fellow man.

Nora Hackett
Riverside, CA (KPCC, 89.3 FM)

A Saintly Agnostic (November 20, 2005)
Brava! Thank you for your interview with Studs Terkel. May we recognize more saintly agnostics, who choose to demonstrate a careful life that cherishes the now. His testimony and timely sensitive interviews bless us with thoughts and actions of those who love the gifts of life. Yes, as Terkel says, life is living, and meditating on death as the Buddhists do can empower us to love life and not fear death.

Maria Keane
Wilmington, DE (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Faith in Our Marriage (November 20, 2005)
I just want to say that my husband Mike and I love your program, and look forward to it weekly. Your program today with Studs Terkel was terrific. I read many of his books years ago, and now will have to get Will the Circle be Unbroken. Faith and spirituality are very important to Mike and I — part of why we married four years ago is because, at the age of 55 then, we recognized soulmates in the central role that issues of faith had for our lives, even though we came from very different backgrounds. He is a lifelong Catholic, I am Jewish by genes and early learnings, immersed myself in Buddhist practice for many years and it continues to underpin my understandings of life, participated in a Unitarian Universalist community for 18 years, and last year switched to a renegade independent Catholic community, Spiritus Christi Church. While I am deeply spiritual there is no single denomination whose beliefs fit mine, just teachings and communities that speak to me and enrich my life at different points, helping me be more the person I truly want to be. Your program is a highlight of the week for us. Keep up the great work!

Jane Ellen Bleeg
Rochester, NY (WXXY)

A Top-Notch Production (November 19, 2005)
I listened to your interview with Studs Terkel this morning and felt that the production quality was exceptional. The content was logically segmented, the interview pace was excellent, and the musical interludes were very effectively chosen. Thanks.

Paul Heitmann
Madison, NJ (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Hearkening to Studs' Days on WFMT (November 17, 2005)
Just an aside from one who listened for at least four decades when Terkel was on WFMT in Chicago. He was/is an attorney, although I never found out why he chose journalism as opposed to the law for a career. I always thoroughly enjoyed his programs and the insights of his guests. He put many things in perspective for me.

William Siarny
Charlotte, MI (WUOM, 91.7 FM)

A Representative Agnostic Voice (February 27, 2005)
Thanks for the interesting interview with Studs Terkel. The views of intelligent agnostics needs more recognition. Our faith in the human potential is too frequently overshadowed by the militant atheist.

Florien Wineriter
Salt Lake City, UT (KUER, 90.1 FM)

Enlightened by Studs (February 27, 2005)
That was the most incisive interview on faith relative to life accomplishments I have ever heard. I always love listening to a senior citizen who has either never adopted or thrown off the frequently prevalent shackles of generationally characteristic racial prejudice. Studs was terrific in his perspectives about how people are drawn out in an interview. You did a great job capturing his still vibrant enthusiasm for his work. I'm glad to have listened to and be enlightened by your interview with this great American connoisseur and conveyor of the truth. Thanks.

Lance Duchesneau
Abilene, TX (KACU, 89.7 FM)

I Love This Show! (February 27, 2005)
I just have to tell you how much I enjoy Speaking of Faith. Today's show with Studs Terkel was beautiful and brought tears to my eyes several times. As an agnostic, I'm fascinated by faith and what other people believe. Your show provides much-needed perspective. Thank you.

Linsey Sieger
Milwaukee, WI (WUWM, 89.7 FM)

A Friend in the Morning (February 27, 2005)
I consider myself an agnostic. I started listening to Speaking of Faith because it was the only program on NPR on Sunday morning when I wanted "company" while eating breakfast. However, I found the program so compelling that I have become a regular listener. The diversity of guests and opinions is wonderful. I have learned a lot over these past weeks and feel spiritually enriched. Today's interview with Studs Terkel was so moving that I felt like expressing my positive feelings and reactions to the program. I plan to buy Terkel's new book as a must-read for someone 86 years old!

Ellen Stimler
Medford, NJ (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Succinct Praise (February 27, 2005)
Yet again another great one.

"Cabbie" Joe Eisenberg
St. Louis, MO (KWMU, 90.7 FM)

Studs Reminds Me of My Father (February 27, 2005)
Listening to the Studs Terkel program reminded me quite a bit about my dad. He was a contemporary of Studs and lived in Cincinnati. He was not interviewed by Studs, but did meet him during a visit to Chicago in the '60s. Dad owned many of Studs' books beginning with the first one on jazz. My dad was a lower-keyed version of Studs in very conservative Cincinnati, Ohio. I found myself welling up a bit, both for Studs and my dad, who like Studs was a socialist agnostic, but both of whom probably were instrumental, in their own unique contributions, to practicing the true essence of religion.

To understand why I mention my dad, I append the following:
My dad, Joe Leinwohl, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was a man who left his mark not in concrete, but within the many people whose lives he enabled to realize their dream. He was born in 1907 in Lvov, Ukraine and came to Cincinnati one year later with his mother to join his father who was a shoemaker/repairer. He died in 1999.

As a youth, he studied the ethical teachings of Orthodox Judaism and learned the teachings of the sage Hillel including what it meant to be a real hamishe mensch and do mitzvah. He began his career as a messenger with the Peoples Bank at the age of 16. He remained with the bank through the depression eventually becoming a vice president. When given the opportunity, my dad seemed at times as if he had stepped out of a Frank Capra moviette: a loan officer of a bank and a boss with a real heart, a pragmatic businessman who knew that doing well and doing the right thing went hand-in-hand. Joe said, "I always wanted to be a part of the fermentation, the flow of history. I want no part of the comfortable vegetation."

Joe enabled folks of many ethnic backgrounds the opportunities to realize their dreams of opening their own businesses. Long before art was exhibited in company lobbies, Joe Leinwohl, in the '60s annually exhibited the work of students. He helped in establishing community centers — one of which was The Arts Consortium in the now black ghetto of his youth. He was active in banking, civil rights, education, and Jewish affairs. He was part of a network that helped Holocaust survivors after WWII establish themselves. He was active in establishing an African-American Bank, but refusing to head it up himself. Thanks for allowing listeners the opportunity to share our reactions to the show.

Stef Leinwohl
Cincinnati, OH (WOSU, 820 AM)

Listening to Studs (February 27, 2005)
I found the program about Studs an excellent one. I have lived in Chicago since 1958 and listened to him every morning at 10 am when he was on WFMT. It was both a blessing and a curse, because his style is of not only interviewing the guest, but in a roundabout way, himself at the same time. He always managed to make both the guest and the listener aware of how much he knew along with those in the past whom he had interviewed and how it related to the subject at hand. He was not the master of the interview style that nudges nuggets of info and then just lays back, listens, and allows the subject time to expand, resisting interjecting the interviewer's personal views. Nevertheless, that style of Studs is what educated me so much about subjects I was unaware of.

One thing about Studs, he is very approachable. If you run into him on the street, you can always stop him and engage him in conversation. He is such a curious person. Much more than almost anyone else I am aware of on so many subjects. And boy does he do his homework!

Steve Wall
Chicago, IL (WBEZ, 91.5 FM)

The Afterlife (February 27, 2005)
When Tippett asked Studs Terkel what the afterlife is like for agnostics, I thought to myself, "Here we go again, more leading questions that presuppose outrageous stupidities." There is no afterlife!! How can an intelligent person in the twenty-first century not understand this? When the brain dies the mind dies, when the mind dies you die, and when you die you're dead. Period. Blotto. Nowhere City!!

After badgering Terkel with more irrelevancies, Tippett got him to say that whether or not there's an afterlife is the individual's choice! Ooops! Sorry Studs. Whether or not there is an afterlife has no more to do with what a person chooses to believe than does the curvature of the earth. Either there is an afterlife or there isn't, and what a person believes is completely irrelevant. The fact that I believe something does not make it true!

Wayne Alt
Baltimore, MD (WYPR, 88.1 FM)

The Inescapable Reality (February 27, 2005)
I particularly enjoy the open and very broadly directed aim of the presentation, as I hear it. I am a cowardly atheist (agnostic), as is Terkel and I am, at the age of 62, comfortable with the probability that there is simply nothing after this life. I was in a near auto accident fatality 12 years ago and still regard life as fragile, as I did for many years before, and [view] death as the inevitable accident of time, place, and circumstance from which no one is spared. Keep up the good work. I am going to start setting my alarm for 6:45 AM, on Saturday night.

Sally Branca
Merion, PA (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Understanding a Fellow Agnostic (February 27, 2005)
Thank you for including an agnostic in your religious programming. I, too, am an agnostic, but I listen to your program every week because I am always searching for answers to why some people believe and others are denied that faith. Together Studs and Krista expressed beautifully how agnostics can be religious people, too. When I share with friends who know me long and well that I am an agnostic or maybe even an atheist, they are shocked. They always say something like, "Oh, no, Sally, how can you say that? You are such a (good … Christian … spiritual … fill in the blank) person. And they don't seem to understand that you don't have to be practicing a religion to be all those things. In fact, they seem to be threatened by my very questioning of things. Anyway, Mr. Terkel reaffirmed my feelings about life and death, and I thank you for making him part of your program. What a life he has lived!

Sally Branca
Merion, PA (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

My Father Would Feel Connected (February 27, 2005)
Thank you for this program on his new book on dying. I am going to give it to my 91-year-old father who seems to have little faith but has done much good in his life with the intent of doing "right." I think he will feel very connected to this man's work.

Esta Jo Schifter
Philadelphia, PA (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Sorry Charlie (February 25, 2005)
You are getting to be a match for Charlie Rose. You get such interesting people to interview.

Dan Pittillo
Sylva, NC (WCQS, 88.1 FM)