297: This Is Not My Beautiful House

Ira Glass

In Houston it's Tuesday at the Astrodome complex. We still had thousands of evacuees from New Orleans at that point. There were these tables with hand-lettered signs on poster board-- they read Florida, New York, Colorado-- basically offering to relocate evacuees to those states. This wasn't the state governments doing this. This was private charities and churches from those states, and they're making some incredibly generous offers.

Ira Glass

Andrea [? Ames ?] was manning the Colorado table on behalf of three different charities there. And the deal she's offering?

Ira Glass

But incredibly, even though this deal did seem to be the very best deal going at the Astrodome complex, people from New Orleans don't want this deal.

Ira Glass

Which is all hard enough for Andrea to deal with on its face, but then there's the added indignity that her candidates then go two tables down and get snapped up by Florida.

Ira Glass

Kevin [? Lillibride ?] at the Florida table.

Ira Glass

The only problem with Florida, of course, is something that everybody from New Orleans pretty much has a low tolerance for at this point: hurricanes. Still, as of Tuesday, the guys at the Florida table got 43 families to relocate.

You're listening to This American Life from WBEZ Chicago, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

So this past week, somewhere between 400,000 and a million people, including an entire city, New Orleans, were scattered across the country, the biggest mass resettlement in our country since the Civil War. And we went out to document some of what was happening as these people tried to figure out what happens next in their lives, where they're going to live.

Two producers from our radio show, Lisa Pollak and Jane Feltes, and I flew from our home base in Chicago to Houston. Houston is where between 150,000 and 200,000 hurricane evacuees went after the hurricane. One man I talked to down there who was looking for housing said that he felt like he was living in a gold rush town, so many people scrambling for all the same things all at the same time. Today, we bring you stories from the Astrodome, and of people simply trying to find places to live.

Plus, back in New Orleans, certain business owners in certain areas are being allowed back this weekend. Nick Spitzer drives through deserted streets to his own house, where he feels like a stranger and a looter. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

It was actually Jane who talked to people at the various state tables, and she says eventually Colorado did actually manage to get some people to relocate.

Jane Feltes

They got 35 people after two weeks of trying. And the reason people finally said yes was desperation. FEMA let everyone know that the temporary housing was ending, hotel vouchers were ending for families that were in hotels, and people were being moved out of the Astrodome. First in line for the bus to Colorado were twin sisters, [? Coquin ?] and [? Kayla. ?] They're six. And here's what they know about the place they're about to move.

Jane Feltes

When I talked to their mom, [? Coquina, ?] she said that they overheard her talking on the phone telling a friend that the last few weeks have really been an adventure. She was being sarcastic, but the girls picked it up. And just as well. It took a little more convincing for their mom.

Jane Feltes

At this point, the girls decided I was done talking to their mom, and they wanted the microphone back, which they suddenly realized was real, and I actually was from the radio, and they had business.

Jane Feltes

We met lots of people at the Astrodome who were still missing friends and family. There's an office that reunites families, with lists of survivors and their locations, but their moms says the last time they saw Jamal and [? Kiana ?] was when she dropped them off with their dad and grandparents in New Orleans before evacuating, just before the storm. She's acting confident that they're OK, so the girls are acting confident too.

Ira Glass

Act Two, There's No Place Like Dome. So what was it like this week in those huge buildings that were housing evacuees in Houston? Well, the first thing you noticed when you walked into the Astrodome or the Reliant Convention Center, where people were living, was the noise.

Ira Glass

PA announcements went on all day and into the night. In the center of the Astrodome, the area there where the cots were, because you were right under the center of the dome itself, it echoed like crazy.

Ira Glass

Louis [? Llewellyn ?] told me that you get used to it. He's a New Orleans evacuee.

Ira Glass

One thing about living in a big room with thousands of people that you don't really think about until you're there is germs. There are little free bottles of antibacterial scrub all over the place that people were advised to use, but that didn't stop bugs from spreading.

Ira Glass

Or maybe not such a bad place, since just a few feet from his cot was a 24-hour medical clinic. There was also a pediatric clinic and a pharmacy. He got better in just a day.

The lights were on all the time, though they dim them at night. It was so calm and orderly that the soldiers you saw inside the Reliant Convention Center were mostly on duty guarding the bathrooms, mainly, one said, to be sure that men and women weren't getting together in the bathrooms for some adult privacy, or, dare I say, domo-sexual activity.

In the late morning, the big convention floor where everybody was living looked like an apartment complex where all the walls had been lifted away. A little girl skipped around her family's cots, a teenager walked through bouncing a basketball. There was a free phone bank, and places to sign up for college, and all the offices to get insurance and government benefits, a big computer center with lots of volunteers ready to help you get online and navigate government websites.

Most of what was so striking was the overall competence of the whole thing, the care with which it was all put together. And nobody thought that more strongly than the people who were there who had been trapped at the New Orleans Convention Center, or the Superdome in New Orleans, after the flooding.

Ira Glass

This is Phyllis Thompson. I talked to her just as she and her son and her daughter and her grandkids were packing up their stuff to move into their new housing. The kids had one of those big plastic trash bags full of new stuffed animals that had been donated. Phyllis and her son both told me that after what they went through at the Superdome, they don't ever want to return to New Orleans.

Ira Glass

His mom, Phyllis, says that after the flood, the moment on the bus that they crossed the border into Texas, she felt safe for the first time. She felt peace.

Ira Glass

Not everybody was feeling quite as positive. I ran into Tony and Tiffany Davis as they were leaving the Reliant Center. An incredibly wholesome-looking young couple, they wore the color wristbands that get evacuees into the Astrodome complex, and they dragged a leopard print wheelie suitcase that had been donated by Wal-Mart, and a beat-up olive suitcase that came from an airline.

Ira Glass

They're taking the free plane tickets offered by Continental and FEMA and moving to New Jersey, where Tony's brother has a house. So far the housing people in Texas haven't been able to get to their case, so they're leaving.

Ira Glass

In a shop at the Galleria mall, she says, a store employee followed her wherever she went. And just walking through town, she says, a man stepped completely off the sidewalk to avoid her and Tony. And in fact, white Texans did raise the issue with us, with me and Jane and Lisa, of what the presence of all these people from New Orleans would do to the crime rate. And the fact that it hadn't affected the crime rate was big enough news to be a front page story in the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday.

But at the same time, what's most striking as you go around Houston is how many people are putting themselves out for days and weeks at a time for strangers from Louisiana. At Grace Community Church, for example, the congregation not only came up with over $200,000 for relief supplies and gas cards for Katrina victims, over 1,000 of them volunteered day after day, some working 12- and 14-hour days, sending out faxes to every hotel in the area offering assistance to survivors, calling apartment complexes all over the city so they could compile every day a daily list of available apartments, specifying which ones were giving special breaks to Katrina survivors. They were serving a huge population that barely made it on to the news, and didn't make it into the Astrodome. That is, people who evacuated before the hurricane, who had some resources of their own. Lori Buxton works at the church.

Ira Glass

Exactly where all these evacuees are going to live is the next serious question that this exodus is going to face. And though the Astrodome officially emptied out at the end of this week, several thousand people are still in the Reliant Arena just next door, with no particular end in sight. And beyond that group, it doesn't seem like anybody knows how many tens of thousands of people are staying in Houston paying for their own hotels, or on two-week government hotel vouchers that are now running out, or with family or friends, who are going to need permanent housing, and may need government help to help pay for it.

There's a voucher program that the city of Houston has set up that gives you six months free rent, no security deposit, two months utilities, furniture for your apartment, stuff like a shower curtain, in pre-selected apartments that have been inspected to be sure they're OK. Which of course sounds great, but matching the apartments with all the people who need them is complicated. And that is actually the subject of Act Three of our show.

Ira Glass

Act Three, Land Grab. Lisa Pollak, one of our program's producers, went to the housing center at the Reliant Arena this week.

Lisa Pollak

It's 3:00 PM when we get to the housing center, and it's not a happy place. There are hundreds of people here, slumped in folding chairs, jostling in lines, pleading for volunteers to help them. Tense-looking cops are everywhere, and soldiers in camouflage fatigues. It makes the DMV look like a day spa. In the section of chairs where we're standing, there's this sudden wave of movement. People stand up, and there's some yelling. It turns out an official with a bullhorn just told a whole group to leave and come back tomorrow. They won't get apartments today. And one of the women standing near us has clearly reached her limit.

Lisa Pollak

Her name is [? Ida Mae. ?] She's been here since early this morning, she says, just like she was told to be, looking for a place for herself and her teenage sons. And at this point, the only way to manage her frustration is to share it with everyone she sees, including, apparently, one of the less-tolerant cops in the room.

Lisa Pollak

Ida Mae goes to stand in another line, the line to sign up for tomorrow's line, which turns out to be the wrong line. A volunteer points her in the right direction.

Lisa Pollak

This is Guy Rankin, the man with the unenviable job of running this place. When I stumble on to him in the middle of the arena, he says things are actually going pretty well here, and he means it.

Lisa Pollak

If all these numbers don't quite match up to the chaos around us, it's for a reason. The housing voucher program, like so much of the Katrina aid, is a work in progress, being assembled on the fly. At first, when hurricane victims showed up, they were told to sign up, and then they'd be called when housing came available for them. Lots of people never got calls. And because that system was moving too slowly, it was changed midstream.

Now how it works is what we're seeing today. People come to the housing center and wait for buses that will take them directly to the apartments that had been chosen for them. But the system is still messy. Ida Mae, for instance, needed a three-bedroom apartment, and not enough of those were ready today.

Lisa Pollak

As it turned out, the bus he said we missed was running late, and we caught the last one just as it was loading. The people lined up didn't really know where they were going, just that they'd have an apartment when they got there. There were seven families, mostly couples, one little boy, and a very, very pregnant woman named [? Lashawn ?] Price who said she didn't want to have to bring a new baby back to the Astrodome. I ask her when she's due, and she says any day, which turns out to be an understatement.

Lisa Pollak

We all get on the bus. Lashawn, still completely calm, is having contractions at this point, and the housing official who's coming with us hands out the voucher forms. We drive for a while on the freeway, and people are starting to get nervous. We seemed really far from the Astrodome. Finally, after 45 minutes, we get there.

Lisa Pollak

It's a nice-looking townhouse development, with garages and tidy landscaping and new brick and siding. And for the first time all day, there's a sense that things are getting better.

Lisa Pollak

We're in the clubhouse now. It's big, kind of like the lobby of a Hampton Inn, and there's a loveseat and wingback chairs and a fancy flower arrangement on the front table. Out the back through the glass doors, you can see a pool and basketball courts. The families line up as if out of habit. They all stand there looking around, flipping through the brochures. A few minutes go by, a few more. In the back corner of the room are two young women. They obviously work there, and they see we're here, but they don't come up to us or even say hello. They're talking about what to do, and everyone knows it. And [? Lashawn ?] says what everyone's thinking.

Lisa Pollak

But the women don't hear her, and the waiting continues. Finally, after 15 minutes, one of them comes forward. She's the assistant manager, though she doesn't introduce herself. She asks everyone to get out their social security cards and birth certificates, and she gets some incredulous looks.

Lisa Pollak

She hands out the applications. Everyone can get an apartment tonight, she says, as long as they have no previous evictions and a clean criminal record. There's an awkward silence in the room, and then the questions begin.

Lisa Pollak

[? Lashawn ?] turns to me.

Lisa Pollak

Now it's getting really tense. The Housing Department guy is arguing with the assistant manager. People are pulling out their cell phones. There's some yelling. In a way, it's no different than things have been for weeks now. The rules keep changing, and no one tells them, and nothing ends up quite how it's supposed to be.

Remember last week, when the big story was the FEMA debit cards? Some people got them, others didn't. Next to me, [? Lashawn's ?] getting more agitated by the minute. I can't believe she's not four centimeters dilated by now. Her old life, with her own apartment and her job as a medical records assistant, seems as far away as ever.

Lisa Pollak

Lisa, the assistant manager, seems a little overwhelmed.

Lisa Pollak

A regional manager shows up, promising to help people, but it's too late. Everyone feels discriminated against. Here's [? Lashawn ?] and another woman as they get back on the bus.

Lisa Pollak

The housing official, he's back on the bus too, tells me he doesn't know why this has happened. It's his first day, he says. But there's another complex open tonight which also accepts the vouchers.

So the bus gets back on the freeway and drives to a neighborhood on the northwest side of the city. Out the bus windows, more and more of the store names are in Spanish. Someone spots a man pedaling a little food cart, and a bunch of people snicker. By the time the bus stops in front of a weathered two-story apartment complex called Villa del Sol, most of the passengers seem a little freaked out. One thing's for sure: this isn't Timber Ridge. For starters, when we get inside they're ready for us.

Lisa Pollak

We crowd into the rental office. It's more basement rec room than Hampton Inn, with mismatched furniture and no slick brochures. But it's clean and comfortable, and a table in the center of the room is piled high with food: pizzas, sodas, chips. Pick as much as you want, people are saying. On the wall is a photo collage: the neighborhood kids at summer day camp.

Lisa Pollak

Lashawn sits down at the manager's desk and picks up a pen. She looks exhausted.

Lisa Pollak

It was that simple. She had an apartment, six months rent free.

Lisa Pollak

No one else from our group even fills out the paperwork. They eat the pizza and drift back to the bus. They'll find something better, they say. I grab one of them.

Lisa Pollak

It's hard to miss the fact that some of the same people who were complaining the loudest about discrimination at Timber Ridge were the quickest to say they didn't want to live around a bunch of Mexicans. One of them told me later, if you were in our shoes, wouldn't you feel out of place? It's a different community, a community you're not a part of. Our kids might get picked on or ridiculed. They'll be outsiders.

Lisa Pollak

Laura Rodriguez, the assistant manager, is going to give [? Lashawn ?] a tour. Jane, my co-producer, walks over to the apartment with them, and halfway there [? Lashawn ?] grabs Jane's hand.

Lisa Pollak

To their credit, the people running this housing program are still working on it, still adjusting it each day, still trying to figure out how to get more people into apartments more quickly. The next morning, we go back to the housing center. Things are a lot the same.

Lisa Pollak

I try to talk to Guy Rankin, the guy in charge, but he's busy. He's walking around the arena, going from section to section with a bullhorn, listening to people's complaints and trying to answer their questions.

Lisa Pollak

The system's still got some problems. Lots of people are asking why they just can't rent their own apartments with the voucher money instead of taking the places chosen for them in neighborhoods they don't know and don't feel comfortable with. It might sound picky, but when I talked to a New Orleans mom whose son has already started elementary school here and is happy there and doesn't want to move again, I'm reminded of how complicated this all is.

I listen for a while to Rankin. He tells the crowd he's heard that complaint, and that maybe soon there will be a way to let people choose their own places. It's still being worked out, he says, even as he speaks. Later today, he says, there might even be a line for that.

Ira Glass

Lisa Pollak. In the few days since the middle of the week when she left the housing center, they've made other improvements, like they've given people wristbands to keep their place in line. The biggest hold-up is still finding acceptable apartments, inspecting them, and then getting people out to see them. That will continue to be slow, especially for people who want three-, and four-, and five-bedroom apartments, which are scarce. By Friday, the number of families that the city had put into the six-month free apartments had climbed from 3,100 to 4,800.

Right outside the housing center, on the parking lot between the Astrodome and the Reliant Center, the YMCA set up a huge recreation area for kids and adults. Basketball courts. There's blow-up things that little kids bounce on at fairs. There's one tent of arcade video machines, and Dance Dance Revolution for kids, and a second tent of arcade games for adults, all set up so no quarters were needed. On one machine I saw a message that I had never seen before: game never over.

At a plastic table in the tent, two kids have drumsticks, and one was teaching the other how to play. Volunteers from Seattle and North Carolina and all over the place walked through, tending the kids and chatting happily like they'd known each other for years. On the Ms. Pac-Man machine, I see a man take a break from standing in line for government help by playing the fastest, greatest game of Ms. Pac-Man I have ever witnessed in my life.

Ira Glass

Outside, a cool late afternoon breeze starts to kick in, and I watch as a pediatric doctor in scrubs, a volunteer who flew in from Baltimore, tries to cross the playground, and gets stopped first by a six-year-old who has to borrow the doctor's camera to take her picture.

Ira Glass

And then she lends her cell phone to an older girl who needs to call a parent, even though she's having trouble.

Ira Glass

As the sun started to go down on Tuesday, it was hard to believe that this whole complex would soon be gone, this city built in a day, like Brigadoon. 27,000 people were just two weeks ago, down to a few thousand this week. The past few weeks have been horrific for people here, traumatic, and the next six months are going to be incredibly hard, too, as people set up new lives, and homes, and jobs. This place was a waystation where sometimes it was possible to pause and rest.

[MUSIC - "PROMISED LAND" BY CHUCK BERRY]

Coming up: yes, the streets of New Orleans are still restricted. So what's it like to drive around there right now? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, This is not My Beautiful House, stories about the hundreds of thousands of people sent into exodus since Hurricane Katrina. We've arrived at Act Four of our show. Act Four The Long Way Home.

Well, the mayor of New Orleans has announced that this weekend certain parts of New Orleans will reopen, first to business owners and then to residents, this weekend and in the coming week. Nick Spitzer is part of the New Orleans diaspora. He's also the host of the Public Radio International music show, American Routes. He's living now with his wife and his two little kids in Lafayette, living with friends. He has a press pass, so it's actually been legal for him to drive through the city of New Orleans. The streets are restricted, of course. So he finally tried it.

Nick Spitzer

This is, I think it's September the 7th. It is September the 7th, in downtown New Orleans, sitting on Canal Street right now inside my car. I'm about to take a ride uptown, and I'm just going to narrate what I see as I go.

So I've been told to go by way of Tchoupitoulas Street, and I'm told that it's fairly clear going up Tchoupitoulas. It makes sense. It's the old high ground in the city. So here we go. Certainly there are a lot of security guards everywhere who aren't very friendly, lots of guys in black with Kevlar vests and different things that say Security ICE, and security this, and security that. And then of course there's just the good old garden variety New Orleans cops. And then there's cops from all over, which is really, really strange: cops from Dublin, Ohio, cops from New Mexico.

I'm going to see-- there's no traffic lights working. I think I'm going to cut through here. I think I can do it. Yes, I can do it. And I'm off and running. And no one's shooting at me, for which I'm thankful. There's a guy with a machine gun there. I think actually there's a corpse up this way. Somebody told me.

I'm heading up Tchoupitoulas Street here. Everywhere you turn there's just garbage lying everywhere, garbage and old signs. There's electric generators running on diesel. Place reeks of diesel in addition to the smell of corpses and dead animals and rotting vegetation, and this stinking water everywhere, just oil, toxic crap.

Boy, here we are on St. Joseph and Commerce, and there's just garbage in all directions. Shopping carts-- oh, this must be where all the looting took place. That's exactly what this is. Oh, it is so strange and so sad.

There's the D-Day Museum. Jeez, looks like they've looted the D-Day museum. That is really strange, looting the gift shop of the D-Day museum.

This really smells bad out here. Unfortunately, it's because there are quite a few bodies over there by the edge of the Convention Center. Oh God, this is just awful.

Now we're heading uptown on Tchoupitoulas. Jeez, I've got to be careful for these tires, too, now that I think about it. I do have another tire back there, but I'm told there's a lot of roof tacks in the street. There's a lot of glass everywhere, a lot of metal shards, and just the streets are in bad, bad, bad shape.

Wow, there's people walking. Maybe I can even talk to--

Hmm, those guys look a little suspicious in that truck. It's a little spooky up here. It's about 5:45 in the afternoon here, Wednesday afternoon.

Coming up to the intersection of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon, famous for the Tipitina's nightclub. I had heard there'd been some musicians sleeping here. I don't know what the deal is, though.

Oh, here's a landmark: Hansen's Sno-Bliz, the snowball shop that I love so much. And it looks OK.

Now I'm coming to Magazine Street, which is, of course, a major thoroughfare. I don't want them to think this microphone is a gun. There's some cops kind of eyeing me, but I'm going to wave to them. Hey, guys.

See my house in the distance, just can barely see it in the distance now. There's a SUV going by it. Jeez, I'm kind of nervous just coming back, worried. A lot of trees down right near the house. Oh God, it's my house. Looks like one window might have blown down in the dining room, unless somebody busted in there. I don't know.

I'm going to go in the house with a-- drop the cargo. Go in the house with a flashlight. I got to be the first one back in the hood. This is really strange. There's those insects in the trees. It's so bloody quiet.

[KNOCKS] I don't think anybody's in here. I sure hope not. The alarm was left on. Doesn't look like anybody's been fooling with this place. Ooh, doesn't smell too good. Hello, anybody home? I always keep this little bell here by the door. [BELL CHIMES] Service.

It does smell a little bit of rotten food in here. I'm almost afraid to open the refrigerator, because it's been about-- Phew. Oh. Oh. Oh God, that will make you puke.

We're back in the back downstairs bathroom. There's my little boy's stool. Gets up to wash his hands. Yeah, I heard the water was on, but--

The whole window is beautiful. The window pane is an ovular window pane with with stained glass. I'm just going to take the damn tape off. It saved it. Let's assume there won't be another hurricane here anytime soon.

I am so lucky. I am just so lucky. Real question is will we ever live here again. Let's go into my son's room. This is Perry's room. The doors seem to be sealed shut. It won't-- there it goes. This is his brother Gardner's room. He hasn't moved into it yet, because he's only four months old. And it looks like it's OK.

No one living here, and it's just incredibly sad. If I started thinking about it, I'd get upset. It's better just to keep moving, get the list, pack, and leave, I think, at this point. I don't want to stay here. It's too creepy. There's just nobody around for miles.

Margaret's given me a list here. Hope I can do all of it. Guest room, quilt on the guest bed: I got that. The LP records, jazz boxes, her Elvis Costello collection. I don't know if I can carry all that. In the bathroom downstairs, I'd better get that Wiggles towel for my son, Perry. He misses it. The scuzzy, I think it's called, or snuggly that goes into the jogger for little baby Gardner. Maybe I can get that jogger out. There's the old Mardi Gras flag, Muses flag. I don't know why she wants that. She didn't even ride that yet, but who knows? Thomas trains, videos, Dora, Ringling Brothers circus, and the little blue jacket.

Upstairs in the sun room, all the memento boxes and pictures. Running shoes, Nine West shoes. I haven't even gotten anything on the list for me, but I'll figure it out.

Just about got the last stuff in the car. Now I'm using the light of the tape recorder to find my flashlight.

Well, I'm back in the car. It's really dark. I feel like I've been a looter in my own house. I came to get possessions to last how long? A month? Two? Three? It's just hard to know what to take. You just take bits and pieces. It's like your whole life was just washing by you, and you feel like a cat burglar walking around, and every sound is pretty scary.

Well, I'm going to go back down to the compound for the night. So I'm all alone on St. Charles Avenue. It's very dark. It's like being on a country road going through the middle of a very big city. Yeah, here comes a car. He's turning across my bow. Let's see what this guy is. Let's hope we don't have a problem here. It's like a military kind of a guy. That's what they told me to be careful about was, when you come down the street, that if somebody turns in front of you in a large vehicle, they could block you. You've got to be really careful.

Wow. Well that was fun. Those guys were on some kind of operation looking for the thieves, because they had all their lights down. And I don't think they were too happy that I showed up. Their guns were drawn. I think that jogging stroller up top probably makes me look pretty nondescript. They bought my story, anyway.

Now I'm cutting back over to Prytania, and there's a big rat crossing the street here. Oh, jeez [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Oh, there's a kitty cat. Oh, that's so sad. He's alive, but barely. The animals are starving in this city.

Ira Glass

Nick Spitzer. You can hear his great music show, or find out what time it's on the radio, at www.americanroutes.org.

[MUSIC - "DON'T EVER BE AFRAID TO GO HOME" BY FRANK SINATRA]

Ira Glass

Act Five, Water Bed. Well, we have one last story about homes and houses in New Orleans. Louann Mims is 78 years old, and never paid much attention to the annual hurricane and storm warnings in New Orleans where she lives. But this year, this year was different. The morning of August 29, the day the hurricane hit, she got everything ready to pack her car to go to the Superdome to take refuge from the incoming flood. From a temporary housing facility in Maywood, Illinois, where she is now, she talked to Alex Kotlowitz about that day.

Ira Glass

After her rescue, Louann Mims was put on a plane to Chicago wearing only the muumuu she was rescued in and a pair of socks that a relief worker gave her. She's currently at a facility run by the state of Illinois, hoping to get a new apartment somewhere near her daughter. The daughter plans to write a thank you letter to the mattress company, Stearns & Foster, at some point. She talked with Alex Kotlowitz, author of Never a City So Real, There Are No Children Here, and other books.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Diane Cook, Jane Feltes, Amy O'Leary, and Lisa Pollak. Julie's also our senior producer. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production help from Todd Bachmann and Chris Ladd.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, www.thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to any of our programs for absolutely free, or buy CDs of them. Or you know you can download today's program, or our archives, at audible.com/thisamericanlife. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who most weeks has this reaction when he hears our show:

Nick Spitzer

Phew. Oh. Oh. Oh God, that will make you puke.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.

Announcer

PRI, Public Radio International.