Always Keep the Fire Going Somewhere

Everything Is Stories

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

B.B. St. Roman is the only staff member for the New Orleans Police Department Homeless Assistant Unit. Before helping the homeless, she traveled the world, recording sound for documentaries involving shamans, Buddhist monks, and Mother Teresa. And at one point, she became the tour manager for Dr. John, Louisiana musician and legend. Now, she works full-time with the homeless. She tells her stories of Hurricane Katrina, shelter issues in the city, as well as planning and dreaming of ways to help those living in the streets. Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray. Music by Holy Gallows. Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The truth of matter was, stories were everything and everything was stories.
0:06.0	Everybody told stories. It was a way of seeing who they were in the world.
0:11.0	It was their understanding of themselves.
0:18.0	Yeah, well, I got the experience of the mountains as a child because our family would go to the Adirondack Mountains in New York State, and my father and grandfather would build a cabin across the lake, so would go stay in the cabin, no electricity, no running water and all that for a few weeks as a family.
0:35.6	But then, of course, when I hit the Himalayas, when I've been there like eight times to Nepal,
0:40.3	so I've been up in the mountains a lot over there, I realized that the mountain is strong, it's quiet, and it's solid.
0:48.3	Like nothing can shake it, and it just radiates an energy that you feel. And that's something that the shamans say.
0:57.0	They don't have to go to Sagarmata, which is Mount Everest.
1:01.0	They bring the mountain to them.
1:03.0	You bring the mountain into you.
1:05.0	Actually, Mother Teresa, she would act like a mountain wherever she went. We'd go to a country where they wanted to take the land away from the sisters that she had there.
1:15.6	And so she'd go talk to the government and she would just steadfastly stand there and say very quiet and calmly,
1:21.6	oh, but this is what we really should have.
1:24.6	And she'd get everything she wanted.
1:26.6	Just by being like a mountain.
1:28.3	You know, standing up for her principles and what she believed and what she knew was the right thing to do,
1:33.3	she didn't let anything affect her.
1:35.3	When you come around the corner of a path up there and all of a sudden you see all these mountains like big mountains white mountains
1:44.4	you're just you're just in awe so to me being like a mountain is a symbol of strength
1:51.6	and of being quiet and strong and yet radiating at the same time and i use that symbol very often especially when I came back from the Himalayas,
2:03.6	and I found that my parents had been murdered, and I had to deal with that.
2:07.6	I had the strength of the mountains in me, and I've always kept that symbol to be like a mountain.
	...

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