who inspired Bob Dylan?

Last fall at KAXE we had the great great fortune to host the StoryCorps project in Grand Rapids. We not only got the chance to meet different people in our community, see the effects of listening to loved ones and watch the StoryCorps crew in action, but we also got the chance to show them what Northern Minnesota is all about. Sometimes it takes showing people where you live to really get how unique it is. I'm grateful to StoryCorps for their visit that reminded me why I live here.

Alex Kelly, one of the StoryCorps faciliatators and I went to Hibbing one day. We saw the Greyhound bus museum, the Hull-Rust mine pit and we did a "Dylan" tour.

Luckily, I have my connections (thank you Aaron Brown) and he was able to spice up our Dylan tour. We journeyed to the home of B.J. Rolfzen, Bob Zimmerman's high school English teacher. Over the years many historians, documentarians and fans have contacted Mr. Rolfzen because Dylan has cited him as a great influence on his writing. On Realgoodwords you can overhear our conversation with B.J. here.

For the past five years Hibbing has held "Dylan Days" as a celebration of the influence of the Iron Range on Bob Dylan's career. Held around his birthday, every year there's the hopes that Bob Dylan may actually show up to some of the events. This year is a high school reunion that may attract him. Who knows? Stranger things have happened, like Doug MacRostie getting ahold of Dylan's cell phone number and leaving him messages.

Sometimes I wonder why towns celebrate their giant balls of twine or their local legends - either people who left town at a young age or never really want to admit where they came from. But lately I get it. It's how we show our pride and it's an excuse to get together and build community. It's not necessarily about Judy Garland or Bob Dylan. It's about celebrating this place where we live...

From the Dylan Days website:
The following excerpt from the May edition of Rolling Stone's Douglas Brinkley interview with Dylan explains why we organize Dylan Days:

“I ask Dylan if he minds people visiting Hibbing or Duluth or Minneapolis searching for the root of his talent. ‘Not at all,’ he surprisingly says. ‘That town where I grew up hasn’t really changed that much, so whatever was in the air before is probably still there. I go through once in a while coming down from Canada. I’ll stop there and wander around.’"

Dylan Days is May 21st - 24th check here for the complete schedule.

When do our family stories start to matter to us?

That's the question, isn't it? It's been on my mind lately, for the StoryCorps project but also as I talked with author Ariel Sabar today about his book "My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq."

As children and young adults we often tune out when our parents and grandparents tell us stories about the "olden days". I asked Ariel if his dad had told him about his Kurdish roots as he was growing up in Los Angeles.

"I didn't give my dad the chance to tell me things. I didn't want him around. I wanted my mother who was American born to take me to things like soccer practice and picking me up after school. I looked at my dad as someone who was hopelessly mired in the past. Who refused to make any accommodations to the modern era - I didn't even let my dad get that close. So I really knew nothing."

He went on to say,

"In fact this was the 1980's when I was growing up and this was right after the Iranian hostage crisis and I remember skateboarding in the local public school yard and seeing graffiti on the walls along the lines of 'Iranians go home' and 'towel-heads go home'. I didn't think most kids made any distinction between Iraqis and Iranians and people from other countries in the Middle East and so I saw my father as a spoiler on my own yearning to fit in. I didn't know much at all."

At some point, sometimes as relatives age or are sick or when we have children of our own, we WANT to know the stories of the people that came before us. That's what happened to Ariel Sabar when he had his son. That's the genesis of the book about his dad's heritage.

"This book is about what happens when we leave an ancient culture for a modern one - and what happens. As children of immigrants we find ourselves just a few steps over that threshold - the folks who live in the old world are still alive - their memories are still with them. If we wait too long then their stories are gone.

You begin to see yourself more as a link in a chain. Are you going to carry forward this culture in some way or are you going to drop the ball?

For me, one of the things I learned about the Kurdish Jews is that against some very great odds they kept up their ancient language and their religion over 3,000 years as a minority in the mountains living among Muslims. I'm close enough to it that I was in this privileged position of being able to record some of this and bring it forward.

We have a choice to make: do we walk away and blaze forward into this great American future in which we can be whoever we want to be and reinvent ourselves? Or do we carry some of what came before us with us and do we connect ourselves to history in a way that allows us to be something bigger than ourselves? "

It's a question Ariel Sabar posed to himself, but it's something we should pose to ourselves too. Do you carry the traditions and heritage of your parent and grandparents and great-grandparents with you? How do you do that?

What I'm finding out, as are the folks who have signed up for StoryCorps, is that we should all carve out time to ask questions, and most importantly, to listen. It's a gift we can give to ourselves.

how quickly the world can change - a preview of this week's show

The world can change in just one lifetime - a culture and a language can die out...

Award winning journalist Ariel Sabar has just published a new book called "My Father's Paradise - A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq".

In some ways Ariel and his father Yona's story is thousands of miles away - geographically and culturally -from my own. And yet, as 91.7 KAXE hosts the StoryCorps crew in Northern Minnesota I am reminded how much our stories matter. The stories of our mothers and fathers inform and in some cases, define who we are. We live here, in the young country of the United States, knowing very little of the immigrant stories of our ancestors.

Ariel Sabar's father, Yona, was born in a mud hut in a tiny village in the Kurdish regions of Northern Iraq. Nestled in the mountains, this community of Zahko had been there for nearly 3,000 years. The people spoke Aramic - the language of Jesus - a language that has nearly died out. In the early 1950's Yona and 120,000 other Iraqi Jews were resettled in the newly established Israel. Life there was tenuous - cramped and filled with bigotry and poverty. Eventually Ariel's father made his way through night school in Jerusalem and on to Yale University. Today he is an expert in Aramic and is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the Jews of Kurdistan.

To outsiders this story is important and fascinating. But when it is your father's story, well, it's just something your sometimes embarrassing family tells you. At least that how it was to journalist Ariel Sabar. Until he had a son. "My Father's Paradise - A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq" is the father-son tale of retracing a family and a country's history.

Sabar offers something rare and precious – a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations. . . . Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq. " – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Tune in to Realgoodwords this week (6-7pm, CST, Wed & 9-10am, Sun) for my conversation with Ariel Sabar and let us know what it was like for you to tell YOUR story in the StoryCorps Airstream trailer that is parked here, at 91.7 KAXE. Does having a connection to your family's story matter to you?