Team Semper Fi

More than two million veterans have come home so far from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  For returning veterans, reintegrating into society can be a challenge.   How do you find your place, when you’ve changed and the people you love don’t recognize you? When that old life is gone and you have to start a new one from scratch.  In this hour State of the Re:Union explores reintegration and asks the question: how do you come back home from war?

For more information on, visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.

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Photo Credit: Lloyd Cederstrand

In this episode Al Letson and guest producer Lu Olkowski visit a tiny town in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio where, for a century, residents have shared the common bond of identifying as African-American despite the fact that they look white. Racial lines have been blurred to invisibility, and people inside the same family can vehemently disagree about whether they are black or white. It can be tense and confusing. As a result, everyone’s choosing: Am I black? Am I mixed race? Or, am I white?

For more information on “As Black As We Wish to Be” visit our episode page for photos, links and music information.

And keep up with the latest SOTRU releases and events on Soundcloud, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter.

Dayvon Love

In the Baltimore episode, we featured the story of Dayvon Love, and learned how the debate team changed his life. Here’s more of Dayvon’s story from SOTRU intern JP Davidson, who tells us about the new shift that’s spreading across the debate community.

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For more stories from Baltimore, visit our episode page. And be sure to sign up for our podcasts on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud.

Sometimes you don’t know how perfect a place is… until you’ve left it. That’s what Chuck Palahniuk discovered. He grew up in a part of southeastern Washington, called the Tri-Cities—after the trio of cities clustered along the Columbia River: Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. It’s in this area that, in the 1940s, the federal government bought up a huge piece of land to make plutonium for nuclear bombs. And theTri-Cities are still shaped by the odd hybrid of farming the soils of the region– and plutonium production. Every episode of State of the Re:Union, we ask residents to write a letter to the place they live. Chuck, who’s the author of Fight Club, and several other books, writes that, with time even things you never appreciated become oddly… perfect.

For more on Chuck, visit his website. Or to learn more about the Tri-Cities, check out our hour-long episode about the unlikely perfect place.

For more from State of the Re:Union, subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes and look for a new podcast every two weeks.

Wyoming: Second in the Nation for Kids in Jail

Source: Andrew Bardwell from Wikimedia Commons

Entrepreneurs at Work in Cleveland, Ohio

Courtesy: Cellar Door Records

When we visited Cleveland last season, we found a city full of a new generation of entrepreneurs that were making their dreams a reality.

Today, we continue our podcast series with a soulful story from senior producer Tina Antolini. Tina takes us back to the rust belt city to learn about about a refreshing addition to the music scene.

For more about Cleveland, check out our hour-long episode, chock full of stories about the new generation of entrepreneurs taking over the city. And for more information about Cellar Door Records visit their website.

For more from State of the Re:Union, subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes and look for a new podcast every other Monday.