‘Alley Gallery of Loss’ Archives
“Laura Waterman Wittstock, Still the Superb Journalist: First Person Radio Signs Off the Air”
Laura Waterman Wittstock BY ELAINE SALINAS, THE ALLEY, MARCH 2018 Excerpt from a longer history of First Person Radio and the beginning of Migizi Communications. “The final segment of First Person Radio (FPR) aired on KFAI Radio in Minneapolis on February 14th, 2018, forty years after it originated as The Native American Program on KUOM-AM, the University of Minnesota”™s radio station. First Person Radio can best be described as a labor of love coupled with a commitment to produce timely and accurate news and information about the American Indian community to counter the many misrepresentations and inaccuracies perpetuated about Native people in the major media. “When First Person Radio was forced to sunset in 1992 due to rising production and distribution costs and declining support for public radio across the country, its legacy continued. Laura Waterman Wittstock, founder of MIGIZI Communications, took advantage of the large [...]
Wizard Marks, assiduous artisan of articulation, bestowed a treasure trove of written wisdom
Wizard Marks”' Alley writings are “Bound for the Future” at Libraries.Wizards Marks left indelible marks (pun intended) with superb articles and extensive investigative reports for The Alley from mid 1980s to 1990s. Her excellent work is now bound within reprinted Alley Newspapers in hard-cover volumes at the Hennepin County Franklin Community Library and the Hennepin County Minneapolis Library. Wizard Marks 1943-2018 Wizard Maureen Marks was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1943 to Elizabeth Ruth Marks Halpin and Vincent Paul Halpin, and raised in a WWII federal housing project called “English Woods.” “It was a ghetto away from other neighborhoods, a ghetto in the woods,” Marks said and “because it was segregated, it was inhabited by hillbillies.”””her people. Cincinnati is the first major stop north of the Mason-Dixon Line along the Dixie Highway, the main migration route for hillbillies. In those days, federal projects did [...]
Get Dick Bancroft!
Dick Bancroft, Storyteller, July 21, 1927 ”“ July 16, 2018 COURTESY OF BANCROFT FAMILY BY LAURA WATERMAN WITTSTOCK Dick was born in St Paul, MN on July 21, 1927 to parents who were both industrious and creative, and they wanted their son Dick to be the same. He shoveled walks and did many other chores for nickels, following his father”'s admonition of saving half of what he earned. Along the way he learned to care for farm animals and milk cows. But these were chores. Dick had ideas and wanted to express them in images. As a child, Dick earned a small plastic Kodak camera. He began to take his own pictures. They were no more than two inches square, but they were so cherished, that he had them in his collection at life”'s end. There were pictures of the family, the dog, and the car. But Dick wanted more than that. Above all, he wanted a real camera. At that time his family subscribed to the magazine “LIFE,” with its brilliant pictures of famous [...]
