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Glass Mosaic, Matt Manning at The Stoop; A Case of the Mondays; and UPS guy, Mike Beresh

A visit with the artists behind the glass mosaic at the AVAM; a Stoop story from psychiatric nurse Matt Manning; Betsy Boyd shares A Case of the Mondays; and music and conversation with UPS delivery guy, Mike Beresh.

As of this weekend, Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum is officially bedazzled.  A massive, multicolored, two-thousand-square-foot glass mosaic has been mounted to the exterior of the building.  Many hands have worked for many months on the huge-scale community art project, and while the mural was in progress, The Signal’s Aaron Henkin paid a visit to the artists.

 

Matt Manning at The Stoop (photo credit: Dan Kempner)

On October 20th, the Stoopstorytelling series hosted an evening with the theme:  That’s Incredible:  Stories about aliens, mystical experiences, and other strange-but-true happenings.  One of the most truly incredible stories of the night came from Matt Manning, a psychiatric nures.  He stepped up to the mic in front of a live audience at Center Stage and told this tale.

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Matt Manning shares his story at The Stoop.

Betsy Boyd teaches creative writing at the University of Baltimore and serves as literary editor at BaltimoreFishbowl.com. Boyd joins us this week to share an excerpt from her short story, A Case of the Mondays.

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Betsy Boyd reads "A Case of the Mondays"

Think about the last time you got a delivery from UPS.  Unremarkable, right?  You heard the knock, answered the door, signed for the package, muttered a thank you, and then you went on about your day.  Now ask yourself:  Did you give a second thought to the guy in the brown uniform?  Probably not.  Why would you?  He’s familiar but anonymous, just a guy doing his job.  But what do you reckon he thinks about you, or your next door neighbor, or any of the hundreds of personal lives he knocks on the doors of every day?  Producer Aaron Henkin decided to break the wall of anonymity with his UPS driver, Mike Beresh, and he invited him to WYPR’s Studio B.

mike_beresh.mp3
a visit with songwriter and UPS delivery guy, Mike Beresh

Aaron creates and produces original radio programs and podcasts for WYPR. His current project is The Maryland Curiosity Bureau. Aaron's neighborhood documentary series, Out of the Blocks, earned the 2018 national Edward R Murrow Award. His past work includes the long-running weekly cultural program, The Signal, and the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings series, Tapestry of the Times. Aaron's stories have aired nationally on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.