(upbeat music) - Here's what's coming up next on "You Oughta Know."

(slide whooshing) The creator of "Albie's Elevator" joins us to talk about the show and what's coming next.

(slide whooshing) Plus, repurposing old electronics and reintegrating lives.

(slide whooshing) And we check out a program that's helping people tune into the sound of their voice.

(upbeat music) Welcome to the show.

I'm Shirley Min.

June is Pride Month.

So we begin with a look at two programs supporting our LGBTQ+ community.

One story comes from Abington Township where LGBTQ+ kids and allies are able to gather and talk in a safe space.

But first, see how Moss Rehab and the Einstein Pride program are helping some find their voice.

- [Phoenix] Ooh.

My name is Phoenix.

- Yay.

So much louder.

This is a gender affirming voice therapy coordinated through the Pride Program.

We start with the basics of establishing voice goals.

What do they want their voice to sound like?

- Luth, boss, blue suit, choose, loot, food.

- And then we start simply with sounds and trying to manipulate the voice in a safe and healthy way and move through words, phrases, and sentences and then eventually to conversation.

And this patient also needs to work diligently at home to make sure this voice is carrying over to their daily life.

The therapy techniques focus a lot on breath work so that the voice is moving in a different direction without straining or overdoing the tension in your voice or your vocal folds.

We also focus on where your voice vibrates.

- I have a fairly naturally deep speaking voice and it causes me to get misgendered on the regular and I got tired of it, so I gave it a try and it felt really good and it made my voice sound like this so I couldn't be happier.

The tone that I am for the word that I use is airy.

That rather speaking from my chest, I speak kind of from my upper chest throat area, and I use a lot more air to talk than I used to.

And that kind of helps me get to the voice that I'm looking for.

- How did you feel?

- I definitely maintained the airy.

I'm breathing well.

- Yeah.

- I like that.

- Yeah.

- It felt a little small.

- The most important thing to be successful with voice therapy is to trust the process and understand that it is time consuming.

And I think as the speech therapist, I have to appreciate and understand the challenges that oftentimes these patients are experiencing with adapting this voice into their daily life.

- Like I had choose and lose that rhyme and because they use the same sound, on the second one, I relaxed a little much.

- Okay.

- And it dropped more than I like.

- Okay.

- Being correctly gendered is not just it feels nice.

It's lifesaving care.

The overall impact of voice therapy has definitely been to make me feel more at home in my own body.

I feel much more comfortable talking in public.

For many years I would just point at the menu instead of speaking.

This has allowed me to be much more vocal in those sorts of situations.

It allows me to be seen the way that I see myself or at least much closer.

- I see a change in the way a person reacts as we progress through therapy.

The idea that they can do this and that their voice may start to align with who they are.

- A tremendous amount of the work that I've done with Alyssa has not been about making my voice sound the way I want.

We spend a lot of our time in session talking about how I feel about my voice.

It's not voice acting, coaching.

It's speech therapy.

And I think that that distinction is very important.

(slide whooshing) - [Narrator] Last summer an Abington parent contacted their local library asking if they'd be interested in starting a group for LGBTQ+ kids in kindergarten through fifth grade.

- Last summer, my seven-year-old kind of came into themself as being non-binary and gender fluid, and they expressed how they didn't really have anyone at school who understood them.

And so I kind of related since I also identify as non-binary and I felt like lonely for them essentially.

- [Host] Shannon's seven-year-old is Adelaide.

Their pronouns are they/them.

(soft contemporary music) - They just expressed how hard school had been where people are saying like, you're a girl essentially, and like not understanding where they were coming from.

So I wanted to try to surround them with other kids their age.

I thought of reaching out to the library.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to try and their book collection is really inclusive so I just emailed them and then they actually responded, which I was like, what?

But I was really excited, and from there we just started planning things.

- [Jessica] The main focus of the program is to provide a safe space for kids and also to show them books that we have at the library.

- [Host] Jessica Olzak is a children's librarian at Abington Library.

- It is a child-centered program so we do ask parents to let the kids take the lead.

- [Host] Jessica and Shannon co-host the monthly meetings over Zoom initially because of COVID, but now it's more of an accessibility thing.

Kids across the country, as far as Arizona, are logging in.

- We try to take a general theme each month so like we did pronouns or gender identity or gender expression, and then around that we kind of planned a craft activity, a book from the library's collection, and then a book discussion.

- [Host] 10-year-old Valencia Gullow identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

She learned about Rainbow Connections from a flyer her mom picked up.

- My mom got some stuff from the library like the Abington Library.

And when I saw it, I was like, "I have to join."

I felt excited and I felt that is where I need to be.

- The whole time she was just glowing.

She was just so happy.

She felt just there's people out there like me.

Everybody's sharing their stories or just a little piece about them.

She just feels just so warm inside that this is the right place for me.

This is where I came to be accepted.

It's open.

It's a safe space that she can just flourish in.

- [Host] 16 kids attended the first Rainbow Connections meeting last November.

Their most recent meeting had 30 kids.

- It proves that without a program like this a need should be in place.

- And we're not trying to like brainwash anyone to be like non-binary, which I think a lot of people tend to worry about.

That's not what it's about at all.

It's more just like letting kids be who they are and embracing their identities and feeling seen.

And it doesn't have to mean that they're LGBTQ to be in the group, but they're just like so excited to talk about other identities that do intersect with who they are.

It's been cool.

(bright energetic music) - Preserving history takes a concerted effort.

Producer Naomi Brito introduces us to a local historian at the William Way Center who's making sure Philadelphia gay rights history is not forgotten.

(bright energetic music) - I'm Bob Skiba and I'm the curator of collections here at the John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT archives, and in the blogosphere I'm known as The Gayborhood Guru.

I love to have people come to the archives.

I think it's so important that we make the material we have available to the public.

I'm Bob from the archives.

When I first started working here we got more esoteric and specialized researchers coming in.

People who were perhaps doing a movie or an author writing a specific book.

As time went on, I found more and more general groups came in.

We get a lot of students coming in, everything from grad students all the way down to middle schoolers which I find really, really wonderful.

And then we get people who come in because they're donating something because their uncle was gay or their aunt was gay or they had a trans cousin and they wanna come in and learn about their lives.

We happen to have this book from the gay switchboard and gay hotline.

So if someone called and wanted to know about a particular bar or something, the person working at the desk would flip it up and they'd be able to tell them all this information.

For instance, JP's Bar is where Rita's Water Ice is now on Spruce Street right across from the Drake so they would call up and ask about it and the person would reads us off, clientele, mid twenties to forties, some hustlers and quasi hustlers, lower class gays without jobs, some rough trade.

And the comment is, "The bar is safe, but be careful who you take home."

These give a real picture of what the city was like and what services and what was out there for gay people then.

(bright energetic music) When I moved to Philadelphia, I was overwhelmed by the amount of political activity here.

I knew a little bit about Philadelphia's place in national LGBT history, and I knew about the demonstrations that took place every year from 1965 to '69 in front of Independence Hall for gay rights.

I did not realize how significant they were in the national history of LGBT people.

The Reminder Day protests were the first regularly organized and regularly recurring demonstrations for gay rights in the country.

Gay men and lesbians marched in front of Independence Hall on the 4th of July letting Americans know that gay people did not enjoy the rights that our constitution promised.

Those demonstrations went on for five years.

Fifth year happened right after Stonewall in a meeting right here in Philadelphia, people decided to move it to New York the next year.

And voila, gay pride parades were born.

♪ Now we'll show you how ♪ ♪ It would feel ♪ ♪ To be free ♪ The archives began really with the first gay community center, which opened in 1976.

The William White Community Center is the latest iteration for over 20 years now.

We've been in this building since 1996.

I think what's unique about it is the diversity of material that we have in this archive.

We have everything from political buttons and matchbooks from gay clubs to very important personal correspondence and everything in between.

People save early gay and lesbian publications, movies that have had any gay or lesbian or trans characters, and luckily many of them saved their own personal memorabilia.

For me, that's the real joy of working in an archives.

We can always examine the same nationally important figures that people have gone over and over, but I love going through people's personal collections because it tells me how they dealt with being different in their time period, in their milia in their society.

This was the first LGBT mural in the city.

I've been giving tours in the neighborhood practically since I've been working in the archives so since about 2007 or so.

A lot of different kind of people have come on my tours.

What I love to see is a huge age range.

It really thrills me to interest young gay people in their own history so that they know that gay people did not suddenly appear five years ago, but we have a long and really rich history and I love to give them a sense of ownership in that history.

(bright energetic music) My own theory about how gay people kind of take ownership of an urban area, they go into two places.

They go into a place that's really busy where they can disappear in a crowd.

Or you go to an area that no one else wants and you claim it for yourself.

I like to think that if I keep on telling you these stories if we document our history, if we document who we are, it's going to be harder and harder to erase or even to ignore.

♪ I wish I knew how it'll be to be free ♪ - Eliminating electronics from landfills is just one of the goals Par Recycle Works is accomplishing in Philadelphia.

(drill buzzing) - We are at Par Recycle work.

PAR stands for People Advancing Reintegration.

Since our inception in February, 2016, we recycled over 3 million pounds of electronics and kept outta landfill.

Our mission is to reduce recidivism through electronics recycling.

What we do is employment training for about four months, four stages of employment programming.

First stages is deconstruction room.

The second stage is in the warehouse where we are now in inventory.

The third stage is sorting.

And then the fourth stage is customer service.

- I have them labeled also and they still have their pickup printouts with it.

My name is Hakeem Riley, and I am currently the acting warehouse foreman.

And that pretty much consists of managing day-to-day operations.

The first stage is the deconstruction room to deconstruct computer towers, networking systems, audio visual equipment, pretty much just means removing the focus materials from within inside, the power supply, the motherboards, the RAM, CPUs, all those things placing them in their appropriate bins and then they'll be stored and then processed, of course, and then sent to our downstream vendor.

(bright energetic music) - This is where individuals get the forklift training.

They learn how to weigh the materials and then enter the materials into our inventory management system.

And that's what's happening all the time down here.

- Inventory management system, which is the IMS system, is being processed thoroughly.

All the merchandise that's coming in and that's going out is being weighed and being processed.

- After it's sorted, it comes up here.

It gets a barcode, and it goes into our inventory management system which is required from our R2 which is the Responsible Recycling Certification.

It's to follow each material as it's coming into the warehouse, watching it as it's going through the process, and then going back out the front door.

And then the fourth stage is customer service.

That's where the driver and the helper will go out to the customer, our customer base, and be the face of PAR for the customer to see and collect the materials.

- We also have events on the weekend where they get a better understanding of how to sort.

- We do community collection events in and around the Philadelphia area up into Bucks County, Montgomery County and Delaware County.

And we partner with some anchor institutions.

We have employer partners that we've partnered with longstanding construction and demolition site.

We work with a scrapyard, the large waste to energy facility that have career pathways for the men and women that we're serving.

These are green jobs.

We don't want people to go into a dead end job or just a job.

We want them to have a career pathway.

It's a win-win.

It's they're getting the training.

They're getting paid.

We're saving the environment.

So that's a win-win-win.

(bright energetic music) (slide whooshing) - And I want you to stop, stop talking about him because hey, hey, his folks never talk about you.

And rhinoceros is to send him to play games.

Hi.

Welcome to my mega deluxe smoothing grooving elevator.

I'm so excited you're here.

- That was a clip from "Albie's Elevator," one of two brand new children's programs produced right here at WHYY and created by our very own Caitlin Corkery.

- [Caitlin] Hi, Shirley.

- Hi, Caitlin.

Congratulations.

The show is incredible.

- Thanks.

- And I love Albie.

Tell me about the show.

- Sure.

So "Albie's Elevator" is a series for preschoolers from two to five and it follows an elevator operator named Albie as she kind of navigates her own big feelings, the ups and downs, if you will, of her life with the help of her neighbors.

It's a social emotional curriculum, which means it's about Albie's own personal feelings as well as her relationships with other people.

And every episode Albie's dealing with a problem.

She uses her elevator to go and travel and visit a real life artist or performer from the greater Philadelphia area.

And they talk a little bit about their own art practice and how they relate to what Albie's going through and helps Albi solve things.

So I think it's a pretty fun show.

- We're both moms, so we know that the feelings of our little people can be quite large.

- Oh, yeah, there's drama.

- Yeah, a lot of drama.

- Yes.

- So how did you come up with the storylines and the lessons?

- Yeah, so it's a social emotional curriculum.

So we worked with an educational consultant who kind of helped us identify key areas that we were looking to tackle and what would be emotionally and developmentally relevant for kids in those age demographics.

After we kind of had this backbone of what the show would be, we did so much on the ground research, talked to school guidance counselors, talked to other parents.

I was in every single Facebook mommy group asking questions about, you know, like, "What do you wanna see the topics covered in the show to be like?

what would be really relevant for you and your kids at home?"

We had this opportunity to kind of be a little bit more nimble than other shows and kind of address those concerns.

And we wanted to be something that's useful for parents.

On top of that, once we kind of have the issues we're gonna cover, we think what would be really fun?

What do we wanna see from a storytelling perspective?

What's really gonna engage kids?

And we marry them together and find a really cool arts partner to bring it all home.

So it's a really fun process.

- I love that.

And what's great about the show is that it's actually fun for the parents to watch along with the kids.

- I'm so glad you said that.

Yes, like, that's very important for me.

I feel like the ideal situation, right, for kids television is you want co-viewing.

You want whatever caretaker and their child to be watching together so they can kind of engage in conversations about what they're seeing and extend the lesson at home.

So if you're gonna have co-viewing, it has to be something a parent wants to watch.

I'm not gonna name names, but as a parent, I've sat through shows where I'm like, I think for my daughter this is gonna be, you're gonna have to finish this one on your own.

I don't think I'm gonna make it through.

So we want it to be fun and playful.

And also within the show, it's important for us that Albie who's modeling child behavior always kind of solves her own problems.

But for the adults, we wanted to make that a modeling opportunity too.

The adults provide scaffolding for Albie.

they provide conversational talk points of like, "How do you support your little one when they're going through something really, really tough?"

So we feel like there are lessons to be learned for adults too.

- And there are online resources available for parents and caregivers.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So every episode has an accompanying lesson plan.

The lesson plans are robust.

I'm really, really proud of them.

Our educational teams did a phenomenal job.

So it's an at-home activity that you can do with your kid that kind of extends whatever you saw on the episode.

There are also talking points if you wanna start more conversations.

There's vocabulary, recommended reading, and on top of that, all the lesson plans rely on easily accessible materials.

So it's never like you have to run to the store and buy something for 50 bucks to do this activity.

- Right, right.

- It's like, do you have a pencil?

- Right.

- Do you have a glass of water?

Do you have crayons, whatever.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Make it all very, very easy so that kids can do it at home.

We think it's especially great for the summer.

If you're at home and you're looking for something to do, there are these free resources online, watch a little TV, do a little activity, learn.

- Absolutely.

So this is one of two original WHYY children's programs.

Tell me about the "Infinite Art Hunt."

- Sure.

So the "Infinite Art Hunt" is our offering for early elementary school students.

So six to eight-year-olds.

And we think of it as a virtual field trip.

It follows the adventures of a 12-year-old named Freddy who is a real kid and it's her goal for the summer to visit a bunch of amazing art spaces.

So every episode she goes to a different real art space across the greater Philadelphia region and she meets a curator or an educator or an artist, learns about a different medium and gets a try something for herself.

So it's all arts learning curriculum.

We go to some really cool places, and the hope is that it inspires kids to see themselves in art spaces, feel like they're accessible art spaces and maybe go there for themselves.

- I love that.

Okay, so the "Infinite Art Hunt" premiers July 3rd.

"Albie's Elevator" can be seen Monday through Friday here on WHYY TV 12 and on demand at the WHYY Kids YouTube channel.

Caitlin, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you, Shirley.

It's been a pleasure.

(slide whooshing) - Another WHYY production we'd like to bring to your attention is the upcoming documentary on Philadelphia's Forten family.

Producer Karen Smiles gives us an up close look at this affluent African American family from the mid-19th century.

(violin music) - On July 8th, 1776, in the yard of the Pennsylvania State House, what we call Independence Hall today, James Forten was there as a nine-year-old child hearing the words of the declaration for the very first time.

And these are words that he would continually reference throughout his life.

- For me as a kid growing up in Philadelphia, if I would've known that, that might have changed my whole trajectory of having a feel for the American Revolution.

- [Curator] The mission of the Museum of the American Revolution is to share compelling stories about the diverse people and complex events that shaped America's ongoing experiment in liberty, equality and self-government.

We're hoping that the Black founders, the Forten Family of Philadelphia Exhibit, will encourage visitors to think about the American Revolution, not just as a single moment in time, but a complex series of events that launch this ongoing effort to make the world a better place for all people.

This is a family of revolutionaries.

They are committed to the ideals of the American Revolution.

- I think anybody living, surviving, and thriving in the late 18th and early 19th century as Black people were revolutionaries.

You had to be in order to live.

- You can catch the full story on the Forten Family on June 19th at 7:30 PM and 11:00 PM right here on TV 12.

Monday is Juneteenth, a federal holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

Many will take part in celebrations that'll feature African American cultural traditions and foods.

As Kae Lani Palmisano shows us, there's meaning to what's on the menu.

(bright energetic music) - Hi, I'm Kae Lani Palmisano and we're here today at the People's Kitchen in South Philly with Chef Valerie Erwin.

Valerie, I really love what the People's Kitchen is all about.

Can you tell us about the mission?

- The People's Kitchen is a mutual aid kitchen.

We provide employment for cooks and chefs, training for culinary students, food free of charge to members of the community.

And besides that, we have a community garden in Southwest Philadelphia where we grow food for the People's Kitchen and also we distribute food to community members.

- And we're here today to talk about Juneteenth.

Tell us about Juneteenth.

- The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in January of 1863.

In June 19th of 1865, federal troops reached Galveston, Texas and were able to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and allowed the enslaved people there to claim the freedom.

- [Host] How do we celebrate?

- So it's a summer holiday and it's festive so you celebrate it with festive foods.

Red is a celebratory color in the African American community and in the African community.

So you might see things like watermelon or barbecued ribs or strawberry shortcake or a red drink like sorrel.

Sorrel is a hibiscus drink that comes from West Africa and is made in the Caribbean still.

And that's the drink that now when I want a red drink that's what I make.

- [Host] How do we make sorrel?

- So sorrel is the calyx of the hibiscus plant.

You can buy it in a bag like this at Caribbean markets or West African markets.

The flowers are steeped with a full variety of spices.

So I'm gonna put the sorrel in a bowl and we have ginger, the sorrel, orange peel.

I have some of it peeled, but I'm gonna peel a little bit more.

- Okay.

- Just a cinnamon stick.

Cloves, you don't have to do anything with them.

You just put them in.

That's 10 whole cloves and all spice which is a Caribbean spice and it looks like a little brown berry.

And that I crack too.

And I put it in a piece of Saran so it doesn't go all over.

- [Host] don't want those pieces going everywhere.

- [Guest] All right.

And then I'm just gonna peel a piece of the ginger.

- [Host] There's a lot of aromatics that are going into this.

- Yes, it's very, you know, very sweet spices.

And then you cover this with boiling water.

Oh, thanks.

So this is seven cups of water and it's four cups the sorrel goes.

- How long does this need to steep?

- You steep it overnight, and you can just leave it on your counter.

And then in the morning it would look like this.

Now we're gonna strain all of the solids out.

So at this point we're gonna put in sugar.

- [Host] And how much sugar is that?

- This is two cups and we're probably only gonna need maybe a cup and a half.

(bright Jamaican music) - [Host] Ooh, nothing beats a fizzy drink.

- Yes.

- On a hot summer day.

- I agree.

- Well, cheers.

Thank you so much- - Cheers.

- For showing us how to make sorrel.

- Well, that is it for this show.

We hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you right back here next week.

Goodnight, everyone.

(bright energetic music)