To The Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio

Maybe home is where you live, raise your family and mow the grass. Or it's where you grew up. Or where the whole clan gathers for major holidays. Wherever home is, it's never mattered more. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, stories of home, from the Texas hill country to the ‘hood. Also, why American homes are the most comfortable in the world.

Merritt Ierley, author of "The Comforts of Home" and the forthcoming "Wondrous Contrivances," talks with Anne Strainchamps about the domestic technology (central heating, indoor plumbing, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers) that makes American homes the most comfortable in the world. Also, naturalist and environmental activist Janisse Ray talks with Jim Fleming about her memoir, "Ecology of A Cracker Childhood." A naturalist and environmental activist, Ray now devotes herself to long leaf pine restoration.

Dalton Conley grew up in the housing projects of New York's lower East Side. But he went to school in a wealthy white neighborhood. Conley tells Steve Paulson that being white gave him privileges and opportunities his Black and Hispanic neighbors didn't have and says whites take race for granted. Conley's memoir is called "Honky." Also, David Syring is descended from the German immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country. He tells Jim Fleming about his problematical grandfather, and why he still feels rooted to his family's home place. His book is "Places in the World A Person Could Walk: Family, Stories, Home and Place in the Texas Hill Country."

Paule Marshall's novel "The Fisher King" tells in fictional form the story of her cousin Sonny, who wanted to be a jazz musician. Marshall tells Steve Paulson about the neighborhood both she and Sonny were born into, recalls Brooklyn's glorious past as a hotbed of jazz, and explains why so many African-American artists chose to live in France.

Books:

• Dalton Conley, Honky (California)
• Merritt Ierley, The Comforts of Home: The American House and the Evolution of Modern Convenience (Three Rivers Press)
• Paule Marshall, The Fisher King (Scribner)
• Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Milkweed)
• David Syring, Places in the World a Person Could Walk: family, stories, home, and place in the Texas Hill Country (Texas)

Music:

Distribution dates:

• week of 11/04/2001 - hour 2