A lobster on a boat off Mount Desert, Maine, is measured to see if it is a legal size. There has been a glut of lobster this season, driving down prices.
This summer is shaping up to be a record season for lobster landings in Maine. That sounds like good news for a state where lobstering makes up a large part of the economy.
It may be welcome news for consumers and food retailers, but for the state's 5,000 lobstermen, it's a different story.
Hard To Make A Living
On Portland's waterfront, about five lobster boats are tied up at one of the piers. Half a dozen lobstermen stand around discussing the current problem of oversupply.
All summer long, All Things Considered has beentalking to politicians, musicians and others about one song they remember their parents listening to, and how it influenced them.
A worker dismantles a mattress at a recycling facility in Oakland, Calif. The material will be used to make carpet products and proceeds will help support the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, a nonprofit that helps low-income families in Eugene, Ore.
Credit Pam Fessler / NPR
Terry McDonald, executive director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, is known to some as "the junkyard king" because he spends so much time trying to turn waste into cash.
The bad economy has hurt many nonprofits around the country, even as demands for their services have grown. That's certainly the case in Reading, Pa., which has been labeled the poorest city in America, with a poverty rate of more than 41 percent.
Now, one local nonprofit, Opportunity House, hopes to salvage some of its services by salvaging junk.
You know you want one: rickshaw seat covers emblazoned with Bollywood stars. It's just one way New Delhi rickshaw drivers are trying to outdo each other in the battle for passengers.
Credit Elliot Hannon for NPR
The three-wheeled buggies — a kind of shared taxi — are the most convenient and cheapest way to get around in India. Here, rickshaws are fixed up in New Delhi, India's capital.
Credit Elliot Hannon for NPR
Mohammed Arif makes custom rickshaw seat covers at a market in Delhi that serves as a one-stop shop for the city's rickshaw drivers.
Dashboard statues of glow-in-the-dark Hindu gods, hubcaps painted like soccer balls and seat covers adorned with Bollywood stars — all this and more rickshaw bling is all the rage in India.
The motorized three-wheeled buggies are a fixture on India's crowded city streets, scooting in and out of traffic, picking up and dropping off passengers.
In New Delhi alone, there are some 50,000 of these vehicles. And that number is set to double as the city recently lifted a decades-long cap on the number of rickshaws allowed on the road.
Maxima Guerrero and Daniel Rodriguez canvass for votes in Phoenix. Rodriguez moved to the U.S. with his mother when he was a child, and is undocumented. "The best thing I can do now," he says, "is organize those that can [vote], and make them vote for me."
For years, Maricopa County, Ariz., has been ground zero in the debate over immigration.
On one hand, the massive county, which includes the state capital of Phoenix, has a growing Latino population. On the other, it's home to publicity savvy Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made his name by strictly enforcing, some say overstepping, immigration laws.
Shyanne (left) holds 1-year-old Makai, as Stepp checks to see if all of Shyanne's homework has been completed.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Along with raising three kids, Stepp works full time and takes evening classes at a local community college to earn an associate degree in early childhood education. Opportunity House also helps pay the rent on her family's apartment.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Stepp hugs her daughter, Shyanne, at the Second Street Learning Center, where she is a head assistant teacher earning less than $9 an hour. The center provides 24-hour day care for Reading's working poor and is run by a nonprofit called the Opportunity House.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Opportunity House also supports Stepp's education and sometimes will subsidize her schooling expenses if she is running short on cash. "Being a head assistant, I can't go any further without some kind of degree," she says.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Stepp sports a tattoo of her younger son's name, Makai, on her wrist. I-LEAD, the nonprofit that runs her evening classes, provides dinner for its students.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Stepp says her goal is to obtain an associate degree and then a bachelor's degree. She hopes to open a day care center of her own someday.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Stepp picks up her three children, (from left) Shyanne, 8; Isaiah, 10; and Makai, 1, at the 24-hour day care center after her classes are over around 9 p.m.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Sometimes Stepp has to remind her children why their lives are so hectic. "I explain to them that I'm doing it for them, not for me," she says.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Shyanne (left) holds 1-year-old Makai, as Stepp checks to see if all of Shyanne's homework has been completed.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Stepp speaks to Isaiah before bedtime. "Sometimes I think I have done something wrong for them to turn their backs to me," she says of her failed relationships with her children's fathers. "But then there are other times that I'm in a good mood and think, 'Oh, well. Let them go. If they don't want to do it, I can do it. I can be the mother and father at the same time.' "
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
"I think a lot of single mothers have a bad name," Stepp says. "[People] think they just go out and have babies and be on welfare. I'm the opposite, and I know [there are] other single mothers out there that are also the opposite. They try hard, and sometimes it's just not hard enough. You need that help."
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Jennifer Stepp, 29, lives in Reading, Pa., and is raising three children by herself. Like 14 million other single mothers in America, she lives below the poverty line.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Once a thriving railroad hub and factory town in southeast Pennsylvania, Reading has a poverty rate of 41.3 percent and is labeled America's poorest city with a population of 65,000 or more.
Single mothers have an especially hard time getting out of poverty. Households headed by single mothers are four times as likely to be poor as are families headed by married couples.
Still, many of these women are trying to get ahead. Some know instinctively what the studies show: Children who grow up in poor families are far more likely to become poor adults.
Finally, there's some good news about Alzheimer's disease.
It turns out that a few lucky people carry a genetic mutation that greatly reduces their risk of getting the disease, an Icelandic team reports in the journal Nature.
The mutation also seems to protect people who don't have Alzheimer's disease from the cognitive decline that typically occurs with age.
Hyungsoo Kim brought his sons Woosuk (left) and Whoohyun to California from Korea so the boys could get an American public-school education. In "goose families," one parent migrates to an English-speaking country with the children, while the other parent stays in Korea.
Eleven-year-old Woosuk Kim sees his mother only three or four times a year. That's because he's part of what Koreans call a "goose family": a family that migrates in search of English-language schooling.
A goose family, Woosuk explains, means "parents — mom and dad — have to be separate for the kids' education."
Woosuk's father brought him and his little brother to America two years ago to attend Hancock Park Elementary, a public school in Los Angeles. The boys' mother stayed in South Korea to keep working.
Sory Kandia Kouyaté was one of the most celebrated singers in West Africa when he died suddenly in 1977. He was just 44, and given his spectacular voice, it's a safe bet that Kouyaté would have been an international star had he lived just a few years longer. Now, some of his finest recordings have been collected on a two-disc retrospective called La Voix de la Révolution.
