Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a bandleader who plays accordion and harmonica for Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots. The band travels around the world playing what he calls Afro-Louisiana music: a fusion of zydeco, blues, Creole funk, gospel and tunes ...

Caitlin Carney is co-owner of Porgy’s Seafood Market in New Orleans.Caitlin calls herself the “Lady Monger.” Her business, Porgy’s Seafood Market, is a purple storefront on a busy corner in Mid-Ci...

Another bonus this week to share a behind the scenes conversation with journalist Barry Yeoman and A Peace of My Mind's John Noltner, who collaborated to produce this multimedia series of interviews and portraits for Still Here: Stories from a ...

Darrah Fox Bach is the restoration programs senior manager at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.Darrah cultivated her love for the outdoors in her native San Francisco, where environmentalism ...

Rosina Philippe lives in Grand Bayou Indian Village, a community that is entirely based in water. The homes, along with the church, can only be reached by boat. This was not always the case. “We had solid ground beneath our feet,” she recalls. ...

Alex Kolker is a coastal scientist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.During the Covid-19 lockdown, while others baked sourdough bread, Alex was studying satellite images of the Mississippi River Delta. As an oceanographer...

Ebony Woodruff is an agricultural attorney in Chalmette, Louisiana.Ebony entered law school with plans to become a corporate attorney. As the daughter of a welder-electrician and a teacher, her initial goal was upward mobility. “It was r...

Kristian Bailey is a farmer, and he also considers himself a land steward and teacher. At Orais Hand Farm, located across the road from the Mississippi River, he is trying to move away from the idea of human dominion over nature. Instead, he is...

Chief Devon Parfait spent his early years in Dulac, a bayou community at the watery edge of Louisiana. He caught fish from the dock, bounced on his neighbor’s trampoline, and went out on his grandfather’s shrimp boat. But Hurricane Rita destroy...

Nate Suppon's mother died when he was an infant. He says he was born into a home filled with depression, anxiety, and turmoil. A lack of love. And he tried to fill that void with drugs and alcohol. Between the ages of 15 and 38, he was addicted...

Dan Brandt is a father, a husband, and an entrepreneur who says he likes to think of himself as a kind, decent person who tries to do the next right thing. Dan stopped drinking when he was 35 years old and he is now 56. He didn't lo...

Josue Gonzalez grew up in difficult circumstances that he said left a lot of holes in his life. Holes where the sense of love and belonging, and being cared for should have been. He tried filling those holes with different things.He reme...

Vanessa Weyaus is a member of the Lynx clan of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Her name in Ojibwe translates as The Shining Light in the Sky Woman. Vanessa spent years in addiction, eventually living on the streets and running from t...

John Gerber is a graphic designer and a fine artist in Minneapolis. He describes himself as someone who thinks and feels deeply. He has had an on again / off again relationship with alcohol. He stopped drinking completely between the ages of 30...

Casey Pytleski is a mother, a wife, and a recovering addict. Although she had experimented with my substances as a youth, it was an unexpected introduction to meth as an adult that led to a quick addiction and unraveled the idyllic life she and...

Welcome to A Peace of My Mind, a project that uses storytelling and art to rediscover what connects us. I’m John Noltner, the founder and director of A Peace of My Mind and I have the good luck to travel the country and the world interviewin...

Joe Davis is a spoken word artist in Minneapolis. I interviewed Joe in front of a live audience for one of our Creative Changemakers events on July 25 at S...

Jan Selby is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has been screened internationally in settings ranging from film festivals and art museums to university classrooms and on Public Television.

Duncan Gray is a retired Episcopal Priest and was the 9th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi. I met him at St. Peter's Episcopal church in Oxford, Mississippi, where he was rector, like his father before him. His father served fr...

Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar is chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. She has spent decades helping her community fight for federal recognition of their tribe and finding resi...

Greg Campbell has gone home to die. His liver and kidneys are failing and on Wednesday, March 8, he left the hospital because he didn't want to die in an institution. He has chosen to die at home where he finds peace and love and safety.

April Grayson was born and raised in Mississippi. She left the state after college and returned again 10 years later to tell stories about her home state and, in particular, about the Civil Rights Movement and the history of race in Miss...

Randell Sam is a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. I met Randell while spending some time with the Water Protectors near Palisade, Minnesota. After a brief introduction in Ojibwe,...

Harvey Goodsky, Jr. lives in McGregor, Minnesota. As a part of the Sucker Fish Clan, he carries the responsibility of being the shepherd of the land. His priority is to keep that teaching and learning alive through his own seven children and th...

Sandy Gokee is Anishinaabe—Bear Clan—and lives in Ashland, Wisconsin. For the interview, we sat outside at a park overlooking Lake Superior as a storm skirted around us, so you might hear a little wind and maybe even thunder in the recording. S...