Cali Rivera makes cowbells, timbales and other percussion instruments in his small shop in the Bronx. Forty-five years ago he started out with a dream to make the perfect cowbell. These days, almost all cowbells are made by machine. Cali is the last in New York to make the bells by hand, and musicians come from around the world to buy his instruments. You can get more information about Cali's cowbells by contacting JCR Percussion in the Bronx: 718-293-6589 The Next Big Thing (NPR) 3/2/2002

Bradley Campbell says drawing story structure is like using Google Maps for directions. Structure offers a path, a way to figure out where to go... what to do with all the tape. To help him plan out his stories, Bradley thinks pictorially. He makes story structure drawings in his head. I asked him to make a few napkin drawings of how he sees structure. Indeed, that's how he first learned about structure -- in a bar on a napkin.

Many years ago, Bradley was a print reporter. He says everyone he worked with kept talking about structure. He knew they meant the way in which a story is organized, but that left him with a question: Organized how? So, he asked a friend of his from the Village Voice "What's structure?" The guy grabbed a napkin and a pen and made a drawing. "Click!" Suddenly, it all made sense.

Now, Bradley's a radio reporter for Rhode Island Public Radio . He says he's listened long and hard to stories on public radio to understand how they're configured and to create skeletal renderings of their structure.

"Napkin #1" is Bradley's drawing for This American Life , a structure Ira Glass has talked about ad infinitum : This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. (Those are the dashes.) And then a moment of reflection, thoughts on what the events mean (the exclamation point).

On this edition of HowSound, Bradley talks about his napkin drawings for TAL, All Things Considered, and "The e" (on a napkin below labeled "Transom"). And, as a bonus for you because you're reading the blog, I've also included his napkins for Morning Edition and Radiolab.

First off, this episode is sort of a goodbye. I will be departing my beloved WBEZ shortly to strike out for new adventures. I’ll include my weepy valedictory at the bottom of this post. But the story this week is important, so before your attention wanders …

As kids, we usually learn about nature from a decidedly human point of view. The world exists in relation to us. People are the stars in this scenario: We are Hamlet, while nature is like Denmark – the place where we happen to be. The conventional wisdom has been that this is a universal way the mind develops its awareness of the natural world.

But an eclectic group of researchers are challenging that. The team is made up of psychologists from Northwestern University, and researchers from the Menominee Reservation and the American Indian Center of Chicago. They started looking carefully at the way Native and non-Native children come to learn about nature. They found some distinctive differences.

Namely, Native kids tend not to have that anthropocentric view in the early years. They come to see the biological world in terms of relationships and connections – what psychologists call “systems-level thinking.” Non-Native kids, on the other hand, generally think more in hierarchical categories like taxonomy – kingdom, phylum, species, etc. So the human-centered learning may not be universal after all, but instead flavored by the culture we grow up in. 

This goes deeper than just having different beliefs. The scientists say those distinctive worldviews actually change the way we think, learn and reason. Over the last decade or so, the team has been designing experiments to tease out the ramifications of that change. It has major consequences for education,  and might (this is my speculation!) influence our attitudes about the environment.

Join Rabbi Neil Blumofe as he discusses Powell's legacy as a reminder to us of the tightrope we walk each day as we try to remain close to those things we need to sustain our souls in a time when exterior elements beyond our control are battling for our attentions, our bodies, our minds and our spirits. When listening to the genius of Bud Powell we can hear and feel the sheer force of human will, and the power one exudes when fully present amidst the chaos both inside and out.

Veteran food writer Marion Kane tells the story of the first recipe she learned to make. It's a touching coming of age story about growing up Jewish in London in the 50s and 60s...Recorded in my kitchen last month.

Whenever governments -- especially local governments -- cut back, there's always a lot of talk about "essential services" .... The ones everyone expects to be performed. This is a look at someone who performs one of those "essential services." Arguably one of the most important. But not one any of us really likes to think about much. Producer Richard Paul spent the day with a man nicknamed "Motor Mouth" who collects Washington DC's trash. CLOSE: Albert M. Roe, Junior -- better known to his colleagues as "Motor Mouth" -- collects trash in Washington, DC. Our series on people who work is produced by Richard Paul.