A Grain of Sand

Series produced by Charles McGuigan

Caption: PRX default Series image
PRX default Series image 

Weekly series featuring real stories that spring from the well of memory. Every narrative illuminates our shared human experience. At least that's the hope of producer Charles McGuigan.

I want to achieve the effect of a short story but told in a way that makes the listener feel part of evolving action.I love stories and believe narrative that flows directly from the well of experience illuminates like arc light, strikes with the force of iron.


157 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Steve Moore
Charmed lives lack for something. If you’re born in a state of nirvana or somehow privileged as a member of the elect, what’s the point? It’s only ...

  • Added: Nov 27, 2015
  • Length: 26:34
Piece image
The Mummers Day Parade is as quintessentially South Philadelphia as Ben Franklin or Willy Penn, a Philly cheese steak or Italian water ice. It’s u...

  • Added: Dec 29, 2015
  • Length: 08:35
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Jay Ipson is a survivor of the first magnitude. He learned his survival skills under the most harrowing conditions known to man. As a young boy, he...

  • Added: Jan 28, 2016
  • Length: 26:28
Caption: Jay Ipson, Credit: John MacLellan
Jay Ipson is a survivor of the first magnitude. He learned his survival skills under the most harrowing conditions known to man. As a young boy, he...

  • Added: Jan 28, 2016
  • Length: 26:41
Caption: Jay Ipson, Credit: John MacLellan
Jay Ipson is a survivor of the first magnitude. He learned his survival skills under the most harrowing conditions known to man. As a young boy, he...

  • Added: Jan 28, 2016
  • Length: 26:37
Caption: Erin Frye and Charles, Credit: Charles McGuigan
Live Art, sponsored for the past three years by the School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community (SPARC), is the only program of its kin...

  • Added: Mar 30, 2016
  • Length: 27:38
Caption: Frances Hilary McGuigan
As a boy I always thought it would be terrifying to be a tree rooted in the ground when developers arrived with backhoes and chainsaws. How you cou...

  • Added: Apr 08, 2016
  • Length: 27:22
Caption: Triptych photo illustration, Credit: Doug Dobey.
For the longest while I would think of my mother as a husk like the shell left behind by a cicada, all the internal meat gone, just a crisp skin re...

  • Added: Apr 15, 2016
  • Length: 27:38
Caption: Movie Nights at Once Upon A Vine, Credit: Charles McGuigan
Today’s show is called Prelude to Summer. We end up on a parking lot late at night on the first day of summer, sprawled out on sleeping bags and lo...

  • Added: Apr 22, 2016
  • Length: 22:10
Caption: Elisheva and Amaris, Credit: Rebecca D'Angelo
Elisheva and Amaris, mother and daughter, know a thing or two about uphill battles where every inch of gained ground costs dearly. Each in her way ...

  • Added: May 07, 2016
  • Length: 27:49
Caption: Elisheva and Amaris, Credit: Rebecca D'
Elisheva and Amaris, mother and daughter, know a thing or two about uphill battles where every inch of gained ground costs dearly. Each in her way...

  • Added: May 13, 2016
  • Length: 26:51
Caption: Abbie Catherine Waters
Abbie Catherine Waters was just nine years and two days old when she left this world. I have heard men and women who knew Abbie refer to her as an ...

  • Added: May 20, 2016
  • Length: 26:25
Caption: Abbie Catherine Waters
Abbie Waters lived in Richmond, Virginia and attended Holton Elementary School. She had survived a rare form of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. F...

  • Added: May 26, 2016
  • Length: 27:28
Caption: Shenandoah National Park, Credit: Charles McGuigan
More than 75 years ago Shenandoah National Park opened to the public for the first time. One of the most scenic routes in Virginia— Skyline Drive w...

  • Added: May 26, 2016
  • Length: 53:41
Caption: Barry Truitt at the helm., Credit: Charles McGuigan
Virginia’s Barrier Islands and the waters and salt marshes that surround them represent the most pristine coastal region on the Eastern Seaboard. U...

  • Added: Jun 10, 2016
  • Length: 27:59
Caption: Hogg Island moorings., Credit: Charles McGuigan
Virginia’s Barrier Islands, and the waters and salt marshes that surround them, are among the most pristine coastal regions on the entire Eastern S...

  • Added: Jun 16, 2016
  • Length: 25:17
Caption: Lester Blackiston
This is the story of a dead man. He gave up the ghost a few years ago. And some who knew him might say he never had a ghost to give up in the first...

  • Added: Jul 22, 2016
  • Length: 26:09
Caption: Lester Blackiston
Lester Blackiston was the pirate of Shockoe Bottom. He was a minor Beat poet, a questionable inventor, a man who avoided work at all costs. He had ...

  • Added: Jul 27, 2016
  • Length: 23:27

  • Added: Aug 03, 2016
  • Length: 24:46
Caption: Lester Blackiston
Pirates and their deeds become legend. Blackbeard, Lester’s personal favorite, did this thing with canon fuses, or so the legend goes. Just as his...

  • Added: Aug 11, 2016
  • Length: 26:15