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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview with Joni Cole

Aired October 11, 2003 - 07:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CHARLES MOLINEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: "5:30 a.m. I awaken to realize that I have left the television on all evening. The reporter on CNN is talking about law enforcement officials' progress in apprehending the Washington sniper. "I want to pay attention to the reporter, but my cold has left me groggy and with headache. I fall back to sleep."
Those are the thoughts of Miss. America 2003, Erika Harold, one year ago. She is one of hundreds of women whose unique perspectives, hundreds of them, make up a broad new snapshot of America on one maybe ordinary, maybe special day.

It comes from a woman who was having a bad day and wondered what other women were going through at that moment.

The result was "This Day: Diaries from American Women."

Joni Cole put it together with the help of 500 friends and she joins us now live.

Thanks for being with us.

Good morning.

What brought this about?

JONI COLE, AUTHOR, "THIS DAY: DIARIES FROM AMERICAN WOMEN": Good morning.

Well, like you said, I was having a bad day. My father had been sick and my freelance business was in the pits and it was afternoon and I was still in my pajamas and got to thinking is anyone else having a day as bad as I am? And that got me thinking, what are other women really doing today? And so that's where the seeds of the book came from.

MOLINEAUX: You chose 500 of them. How do you find 500 women to give you these different perspectives?

COLE: Oh, my goodness, we cold called, we networked, we relied on friends and family. At some point, too, then we were more calculated. For example, I wanted to know what's a day in the life like for a funeral director, and so I called the National Funeral Directors Association. We called Habitat for Humanity, Dress for Success, Welfare to Work, Miss. America Organization, the Ford Modeling Agency, U.S. Polo Association. You name it, we really, really tried to get a diversity of women to participate in this project. MOLINEAUX: But all on one day...

COLE: Correct.

MOLINEAUX: ... October 14,2002.

COLE: October 15, but, yes.

MOLINEAUX: October 15.

COLE: Yes.

MOLINEAUX: What did you get?

COLE: Well, we got, as you know, Miss. America, the president of NOW. We got an inmate in jail for murdering her children, unfortunately. We got the CEO of Frederick's of Hollywood; a widow whose grief is still so palpable is in the book; Anoushka Shankar, who talks about touring and the loneliness of being on the road. You name it. We did get a diversity of women.

MOLINEAUX: Now, of course, this is different women going through every day life.

COLE: Right.

MOLINEAUX: But we also have a unifying element, I guess, because this was the day after one of the victims of the D.C. snipers was murdered.

COLE: Oh, yes.

MOLINEAUX: Something that they all would have, to one degree or another, heard about and maybe responded to.

COLE: Right.

MOLINEAUX: What did you find?

COLE: Well, certainly the women in the D.C. and the Virginia area and Baltimore, it impacted their day incredibly. One of the women actually was a block away from where that shooting had been and she had to wake up that morning to tell her children there had been another shooting. And, of course, Kim Gandy, the president of NOW, her children were at schools that were virtually locked down. Women were wondering whether they should get gas at the gas stations. Women in D.C. were zigzagging down the street. One of our day diarists nearly got run into by a woman zigzagging down the street who had warned her, hey, you'd better do the same.

It was pervasive. There was a lot of fear. And it wasn't just in that area, but around the country, too. The women remarked on this terrible situation.

MOLINEAUX: Did having that situation as part of this day help to provide the diversity of perspective that you were looking for? COLE: I think it did, because we saw how a tragedy like this impacts somebody who lives in that area directly. But we also saw how it resonated throughout the country. It was interesting, people in the Midwest, the women that participated in that area would come in and oh my gosh, I never go out, or, oh my gosh, what are they doing zigzagging down there?

So you could see how a situation, a national situation like this resonated in different ways depending on where the women lived.

MOLINEAUX: Let's take a look at another of the diary entries that you had come out today.

COLE: OK.

MOLINEAUX: Because there was an incredible variety of them. Are we going to call that one up? 10:22 p.m., coffee is set on auto, his lunch is packed in the fridge, laundry is done except for one load to go in the drier -- I'll do that tomorrow. And I just don't care about dishes. I need to go to bed. Hopefully I will sleep, but I'll probably just stare at the ceiling like I usually do until midnight or so, sigh, such the glamorous life."

How much of that was there?

COLE: I love that day diary. That's a woman named Justina Evans in Farmerville, Louisiana. She's an out of work trucker trying to rebuild her life and she'd had some problems and was trying to bring her children back home. She was living in a trailer with her fiance.

And just the daily grind and trying to fix up the trailer and desperately trying to find work, too. She was a perfect example of how these diaries really talk about day to day reality.

MOLINEAUX: OK, thank you very much.

COLE: Oh, sure.

MOLINEAUX: Good to have you with us this morning.

COLE: Well, thank you.

MOLINEAUX: Joni Cole.

And the book is "This Day: Diaries from American Women."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired October 11, 2003 - 07:42   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHARLES MOLINEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: "5:30 a.m. I awaken to realize that I have left the television on all evening. The reporter on CNN is talking about law enforcement officials' progress in apprehending the Washington sniper. "I want to pay attention to the reporter, but my cold has left me groggy and with headache. I fall back to sleep."
Those are the thoughts of Miss. America 2003, Erika Harold, one year ago. She is one of hundreds of women whose unique perspectives, hundreds of them, make up a broad new snapshot of America on one maybe ordinary, maybe special day.

It comes from a woman who was having a bad day and wondered what other women were going through at that moment.

The result was "This Day: Diaries from American Women."

Joni Cole put it together with the help of 500 friends and she joins us now live.

Thanks for being with us.

Good morning.

What brought this about?

JONI COLE, AUTHOR, "THIS DAY: DIARIES FROM AMERICAN WOMEN": Good morning.

Well, like you said, I was having a bad day. My father had been sick and my freelance business was in the pits and it was afternoon and I was still in my pajamas and got to thinking is anyone else having a day as bad as I am? And that got me thinking, what are other women really doing today? And so that's where the seeds of the book came from.

MOLINEAUX: You chose 500 of them. How do you find 500 women to give you these different perspectives?

COLE: Oh, my goodness, we cold called, we networked, we relied on friends and family. At some point, too, then we were more calculated. For example, I wanted to know what's a day in the life like for a funeral director, and so I called the National Funeral Directors Association. We called Habitat for Humanity, Dress for Success, Welfare to Work, Miss. America Organization, the Ford Modeling Agency, U.S. Polo Association. You name it, we really, really tried to get a diversity of women to participate in this project. MOLINEAUX: But all on one day...

COLE: Correct.

MOLINEAUX: ... October 14,2002.

COLE: October 15, but, yes.

MOLINEAUX: October 15.

COLE: Yes.

MOLINEAUX: What did you get?

COLE: Well, we got, as you know, Miss. America, the president of NOW. We got an inmate in jail for murdering her children, unfortunately. We got the CEO of Frederick's of Hollywood; a widow whose grief is still so palpable is in the book; Anoushka Shankar, who talks about touring and the loneliness of being on the road. You name it. We did get a diversity of women.

MOLINEAUX: Now, of course, this is different women going through every day life.

COLE: Right.

MOLINEAUX: But we also have a unifying element, I guess, because this was the day after one of the victims of the D.C. snipers was murdered.

COLE: Oh, yes.

MOLINEAUX: Something that they all would have, to one degree or another, heard about and maybe responded to.

COLE: Right.

MOLINEAUX: What did you find?

COLE: Well, certainly the women in the D.C. and the Virginia area and Baltimore, it impacted their day incredibly. One of the women actually was a block away from where that shooting had been and she had to wake up that morning to tell her children there had been another shooting. And, of course, Kim Gandy, the president of NOW, her children were at schools that were virtually locked down. Women were wondering whether they should get gas at the gas stations. Women in D.C. were zigzagging down the street. One of our day diarists nearly got run into by a woman zigzagging down the street who had warned her, hey, you'd better do the same.

It was pervasive. There was a lot of fear. And it wasn't just in that area, but around the country, too. The women remarked on this terrible situation.

MOLINEAUX: Did having that situation as part of this day help to provide the diversity of perspective that you were looking for? COLE: I think it did, because we saw how a tragedy like this impacts somebody who lives in that area directly. But we also saw how it resonated throughout the country. It was interesting, people in the Midwest, the women that participated in that area would come in and oh my gosh, I never go out, or, oh my gosh, what are they doing zigzagging down there?

So you could see how a situation, a national situation like this resonated in different ways depending on where the women lived.

MOLINEAUX: Let's take a look at another of the diary entries that you had come out today.

COLE: OK.

MOLINEAUX: Because there was an incredible variety of them. Are we going to call that one up? 10:22 p.m., coffee is set on auto, his lunch is packed in the fridge, laundry is done except for one load to go in the drier -- I'll do that tomorrow. And I just don't care about dishes. I need to go to bed. Hopefully I will sleep, but I'll probably just stare at the ceiling like I usually do until midnight or so, sigh, such the glamorous life."

How much of that was there?

COLE: I love that day diary. That's a woman named Justina Evans in Farmerville, Louisiana. She's an out of work trucker trying to rebuild her life and she'd had some problems and was trying to bring her children back home. She was living in a trailer with her fiance.

And just the daily grind and trying to fix up the trailer and desperately trying to find work, too. She was a perfect example of how these diaries really talk about day to day reality.

MOLINEAUX: OK, thank you very much.

COLE: Oh, sure.

MOLINEAUX: Good to have you with us this morning.

COLE: Well, thank you.

MOLINEAUX: Joni Cole.

And the book is "This Day: Diaries from American Women."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com