This is the Moth Radio Hour.
I'm your host, Michelle Jalowski.
In this hour, stories of eye-opening encounters.
I always feel like there's a special kind of magic that happens when a random encounter with a stranger or a chance conversation has the power to shift my whole perspective.
It's so easy to live in an echo chamber, especially these days, and honestly,
I love a reminder that I'm not always right,
or that things can be different than they initially seemed to me.
All the storytellers in this hour have the opportunity to shift their perspectives in ways big and small,
and they take it.
Our first story comes from one of our open mic story slams in Asheville,
where we partnered with Blue Ridge Public Radio.
Live from the Great Eagle in North Carolina, here's Mandy Gardner.
So I'm walking through the cemetery and I have been for quite some time.
I just assumed that there would be a sign that would point me to the where she lay.
She was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.
But I found signs that pointed the way to Eugene O'Neill, but no Ansexton.
And I'd been walking around the cemetery for quite some time when I finally found a little guard shack.
It was actually a little visitor center,
but it was closed because it was Sunday and the cemetery was mostly shut down that day.
But I walked around the outside of the building.