So, which story do you believe? One year ago today the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- Johnny on the spot -- established a hotline to collect dona tions for Hurricane Katrina victims who had been begging from rooftops, flooded streets and a fetid Super dome.

This, finally, after everyday folks around the country had already mobilized to send checks to rescue agencies and open their homes to strangers.

`` Hurricane Katrina's sheer force overwhelmed local, state and federal agencies,'' new FEMA Director David Paulison said recently. `` Along with our state and local partners, we worked tirelessly to support the immediate and long-term needs of disaster victims.''

Really? Is that so?

The Brownie-isms continue. Sure ly you remember FEMA's former boss, Michael Brown who, as hun dreds drowned and thousands thirst ed, was told by ever-sharp President George Bush: `` '85Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.'' A new storm season is challenging emotional and structural bulwarks along the Gulf coast. The Army Corps of Engineers is unable to guar antee that shored-up levees will hold while New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin vows they will.

The mythologies and the lack of leadership at all levels show appalling disrespect for the displaced and disenfranchised.

`` The citizens of New Orleans need to know what the plans are, so the citizens can make their plans on whether they should rebuild, repair or sell their homes,'' Norman Fran cis, president of Xavier University and the man tapped to lead the state board, Louisiana Recovery Authority, overseeing the distribution of $11.9 billion in federal aid, said last week.

So, what's the real story?

Well, you'll find it not in the cari catures of officialdom, quite obvious ly, but you will discover authenticity in oral histories shared by Katrina survivors who recall that personal heroism and the kindness of strangers made the difference as our government stood by, flummoxed and fumbling.

StoryCorps, a traveling soundbooth trailer, recently collected oral histories in New Orleans. Some are airing on National Public Radio, a project partner. The process is this: One individual from the public inter views another of his or her choosing, a spouse for instance, or neighbor, or best friend. Interview topics will vary, depending on many factors. In New York City, for instance, many stories have been collected at perma nent booths about the aftermath of 9 / 11. In New Orleans, Katrina was the pull.

Kiera Butler, writing last month in the Columbia Journalism Review, recounted one StoryCorps contribu tion by Cynthia Scott, a New Orleans artist, who interviewed her 58-yearold fianc'e9, Les Colonello, a jazz musi cian.

`` Colonello had remained in the couple's house during the storm,'' Butler writes, `` and he described both the harrowing few hours when his house literally began to fall apart around him and the days immediate ly following the storm, when he and a few neighbors banded together to survive. He described, for example, how he and a neighbor, in a boat they had grabbed as it floated down their street, took food for the neighborhood from a pitch-black, flooded Winn Dixie.

`` But as I listened, I realized that Colonello's story was most com pelling during the moments when some small detail struck a chord in a way that made the disaster under standable on a human scale. One of those moments came when Colonello described climbing up into the rafters of his house to repair the roof. From the rafters, he saw that the wind had destroyed the local horseracing track, and trees littered the streets. `All the neat property lines the neighbors worked so hard on were gone,' he said. `There was no this is my territory, that's your territo ry anymore.' In a few sentences, Colonello had made me understand the chaos after the storm in a way that I hadn't before.'''

StoryCorps is amassing interviews around the country from people just like you -- people with stories that may never make the evening news. In its debut months of 2003, the tour recorded interviews with subjects ranging from homeless youth in Min neapolis, Minn. and Tibetan monks in Madison, Wisc., to Native Ameri cans living on a reservation in North Dakota and inmates at a maximum security penitentiary in Salem, Ore. Anticipated results, 250,000 inter views in time, will be stored at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

What's your story? Bet you've got one.

What's certain is this: By spilling the stories of our hearts we can all learn, as did Les Colonello of New Orleans, there is no `` this is my terri tory, that's your territory.''

We will learn that we are entirely alike on the days in our own life when the wind starts to howl and the waters just keep on rising and rising and rising.

rdrtrdrsrdrw15rsp160 BETSY SHEA-TAYLOR is associate editor of the Opinion page. She can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at btaylor(at)(at)thesunchronicle.com. StoryCorps will be in Boston from Sept. 28 through Oct. 22. For details on how to reserve booth time or contribute your story online, visit www.storycorps.net. You can also make reservations for Boston in mid-September by calling 800850-4406.