Heads or Tales

Talking To The Librarians

Yesterday, Frank and Cathy Jo and I went to the semi annual Columbus librarian’s meeting. It was so nice to see my old librarian friends. Our job was to show those school librarians the benefit of hiring storytellers and to emphasize that the Storytellers of Central Ohio would be a good place to start. The superintendent told Frank that the librarians needed to bring more folks like us into the schools. What could be better? I came away, however, feeling as if I was swimming in mud with a voice speaking from down inside a well.

Last week, at Artists In Schools night, I was able to talk about being a storyteller and say something meaningful about storytelling and myself, but not this time at the librarian’s meeting. The trouble was that Frank invited me. He was in charge, and I only prepared my part. I didn’t prepare in my head for what we might say at the end. What might be said at the beginning, and how we might handle questions. I didn’t do it because that was Frank’s job, so I put the focus in its default place, which was on myself. That’s why, when we left, I felt like I was swimming in mud and my voice felt as if it was coming from down in a well. I didn’t make myself part of the bigger picture, part of the purpose.

I just finished a great article by David Novak in a journal called Storytelling, Self and Society. In the article he talks about a performance given by storyteller Gwenda LedBetter. He says she did such a good job because even though the entire evening of stories was about herself, even though storytelling is about conversation, compared to the more formal theater, Ms. Ledbetter entered her performance as the teller of her own story. The story and its telling became the focus and she the author. He said that if you talked to Ms. LetBetter before or after the performance, you wouldn’t know she was a storyteller.

“At age 76, Gwenda LedBetter demonstrates that the art of storytelling is the art of becoming a storyteller. For, even as she shares herself with us, she becomes a storyteller. By beginning in an ordinary prosaic voice and transforming into a poetic voice, Gwenda transforms from an ordinary person talking into a formal storyteller, conjuring.”

I think that when we spoke to the librarians, I forgot that I needed to shed my daily life and take on some of what storytelling is. Frank and I and another storyteller are due to talk again at the OCEA convention in Cincinnati. There I will have the challenge of seeing all my friends from St. Joseph School plus the school librarian bunch. This time, I’ll work at conjuring.

Kiss The Bride

Take a look at the new comic Nelson drew and I wrote. When that event happened at our wedding 39 years ago, I thought I would never find it funny. Not ever. Now, when I talk about that incident, I laugh so hard that tears roll down my face and I have to take deep breaths to finish. I think it just goes to show that out of the greatest conflicts can come the best stories. This was more of an internal conflict…for each of us. The drawing part took Nelson a long time because he was embarrassed. I told him that that he shouldn’t do it if he didn’t want to, but he finished a few days ago, and I posted it. Just click on each drawing in turn to enlarge and read it. If you want to see a picture of Nelson, click on the comic above called "The Board Meeting".

A Storytelling Story

Next week on Tuesday is the annual Artists In Schools gala, in which Columbus teachers and artists get to mingle and find out about each other. I’m really happy to be a member of that organization because of all the people I’ve met and because of all the good it does for artists in Columbus. This year, I’ve really been thinking about the moments in storytelling when I realized that I was glad I was a storyteller. I want to tell teachers about those moments because I think they illuminate why storytelling is important, and it gives them an idea about how I fit in as well.

Here’s a story that always comes to mind:

When I first began to tell stories, I asked a primary class at St. Joseph School, where I was the librarian, if I could come once a week and tell them stories for thirty minutes. Every week, on Friday, at the end of the day, I showed up. When the kids saw me, one student would ask permission to ring the little bell on the teacher’s desk. The announcement was made, the kids put chairs on tables, cleaned up the class, turned off the overhead lights and in the fading afternoon, found a place with their friends at the far end of the big room. Char and Jennifer, the teachers, pulled up their chairs, and I told the stories I brought. I told Wiley and the Hairy Man. I told The Crab With No Eyes. I told Old One Eye. Week after week.

When, at the end of the year, the classes were asked to vote for their favorite events at school, every child in that class voted for the Friday storytelling sessions. I was so surprised. Storytelling was defiantly a powerful medium, and I felt so lucky to be able to use it. Now, I know even more. Storytelling opened all our imaginations on those Fridays. It made us all listeners, and as listeners we became, for that short time, more than a class, we became a family.

Is Someone Out There Watching?

Could it be that things happen for a reason? That maybe someone way out there is watching.

A month ago, I was in the doctor’s office for a checkup. When he asked for a urine sample, there was blood in it. After that day, however, all bleeding stopped. The urologist did blood tests, urine tests and scans, only to find nothing. When he looked, however, with his fancy scope, he found a small lesion in my bladder. I had it removed yesterday, and probably will only have to be checked periodically. I may never have followed up on it, if it hadn’t happened in the doctor’s office. Realizing that, I began to wonder if someone is looking out for me.

This story has a twist, and here it is: I was to supposed to have the procedure done a week ago. A week ago, when I showed up early in the morning all washed down with Dial soap, like they told me, and really nervous, the lady at the desk couldn’t find my name. “You’re not on our schedule for today. You’re scheduled for Sept. 12.”

The head nurse came out. She told me I could wait an hour and a half until the urologist's office opened, and they could call. I am not unacquainted with getting dates mixed up and assumed that I had made the mistake, but it wasn’t my error. Both the doctor’s office and the surgery center didn’t send the information needed to do the job that day. That made me wonder about the competency of the center and the doctor, or, perhaps... I wasn’t supposed to be there. The new date was scheduled for yesterday which was Thursday, Sept. 5.

With Thursday looming closer and closer, I received a call on Tuesday from Jim Flanagan at the Southern Ohio Storytelling Festival, asking me if I could fill in from Thursday to Saturday for a participant who was unable to come. I told Jim that, after being put to sleep and having someone dig around my insides on the day before I was to perform, I would be in less than top shape. I declined, and THAT made me very unhappy. He did, however, ask me to be part of the festival lineup for next year. Being asked for next year made me really happy, but, I pined to take this year’s opportunity. God knows what will happen by next year.

Being asked on Tuesday to jump in to the festival on Thursday was daunting, but I was ready to jump in. I could already hear the brakes on the school buses as they pulled up to the theater, and it was exciting. Realistically, however, two days wasn't enough time for me to prepare for such a big event. I would need to revisit old stories and spiff them up, create some new ones and plan which would go best where. I couldn’t have done that adequately in two days, but I would have tried. If it hadn't been for the doctor, the office mixup and my bladder, I would have been there.

So... Maybe, my grandma, the writer, or my dad, the editor, or my sister or mom, worked some magic with the scheduling mess and even with the detection of that lesion. Could it be that things do happen for a reason and perhaps someone from beyond this life occasionally has us in their sights?