Steering the craft

Posted on April 11, 2011 by hdh

I’m reading the book by Ursula K. LeGuin entitled Steering the Craft. It is a book about story writing. There are a number of exercises in it to try as you read the book. Here is the first exercise: Write a paragraph to a page that is meant to be read aloud.

 

My thoughts on deer:

Destructive deer are determined to drift onto my lawn and property. Seeking out fragrant flowers and shrubs that satisfy their never-ending appetite they enjoy frivolously feasting on our bounty busting branches that were beautifully set-up to enrich our landscape. They show no care for the work we have done to make our land pretty. Chomping on the tops of plants, leaving nothing but stems and roots. Leaving their droppings whilst pursuing their plunder, destroying all of the perennials and decorating our lean lawn with putrid poop to be stepped upon. Have they no care for our desires.

What can we do to stop them? Barriers and sprays don’t work. They shiver and shake when we’re around to see and fly at the least provocation. They patiently wait eyes and ears at the ready for any moment when we are not around or our backs are turned to again nibble and gnaw at our gardens. Then there are the ticklish tics that they bring and breed. Creeping, crawling little suckers of blood and bringers of disease that latch onto our clothes and skin as a reminder of the plunder of plenty that the deer have wrought to our humble hovel.

Some day, yes, some day we will prevail. But till then, we will continue to plant knowing that success is but a dream.

 

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Unfinished story

Posted on December 4, 2010 by hdh

You’ve heard of Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”? Consider this my “Unfinished Story”. What I’ve written is exactly what was going around in my head one night. It was pleading with me to be written down. So I have done that. I’m welcome to any suggestions as to where I should take it from here.

Once there was a story. It was a simple story about a king and a queen. They were unable to have children and wanted an heir. As in most tales they made a deal to have a  a child. Of course the condition agreed upon required them to give up something valuable when the child reached a certain age. The condition didn’t concern the king or queen when the agreement was made, however when the child came of age they needed a way to break the agreement. The story unfolds and a quest is taken until finally all things work out in the end except for the proposer of the deal. As I said a simple story.

But now our story begins, because this story had nowhere to go. Yes, it was created. There was a wonderful beginning and a happy ending, but until it could be shared it had no life.

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A telling event

Posted on November 6, 2010 by hdh

I just completed a Halloween storytelling gig. It was a marathon performance. Four – 45 minute shows in one day. Knowing that you are going to be telling for 3 hours you really need to prepare not only the material, but your voice.  Choice of stories and songs is always crucial to the preservation of your voice.  Not to mention lots of water and Fisherman’s Friend (a throat lozenge that contains menthol). It also helped to use a microphone during my performance, so I didn’t have to push my voice to be very loud. I did the first two performances with my wireless microphone clipped to my shirt. The last two I did with a standing microphone.  It had better quality, though didn’t allow me as much movement.

It is important to me to make sure that if I’m going to perform any stories that might scare anyone to give the audience a strategy to help prevent bad dreams and the like, especially if there are little children in the audience. I start every one of my Halloween type storytelling events by sharing a legend that I learned at the National Storytelling Festival from Kathryn Windham and Jackie Torrence.  When going to bed at night take your shoes off and put them on the floor at the base of your bed one shoe facing away from the bed, the other facing towards the bed. I’ve been doing this for the past 25+ years of storytelling. It works. You’d be amazed at how many people that have heard me tell over the years come back to me and thank me for helping them out.

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While you wait. . .Is this really necessary?

Posted on October 1, 2010 by hdh

Why is it when we go into a waiting room, there always has to be a television blaring? It doesn’t matter whether it’s my car dealership, a doctor’s office, or even my tax accountant; you are always forced to listen and watch some television program. Why can’t they set up two rooms, one for those that need the distraction of TV and those that want a quiet place to read and contemplate life’s mysteries?

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Give credit

Posted on August 6, 2010 by hdh

I recently read an article in the New York Times about plagiarism and how students nowadays are becoming more and more clueless as to what constitutes infringement of other people’s intellectual property.  If it is posted on the Internet, it must be in public domain right? No.
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in the beginning…

Posted on July 14, 2010 by hdh

I started teaching in 1973. For my birthday in 1974 a friend of mine gave me a guitar. I knew some basic chords that I had learned when I was a teenager and this new guitar inspired me to sing folksongs and incorporate them into my teaching. Granted the students (6th graders) that I was teaching were not going to be impressed with the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley”, but they did get into songs like “This Land is Your Land”, “The Titanic”, “Ballad of Jesse James”, and  “Battle of New Orleans”.  The summer of my third year of teaching a fellow teacher, Jerry Silverstein, took me to the Philadelphia Folk Festival for the first time, and I was introduced to a whole new set of tunes to use in class. Singing with kids became an important part of my teaching. I continued singing throughout my career.

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I’m sorry, what did you say?

Posted on July 9, 2010 by hdh

As I get older, it seems that my hearing has become more sensitive and less accurate at the same time. The same thing goes for my family. Obviously aging has something to do with this. Heredity plays a part also (my mother became hard of hearing when she was older). Part of my hearing sensitivity has to do with the environment I married into.

I married a woman from Iowa. She was very sensitive to things that were loud. She enjoyed quiet evenings in quiet places, which might have had some influence why she doesn’t like to go to movies. I grew up in New York right next to a subway train yard, loud radiators, in an apartment that had street sounds and light flashes all the time. My wife and I settled in a suburb in Long Island. The longer that we lived together the more used to quiet I became. Then we had my son. He grew up with a sensory integration issues. Too much stimulation, especially noise, made it difficult for him to do things. Hence there was even more quiet. The more used to quieter things I became, the more sensitive I was to louder sounds.

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What’s in a name?

Posted on June 19, 2010 by hdh

When you are born your parents give you a name. For some it takes many hours to determine what that name should be. Some want it to reflect family heritage. Some want it to be connected to popular culture, based on some famous book, TV or movie character. Some just like the way it sounds. For whatever reason, you are given a name that your parents want you known by. Then you grow up and your name gets personalized. Your name becomes the unique identifier of you. In some cases decided by some and accepted by everyone. In some chosen only to be used by select groups. In some cases you choose it yourself.

For some it is just a shortening of your name. Jonathan becomes John, Christina becomes Tina, Elizabeth becomes Beth or Liz, etc.  For others it is a true nickname.  George Herman Ruth became the Babe, Doctor Leonard McCoy became Bones, Djeliba Baba becomes Baba the Storyteller, to name a few.

When I generally interact with people I shorten everyone’s first name, I refer to my son David as D, my niece Alison as Ali, Michael – Mike, Rachel – Rache. My name shortened would be Harv and no one refers to me as that. My first name does not lend itself to many options. With a given name like Harvey, most people call me Harvey.

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Technology and change

Posted on June 11, 2010 by hdh

There have been a lot of articles written recently about the decline of interpersonal connectiveness due to the increase in use of technology. There are more people texting on cell phones, spending time on Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks, not to mention surfing the Internet and other electronic anti-socializing tools (iPad, iPod, .mp3 players).  All this has contributed to people drifting away from face to face contact and truly knowing each other… or so the articles say.

My wife and son are strong believers in these thoughts. They credit the obsession with technology for increasing divorces, having less solid friendships and basically a decline in our society. Where I believe that all this technology is causing a disconnect between individuals, I cannot quite believe that it is the decline of our society. I’d like to think of it as the evolution of our society. Now understand that these opinions are all coming from someone who has become somewhat immersed in technology, where my wife and son have not.

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To tell or not to tell? – that is the question

Posted on April 22, 2010 by hdh

I recently was preparing for a storytelling concert in which the theme was kindness and Bucket Filling.  For those of you that don’t know what Bucket Filling is, it is based on a book by Carol McCloud, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? To fill a bucket one does things that makes others feel good about themselves. It can be anything from complimenting them to just smiling at them. You can fill your own bucket also. That usually happens by filling someone else’s bucket. The opposite of a bucket filler is a bucket dipper. That happens when you take away from someone’s good feelings. Bullies are bucket dippers.

With that as the theme for my program I did my usual research to find stories that I already tell and new ones that fit the theme. One of those new stories I chose was ‘More Than a Match’ by Aaron Shepard. Aaron gives permission for storytellers to tell this story. The story takes place on the road between the cities of Here and There. A giant blocks the road. When the king’s most powerful warriors are defeated by the giant, the Wise One discovers the giant’s true power (the giant’s father is the wind and mother a curved mirror so he shows whatever he sees reflected back) and through kindness learns how to defeat the giant and get his help. Aaron states on his website that this story is suited for ages 5-12 and adult.

As is my usual practice when learning and telling new material, I go to my local schools and practice on willing classes. Since this performance was going to be for grades 1-2 and 3-4, I decided to practice on classes within that age range.

The first class I practiced with was a 3rd grade class. After telling the story the teacher asked the class how the giant was defeated and with a little prompting was able to get the mirror analogy from a student. My second class was also a 3rd grade class. They however could not get the analogy and therefore did not understand the underlying meaning of the story. There were two reasons that they didn’t get the story. One was that the analogy of a mirror was probably too abstract for them. And two, I used a wrong term when describing how the giant helped the Wise One.
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