Saturday, April 30, 2011

To consider when telling stories of Indiana history

"All the lives this place
has had, I have. I eat
my history day by day.
Bird, butterfly and flower
pass through the seasons of
my flesh. I dine and thrive
on offal and old stone,
and am combined within
the story of the ground.





By this earth's life, I have
its greed and innocence,
its violence, its peace.
Now let me feed my song
upon the life that is here
that is the life that is gone.
This blood has turned to dust
and liquefied again in stem
and vein ten thousand times.

Let what is in the flesh,
O Muse, be brought to mind."



From "Clearing" by Wendell Berry

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"The Harvest of Language"



"Language, for children as for the rest of us, is a chief pleasure giver. The riddle of human destiny, who we are and whither we go, may absorb our waking hours and cause us to sleep fitfully at night, but the story and the song help us, young and old, to live with the riddle. Those language happenings take us away from our musing and deliver us into another space and hour, while with the same breath they provide a commentary on the questions we ask: What is my self? Where is my self taking me?'



--Ramon R. Ross in Storyteller.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

A Good Story

"In the main a good story should appeal to those emotions that are felt to be both true and desirable in childhood: humor, love of adventure, desire for courage, compassion, a sense of good fellowship, joyfulness, and fresh untrammeled imagination. It is of such substance that good stories are made." -Ruth Sawyer, in "How to tell a story".

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dinner out

The lights are lit... above a table of storytellers



Tales flow along with the wine...



how easily the time goes


when accompanied


with stories.