Memories

Over the winter holidays, looking for something else at my in-laws, I came across my father-in-law’s Kodak Retina from the early 1950’s. As someone who went to college, studied photography, and made it their career for a long time, I had to see if it worked. I bought some film and ran it through the camera, and it does. It’s a 35mm, fully manual camera. By that I mean you have to pay attention to taking a photograph, it’s not point and shoot in any manner or form. Ideally you want a light meter to tell you what settings to use for shutter speed and aperture, and a tape measure to measure the distance between camera and subject. All of these settings (aperture, shutter speed, and focus) need to be done manually on a few dials. Fortunately, having grown up in the age of film, I wasn’t too bad at the exposure, but found I either completely forgot to focus, or that I need to work on figuring out distance-by-eye!

Old car found on brother-in-laws property. Forgot to focus!

As I looked over the blur, the grain, the light in these photographs of family members, I wondered at how my wife’s siblings had changed since the camera first recorded them, playing as kids, going on holiday, and at school events. All those moments in lived stories which had shone through a lens onto a bit of film base covered in a gelatin emulsion.

There are some cultures where having your photograph taken was seen as taking a piece of your soul away. (I look at famous people these days, and wonder if that’s actually true!) These moments that are captured and saved are moments of storytelling, fragments which can prompt memories. People can look at a photograph and something that they may have forgotten about suddenly floods back. Looking at family photograph albums we look at people. Some things we may remember and others we don’t. What stories happened to have such memories? What stories happened (or didn’t) that caused us to forget.

Me, a long time ago, on the way to Frigate Foudroyant when it was a summer camp.

We don’t make photograph albums anymore. Do we? Well, most people don’t - my mum still does! And so do I, but for me these are smaller albums of events, highlights, and are not the whole big picture of what was going on with notes and names always. My mum created a photo album for each of my kids. She collected photographs of them growing up, wrote next to the photos, and built the albums over the first sixteen years of their lives and then gave the albums to the kids on their sixteenth birthdays. They were both genuinely bowled over by this. For when they were too young to remember, the notes explain what was going on in the image, and where.

The stories we tell are made up of fragments which we piece together. What pieces do you have that you’ve pieced together? What stories do they tell? Do you see things clearly, smell the smells, hear the sounds? Reclaim these stories of your past and share them with other family members.

Happy New Year,
Simon

January, 2024

Life on the Inside

Or: In the Big House

Through my work with CLiF, the Children’s Literacy Foundation, I have made a few visits to New Hampshire prisons. Most of these have been for family day when the inmates get to hang out with their families. There are activities, special foods (ice-pops, and cotton candy - which I admit I am just assuming are not regular food items in prison) and CLiF gives the incarcerated men or women books to give to their kids. Other visits are presentations with the inmates alone, helping them learn about choosing books for their kids, biological or not. Some of these people are giving books to grandchildren, nephews, nieces, younger siblings, cousins even. It’s not easy work. Some of these men and women are there because of one mistake. Sometimes that mistake lasts for the rest of their lives. I have even been to visit with the men who are kept in solitary most of the time - together in one room with my back close to the door, and guards. Having said that, I have never felt safer once the ice was broken!

It’s kind of funny, as my mother once worked at a half-way house for prisoners coming out. Not regular prisoners, but murders and rapists and the like. Now I am working with incarcerated folks.

My very first visit for a family day, there was a man sitting at a table on his own. All the other men at their own tables had family around them, chatting, laughing, hugging. I went to join the solo inmate. After I asked if he minded if I joined him, and him agreeing, he told me that his family were usually late, as his 15 year old daughter had a hard time visiting with him. He told me he was trying to make sure that his children (he had a son and another daughter) did not follow in his footsteps and follow what had been the family business. He told me his father and his father’s father had been in same ‘business,’ but he was done. He wanted out, big time, and he wanted his children to have a better life, a safer life.

It struck me how lonely these folks are, behind bars, and how hard it must be for older children visiting their incarcerated family. It has to be utterly heartbreaking for everyone.

A few weeks ago, I went to do one of these presentations for male inmates with CLiF founder Duncan McDougal. Some of these men recognized me from previous visits, most knew Duncan, who has been going to these places regularly for 20 years. We sat and talked with the men, helped them choose books, chatted. A couple of the men, once I had started talking and my English voice gave me away, came over to say how much they had enjoyed what I did for the family day visits. It was good to hear, and I sat down with them and gave them some storytelling tips. But that’s not important. What’s important is that these inmates, the women or the men, connect with their children, or the children of their partners on the outside. By being able to talk about the books they send is a starting place for a conversation. Being able to tell each other what they thought about the books, or even something in the book that might have been a shared experience for the inmate and their family before they became incarcerated. Books are invaluable for these people to have a relationship outside of prison. And this helps them when they have done their time and they are out. These relationships help them succeed and contribute, positively, to the community they end up living in. This visit was on a Monday.

That Friday, four days later, I was galivanting in a completely different part of New England to tell stories at an elementary school. As one group of kids came in, a young lad called out to me. “Hey! I’ve seen you in prison!” Not something one normally hears coming from a fourth grade kid’s mouth! It took a nanosecond for the penny to drop, and I waved him over and we had a chat. I remembered his dad’s name, and face, and told the boy that I had seen him on Monday. It was a little moment, like a birthday, a surprise party, a gift found. And it became something the boy can connect over when he next speaks with his dad.

Worcester Cathedral and the River Severn with two swans.

A favourite place of mine to visit when back home in the UK, visiting family.

Back to Monday. I was talking with a number of the men, and was talking about one of my all-time favourite authors - Jason Reynolds. He wrote the Track series - Ghost, Patina, Sunny and Lu. He also wrote As Brave As You (absolutely brilliant book), and Miles Morales: Spiderman (one of my all-time fave superhero books). He also wrote A Long Way Down. I get the privilege of sometimes being able to grab some of the CLiF books if they are not taken, to take home and read myself, so I can talk knowledgeably about the books to kids when giving the books away. I then bring them back to a CLiF presentation, lovingly looked after. I read the graphic novel A Long Way Down, and then the novel itself. Both are incredible books. And not at all easy reads. Brief synopsis - spoiler alert - a boy’s brother is murdered, shot to death. The street motto - no tears, no snitching, revenge. So the younger brother finds the older brother’s gun in their high-rise apartment, and gets in the elevator to go down to kill the kid who killed his sibling. At each and every floor, the elevator stops and in steps someone; someone he realizes he knows; someone who was shot to death. One of these people was shot accidentally, the rest mostly revenge killings. At the bottom of the long ride down, the young boy has to make a decision: Will he go and shoot the kid who killed his brother, or not. I was talking about this book to one of the inmates. That’s my story, he said.

Let’s take a moment to pause there. Let that sink in. That’s my story.

After a moment we talked about the book, the story it told, what it meant to him, what it might mean to the child he might send it to. Would it help them understand their father better, or would it make things worse? These moments I stumble on sink deep beneath the skin and into my heart. One bad decision. A good person, who does one bad thing and their life, and the lives of all those around them changes in a moment. A good job, a family, prospects, and then prison.

And all these other thoughts come to mind - my privilege, my luck, my own choices (and not all have been good, some far from good). And here I sit. I can call my family when I want and get to talk to them (when they actually pick up)! I can visit them when I like (or when I can afford to - flights to the UK are not cheap). We can video chat and send each other books and magazines, photos and the like.

Someone recently asked me what my joy was. Or is. Children’s unadulterated, pure, belly-filled laughter. And my family. All of it. My wife, my kids. My brothers, sister, cousins, nephews and nieces; the few remaining aunts and uncles; my outlaws, my wife’s nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles; our parents. Of course. And friends. Some of my friends give me a great deal of joy.

My joy is telling stories, and to see kids and their care-providers/parents laughing in a world, that for some, has little joy, and my family. My great, big, crazy family. So while we gather at this time of year, be grateful that you have people in your life that you can call on, talk to, be with, laugh and cry with. And give away books, lots and lots of books.

Stay warm, be nice out there, and love deeply.

Simon

It's Getting Better All the Time!

These words taken from the Beatles’ song “Getting Better” resound with hope and I carry them with me often. They also inspire.

I just returned, on Sunday, from Sharing the Fire, the North East Storytelling Conference hosted and run by North East Story Telling, or NEST. It’s been going on for years, starting in the late 1970’s I believe and still going strong. It’s moved about it, and the format has changed, but for as long as I have been going to it it’s pretty much been the same: Keynote, featured teller, annual meeting of NEST members, an olio (showcase of storytellers) and closer, and in between all this, many workshops, and a few fringe performances. The keynote is usually very good and this year was no exception. Adam Booth came all the way from West Virginia bringing with him a flock of herons.

Adam with one of his herons

Adam is a great storyteller and many of his tales are Appalachian. This weekend he told a new story which used many of the motifs found in folk and fairy tales, myths and legends, a story that was very original. As he created The Heron’s Journey he worked with a quilt maker, a paper artist, puppeteer and dancer, all of which informed and, in some cases, changed the story. The tale itself took the arch of a creation myth but Adam reversed this arch, making something very compelling. It was a tale of re-birth, community, transformation, The People, and was filled with surprises and compassion. At the beginning of what felt like the last third of the story, the flock of herons took flight and flew through the audience. Okay, this is where the paper artist came into play; the herons were made of paper. They were huge, with a wing span of maybe two or three feet. They had vertical handles on them, and were passed through the audience by the audience, and was incredibly powerful. The quilt, which Adam carried in at the beginning, decorated with a crown, and with some of the Underground Railroad motifs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad) sewn into it, suddenly took on a new meaning, a greater meaning. Later in the story the quilt was reversed and became another powerful part of the tale Adam was sharing with us.

The Underground Railroad, Concord, NH. Click on map to read about this network of secret routes and safe houses which helped enslaved African-Americans to escape North and to Canada.

The story was told with grace and not rushed, but still I feel it is a piece that I need to see again because they were so many layers in it - I am sure I missed a few!

In the keynote, the next morning Adam challenged us to look at working with other artists, something I have been thinking of doing for a long time and tried out when Megan Wells and I performed The Magic Flute as a storytelling piece. Working with the quilt maker, Adam gave them some free-reign within the parameters of what he needed, and the image on the reverse side of the quilt caused the story to alter a little. The paper artist created the herons and when he was working on talking to them, he realized that addressing one instead of the group worked better. The dancer informed his movement on stage which in turn helped him find entry to parts of the story he struggled with.

There are a couple of other projects I want to do myself, beyond The Magic Flute. One is slowly coming together this year. This challenge Adam threw down, as it were, was a gauntlet of sorts, thrown down to help us create better work. We don’t have to work with paper artists, dancers and quilt makers but collaboration can help us see our own work in a new light. It might shine on areas where we have weakness, and working with another person can help fix that.

The gang on Tuesday night. We used a recording of Norm who was with Anne in Norway

Tuesday night Paul Strickland came over and we shared my garage to broadcast our stories in our TBD Concert with Antonio Rocha, Jeff Doyle, Ingrid Nixon, and Norm Brecke. Anne Rutherford, another member of the group, wasn’t telling stories that night. Paul told a folk tale, as straight as Paul can. He is a surrealist, of sorts, and a self-declared post-modernist! To hear Paul tell a folktale like he did make my mind creak in a new direction. It made me think of ways I can be better, get better and improve my craft. And we can all do this.

Find people who inspire you, watch their work, see what they do. Look at photographs and artwork, to inspire you. You can find prompts in things like this, even from photos in magazines or on-line - a glance or poise in a picture might make you think of a way you could portray a character in your stories, and this can apply to writing too. Go to plays and see how the performance is staged. Seeking out others can only improve your art and craft, no matter what it is.

Anyway, I am guessing you’ve spent enough time away reading this, rather than doing what you should be doing, so I will lay off and let you go.

Thanks for reading this, and being here with me on this journey of life.

Stay well.

Peace,
Simon

Why Tell Spooky Stories to Kids?

A friend of mine once told me that they would NEVER read the Grimm’s stories to their children. I asked them ‘why?’ “Because I don’t want to have my child filled with fear.”

I was raised on the tales the Grimm Brothers recorded, as well as Hans Christian Andersen and The Thousand and One Nights, and many other folk tales and fairy stories that weren’t in those canons, some of which were told first-hand, without books. One of the saddest stories I heard was when we were visiting part of Wales as a young child, a town called Beth Gellert. Beth is Welsh for ‘grave.’ Gellert was a wolf hound. I am sure you can look the story up on-line. We went to see the stone where the dog is supposedly buried. It’s a brutal and heart-breaking tale about love, but there was something about it I fell in love with. It taught me to ask questions and not to act rashly, without thinking. It gave me more compassion. And there were other stories like Hansel and Gretel that were super scary and made me hide under the pillows. But I listened every time those stories were told to my brother and me and loved them. Maybe I liked the thrill, like going on a roller-coaster ride. Maybe because it was teaching me something. My parents divorced, and like Hansel and Gretel I felt abandoned. But they got through it and so did I. I met crazy people like the witch, and I knew to keep my cool so I would figure something out. Other folk tales told me some strangers were dangerous, but there were others who would be helpers, and to be on the look out for both kinds.

When I had kids of my own, I was already telling folk and fairy tales, and as I read more, and heard more storytellers working their craft and art, I added more spooky tales. Some of them had a great deal of humour within them. Others not so much. Some were jump stories (designed to make people jump out of their chairs), some were just plain dark, but even these stories had something to teach.

I knew, and still believe this to be true, that people need to hear scary stories. Especially kids, and here’s why. When you tell children appropriately scary stories they get that thrill, and are scared just enough to learn about fear. But they are in a safe and loving environment, and you, as the care provider, parent, grandparent, can talk about the stories with the child afterwards. And you can ramp it up slowly until they tell you when to stop.

They learn to handle fear. Not become desensitized to fear, but learn to cope with it. In that safe environment. When they face fear for real the very first time and you are not around, they will have a coping mechanism in place, and won’t, we hope, freeze, but have an idea of how to act, or at least retain some hope which many of the stories end with.

Something happened to a friend of my daughter’s when she was about six years of age. She asked me to read to her the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She asked me to read it to her four times that night, which was something she had never done before. We might read one story twice, but she liked different stories. When the same thing happened the next day, I told my wife and she said something had happened to one of our daughter’s friends. It was nothing too scary, but it was not a good thing by any means. I realized that she was processing the what had happened through the story. Because I told my kids these stories, they knew the ones that would help them.

So as we approach Halloween, Samhain (pronounced: soaw-awn - like the female pig and an - sow-an) an d there are events where scary stories are happening, take your kids! Sit and listen to the end of the story, they usually end with hope and happily. Don’t leave half-way through, there will be a resolution that the kids need to hear! You can even pretend to be a little scared yourself when you’re with them so they can see that although you are scared, it’s okay to be frightened.

Have fun with spooky stories. Like any other folk and fairy tale, like most myths and legends, there are lessons there for all of us to learn.

A list of spooky stories I tell is right here: CLICK ME!

The State of Mind

This is a ten minute read about what I am seeing going back in-person, into schools and other community events.

Back in April 2022, as you may or may not have read, I had what I felt was my first real gig back in-person for a long time. It was certainly the first time since March 2020 where I was not 20 feet from the first row. It was certainly the first time since March 2020 where most folks were maskless and I was not wearing a mask, or a face shield. It was the first time I had had three large presentations to different groups of kids since the pandemic began. There was this wonderful, euphoric feeling of togetherness. It felt like a normal presentation – well three! The kids had been prepped on behaviour, there was some silliness, as it was the first event at the school with “an outsider” since March 2020, and it all felt wonderful and thrilling!

Since then, I have done a number of other first events as a visiting guest. Some have gone really well, others have been a little challenging. I am writing this because there are some folks, some performers out there who have not physically visited, in-person, a venue since March 2020, and things, I believe, have changed since then.

The amount of time people have been actively engaged in technology since the pandemic began – screen time, the amount of time people have been distracted by virtual meetings and calls, children who need help, and not being able to go outside and play to a large degree, has been huge, and at the end of the day many of us just vegged in front of a box or device. This has had a severe effect on not just kids, but everyone. I think we need to participate in a lot less digital engagement. AND I THINK WE NEED TO ADDRESS THIS WITH PARENTS AND CARE GIVERS WHEN WE HAVE ACCESS TO THEM! We need to take time out for ourselves as humans, to disengage from digital content and seriously get back to analogue.

I am not a Luddite! I am NOT calling for people to throw out their devices, or run into schools and businesses and destroy computers and the like! I am suggesting that we step away from them for a while, go on a digital vacation, to some degree! Put devices in a time-out box!

I have been in schools on and off since the pandemic began, and since the beginning of 2022, have been regularly back in, in-person and I am seeing a difference in child behavior. This is at the elementary level, and middle school level. I am also seeing this with my own high school aged daughter and her friends - she is 17 and will start her final year of high school at the end of the summer. When I originally posted this as a letter to listservs I am on, I have heard back from others, including Milbre Burch who said: “I’ve seen what you describe from first graders to Masters students.”

I have presented Gilgamesh to sixth graders at a local school many times prior to 2019. The kids were spellbound by the story (and hopefully the telling). I presented it (at the same school) virtually, via streaming media during COVID. Because it was streamed, I have no real idea of how students were engaged those two years.

This April of 2022, I took Gilgamesh back to the school, in-person, in front of 6th graders. Same school with the same teachers, although in a different space. The reception was totally different. Lack of focus, getting up, whispering to friends next to each other were all happening which never happened in 2019 and the years prior to that. I had worked on Gilgamesh, probably more this year than in the past, and put a lot more work into being as engaging as possible, both with physicality and with word choices. And dramatic action! What I found was that the 'same' 6th grade students were behaving like 4th graders.

This is not my only experience this year. I have been into a number of schools, and performed at community events and found, to more or less a similar extent, children, students especially in elementary and middle school, have little attention span at all. I put a lot of this down to being remote for two years; having parents working from home, trying to work and engage the kids, and help them where possible. I imagine there was a lot of  - go play on your device, go watch a movie. Being stuck indoors for much of the first year, there was little play, little reading, just a lot of screen time. Habit forming, addictive screen time.

 By doing what we do, analogue storytelling in front of warm bodies, we need to start with shorter stories, build up to longer ones, get the span of attention longer, larger, more resilient. The attention muscle has atrophied! It needs retraining. I believe we need to tell folks to read to their kids more often. Start with short stories, get into longer ones, combine stories. Heck, read them anything they will listen to. Discuss things with them. Get magazines like the Smithsonian or National Geographic and find articles to engage the kids, Mountain Bike Action magazine - anything! I think we need to be like that - try on multiple different fronts to engage young people, and retrain adults, quite possibly, based on a recent experience!

 As storytellers, I feel this year, we need to be far more "accepting", maybe tolerant, way more patient with young people. It's Not Their Fault. We will, in my experience thus far, need to take more deep breaths, show patience, and try to work to gather them into the stories we tell, like a blanket on a cold day. From what I have seen this might be tough, and also not needed everywhere. We do need to be the fireplace where young people can gaze and lose themselves to their imaginations (which are being stripped from them by technology). They need to learn (for the little ones) or relearn (for the older ones) that the imagination is a wonderful (and much needed) tool and place. We need parents to realize that reading to kids, telling them stories, is so, so important right now. The tv and devices need to be Put Away. A return to analogue. And when we face children, young people this summer at libraries and camps, etc., we need to give them space and be tolerant of their behaviour, and guide them back gently.

Karen Chace on a 12-week class she led this year (and has led in the past many times): “Was every student difficult? No, but the vast majority had trouble listening, attending to their work, many were even disruptive during the interactive games, and practice time outside of class was fairly non-existent.”

And I have also experienced some wonderful interactions with students. In fact, last week I did three presentations at a large school (5 – 6 year-olds, 7 – 8 year-olds, and the last group 9–10 year-olds). The smallest group I had had around 65 kids in it, the others much larger. With each group I set expectations. The first two groups were amazing – wonderful, we had a lot of fun. The 4th and 5th graders (9 - 10 year-olds) were challenged in their ability to concentrate or sit still, or even listen. At one point in a story Goldilocks ran into the bedroom, landed on a really hard bed and cried out: “Crud! That really hurt!” Some of the kids, I think mis-hearing my British voice, told me I couldn’t use that word. So I said, Goldilocks ran into the room, and landed on the really hard bed crying out: “Bother!” Again, the kids called out, “You can’t say that!” So, I did the same thing again and again substituting the ‘bad’ word until I was using words like ‘shoe,’ ‘saucepans,’ and ‘fish hook’ until we agreed on: ‘Oh, oops-ee-daisy!’ and moved on. This took up about four minutes of the story as the kids cried out and then settled down before starting over again. This I would expect from 2nd graders, not from too-cool-for-cucumbers 4th and 5th grade students. And it was fine. I tried other things in another story when one of the characters was granted a wish. I asked the kids (by raising their hands) what they might wish for. I used every trick in the book to engage on a more personal level and used some tricks that came to me, spur of the moment! They settled in, but it took time.

Like Karen, I had to have a serious talk with one of the kids (Karen had three and she eventually called the parents during her 12-week program). I rarely do this, and hate having to do this, but sometimes it is needed. Again, I don’t believe it’s the fault of the child.

 This brings me to another point! At another gig with very little, delightful pre-school kids with wonderful parents and staff, I had some issues. It was a special event and held outdoors. It was hot and sunny, and I was placed in a pavilion, and invited kids and parents into the shade with me throughout my set. Some of the kids later joined me, but it got a little wild. Some kids walked about the space, some came and sat next to my feet, and one little girl for a while stood between my feet and rested her elbows on my knees and rested her chin in her hands as I told a story. Engaging the other children, and the parents continued, and after the story some of the kids went back to their parents. Some kids were whispered to, others were not. Those who were not whispered to came back and goofed about a bit on the pavilion platform.

 When I finished and was packing up, a mother came over with her daughter. I thought we were going to have a nice little chat about stories, and by the look on the girl’s face, she though the same thing, but the mother then told her daughter to apologize to me for mis-behaving. This was a parent who had said nothing to their child during the performance, in fact I wasn’t sure if she was the mother until that moment. The look in the girl’s eyes changed and I thought she was going to cry. I felt pretty annoyed myself. The parent had done nothing to educate her daughter, and her girl was just being a little preschooler – being who she was supposed to be. I felt the parent was the one who should have been apologizing. I said pretty much, just that – the girl was being a little kid, that’s all. No harm done. And that kids need good role models, they need guidance as to how to behave, especially when it might be their first sort of experience like this. I gave lots of smiles to both of them and hope the point was made.

 Parents might need reminding that we, the performers, are not their children’s care providers. That care providers need to keep a check on their wee ones, that their wee ones might not know how to behave, but they, as parents, should be able to remember! I try to make light of a lot of this sort of thing and chalk it up to experience, and learn from it. We might have to tell parents that more than ever their children need active attention from them.

The kids have been through a lot, and I am sure many of these children have not escaped seeing or hearing about the horrific news about shootings. They are daily. Some are worse than others. There is so much division in the country, I am sure children feel that anxiety coming off parents and other adults around them. Kids sense a lot. We have to cut slack, as I said, breathe deeper, be more forgiving and supportive.

Again, from Karen Chace: “The principal was very aware of the problems and agreed the vast majority of students at the school were affected by the lack of social contact during the pandemic.” They are craving for contact, for attention. And it’s not all bad out there, as I said. We just need to be aware of the audience’s needs, and limitations. It is a changed world. As Fran Stallings wrote about her first time out in-person with children (K-2): “…they were great. Nobody moved, except with my gestures. Whew!! Teachers were dumbfounded. I credited the stories (with active participation tapping off excess energy). I’m glad we all survived together! Summer reading programs, with a wide range of ages and distractions, are a different challenge!”

And I Know we will rise to it. Milbre Burch again: “There’s a lot of work ahead, not all of it the kind you get paid for. Let’s all hold hands and jump!” Welcome to the new times ahead. Have fun out there and Love Your Audience.

Peace,

Simon

Odds Bodkin, Karen Pillsworth, and myself in the before time!

It's Been a While - bak 2 skule

I had no idea!

  I had no idea how much I had missed it (well, I really did, but...)

     I had no idea how much fun it would be to see young people get excited about stories after two years of not being in a school.

       I had no idea how out of shape I have become!

Back at school!

This last week I had two school gigs. And it was brilliant. Both were very different, but both were in-school, in-person and very much live. The organizers, librarians, and teachers were wonderful, and seemed so happy to have in-person events going on. The kids, very much the same!

Curious looks and glances were made by children as I made my way through the halls with my gear. "Hallos" were called out, along with the Big Question: "Who are you, and what are you going to be doing here?" So many crazy thoughts went through my mind in answer to that: special agent, location scout for a film, building inspector, but I just said: "I'm going to be seeing you later, to tell stories to your grade!" Eyes wide! That put a bigger smile on my face!

Tuesday was a big rush of a day. I packed a banana for lunch and an apple for the ride home. It was going to be a half-day visit. Three presentations for second and third graders, then kindergarten and first graders, ending with the fourth and fifth graders. Then a workshop for the latter group - invitation only!

I had my stories polished and planned, the PA set-up in the cafeteria, my drum warmed up! But then the kids came in, we started chatting and things changed. I shared some personal narratives about being a kid, long, long ago, before moving into the folk and fairy stories. I talked about the importance of reading, and playing, and spending as little time as they possibly could on t.v. and devices, and that music was also really cool without the videos: think about playing a musical instrument. Music is a language spoken all over the world. The principal popped in and out, other teachers who were not looking after the young folks listening came and went.

We laughed a lot. As did the teachers. I told some more thoughtful stories which provoked smiles. One group left and another shuffled in. I grabbed water, looked at my notes, and played the penny whistle. I played the same tune three times, but each time it was a different song. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, followed by the ABC song kids learn, and then Ba-ba Black Sheep. I do not profess to be an accomplished penny whistle player, but the kids and teachers liked it, groaned and rolled their eyes when I started the third song. They waved good-bye and the older kids, the nine and ten year olds came in. Another sip of water, and banter. "Ah, here we have the Big Kids!" They strutted a little taller before sitting down on the cafeteria floor. I showed them a map I had painted of Scandinavia and asked if they knew what was where, and a couple did. I then began a story from Finland. The kids were great. So many smiling faces, so much chatter at the end, talking about the stories, their favourite parts, the wonder of it all.

It was then time to rush into the library and get set up for the workshop. We didn't have much time, but I was able to cram a bunch of stuff in, and have some of the students tell their stories, give them different kinds of feedback, before they had to go. The kids were amazing, as they had chosen to work through their lunch break. Their attention wandered at times, as did mine - we had all been at it for a while, but we got quickly back on track. One young lady who really didn't want to share her story, ended up volunteering to tell her tale! And it was good. There's something so empowering for kids to be actively listened to, to share their own stories, and be heard by their peers and teachers.

I left on a high from that morning.

Far, far away (backdrop detail painted by Allison Teague)

Tuesday night I had another gig but it was a virtual presentation with TBD Storytellers. A fun night with some great stories, but a late night. The next day was prep for Thursday. Thursday was only two presentations, and no workshop. This school was very different from the previous school on Tuesday. It was much larger. Their policies were slightly different in that the classes, if we were to present inside, would not all be allowed to be together, and that one group would be in the library with me, the

other classes would watch through streaming live. It was cold and windy and the report said there would be rain, so we moved into the library. A laptop was set up in front of me, I stuck the map up on the white board along with a photograph of a cave in England's Lake District (it's where a dragon used to live) and I began.

Again watching and listening to the kids, this time fifth and six graders, was wonderful. The story of the cave has a dragon in it. At first it is only a voice, the kids don't know who it is in the cave speaking to the kid in the story. But when it comes out that it's a dragon, there's a rush of quick conversation on what they thought it was. And the look on their faces at it being a dragon was so heart warming.

I say that the kids have similar challenges in both schools, but there were differences. When we talked about sweaty palms (one character was very nervous), I asked who had felt that way, and had anyone ever been the principal’s office. Eighty percent of the kids raised their hands. We talked about devices, writing, stories, books. The laptop was treated as a person in the audience. I got close, very close to the camera lens, I made faces for the camera as much as I did for the audience and I asked teachers to put forward questions in the chat feature. It seemed to work; a teacher came out afterwards to tell me the kids were engaged! This is the first time I have got immediate and unsolicited feedback about virtual work. After two years, it seems I have it.

We talked about all sorts of things related to the stories I told and it was wonderful. Again the kids left chatting about what had happened and the tales told. Teachers talked about the way the kids were not used to having to sit for so long and pay attention (class periods are not sixty minutes long), and how much joy they exhibited - some kids who had not done so since March of 2020. It was great to hear. And I hear similar things from other storytellers - the joy stories bring, the connection stories create with the kids, the peering over the walls some teachers have slowly built up since the beginning of the pandemic.

One thing I did discover today, Friday morning, was that I am Exhausted! Before the pandemic I was doing this sort of work all the time, in and out of schools, dashing around the countryside, presenting, working with teachers, but since March 2020, not so much. So I now need to get this Dad-bod into shape so when I next go out (in a few days) I won't be quite as tired at the end of the day!

Do you feel like too?

Peace,
Simon

AN ADDENDUM (June, 2022):
Since this performance I have done a number of others and I am seeing that there is a difference in engagement and attention between venues. I do not think it has anything to do with demographics. I have been to a number of different schools and communities, some wealthy, some a lot less well-off, predominantly white, predominantly of colour, some rural and some inner city, and each seems to have its own unique set of challenges. Some communities have not been as badly affected by the pandemic and remote learning as others, and I am not qualified to discuss the whys of the matter.

The above (origianl blog) was written about the euphora of presenting to multiple groups of children/students, and not being socially distanced. We were in close quarters of one another, there was banter. This was the first in a long time. I had done other engagements, but mostly to smaller groups who were all socially distanced, or I presented to a small class while broadcasting to other classes or students who were still remote. This April gig felt like a return to normal, or what was, in the before time. Since then, I have seen some big changes across the board.

Creating Community Through Story - being in-person

Being a performer there is something very much missed when not able to perform in-person. It really isn’t, at least for me, an ego thing. Not really. It’s the inherent need to share the joy that I have for stories with others. And if an artist does not have an audience, we are only performing for ourselves – not much fun in that!

On Thursday, I drove up the road to an assisted living center to tell stories. The temperature had risen from below freezing to the mid to high 40’s (Fahrenheit, about 7 degrees C). It was a nice day outside. Because the folks there are elderly, staff and visitors have to remain masked, even though the elderly themselves are unmasked. I wore a regular mask getting in.

As people started entering the room, introductions were made, banter began. Some people came over to introduce themselves, some even shook hands with me. The folks chatted with each other, and some sat off a little in their own space. I imagine that if you live with the same people, there are times when not sitting next to someone is a-okay! As I watched this, I played on my bodhran, and I witnessed some people tapping their feet. I swapped out my mask for a new Broadway Relief singer’s mask, which makes me look like a bear, or platypus! The advantage of this mask is that I can breathe and be heard! Anyway! I swapped masks and made sure people could hear me and began.

Seeing their faces move from looking like: “Who is this guy, again? Why is he here?” to being immersed into story did not take long. Some of the more serious people would crack a smile once in a while. Frowns turned upside down! We chatted between the first and second story, and the energy in the room was loser, and when I started the next tale, the energy between us was moving.

This energy movement is hard to realize or feel on a Zoom call or Google meet, Facebook or Google live, or on Skype! Does anyone use Skype still? There is this barrier called the screen and camera which makes it hard, and then there’s the distance, sometimes made more apparent with the delay of responses. There is a disconnect.

Winter is not my busy time; it is a time for reflecting on the previous year, a look at finances, reading stories to increase my repertoire, reading about my craft to better my knowledge and be inspired to try something new of different; a time to reach out to people: it is a time of planning for me. After 22 months of mostly virtual work (80-90 percent of virtual work), getting ready to perform with someone close by, someone less than 20 feet away, in-person was exciting to think about and a little daunting, since my last in-person gig was back in December 2021.

Right there, in the moment of feeling that energy move, to see feelings flow out of the listeners was incredible. I could see their faces, unmasked as they were, smiling, eyes rolling, heads shaking, a slap on the thigh, eyebrows rising, a gasp. All of that happening right there in front of me, but within a story. It doesn’t feed my ego; it fills my heart. For a moment we are all transported to another place that is not, well, we are all transported to another world where good conquers evil, where we can laugh at ourselves, and be real with each other without feeling someone might adamantly disagree with us. Although as I was wrapping up and I asked if they wanted another story, one voice adamantly called out: “No!” Apparently, it was nap time. So, we agreed I would come again.

As the staff assisted some people back to their rooms, or to their next activity, and others ambled away, a small group stayed behind and we talked. We talked about our children, my grandparents, some of our fears, and how stories are really pretty darn cool even when you are not a young child, that these stories hold a meaning, a new meaning for some. We connected as a community of human beings.

I finished packing up my gear and we all left the room to its own quiet. As I passed one of the amblers in the corridor, she stopped me and announced she was a transplant from Texas, and that she had been a cowgirl. I asked if she had brought any of her cowboys with her, and she gave me a smile and a light punch on the arm. The woman who hired me walked me outside and we briefly chatted. I shared some of the comments the small group at the end had shared with me about nap time, and that maybe we could do it again. We stood in the sun, masked still, talking of tales, and we agreed to play again soon, and regularly. As I got into the car, I thought about the stories the cowgirl might share, if we had time to chat the next time I visited!

There are no hallways in the virtual world, there’s no sitting and watching a soft smile grow on someone’s face as they fall into the depth of story, there’s no standing in the sun sharing words with an organizer, watching her hands gesticulate her enthusiasm. I am very much looking forward to being in-person, live, full-time once more.

The Real Thanksgiving

I have talked about my cultural ‘guilt’ of being British before, of the atrocities of the Empire, and European Colonialism. When I began my spiritual journey in my teens, I was heavily drawn to the animism of First American culture. This led me on a path to reading up about the indigenous people of America starting with “Black Elk Speaks” and followed shortly by “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” Many, many books followed, and meetings with indigenous people from America. When I saw movies like “Cry Freedom” I saw parallels to what the Native Americans had experienced with what the people in Africa also went through.

When I came to the USA in 1993, I saw Thanksgiving as an American version of what we called Harvest Festival, but then began to look deeper at the story. I am not a history buff, but that sort of thing interests me. I discovered that the school-promoted story of Thanksgiving was a myth, a promotional tool used to bring the predominant culture together, and white-wash history. As a storyteller, when I tell tales from other cultures I dig into them, so I learn about that culture, and do not misappropriate a story, nor strip it of it’s culture. The following is what I understand as the truth of Thanksgiving, taken from First American sources on the web, books I have read, the Smithsonian, and some other resources.

Some folks see Thanksgiving as a Founding Fathers story, but Virginia was a colony almost twenty years before the “Pilgrims” landed in 1620. Europeans had been raiding the area of Plymouth to enslave the indigenous population and trade with them for years. One such enslaved man was Tisquantum, or Squanto. Tisquantum had been taken to Spain, and later sailed to England and escaped back to his land of the Patuxets of Cape Cod. He discovered that his people had been wiped out by European diseases brought to America by the traders and slavers.

Paula Peters, historian for the federally recognized Mashpee Wampanoag states: “they weren’t ‘Pilgrims’ … and the Wampanoag weren’t invited.”

When the Brownists, or Separatists from the Church of England left for Holland to find religious tolerance, they found hardship there too. Most were rural people and found it hard to find work. They also did not want to become ‘Dutch’ and saw that there was political unrest growing in Holland, so headed back to England. These people, now called “Pilgrims”, bought passage on the Mayflower to head to America and start a colony of their own. They first landed at Cape Cod and then found and moved to what would become Plymouth. It was the land of the Wampanoag people.

Of the 102 Puritans only half of them remained after the winter had taken its toll. The Pilgrims had moved into what seemed a deserted Wampanoag village, and they took (stole) the seeds, beans, corn and other supplies they found there. In the spring, the Wampanoag returned.

The Wampanoag, like the Patuxet, had been decimated by disease. Between 1616 and 1619, ninety percent of the population of sixteen indigenous groups of the area had died due to disease brought by European traders. The remaining Wampanoag had rich lands and were fighting off other peoples to retain it. When the Puritans arrived the local people’s leader (massasoit), Ousamequin saw that an alliance with the Puritans and the Wampanoag could be beneficial. The Puritans had guns, the Wampanoag knew the land and the people.

The two groups had a tenuous relationship, with the Wampanoag helping the Puritans plant and grow crops, but the Europeans retained a distrust for them, and saw the Wampanoag as inferior people. When the first harvest was gathered, there was what was called by the Puritans, a ‘rejoicing,’ a time of celebration. ‘Thanksgiving’ to the Puritans was a time of prayer, meditation and fasting. As the Puritans celebrated, shots were fired. The Wampanoag, upholding the contract they had with the Puritans came to see if the colony was being attached. Ninety warriors arrived, uninvited, but joined the celebration. The warriors far outnumbered the Puritans.

Over the following years, tension grew between the Wampanoag and Puritans as the whites did not want to honor the coequal civil and criminal jurisdictions they had agreed to. The Puritans began to ‘divide and conquer’ the people whose land they were now stealing. They imposed English laws on First American land. Ousamequin’s sons saw the deception of the whites, and began to fight for their land. By 1670 the population of the Europeans was between sixty thousand and seventy thousand people, double that of the indigenous people. Ousamequin’s head ended up on a spike, as did one of his son’s head and that of the son’s wife.

Fast forward to 1789, about one hundred years later. Washington held the first “Thanksgiving.” The date moved around a bit in following years, and later, Jefferson, as third president, felt a ‘thanks to god’ seemed at odds and was inappropriate with the separation of church and state. Other following presidents seemed to agree and no official proclamations for ‘Thanksgiving’ were made until Lincoln’s in 1863. He wanted to create some sort of unity within the country as the Civil War continued. He thought a “Thanksgiving” would work. He made it an official national holiday for the last Thursday of November in that year after a request from Congress.

The previous year, Lincoln had read the transcripts of a number of trials which had happened in Minnesota after the Dakota War. The military commission set up to try three hundred and three Dakota men, found them all guilty. They were going to be executed. Lincoln thought this would be a bad idea, and had intervened, seeing that some of the trials had lasted all of five minutes. He deemed ‘only’ thirty eight should be hung. On December 26, 1862, they were hanged. Two of the wrong men hung, and the bodies of the Dakota men were left hanging for over thirty minutes. Although this is not part of the Thanksgiving story, it plays into how First American history is filled with mistrust of the Government.

In 1879 the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was set up and many of the native tribal leaders and people were encouraged, taken, or forced, to send their children to this school. This was one of the first of its kind. The Native Leaders believed this could be beneficial to their people. They could learn the white, ‘European’ ways and be better educated to understand and deal with white America. The students, however, on arrival were stripped of their culture, dressed as white people, given a fifth grade education and put into servitude. Instead of getting the promised education of white America, they were taught to be working class people and not given the education equal to others and therefore robbed of the opportunities to be more than laborers. This was one of the first off-reservation schools and was the model for many more. The founder, Richard Pratt, had the motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man;” a mentality which was then applied on a larger scale to the ethnic cleansing and cultural assimilation efforts of the Native American boarding school system.

As you can imagine, the white system of American did nothing for the indigenous people here. The myth of the Wampanoag welcoming the Puritans must be sickening to them. It is of no surprise many First Americans see ‘Thanksgiving’ as a time of mourning. The Guardian newspaper headline today, “The gooey overlay of sweetness over genocide: the myth of the ‘First Thanksgiving” sums it up.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the day of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of the month to the fourth Thursday for commercial reasons. It was realized that when November had five Thursdays in the month, it created a shorter ‘shopping season’ before Christmas. Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression. At the time, advertising goods for Christmas before Thanksgiving was considered inappropriate. I think it that myself, today!

David Silverman says Protestant fundamentalists allegedly rebranded “obscure Separatists” as “Pilgrim fathers” to assert power over other immigrants, a Plymouth tourism campaign and a revisionist footnote in a 1840s book naming the forgotten feast “the first Thanksgiving”.

Jessie Little Doe Baird of the Mashpee Wampanoag said (reported in today’s Guardian): “We are a modern people but the focus on us just once a year keeps us in 1620. If we let indigenous people talk year round, there’s a better chance for equality and change.”

Sources:
Wikipedia
https://indigenousnh.com/
Smithsonian Magazine, November 2019
uaine.org/suppressed_sheech.htm
dosomething.org/us/articles/truthsgiving-the-true-history-of-thanksgiving
David Silverman: This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, Bloomsbury, 2019
Guardian Newspaper, 25th November 2021 (Alice Hutton)