The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The moon over the sunrise. A gift!

 In 2020, I learned that the world is not as safe as I may have thought. The virus, the political arena, the arguments and disagreements, - all added up to make me anxious. I was not alone.

2021 was not a whole lot better, with violence in our capital and the return of mass shootings. (Even shooters stayed home during the pandemic's first year.)

2022 - more of the same. My disillusionment was becoming a world view.

I dropped out of social media. I went to ground. And I told myself that the world was an unsettled, unsettling place.

Over and over again, I warned myself about real and imagined dangers. Over and over again, I congratulated myself on wisely hunkering down, laying low, disengaging.

Now, I am teaching a short "stories-we-tell" workshop to the children of my worship group. What a wake-up call! 

The world is complicated! The world is full of flawed and wonderful people, intriguing living things, beautiful rocks and trees, (awful traffic, annoying noises, too - let's be honest). 

Still, there is light - Light - every morning, even if the skies are gray. If I tell myself that the world is full of danger, I will treat everything and everyone as an enemy. Do I want to live in a world like that? Does that make me happy?  Um, no.

If my conversation is ONLY full of the way people irritate me, or close calls with disaster, or wrongs that I have suffered, YUCK! How can I bear getting up each day?

Somewhere in our suffering, we have to find birdsong, or cloud dances, or funny hats, or smiles.

The Attitude Doctors tell us to find three things to be grateful about each day. Make it easy on yourself. Be grateful for ONE thing! Just one. But be grateful for that one thing several times during the day. Maybe in a day or two, you will notice another thing to be grateful about.

Here are some suggestions:

Hot toast with your favorite spread. Just the smell is a gift.

Birds in puddles - they are seriously silly.

Roofs!

Warm socks.

Air.

The fact that things will change - hopefully for the better.

Can you walk? Be grateful. Can you see? Find interesting things to see.

You can change scary stories to ones of possibilities, tales of comfort, the history of growth.

Time to crawl out of the bunker. You can do it.

(Right now, I am grateful for radiators and tea kettles.)

 

 

A NIght Time conversation

Happy 2021 everyone! THAT is an ORDER!!!

 

This morning at about 1 am, I paged through my most recent journal. Wow! For all the staying home and all the "I didn't do much" opening sentences, I, and I really mean we - Hub, D, and Little Blue Bunny, et al, and I - did a huge bunch of stuff.

I had forgotten about the night time reading sessions with the stuffies and the conversations we sometimes had in the dark. But this conversation made it into my journal. I had stopped reading to the stuffies for awhile. LBB noticed. After we talked, I turned on the light, grabbed a pencil and I wrote it down as best as I could remember.

Here it is with a tiny bit of editing...

Sept. 21, 2020

LBB: You don't talk to us anymore.

Me: I know.

 

 (Actual journal entry above.)

LBB: It's like you forgot all about us.

Me: I could never forget all about you...It's just I worry about  grown-up things.

LBB: Want to talk about it?

ME:  It just feels like this whole year, we are just waiting, waiting for things to get better.

LBB: Are things getting better?

Me: No. We started waiting for all this waiting to feel normal.

LBB: Ha! Hahaha! Normal?

Me: I can hardly remember going to Meeting for Worship, or going to the library or stores or to parties with friends. It almost feels like we never did those things.

LBB: I know you went on ships because you never took me.

Me: You would have jumped overboard.

LBB: Not!

Me:

LBB:

Me: I don't want to talk about it anymore. I want to talk about Wizard World.

LBB: Ahhh! Yes!

Me: Yes! Wizard World where a shy quiet Wizardy Wizard made a wing kite to fly her friends into a magic land.

LBB: .. and Little Blue Wizard thought that dancing princesses should be turned into flowers.

Me: I remember that! How about the time that Prince Philip,  I think, was turned into a platypus by his own brother?

LBB: Did I save the day?

Me: You and Wizardy Wizard.

LBB: We both did.

Me: Hmmm. Now I remember. You had new magic because you flew to Australia.

LBB: I did. Queen Apple Tree took my Wizard World magic away because of the whole princesses into flowers thing. Then I got new magic when I flew to Australia.

Me: You know, I wrote a lot of this down back then. I just have to find those journals.

LBB: I would like to read that someday - to refresh my memory.

Me: Me, too.

LBB: Nana?

Me: Hmmm?

LBB: Do you feel all worried now?

Me: Not so much. Thank you, Little Blue Bunny. You are a good friend.

LBB: Thanks, Nana. Go to sleep.

I wish magic lands to you all - wherever you find them - and good friends to drag along on your adventures.  2021 will be full of wonders. Look forward with courage and hope.

There's a bunny in that manger!

                                            

 

 

Earthlings!

On Sunday, February 16th at 2 pm. I will tell and sing and play with anyone of any age who wants to learn about being a Proud Earthling! At Godfrey Daniels - info below!

I wrote a song for this event AND an action rhyme.  I am posting the lyrics to the song below.

HOWEVER, I also chose some great stories and there will be a game and discussion and a secret (sort of ) club.

We are all earthlings.
The Earth is our home.
We love the lands, the skies and the seas
The sun and the rain, the snow and the breeze.

We are all earthlings.
The Earth is our home.
We share this home with rabbits and bears
the fish in the seas, and, birds in the air.

Break:
We are all Earthlings
We cherish this place.
We’re a family of Earthlings
On a ball out in space.

We are all Earthlings
The Earth is our home
We love the deserts, the jungles and towns,
The mountains and swamps, and the mud, rich and brown

We are all Earthlings
The Earth is our home.
We share this world with gators and bees,
the crawlers on land and the climbers in trees.

Break:
We are all Earthlings
We cherish this place.
We’re a family of Earthlings
On a ball out in space.

We are all Earthlings
The Earth is our home                                  by Karen Maurer, 2020

I just finished the action rhyme after reading about the ways people greet each other around the world. To be totally factual, most people accept a bow or a handshake. But whenever possible, native
people's traditions should be respected.  The story behind Tibet's odd greeting is wonderful! (See below!)

Here is my beta version of How Do People Say Hello? It may change before Sunday, who knows?

(Children pair off. In each verse, they act out how people greet each other. In flu season, you may want to skip or "air play" New Zealand and Oman. I am doing this with a teddy bear since I have a cold.)

 (Repeat this first verse between the others. Children can wave to each other during this verse or greet other people in the way they just learned about.)

What do people do to say hello?
How do people say hello?

In America, you take
your friend’s hand
and give a shake
That’s what people do to say hello.

In  far off Tibet, some monks
will stick out their tongues
That’s what people do to say hello.*

In Japan, bowing is polite
When you meet both day and night
That’s what people do to say hello

In New Zealand, touch together
foreheads and noses*
That’s what Kiwis do to say their helloes-es.
That's what people do to say hello.

In the deserts of Oman,
Men touch noses when they can*
That’s what people do to say hello.

The Masai like to jump.
Some people do fist bumps.
A hug, a wave, a fast hand jive
A smile, a slap, a quick high five.

People do so many things to say hello
So many things to do to say hello!          Karen Maurer 2020


Okay for the asterisks.
#1. In the 6th century, Tibet had a horrible king, cruel and nasty. He had a black tongue. Tibetans stick out their tongues to assure people they greet that they have no relationship to that nasty king. Reincarnation plays a part in this greeting but young children might not get it.

#2. This greeting is called hongi and is very sweet. Eyes can be open or closed.  Also, Kiwi is a slang phrase for someone who lives in New Zealand because kiwi birds are native to New Zealand.

#3. Touching noses appears to be an Arab tradition. Since men and women have very separate roles, I only found this greeting listed as involving men.

NOT AN ASTERISK: Inuits (sometimes called Eskimos) do NOT rub noses. They touch their nose and upper lip to a person's forehead and breathe in. First one person does it, then the other.

I love Earthlings. We are awesome!

Update: I found the info about greetings on these websites:
https://www.opodo.co.uk/blog/greetings-around-the-world/

https://guff.com/15-ways-people-greet-each-other-from-countries-around-the-world

https://www.insider.com/how-to-greet-people-around-the-world-2016-8#india-place-your-palms-together-and-say-namaste-12

3 Things I Did With My Week

Thing 1.  Dan helped me create a Bandcamp site and I posted my story, "Ambrose's Gift" up there.  Check it out. 
https://karenmaurer.bandcamp.com/releases

Thing 2.  Played with D - A VERY MUCH LOT!!!  Delayed NYE overnight on Saturday and Sunday, early dismissal on Monday and a 2 hour delay on Tuesday.  Thursday was the same old schedule.  Yesterday, Little Blue Bunny and I mysteriously switched voices.  D's cure for that was very simple.  We (Little Blue Bunny and I) had to smoosh a big pink balloon between us and kiss over the top of it.  It WORKED!!

LBB in the NYE photo booth

Thing 3.  Worked with Dan on our Chiles' Play CD, "I Can Make It Myself", which will also be offered on Bandcamp, very, very soon.  We did hope to get two more dragon stories recorded but time ran out.


About Dan:
Our time together is running out, Dan and I.  He goes home to his boys on January 21st.  They need him.  And he needs to be the best dad he can be.  Also, he has teaching jobs in Japan.  Here, he would have to go back to school, spend money and time, as his boys grow up without him.

My youngest brother is a good man.  I hope things go better for him in Japan.  I hope we continue to work on our crazy songs and ideas.  He got me to do so much more this year because he made everything so much more fun.  

Further Adventures - Little Blue Bunny

(His name is Little Blue Bunny.  D says he is six years old.)    

Yesterday, Nutty Romomlia, celebrated her fifth birthday.  Little Blue Bunny wasn't going to give her a present.  She is just his little sister, after all.

But Nana found something that he could give her so he wrapped it up in aluminum foil.

Everyone wore stickers on their tummies (except Cuttlefish.  She hardly has a tummy.).  Nutty Romomlia was so excited.  D made an oreo cake and almost didn't have enough (imaginary) oreos to complete it.  Then she wrecked the icing and had to do it over.  Such drama for a small person birthday!

See the invisible cake?  It's on the green plate.  YUM!

The presents were wonderful; a pinecone, a wiggily head turtle, a huge noise maker, a box of crayons(!!) and a picture of stars!  Nutty Romomlia loved all of them.

Nutty and her presents and someone blue.

Little Blue Bunny had to wash up afterwards and that made him mad.  It WAS his turn to wash the dishes but there were so many of them.  Boy, he splashed and crashed and rattled those dishes clean.  And, then.... and then.... (DUM, DUM, DUMMMMM)

He left the (pretend) water faucet running - ON PURPOSE.  (D insisted that LBB did it on purpose.  The game had changed to Little-Blue-Bunny-Gets-In-Trouble-One-Last-Time, except even D realizes that it is never a "last" time.)

The (invisible) water overflowed the sink and soaked the floor and D slipped and slid and fell and couldn't get up.

Little Blue Bunny didn't even know about it.  He was off somewhere playing with his friends.

Nana had to help poor D who was now (pretend) cold and wet and sad and D had to huddle under a blanket while Nana made sure she was warm.

What a shock!  Nana called the water removal pros with their suctioning device and Little Blue Bunny got sucked up into the device!

Nana suggested that Little Blue Bunny be washed down the sewer - quite an adventure THAT would have been!- but D said No!.  LBB had to pay for making her wet and cold and possibly even sick.  So instead, the water was emptied into the sink and LBB climbed out, none the worse for wear.  Actually, he thought the whole thing was a riot!!

But NOT when Nana got hold of him.  Oh, he got such a talking to!  AND he got time-out.  AND he had to write D an apology.  AND he has to wash the dishes every night this week - WITHOUT overflowing the sink or breaking anything or making a mess.

Little Blue Bunny is sorry.  He's not sorry about the water overflowing, or the mess.  He's not at all sorry about the water suctioning pros - that was fun!  He's sorry that D got cold and wet and caught the (imaginary) sniffles.  Little Blue Bunny loves D.  She's his favorite "cousin" in the whole world.

Hmmm, what will happen to Little Blue Bunny today?

You Can Be a Hero

This year's Summer Reading Club theme is "Every Hero Has a Story".  And most libraries are using Superheroes to bring in kids.  It's such a kid friendly theme!

Not all heroes are super heroes.  Every one of us can be a hero - at least, sometime.  Doing the small things like smiling at someone who smiles at you - even when you feel grumpy - can feel heroic sometimes.

On Wednesday, I will tell stories about Every Day Heroes at a local library.  The audiences there are usually fairly young, so telling historic stories of heroes of the past may not work.  I want the children to see that simple things - telling the truth, picking up trash, being kind - can make the world a better place.

I decided to search for "simple ways to change the world" online and I got a lot of things like:
1. Be present.
2. Be grateful.
3. Be kind to yourself.

Hmmm, explaining gratitude to a 4-year-old is hard.  And these kids are as present as anyone can be.

But one simple action, Plant something, caught my attention.

So here are my 5 Simple Ways to Change the World:
1.  Keep your own space clean and neat.  (I don't follow this advice very well myself.)
    The world space belongs to us all so this includes your house and your neighborhood.
2.  Speak the truth.  Hmmm, this is never as easy as it seems.  People use their words so cleverly.  Use YOUR words for good.
3.  Smile.  Yep.  That.
4.  Plant something.  Grow something.  In a can on the windowsill - caring for a living thing is good   
for you and the plant will clean the air around it.
5.  Keep the peace.  It is so tempting to be hurtful when we feel down or when someone is hurtful to us.  If we can't find a way to bring peace to our attacker, we should just walk away from them.  I am talking about every day attacks, not life threatening events.

There you go.  Johnny Appleseed, Wangari Maathai, Elzeard Bouffier are all heroes who planted trees.   I think at least one of them should make it into my program.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Lititz Storytelling Festival

 

Fall is coming and so is the Lititz Storytelling Festival!!!!!!!  On Friday September 13th the fun begins with workshops and performances from 10 am to 10 pm???

ON Saturday, it begins all over again - workshops, a story swap and more and more and EVEN MORE STORIES!!!!!!!  I am in exclamation mark heaven! Because I love stories that much.

And also, here are very important things you should know about this year's festival in Lititz.

Jay O'Callahan will be performing.  Be still my wildly beating heart.

My friend, Charles Kiernan, will also perform.  I need to sit down.

Other tellers include Ed Stivender - he of the Morris Dancers -, Kim Weitkamp, Charlotte Blake Alston - oh yeah! - Rita Clarke, Ken Sensenig (say that 10 times fast), Marie Winger, Terri Mastrobuono and David Worth.

Now, I have made myself very very worried because........

I will be telling at this festival, too - with all these great storytellers.  I am feeling faint.  Do you think I will be up to the task?

Here's how to find out.  Come to the festival and listen to my stories and to the other tellers to find out if I measure up.  Watch for a weekend pass giveaway - on this blog - very very soon.

Talking Donuts, Superheroes and Melancholy Lions

Years ago, when I was a young mother and babysitter, I rode the bus with my son and my young charge - everywhere.  What else do you do with two five-year-old boys with endless imagination and energy?  We rode downtown, to libraries, to parks, to the next town over, to visit friends.  We also walked and later, in the summer, we rode bikes.

Everywhere we went, we told stories.  After reading William Steig's The Amazing Bone, we came up with a story about a talking donut.  Every bus trip for a month or so, we added adventures about the donut and King Rupert, the donut's best friend. 

And then there were the tales of Llewellyn the Lion, who worked as a late night radio host and rarely went out in the day.  He rode a motorcycle and had a tab at the butcher's.  He lived in fear that people would realize that he was not just a gravelly voiced, hairy recluse but a lion - a real lion.  As time went on, Llewellyn told us of his friends - all graduates of the Philadelphia Zoo's secret Animal Intelligence project - and we met Llewellyn's teacher, Professor Freeman.  The animals were tricked into a reunion and were drugged and kidnapped to become stars in a traveling animal act.  Fortunately, one of Llewellyn's friends was a dainty gorilla.  Along with the Jaguar, ocelot, rhinoceros, several lions, a seal and a rhinoceros, they all managed to escape.

I wrote that story up and shoved it into the glove compartment of my old black Impala.  When the car broke down and we had it hauled to the junk yard, the story was lost forever.  The rhinoceros - or was it the seal? - was a poet and some of her poems were in that story.  They were haunting and surprised me.  Stories can be pieced together.  Poems evaporate.

And then there was Super Anders and his sidekick Critter Man.  These stories were made up bit by bit of the things that my boys suggested, cartoon characters that they enjoyed. Danny Dunn and his friends got tossed in there, too, since we read every Danny Dunn book we could find.  I liked these stories best of all.  The boys were always trying to save Little Annie, the Orphan Apple Selling Girl from danger.  But Little Annie just as often had to save our heroes.

I miss Llewellyn and his friends.  I miss Critter Man, who ba-a-a-a-rked!  And I miss King Rupert and his talking donut. 

Perhaps, I will ride the bus for nostalgia sake and remember small boys, stories and a time when I was young.

Stories Forever

StoryFUSION begins soon, very soon.  Go to the StoryFUSION page for all the details but it is fabulous stuff.

Check my Storytelling page - above - for the Guerrilla storytelling events on Tuesday, April 16th and Wednesday, April 17th.  These events are FREE and out in public places near you.

On Thursday, NCC and the members of the LVSG are offering FREE workshops at Northampton Community College.  I am offering "Story in a SNAP", a workshop that will use improvisational exercises to combat both writer's block and stage fright.  It will be a lot of fun and it would not be possible without the help of Professor Susan Petrole.

Story in a SNAP workshop - Thursday, April 18th at 11 am at Northampton Community College, in Room CC 165.  (CC stands or College Center - the BIG building in the middle of the main campus.) FREE and open to everyone.  Please join me.

To keep us all in the storytelling mood, I must share this video from just a year and a half ago.  Kelly will be telling on Wednesday.  Look for her.

Stories CAN Change Us

Much thanks to storyteller, Robin Reichert, for bringing this to my attention.

Over on Brain Pickings, Maria Popova highlights experiments done by Paul Zak, a neuroeconomics engineer.  (And, no, I don't know what a neuroeconomics engineer is.  It sounds a little scary, though.) These experiments showed how listening to a story effected brain chemistry and changed test subjects behavior.

You can watch the video and read Popova's article here.

 It's nice to have empirical data that confirms what we storytellers have known all along.  Stories change us.  So, be careful what you tell.  Stories are not just for entertainment - and they never have been.

Storytelling Thurs??? Friday (oops)

I just finished The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean.  Not a story book at all.  HOWEVER, Kean tells the stories of how dozens of scientists, explorers, and other learned folks - to say nothing of isolated Scandinavian villagers and good old Neanderthal - contributed to what we know about DNA, the building block of our very selves.

If Kean had given his readers, "Just the facts, Ma'am," as Joe Friday was wont to say, I would never have finished the book.  The science is daunting - all those A's and C's and G's and T's and mitochondria and mtDNA and messenger RNA and, please, please DON'T ask me what these things are (I sort of know but I will bungle it, I'm sure).  But the stories, the life histories, the theories, the mangled logic, the loves, the victories and failures...the embarrassments and personalities - even the insane experiments - add them all together and you have a page turner.  Man, that Sam Kean can sure tell a good story.

And after we find out everything that is now known about DNA, Kean tells us stories of how scientists hope to use what they have learned.  DNA is awesome.  We, this world, all living things - totally awesome and scary and thrilling and wow....  Read the book.

Storytelling is a most effective way to get humans to swallow facts and remember them.  There is an organization dedicated to helping educators teach through storytelling.  Good Stories for Good Learning is made up of storytellers and educators who have seen how their personal stories have made the subjects they were teaching become real to their students.  Adding stories, your own or folktales or riddle tales or other people's stories, brings life to learning.  Try it.

There are studies that have shown how the brain reacts to stories differently than to lectures, and there are studies that have proven that students remember the stories they hear - and the facts attached to the stories - longer than those facts without stories.  (And, yes, I promise to share links to some of those studies soon but I am already a DAY LATE with this post, OK?  You can trust me.  Honest.)

So the next time you want to make a point, or help someone remember a fact, or teach something to someone, do what Sam Kean did in his book and what effective teachers are doing in classrooms all over the place - AND what humans have been doing since language began.  Tell a story.

What Happened to Thursday?

It was here - right here.  I saw it.  Now it's gone.  What happened to Thursday??

The Storyteller of Story Thursday is Eva Grayzel.  Eva told at the Children's Series on Sunday and she is delightful.  I know that I have mentioned her this week.  So I decided to dedicate this Storytelling Thursday - just to Eva.  And then, Thursday disappeared!!!  So, here is Story Thursday - one day late.

Eva uses repetition and rhyme to get her audiences involved.  She often has a character say the same thing or repeat an action when faced with a problem.  "He scratched his head.  He tapped the floor.  He thought and thought and thought some more."  Eva's rhymes are more clever than that.  After the second repetition, she starts the phrase or action and pauses.  her audience jumps to finish the phrase, or add the rhyming word.

Eva uses costumes and brings members of the audience up to act out stories, too.  And she adds those very young children who just wander onto the stage uninvited right into the action.  Her story programs are a lot of fun.

Lively and gentle are not two words that go together often.  But Eva's performances are both lively and gentle.  She picks stories that encourage thoughtful problem-solving and self confidence.

I HEART Eva Grayzel!

PS.  Eva is the moving force behind Six Step Screening, an oral cancer prevention and education non-profit.  Check out the website in my Favorite Links list.

Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah

Once again I neglected to post on Storyteller Thursday.  But I have a link that will make up for that! Through a special interest group on Linked In, I discovered the Story Tour Blog, a blog that presents Jewish stories - a new one every week or so - in an effort to strengthen faith and increase understanding among Jews, Christian, Muslims and EVERYBODY.  Jewish stories resonate with truth.  Bat wait, all stories do.  Back to Story Tour!

The story I linked to is a good one for this season.  All around us, people encourage us to to feel joyful, happy, fizzy inside.  But realists among us see through the overlay of holiday excitement to the imperfections of our lives and ourselves.  Let a Rebbe open your eyes to how to improve things in this story.

And now for you Christmas lovers out there - and I am one of THOSE! -a very special tree brought to us by the librarian at Trexler Middle School in Allentown, PA, Donna Forsyth.  Thanks for letting me share this picture, Donna.

Donna assures us that these books  were made available to students if they wanted to borrow them but she chose less popular books to build this literary tree.  So festive!

Merry Christmas to all of you! 

Paper sculptures

Someone is Scotland has been very busy creating the most beautiful things and leaving them to be found - in libraries, museums, a Storytelling Centre and more amazing places.  Oh my!

Games, stories, movies and summer heat

Whoa!  I have a summer cold, the kind that comes on with extreme changes in temperature and fans blowing all over the place.  We don't have central air-conditioning and we keep our window ac off for most of the day.

On Friday, I spent the day closing off the family room doorways - no doors - with curtains to keep the cool air in.  The curtains are thin but the difference between one side of the curtains and the other is dramatic.

But you know all about the weather. Just look out your window.

I have one more week of Stories in the Schools and then the amazing Teen Tellers and I and several wonderful adult volunteers will put on a Storytelling Workshop.  That is always fun. Last week, Stories in the Schools were so much fun.  The theme was friendship and we talked about games.  I found a wonderful website of games for camp counselors - The Ultimate Camp Resource.  And on the site was a game called Beat the Bunny.  It was so simple, I worried that the older children might not like it but the kids cheered and hollered.

Here is how the game is played.  Sit in a circle and start passing around a small ball - I used a small balloon.  When the smaller ball is half way around the circle, start passing a larger ball or balloon in the same direction.  The small ball is the bunny and the larger ball is the farmer.  The farmer can change direction anytime the players want it to.  But the bunny must go in the same direction UNTIL the farmer changes direction.  That causes all the excitement.  It takes some players longer to notice that the bunny is heading right into the farmer's hands.  The game is over when the two balls end up in the same lap.  We played the game with three different groups of children between the ages of 3 and 7 and the reaction was the same with each group.  Laughter and cheers!  One teen helper lamented, "We never played fun games like that!"  Thanks, Ultimate Campers.

The schools are all air-conditioned which makes these programs even more enticing.

Movie theaters are also good places to beat the heat.  We went to see HP 7, part 2 TWICE this week.  I felt like watching it again, actually, and I am not a movie go-er.  As the professors prepared Hogwarts for battle, I found myself crying.  They all seemed to feel so hopeless.  And even though we all know how the movie will end - or do if we read the books - that feeling that the professors and the students are doomed really comes across.  Voldemort sounded so reasonable when he offered them safety in return for Harry.  Scary and wonderful.

Talking about movies - and I am talking about movies - the Hobbit movies are taking so long to make that Peter Jackson is posting videos about the process on his Facebook page. ( I hope this link works.)  I long to visit Middle Earth - my generation's Hogwarts.