Storytelling

There is an awesome power
in a story, and it is transferred
from the teller to the listener
with two simple tools: the
spoken word and a willing
imagination, engaging the
listener as if he or she were
actually living it.

I paint words into worlds as I
work with children and adults,
in classrooms and performance
halls, solo or with a symphony
orchestra.

The world is filled with billions
of stories, all played out every
moment, every hour, everywhere,
all of them woven into a timeless
tapestry. I observe that tapestry
and tell what I see. Listeners are
held in the story... and then
released back into their daily
lives, somehow renewed and
transformed.

Please Enjoy this blog. It will transform your life, too!

November 18, 2007

Pounds of Gratitude

Martha and I have just finished dressing the turkey for the big Thanksgiving meal. We got up early and started cutting up the vegetables right away. Lotsa family coming over for dinner. Like always. And I'm grateful they're in my life. Come to think of,it, I'm grateful about a lot of things. Like the food we’re about to eat.

Lemme think. I've been alive for all of seventy five years, and I imagine I've been a fell-fledged participant in the celebration of Thanksgiving since I grew a set of teeth. And one day I got to wondering just how much food I've eaten in all those 73 or so holiday meals. So I got to figuring:

Lessee now. . .1 estimate that I eat about 2 pounds of turkey every year (that includes the leftovers). After that, I have about a pound of stuffing. Maybe more, but I'll be conservative. A half-pound of sweet potatoes. About the same of mashed potatoes. There's an assortment of cranberry sauce, vegetables, and squash- maybe another half-pound. Then there's dessert. Oh, boy! Pumpkin pie, apple pie, loads of ice cream. Probably a pound and a half right there.

That all comes to a total of 6 pounds of food per holiday. You follow me? Now, I take that 6 pounds and multiply it by the number of Thanksgivings I've been celebrating. Let's say 73. That brings me to a total of 438 pounds of good food.

'Course this is only one person I'm talking about. I figure each Thanksgiving celebration I've been to included no fewer than 10 living souls. So when I work them into my calculation, why I come up with more than 2 tons of good cooking.

Now that's a lot of gratitude!

Posted by jaystetzer - 02:41 PM - Family Story - Comments [ 0 ] - Link to this entry

Pile of Leaves

Dry leaves skitter and twist in ringlets across the front yard, bedeviled by unseen winds whipping down the driveway and around the house. I watch as they perform a haunting dance of the season, and I am swept up in its mystery, drawn into the whirl. I throw on hat and coat to join the festivities.

There's that familiar smell in the air, and a haze that renders things soft in the distance against a dramatic sky. I swoon at the beauty, but regain my equilibrium by a single concrete directive: time to rake the lawn.

I heave a sigh and amble back to the garage, pull out my trusty bamboo rake and find a suitable starting place upwind at the back of the grass. A few hesitant chips at first, then my arms and body fall into the rhythm of the characteristic swing like they've been doing this kind of thing for weeks. My heart rate falls into a hefty clip and my head begins to perspire under my hat, causing a familiar itch to my scalp. My breathing takes on the huff and puff of a locomotive as I chug my way along the edge of the field of leaves.

Memories flood in and around me as I push the leaves toward the curb. The times as a child when I had to do this kind of thing as a household chore and resisted as long as I possibly could.

But then I got caught up in the frenzy of motion and raked up a huge pile under a willing maple tree, climbed up the tree and out to a branch over the pile, and dropped in a free-fall, carefree and laughing into the soft cushion of autumn on the ground.

Today I rake the pile under the tree for old time's sake. Then into the hose for a hot cup of cocoa, also for old time s sake. I pass the front window in time to watch some neighborhood kids scrambling up the trunk of the tree. A tradition is repeated. History completes itself.

I sit back and smile contentedly.

Posted by jaystetzer - 08:27 PM - Personal Reflection - Comments [ 0 ] - Link to this entry

Making a Life

We were vacationing on a tiny tropical island off the coast of Venezuela, where everyone lives on the water and they all keep time by the tides and the movements of sun and moon. Few wear a watch, or need one, for that matter. Nothing is so important that requires a body to show up precisely on the minute.

A refreshing notion to be sure, but we were having our share of troubles shaking off our post-industrial brains. Now, we had heard from a number of sources that the best sunset view of the water could be found in the little bay town of Juan Griego. So we hired a cab and made our way across the island to enjoy an evening of natural beauty.

We found a little open-air cafe along the beach and chose a table that would give us the best view of the water and the setting sun. Couldn't have been more romantic.

The waiter came over and we ordered a couple of coffees to sip on while we watched the show. The sun edged its way toward the water. The sea transmuted into a slick glaze of colors and hues. The coffee didn't come. We were getting itchy. The water reflected blues, greens, wild turquoise and violet. My wife said, "What's keeping our dessert?" The sky foamed into a blizzard of reds and maroons.

I couldn't stand it any more. I went over to the cafe counter to see what the hold-up was, but there wasn't a soul to be found. I looked around a bit and I noticed a few people standing on the beach near the water. One of them was our waiter. He didn't want to miss the sunset.

It's a rare land where making a life is more important than making a living, where sunsets take precedence over pushy costumers, where you measure your fortune by the time you can afford to spend in a state of pleasure.

Posted by jaystetzer - 03:21 PM - Personal Reflection - Comments [ 0 ] - Link to this entry

Puff

Lenny Lipton was homesick, and it was his first year at Cornell in Ithaca New York, the fall of 1958. So many new faces and places, so many new things to think about-- women, money, career. He found the whole growing-up thing overwhelmingly confounding, and he secretly pined for the loss of childhood.

Somehow he managed to survive the first semester and settle in, and in the spring of 1959, he found himself in the Cornell library and made the discovery that changes his life. It was the poems of Ogden Nash. Those little ditties that encased wit and imagination in four lines or so. He read a simple rhyme about the "Really-o Truly-o Dragon" and thought "if he can do it, I can do it."

He took out the book of poetry and headed for a friend's house, mulling over a poem of his own, also about a dragon. When he arrived at the apartment, his buddy wasn't there, but Lenny wanted to get his poem down on paper, so he went inside anyway. He headed for the typewriter and punched out the whole poem in just three minutes. Then he got up and left. Didn't even bother to take the poem with him.

When his friend returned and found the poem, he thought of a melody for it and worked it up with his folk group on campus. The song became an instant success, and so did the musician. His name was Peter Yarrow.

He eventually tracked Lenny down and listed him as the song's co-writer. Oh, yeh. The title was "Puff, the Magic Dragon." And Lenny says it's not about drugs. There weren't any around on campuses in 1959. "Besides," he says, "it would be insidious to propagandize about drugs in a song for little kids."

It's just a sentimental children's tune.

Posted by jaystetzer - 04:43 PM - True Story - Comments [ 0 ] - Link to this entry

Machete Mary

We were on holiday on St. John in the Virgin Islands recently, and we heard stories of a woman who chased people from the beach near her house with a machete in her hand and a mouthful of obscenities. The stories were hard to believe, But I got a chance to confirm them when we went walking one afternoon.

The road hugged the beach and passed in front of her house. A six foot barbed wire fence stretched the full length of her property.

We looked through the fence and there she was, pleasantly weeding her garden. A meek-looking, slender woman, a faded blue dress, and barefoot. She looked so harmless.

We continued our walk along the road and up a hill, where we stopped at an overlook, and that's when it happened. A young couple had motored to shore from their sail boat, and inadvertently pulled up on the beach directly in front of her house. In seconds, she came at them, waving the machete wildly over her head, shouting at the top of her lungs. They jumped back into their dinghy and made a bee line to their sail boat anchored safely in the bay and out range of Mary's machete, but well within the range of her voice. And so were we. From our position at the overlook, we could hear her voice as clearly as if she were just around the bend on the road. They were right about her colorful language... She let out a blast of obscenities as hot as the Caribbean sun.

We were stunned by her actions, and the story suddenly became a melancholy vignette of futility. She had created a personal hell for herself.

The words "American Paradise" are printed in bold red letters on the license plates in the Virgin Islands. I guess she never had the opportunity to read them.

Posted by jaystetzer - 06:39 PM - True Story - Comments [ 0 ] - Link to this entry