Going to Japan to tell stories and...

Aoyama Gakuin University

Late this summer I was surprised and delighted to learn that a project proposal, written by a friend was funded by the Japanese Government and this has prompted an invitation, complete with all travel expenses, for me to give some lectures on Story, Storytelling and ELL in Tokyo, Japan. My sponsor and host, Professor Mitsue Allen-Tamai, has just published a book, Teaching English to Young Learners through Stories and Activities and is a leader in the field of English instruction for young learners. Mitsue visits every summer and we have been talking together about storytelling and language intruction for decades.  Now, Mitsue has created this opportunity to make our thoughts, public.

In mid November, 2011 I will be a guest speaker at Aoyama Gakuin University and the working title of my talk is: "Storytelling: An Organic Base for Literacy and Language". While visiting Aoyama Gakuin University I will meet with undergraduate and graduate students who have an interest in teaching English. I also will present a longer, formal seminar on applied storytelling in ELL classes in a meeting exclusively for practitioners who are actually teaching English to children. These will be followed by a joint lecture with Mitsue Allen-Tamai, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan, and an adjunct professor at the graduate school of Temple University in Japan. Professor Allen-Tamai has been teaching courses to train college students to become English teachers of young children at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  She is quoted at the end of this article in the JapanTimes. I am very excited about classroom visits and storytelling with Professor Allen-Tamai in kindergartens and also with 5th-6th graders in Tokyo school.  A possible lecture at Seisen University English department, in Tokyo  and a visit to an onsen* are also in the works. When I first went to Japan we stayed at a magically beautiful onsen on the Izu peninsula. But 35 years is a long time between visits and while I will be presenting in English, I must find time to study up on my very rudimentary Japanese...Waku waku, Doki doki shimasu ne!  (So very excited and thrilled! At least this is what I hope I said. )

*Onsen: from wikipedia:

An onsen (温泉) is a term for hot springs in the Japanese language, though the term is often used to describe the bathing facilities and inns around the hot springs. As a volcanically active country, Japan has thousands of onsen scattered along its length and breadth. Onsen were traditionally used as public bathing places and today play a central role in directing Japanese domestic tourism.
Onsen come in many types and shapes, including outdoor (露天風呂 or 野天風呂 rotenburo or notenburo) and indoor baths. Baths may be either public run by a municipality or private (内湯) often run as part of a hotel, ryokan or bed and breakfast (民宿).

The Life of A Storyteller: It's Like This, too...

It is a beautiful thing to be an artist. And I am ever grateful that I have work that allows me such full expression of who I really am. But lest I get too ecstatic in this " art and life are beautiful" vein, I feel I should mention that the merry life of a live performer is like this too...

It's Like This, too: the life of a storyteller in two short acts

Telling stories in an urban park on an pre-inspected surface...

 ACT 1 "More Interesting than Dog Poop"

Scene: A Summer gig, not too long ago  -

My work sends me to some funky venues.
This one was a park along side a highway where the planes are low overhead in their approach to Logan. It was about 90º F.

It was also before lunch and maybe after nap
About 20 kids about 3 years old each,
walking like somnambulists, holding on to
clothesline were brought out to me and
we were all led to a huge tree.




How primal - how essential !
Me, a tree and a group of children.
This is storytelling.
This is what it is all about!

The disaffected teen staff were sullen
and glum. Who could blame them?
It was so damn hot, humid and smelly.
But when I pointed out that the broken glass mixed in the
wet with dew covered grass as unsuitable for tender toddler bottoms of my audience they
became even unhappier.
We moved around the tree and finally to another tree.
And I started at last.
A plane roared overhead. I pushed on.
Traffic flowed and growled in the background.
I engaged and cavorted.
Then a bright and perspicacious little boy noticed a huge dog
turd about 18" inches away from my foot.


God. I wished I had seen that first.

"Wow. Look! Dog P-O-O-P!"

20 little heads were snapped around and riveted
in attention on the brown, perfectly
formed canine offering by my foot. The teen counselors perked up.
This became a moment of intense interest. My audience could not get enough -
It quickly evolved into group participation.
They had to see and share and even wanted to touch.
This last desire snapped the teen's into action.
They had no tools to remove the intruding turd so the counselors worked on crowd control.

And the rest of my gig was spent in shameless competition.
By god ! I am storyteller!

I am more
interesting than dog poop.
Aren't I?
Story is bigger than this!
Isn't story bigger than this?

Apparently not.
I bought a sound system next year.
I bring plastic bags.
I know who I am.

I am a storyteller and that is for shizzle!

Such is the power of storytelling.



Act 2  And I thought dog poop was stiff competition? 
Scene: A school gig in the winter

Performer's Affirmation - "Don't lose concentration."

One day,  I tested the power of storytelling.
For real. I was right in the beginning set of my presentation in a cafetorium filled with 300 or so K- 2 grades sitting on their bottoms. The kindergardners were already a bit rambunctious. I was intent on keeping their attention. As is often the case, they are disoriented in a big space where they can only see me or the person next to them.  I usually request to see them in the warm familiarity of their classrooms.  In their own space their teacher's eyes, arms and laps are always close by.
Their sketchy attention was soon downgraded to a non-issue when a poor little 1st grader quietly let fly. 
I saw some of the action in my peripheral vision. Luckily the calm and very quiet 1st grader who lost his/her breakfast and made a spectacular technicolor yawn was behind the K- folk who were now with me and my story.




The space for 15 feet around the incident was quickly and immediately evacuated.

This happened so quickly and noiselessly that I wasn't sure what was going on until I saw there was a hole in what had been a visual field full of 1st graders.
And in the middle of the large white space
was an enormous puddle of
red vomit.

For quite a while the spot was vacant. The news was passed quickly through the students and rippled in whispers to the back rows where 1st and 2nd graders started poking their heads up like
gophers to try and "see".

A teacher covered the one foot circle of
vomit, with small paper napkins.
This manouever took some time. She was thorough. And slow.
Finally the fire engine red circle with orange chunks
was covered up. Mostly.

And then janitor came. Moving
with the measured,
precise movements of a character in a Noh play,
he carefully swept and then
he brought out sawdust and sprinkled and swept some more.
He returned with disinfectant
and sprayed and wiped and wiped again.

It was not a simple task. A laborious process. A careful cleaning.

But, by god - I was more interesting than throw up and clean up. I never stopped and never lost the
crowd or my train of thought.

This is the POWER of storytelling. Essential. Deep. Organic. Human.

Amen.

Both these "acts" were previously published in this very blog 4 years ago. That was back in the day, when I first started a blog, thanks to Andrea Lovett, who walked me through the set up.

Last Day of Read Boston for me

It is my last day of Read Boston. I will be in Charlestown all day. Yesterday was a great day. I worked in the South End Settlement House in their lovely walled garden, the Tadpole playground on the Boston Common, at a school in Chinatown and then at the zebra gate of Franklin Park Zoo in the evening. Hard to express fully how joyful and satisfying it is to tell stories all day.

Here is a short slide show of the earlier part of my day. Biking from place to place, on a gorgeous day, telling stories. My idea of heaven.

Today I wrote this on the way to Charlestown. What I especially enjoy about bicycling part are the little things...

A meditation on some black details while riding on the Charles River to work.

black starling bathes in a tiny puddle on asphalt path
what a yellow beak!
kingfisher is a black question mark on top a
round white buoy.
A long shadow behind as I peddle by on a
black bike in early morning sun.

Been working on sound recordings of our work at masmouth for  nearly a full year. Finally about to publish some podcasts at iTunes and SoundCloud. I have also put up a few of my own stories at Sound Cloud and here [below] is the player. The audio content will be updated in the player to the left as I add more of my slapdash material.

   Latest tracks by norah_dooley

Vermont to Montreal July 26th - July 27th

The Galaxy Book Shop in Hardwick, VT

self serve with cash in the till

Amazing roof garden

Nearly all of Monday was spent driving up and down Route 2. I was taking youngest daughter for her obligatory immunizations before college. This was a lot of time in the car - 7 hours due to traffic but relatively easy. Easier than we had thought and Rosie and I enjoyed pleasant conversations and a nice breakfast at Whole Foods on the way out and she was much relieved that the this series of shots was not very painful as the previous ones. I also arranged other important doctors visits as I drove so it was a good day. And if not a vacation precisely at least some stress was removed from the summer. 

The drive to Vermont was delightful. We stopped Burdick's for coffee in Walpole NH and arrived in Hardwick VT in time for lunch. Hardwick has a coop that we visited in 1984 when or eldest was 1 years old. We bought her a T-shirt that had a buffalo and Buffalo Mtn. Coop which she and all three of her sister wore for 15 years. Hardwick is now the center of the 'localvore' movement.  The first site we enjoyed was this window at the Galaxy Book Store 7 Mill Street. They will have one of my fave poets reading in AUG - David Budbill. I wish someone had been in the window. We could have exchanged stories. We had a local produce lunch at the Buffalo Mtn. Coop Café where the gazpacho was the best I have ever had. Anxious to get out of the car we pushed on Craftsbury to visit our friend Mimi who is the mother of one of our oldest and closest friends, David. Back 1984 we lived together in Cambridge. He was reeling from a divorce proceeding that was tearing at all our hearts and shaking the foundations of our little coop house and community. We were visiting in VT to cheer us and his two year old daughter, Catherine, in this difficult time. I was pregnant with our second child, due in late August. David was separated but still married to Lucy, my best friend from high school. Our friendship and our youthful promise that we would live together and help each other raise our families was the center pole of the three family arrangement in our funky three-decker in Central Square, Cambridge. Robert and I loved Catherine like a niece and our eldest daughter Sira loved her like a cousin. We spent many summers after that visiting David and his parents in Vermont and now our all too infrequent visits are always filled with sweet memories.


On the way to Mimi's there is new farm stand that is owned by Pete Johnson - a shaker and mover, who is responsible for much of this ... article excerpt from http://www.slowfoodusa.org  SlowFood blog:

"We all know what local, sustainable food can do for the health of our bodies, but could it also be a cure for the health of ailing economies? Ben Hewitt’s book The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food delves into this question, exploring the growth of a vibrant local food economy in Hardwick, Vermont, population 3,200. Hardwick is a lot like how it sounds – unemployment in the town is 40 percent higher than the state average; incomes are 25 percent lower. But in the last few years, Hardwick has returned to its historical roots in farming, with a new twist – local, sustainable agriculture. It’s growing a vibrant local food system that is restoring not only some jobs and higher wages, but a sense of community and food that’s connected to it. A diverse network of “agrepreneurs” in Hardwick– High Mowing Organic Seeds, Pete’s Greens, Jasper Hill Farm, the Vermont Food Venture Center and so on - are producing organic and artisanal foods and seeking investors. Business owners share advice, capital and facilities. About a hundred jobs have been created. Sounds great, but is the story of this one town’s thriving local food system unique, or is it a viable model for other communities? As I read, part of me hoped to find an easy-to-follow plan - just do it like we did! Farm this way, market that way, save the world, take a nap. Sadly, social change isn’t that easy, but while Hardwick doesn’t offer an exact blueprint, it is a thought-provoking example of a thriving local food economy. Hewitt suggests that a couple of unique, and surprising, variables have contributed to the town’s growing local-ag economy: poverty and small size. Hewitt believes that Hardwick’s success is founded upon trust and collaboration which “are in no small ways social and cultural responses to economic hardship.” He also suggests that the population had a “just right” quality that was big enough to be ambitious, and small enough to be fast-acting and flexible. The best lesson to be learned here is about cooperation and inspiration. The Town that Food Saved is a story about the ability of a group of likeminded folks to come together in pursuit of a passion for sustainable, local food– not without challenges, but with dedication to a bigger vision. That’s what Slow Food is all about too. If you’re interested in learning more about thriving local food entrepreneurs, BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) has some exciting network programs focused on sustainable agriculture.  And for ideas on how to invest in other inspiring small food enterprises, you can check out Slow Money, a non-profit dedicated to investing in local food systems and connecting investors to local economies.

We were earlier than planned but Mimi was gracious and read her book as we paddled around her pond and walked the dirt roads a bit, eating fresh raspberries. Then we watched a huge thunder storm roll in, roll over and pass on. Mimi made a delicious curry chicken dinner and we played a few rounds of banana gram  and slept soundly in a room overlooking pond. A gray morning greeted us as we left later than planned for Montreal. But the drive was pleasant and again, shorter than we had thought. We arrived at our 'hotel' at noon and the room was not ready. We discovered only as we were leaving the next day that we had misread the time and we were a full 2 hours early.

We talk a good game...July 24th 2011

We talk a good game...

Robert and Rosie did the framing of the screen house/shed extension.

Robert and I talk a good game about sweetly "doing nothing" but as soon as the sun went down I was immediately engaged in transferring old family videos to DVD. This is my idea of fun.  I love that the little gizmo in white is now all that is needed to connect and digitize from VHS tapes to .mov files. Back in the day I had to borrow a set up from a film-maker friend that cost about $1000 and was 20Xs the size. This set up was less than 1/10 the cost as well. Early in the AM I set this up to run with tapes of Xmas 2000. But when,  like an old fire horse, I heard Robert pounding nails into his screen house project and I found myself strapping on a tool belt to help shingle while the infernal machines worked on my project.

White rectangle in middle is 'gizmo'

My favorite yellow hammer - which I used for 2 years as we built the houses here in Royalston, felt like an old friend. The hammer is light, well balanced and has an easy grip. But my upper body muscles did not find work familiar and hammering was not an old friend. The only muscle I use in my upper body is my damn mouth. Which came in handy as I convinced Robert that the 90+ degree heat was better suited to blue berry picking. After whacking my index finger, nailing shingles too low and bending and pulling 2 nails to each I sent home, we broke for a quick late lunch. And then we went in search of the low bush blueberries that were sited by Maureen earlier in the week. The roads in Lake Dennison were dry and dusty so we went slowly, drinking in the smells and sounds of summer.

Patti was our guide/companion on the back roads of Dennison and we found the blue berries after a few false starts. The berries were not as plentiful as we hoped. Nothing like the top of Gap Mtn.  I pick berries carefully, eating a lot as I go and with a mind towards cooking and freezing them. Robert picks with a clear "quantity over quality mentality" and I have always been the one to prepare the berries for eating. His is a tough act to follow - it can take hours to get his berries usable! This time I got him to agree to clean and separate the berries when we got home.  He was happy to agree because he was certain I was just being whiny - How hard can it be, really? Just to sort the ripe berries from the leaves, twigs, unripe greens and dessicated grey berries? Well, it took him over an hour to clean about a gallon. I think I have a convert to quality picking. The heat was relentless so we drove down to the lake for a swim. Normally, it takes me many minutes to walk in and get all over wet. I'll dive into anything but I HATE walking into cold water. This time I was in before Robert. The water was about 70 degrees and the air temp was over 90 - my fave conditions for swimming. It was luscious.

We had a quick dinner after our swim and finished the day with more work on the screen house. This has been Robert's project - I have not been any help. In fact, the project has been stalled for years because we could not agree on the location, design and materials. I gave in ( I want a barn with a studio - been promised one for 30 years...bon chance ) and Robert, assisted by youngest daughter, Rosalie, did all the framing during the precious 3 weekends while I worked on grant reports, videos and other matters. It was fun to be swinging a hammer again. We worked in the cool of evening until the bugs drove us in.

The Sweet Doing of Nothing July 23rd,2011