Tipingee and Boys Wear Pink

The legend of the King  of Denmark and the Yellow Star has long been a favorite of mine. And I was delighted to find an authentic, but soon to be legendary example of that kind of creative response to bullying in Boys Wear Pink  written about here at Parent Dish by Peter Sinasohn: Students wear pink to fight bullies:

Seniors David Shepherd and Travis Price decided it had to stop. Using the internet, they encouraged fellow students to wear pink the next day and even bought 75 pink tank tops for boys to wear. They also brought a pink basketball and pink material to make headbands and arm bands. They estimate that half of the school's 830 students wore pink.

It seemed to get the message across. "The bullies got angry," said Travis. "One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We're glad we got the response we wanted." The bullies, he says, "keep giving us dirty looks, but we know we have the support of the whole student body. Kids don't need this in their lives, worrying about what to wear to school. That should be the last thing on their minds."

David explained their motivation: "Our intention was to stand up for this kid so he doesn't get picked on." When one of the bullies asked him if he knew that wearing pink indicated homosexuality, he told him that he didn't care and that neither should anyone else. "Something like the colour of your shirt or pants, that's ridiculous," he said.

When the student that had been bullied put on one of the pink shirts and saw all the other pink, "he was all smiles," David said. "It was like a big weight had been lifted off his shoulders."

After hearing the tragic stories coming from Western Mass about students being bullied to death, I wanted to do something - but what?  It is not enough but "something" clicked when I heard storyteller Tony Toledo and Sharon Kennedy tell the story of Tipingee and her friends  - a story from Haiti.  So this summer I have been combining the story of Tipingee with the real life story of Travis and David from Nova Scotia  and it has been wonderful to see the wheels turning in the heads of 5,6,7, 8, 9 and 10 year olds and their young adult counselors.

A typical response from an 8 year old boy in a camp for kids with "issues"  He said, in answer to my question "What did you notice about the two stories?"  "Well that just shows that violence doesn't work." Another girl said, "They used their brains to help their friends."  Have to love the power of story to get a point across and even teach some strategy too.

Here is Diane Wolkstein's version from youtube



followed by my interpretation  a clip from a digital story video

This is your brain "on" storytelling" - a deep connection

This is your brain on storytelling - from Roger Dooley (no relation)

We storytellers often describe a successful performance by saying that our audience was "entranced" by our story. After a storytelling performance in a school,  I sometimes have the opportunity to break it down for students. Explaining what just occurred, I might say,  "I used words to transmit the images in my mind and you received my words and turned them into images, feelings and experience in your minds."   I tell students this is the magic of language and story. "Our heads are connected - like wifi ! Only without the computers, iPhones, modems and DSL."  It seems that brain imaging shows my wifi metaphor to be less metaphoric and more a scientific description of the actual process, than I knew.

 "You may be talking and I may be listening, but our brains look strikingly similar.
That’s the conclusion of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. After conducting brain scans of a woman telling a story off the cuff and then of 11 people listening to a recording of her, researchers Greg Stephens and Uri Hasson say they found that the same parts of the brains showed activation at the same time, suggesting a deep connection between talker and listener."

Storyteller and college professor of folk lore Lee-Ellen Marvin said:

Fascinating news! Those of us who tell stories professionally have sensed a deep connection with our listeners that seems mysterious. Some professional storytellers have observed that their audiences breathe together during intense stories, but this goes quite a bit further. The study might also explain the light trance state that listeners seem to fall into during storytelling events. It certainly fits with my favorite definition of storytelling as the communication of experience. If only there was a way to measure the brain activities of a storyteller and listeners in a live, face-to-face storytelling event!

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a little storytelling manifesto

A wordle created from the words of the manifesto by wordle.net -
thanks to Joanne Piazzi of LANES

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as a creed. Manifestos may also be life stance -related. Manifesto is derived from the Italian word manifesto, itself derived from the Latin manifestum, meaning clear or conspicuous. Its first recorded use in English is from 1620.

Storytelling

is a human birthright and as natural as breathing. When practiced as an art, storytelling is deeper than philosophy and more fun than the movies. Story is an amazing educational activity because it works on so many levels. It is meta-cognition or  the natural format of human thought. Because it engages physically, emotionally and intellectually, storytelling is deeply satisfying entertainment.  Since the listeners work with the performer and have a shared, active experience,  storytelling is also a social tool that can  help build healthy community.  As a performance art, storytelling is spoken word at its most accessible.   As a timeless and essentially human art, storytelling delights, engages and inspires students of all ages and abilities.

- Norah Dooley

"After conducting brain scans of a woman telling a story off the cuff and then of 11 people listening to a recording of her, researchers ... say that MRIs showed that the same parts of the brains showed activation at the same time, suggesting a deep connection between talker and listener. "
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/07/27/study-the-brains-of-storytellers-and-their-listeners-actually-sync-up/


“Language is a human instinct, but written language is not…Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on. This basic fact about human nature should be the starting point for any discussion about how to teach our children to read and write.” – Steven Pinker, neurologist and research scientist

A wordle created from the words of the manifesto by wordle.net - thanks to Joanne Piazzi of LANES

Broken Bodhisattva - a poem

Broken Bodhisattva
by N. Dooley


I apologize for my tone.
I have not been myself.
The climate control
Is cold and penetrates.

My smile feels stiff
as if it had been pinned on
and God knows
I
didn’t  pin this smile on
Do you see any fingers on these stumps?
No.
I do not bleed
On their shiny floor.
I can hear the night watchman’s heart beat
And the sad thoughts of the woman
who sings in Spanish when she washes and waxes
the floors.

I do not bleed on them.

I am
still
a
Bodhisattva,
after all.

But
What I want to tell you is–

I’ve been stuck on this pedestal
With
a rod up my ass
for 100s of years.
I will never get down.

And they took my hands.
What more do you need to know?
Can’t you see it?
Must I say it ?

If I spoke
my polychromed lips would break and
the Guardian on the next pedestal would wake from his wooden sleep.
Believe me
he is best left alone
and slumbering.
You see it in his eyes, don’t you?
I can no more save you from his madness
than save myself from
this  pedestal.

His rage would
thunder, breaking the silence in an
explosion of fury
where dust motes now
plop
one
after
another on waxed floors.

Look at his fists, at his biceps!
Don’t get him started.

The Persian minatures would shake in their cases
and those Grecian kraters, ringed with hard ons following
hard ons would
crash
sending shards and
frozen smiles into a
future of puzzles
that are as simple as this one.

What more do you need to know?
Now can you see it?
Or must I
a Bodhisattva
say it?

Help yourself.

The Bodhisattva without hands that inspired me lives at the Sackler Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA. The one pictured above is from the Met in NYC

Advanced Entrepreneurship: Teaming Up for Success

Advanced Entrepreneurship: Teaming Up for Success
The post above is the third in a series on Advanced Entrepreneurship and what distinguishes a great entrepreneur from a good one, by by Stever Robbins. Would any one have pegged this writer [ Norah] big mouthed, left wing, radical butt pain as a reader of the Harvard Business School review? Not bloody likely. But here I am posting a link [above] to a blog from the "B" school about team building and entrepreneurship ( is this even a word?) How mighty are the fallen? Fear not, comrades! I only study the Man's tools to work smart and bring down the Man. Anyway, I like the "socialist" leanings of the Get-It-Done-Guy and see valuable insights in what he has to say about teams and start ups:

A major part of a CEO's job is building and keeping the team together. Mastering this skill is especially important for CEOs of start-ups. When resources are scarce, you need to make sure everyone's working together, to avoid wasted effort or scattered focus. For example, several college friends founded a tech start-up their senior year, but they paid no attention to learning to work as a team. As a result, the marketing VP simply did what she thought made sense. Too bad it didn't correspond to what the product developer was creating. As team members executed independently what they considered best, they began to butt heads. Ultimately, while they fought and squandered the company's resources, their competitor came out with a strongly marketed, tightly developed product — one that put them in the market-leading position previously held by the start-up.
Good entrepreneurs focus first on building a strong executive team. This process begins with hiring. CEOs of start-ups must find the right people with the right skills and get them excited enough to sign on, despite not being able to offer them much money and the uncertainty of success. Recruiting under these circumstances has the happy side effect of building a team that's emotionally committed to the job.
Of course, emotional commitment brings with it strong opinions, and sometimes these opinions clash. As team leader, the CEO is charged with ensuring that personalities among the senior team members mesh and is responsible for mediating any conflicts that arise.
It also falls on the CEO to keep the senior team motivated. Team members were hired for their intrinsic motivation, so this largely means pointing them in the right direction (or letting them help set that direction) and getting out of their way.

massmouth.com is a kind of "start up" and we are building a good team to really get moving on some exciting projects. So I am studying up on all kinds of models to help us make headway in the big wide world. In the world of storytelling, we have many models that show us to how to do things in a small, careful and unobtrusive way. At massmouth.com, we are working on how to take risks, be noticed if not loud and work effectively. We are planning to raise the role of storytelling back into the larger world of culture and art. And oh yeah, by doing so, we hope to make our livings doing this important and creative work.

And besides I started clicking around at the "B" School Review blogs and I found this article: 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life

IRL: In Real Life. It's used as shorthand all over the Internet, to distinguish what happens online from what happens offline.
And it's a lie.
If we still refer to the offline world as "real life," it's only a sign of deep denial — or unwarranted shame — about what reality looks like in the 21st century.
The Internet's impact on our daily lives, experiences and relationships is real. Our world is deeply affected by networks. From the moment you wake up to news that was gathered online to the minute you fall asleep listening to a podcast, the Internet shapes how you experience the world around you. From the lunch date you make with your BFF ("r u free 4 lunch 2day?") to the colleagues your company recruited online, the Internet shapes who you interact with. And from the boss who fills you in on a Twitter rumor to the kid who fills you in on her Facebook activities, the Internet shapes how you interact with them.

All the above verbiage was good, and helpful but this article was even better: 

Why Friends Matter at Work and in Life by Peter Bregman

8:30 AM Thursday July 1, 2010 | Comments (49)

Susan Harrison, my mother in law, died several months ago after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Like most of us, she was not famous. If you didn't know her you probably didn't know of her. She lived in the relatively small community of Savannah, Georgia.

Yet she did some amazing things there — she was the first ordained woman Deacon in Georgia, she founded a soup kitchen, and she helped create the Savannah Homeless Authority. In addition to raising three children and, some would say, a husband.

One of the problems we faced after her death was finding a church big enough to hold the people who wanted to attend her funeral. We picked the largest one we could find, with seating for 600, and still many had to stand in the back and along the aisles.

Susan had a particular quality that drew people in. It wasn't her accomplishments. It wasn't money. She had no access to famous or important people. She couldn't hire you; she wasn't a stepping stone.

Susan was, quite simply, a really good friend.

Which is an art. To be a good friend, you have to give of yourself, but not so much that you lose yourself. You need to know what you want and pursue it, while helping others achieve what they want. You need to have personality while making room for, and supporting, other people's personalities. You need to care about, and even love, people you might disagree with (I'm pretty sure she didn't vote for the same candidates as her husband). You need to be willing to give at least as much, if not more, than you take.

This is a pretty predictable recipe for happiness. Giving to others — a reliable way of fostering friendships — makes us happier than taking things for ourselves. According to research led by Dr. Elizabeth Dunn at the University of British Columbia, money can buy happiness . . . as long as you spend it on other people.

Researchers conducted three studies. First, they surveyed more than 600 Americans and found that spending money on gifts and charities led to greater happiness than spending money on oneself.

Then they looked at workers who had just received bonuses and found that their happiness was not based on the size of their bonus but on the decision they made about what to do with whatever amount of money they received. Those who spent more of their bonus on others were happier than those who spent the money on themselves.

Finally, the researchers simply gave money to a number of people, instructing some to spend the money on themselves and others to spend the money on others. At the end of the day, the ones who spent money on others were happier.

So having friends and treating them generously is clearly a winning strategy in life. But what about business?

If you watch even a single episode of any reality TV show based on a competition — The Apprentice, Survivor, Top Chef, America's Next Top Model, The Bachelor, The Amazing Race; it doesn't matter which — you'll hear a single phrase come up more often than any other:

"I'm not here to make friends!"

If you want to see what I mean — and just for the fun of it — watch this short YouTube video compilation. Apparently many of the contestants believe that in order to win you can't be worried about how you affect others. As one contestant on The Apprentice so eloquently said, "We're not here to make friends. It's nothing personal. This is f**king business." Is that true? Are we better off being cutthroat than collaborative?

Well, let's look at the data. If you're looking for a job you'd better have friends. The number-one way people find new jobs is referrals by friends.

Once you're on the job, having a best friend at work is a strong predictor of success. People might define "best" loosely (think of this as kindergarten where you can have more than one "best" friend), but according to a Gallup Organization study of more than 5 million workers over 35, 56% of the people who say they have a best friend at work are engaged, productive, and successful while only 8% of the ones who don't are.

And another remarkable study, spanning decades, revealed that friendships in high school were a strong predictor of increased wages in adulthood — to the tune of 2% per person who considered you a close friend. In other words, if in high school three people listed you as one of their closest same-sex friends, your earnings in adulthood would be 6% higher.

Want to stay in that job you have? Then you'd better have friends. As a friend of mine who runs sales for a successful technology company told me recently, "People try hard not to fire their friends. It's the difference between 'he's a good guy' and 'I don't know about that guy."

The happy truth is that the people who say they're not here to make friends don't win. That's true for reality TV. It's true for business. And it's true for life.

During Susan's last few days she was surrounded at all hours by her family and friends. During those moments she managed to get some advice out. Among her parting words? "Surround yourself with a loving community."

In other words, it's a pretty good bet that we really are here to make friends

'Nuff said, friendship trumps competition -- the Harvard Business School sez so. Avanti Populo!

The Windy City Story Slam takes it national. article from Time Out, Chicago

 Last week, in the middle of all the heat and whirlwind of activity, I was interviewed as a rep of massmouth about our participation in the Windy City Nationals. Here is the article.

Glam slam
The Windy City Story Slam takes it national.
By Robert Duffer

top: Alex Bonner, representing Windy City Story Slams, Photo: Tim Schreier
below: our massmouth rep, Jim Stahl
Photo: Norah Dooley

WE ARE THE SLAMPIONS
Two years ago, the Windy City Story Slam was an idea. Now it’s a sensation. Story-slam representatives from eight cities will hit Chicago at this year’s revamped Printers Row Lit Fest for the first National Story Slam Competition. From Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, the slammers are coming, and they’re following Bill Hillman’s lead by making it happen at the grass roots.

“The story slam revolution is in full go,” says Hillman, who is a construction worker and grad student in the creative-writing department at Columbia College Chicago. “Story slams have been popping up completely homegrown and community-based.”

Three weeks before the nationals, massmouth out of Boston held a competition to decide which of its 12 slammers would win the $240 airfare to Chicago. “With massmouth, we want to engage a whole new audience and firmly plant storytelling as an art form in our culture,” says Norah Dooley, the Boston slam’s co-founder and champion of Hillman’s efforts. (my emphasis)


This national support helped Hillman convince the Chicago Tribune, producers of Printers Row, that an amped up national showcase on Sunday afternoon at the venerated Pritzker Auditorium in the Harold Washington Library would be better than a regular WCSS under a tent outside.

“I can sell ice to Eskimos when I believe in something,” Hillman says.

What is the draw, and how is it different than a reading? The attraction is the dynamic interaction with the audience. Hillman, the 2002 Golden Gloves champion, likens live storytelling to a bout where he was outmatched and beaten down by a bigger, better boxer. A knockout was imminent, but the crowd rallied and kept Hillman in the fight.

“I couldn’t believe I did that,” Hillman says, smiling and shaking his head. He didn’t win that one, but he learned to feed off the crowd. So do his storytellers. “The energy of the crowd can bring incredible things out of people. It’s electric.”

For the WCSS to host nationals seems like a natural progression. Since its inception, the monthly series has courted many and pissed off a handful, packed the Metro, featured headliners from great Scot Irvine Welsh to National Book Award–nominee Bonnie Jo Campbell, incorporated a musician from the Old Town School of Folk Music into each show, finally found a regular home at the Empty Bottle, and now established a national event.

Massmouth, like most slams Hillman has recruited, from Portland, Oregon’s Story Theater to Philadelphia’s First Person Arts, specializes in the personal narrative. “We get fiction usually, but for the nationals it’ll be true stories,” Hillman says.

That’s not the only difference. The Windy City Story Slam was built on audience involvement. Applause crowns the winner, as it did for Alex Bonner, this year’s All-City Champion and Chicago representative. Heckling can also shut slammers down. During the All-City Championships at a packed Metro in January 2009, the title event of a banner inaugural year for the WCSS, Hillman couldn’t persuade the crowd to give less-seasoned performers a fair chance. “I should have done a better job reining it in,” Hillman admits, wishing he had mesmerized and enchanted the crowd more like his slam mentor and inspiration, Marc Smith, the Slam Papi of the Green Mill’s legendary Poetry Slam.

At the comparatively reserved Pritzker Auditorium for the nationals, Hillman and his crew will recruit five judges (who hadn’t been named by press time—Smith was top on the list) to choose a winner. The audience won’t be forgotten, Hillman assures; there will be an audience choice as well. Both winners receives Story Slam bragging rights—over the entire country.

The slam throws down Sunday 13 at 3pm at the Harold Washington Library Center, 450 S State St.

Read more: http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/books/86270/windy-city-story-slam

I nearly forgot how much I love to paint,sing and tell stories...

massmouth's Bridge to Haiti was a fun idea. But the weather and other commitments conspired against me until I was left with just 12 hours, in which to paint, load and deliver  enough cardboard to make a scene on the Weeks Memorial Footbridge. Man, that is one big-assed bridge.  Sheila Leavitt helped enormously by creating HUGE cloth banners for both sides.  Amazing. Adriane Spunt and Andrea Lovett worked in 90 degree heat to prime one side of the cardboard. But in the end,  it was me and big ideas that was left to do the rest. Not the ideal conditions for painting.  So humid. Nothing would dry. Hard to cut damp cardboard. Cramped apartment. Moving from boiler room to bedroom, tip-toeing around and through the sleeping family. Setting up a dehumidifier, and moving 16'X 6' wet cardboard boxes from room to room is just as crazy making as it sounds.  At about 3 AM some cardboard had dried enough to be cut and painted.  It was then that I started to have fun. I looked up flora and fauna of Haiti. I learned how to draw a hibiscus, the unofficial flower of Haiti. I was just hitting my stride when it was time to pack it all up and get it to the River Festival. *sigh*  Stu just uploaded a tom of pics and some of the little decorative pieces I made for the Bridge to Haiti. It was so much fun that I am itching to paint more. 

 
Find more photos like this on massmouth The Power of Story

But,  in the "cobbler's children have no shoes" mode, instead,  I am in a show coming up that I have not had a moment to personally promote.  I did find time to steal a frog and design a poster for the event ( above).  Here is some additional information:

An evening of personal narratives tall,short and otherwise

 some are stranger than fiction but all are true. by massmouth storytellers. 

organized by H.R.Britton of Overcoat Theater •  Tickets at the door - $10 dollars 
1353 Cambridge Street in Inman Square Cambridge from 7PM – 9:30PM

HR Britton’s most recent monologue, From Madison to Madurai: 134 Days in Mother India is a humorous and sometimes sobering look a Britton’s four-and-a-half month stay in India. Andrea Lovett telling “Grilled Underpants” and other personal favorites. Norah Dooley tells all in “Charter School” is English word for ‘gulag”   Tony Toledo  has been telling stories to pay the rent since 1990.  Elizabeth  Appleby Elizabeth Appleby advises you fasten your seatbelt  as she tells  

 If you lived here, you’d be home^DEAD now.

The storytellers:

H.R.Britton is new to Boston.  His new monologue about his time in India, “Melting in Madras” opens at the Piano Factory Theatre this Tuesday. Andrea Lovett is a founding member of massmouth, stoyteller, teacher, and has kissed a lot of frogs. Not complaining, just saying. Norah Dooley,  also a founding member of massmouth is a storyteller, author and educator. She has swallowed many flies.  More at: www.norahdooley.com Tony Toledo tells tales to elementary students, senior citizens and preschoolers, though usually not all at the same time. Elizabeth  Appleby is a performer, writer and educator. Her one woman show Fritz Perls Is My (tor) Mentor was produced at The Marsh in San Francisco.  Early on, she labeled her life a living joke.

Much as I love the short form of 5 minute stories, I am really looking forward to the chance to tell a longer story at this gig. Painting will have to wait. Again.  Speaking of things I have waited to do, Rosie and I sang again with the Mystic Chorale this weekend after an 8 year break. It was pure joy to sing with 250 other people in Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA. We did two shows and it was so much fun to work with the guest conductors, Jonathan Singleton and Dr. Phillip Woods in particular.  Here is an article from WBUR - FM

Nick Page (center, behind the piano) leads his Mystic Chorale through a recent "sing" in Arlington. (Andrea Shea/WBUR)

Get Out Of The Shower: Mystic Chorale Says ‘Everyone Can Sing’

BOSTON — This story is about a potentially embarrassing topic: Singing. Where do you belt it out? If you’re like a lot of people, you might feel safe singing alone — in the shower, or maybe in your car. But Boston conductor and composer Nick Page thinks everyone can sing — and should — with lots of other people, in-tune or almost in-tune...He’ll be doing that this weekend in a concert with his posse, the 250-member Mystic Chorale....More than 200 singers gathered for a recent rehearsal at a church in Arlington. Page is the chorale’s founder and fearless leader.
“The trick with adults is to give them the emotional permission to let it out,” Page said. “Most adults who don’t sing sing at the same level as when they stopped singing. I got that from that book, ‘Drawing (on the) Right Side of (the) Brain.’ It says that people who take up drawing as adults start at the same level as when they stopped. And the same is true of singing.” Page lives by the mantra: “Everyone can sing.” There are no auditions for the Mystic Chorale. Some members are totally green. Others have been singing their whole lives.

The conductor is a big man with a big heart. He commands a hulking, playful, supportive presence. Barefooted and wearing a head band, Page works with the group through a song he wrote called, “I Found My Voice.” The chorale group’s affection for him is palpable. Page — a classically-trained musician and self-described “folkie” — formed the chorale 20 years ago. It started with much smaller, casual, community “sings,” as Page calls them. Open to all, they were inspired by Dr. Ysaye Barnwell of the African-American a cappella group, Sweet Honey and the Rock. She’s organized community sings all over the world, with a focus on teaching the art of song in the oral tradition. Over the years, the Mystic Chorale has grown organically as people in the audience sang along, got hooked and signed up... more here