Where I Have Been for the past 4 months

The Queen of Hyperbole is a title I wear easily. It fits. So when I say this has been the most intense and exhausting few months of my life, most people will "pooh-pooh" me. But it has. And I guess I have done things like this before? But it is impossible to remember. Which is likely why I do things like this over and over again. What is "this"? "This" is/was an epic project that  cost me many more gray hairs, a dozen visits to  PT for back problems and 6 to 7, 18 hour days a week.

This spring, from March 11th until April 15th, massmouth storyteller-educators taught the art of storytelling to high school students. The curriculum based, in class program was called, StoriesLive® Collectively, we have heard over 1,200 personal stories from high school juniors and seniors in Abington, Andover, Boston Latin Academy, Everett, Lynn Classical, and Newburyport high schools. The best of the stories heard in the classroom moved on to tell in front of a larger high school audience. The best of each high school competed on April 30th, 2011 for a share $5000 in scholarship cash. Prizes were awarded for any post-secondary educational endeavor as follows: $2,000 for the 1st place and $1000 each to 2 runners up. $500 to the Audience Choice winner. A $500 award was a discretionary prize from massmouth to any student in the program.





So here, at last, is a video - uneven in quality but unified in message, that has some of the highlights of StoriesLive®.

Offices - here there and everywhere...

View from the Royalston office...

I am moving target these days...up and down Route 2, to and from Boston. Seeking internet connection in the boonies... Feeling a bit like the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's, Through the Looking-Glass.

The Red Queen said, "Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."


The Red Queen Principle can be stated thus: "For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with." Uh-huh. Well, whatever.  Another way to say it might be that we are so busy we hardly have time to wipe our noses.

My favorite quote from The Red Queen is : "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." And at massmouth, we have sometimes done as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  Lewis Carroll said the Red Queen was based on the quintessential British governess or teacher. If that is true,   I often feel more like Tweedledummer than the Queen: "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

And as for my postings? Well, the Red Queen said it best: "It's too late to correct it," said the Red Queen: "when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences."

The postings have not kept up with our truly fantastic speed. Maybe that is a good thing, considering my pathetic typo to word count ratio ?  As for impossible things, this month massmouth moved out of my bedroom, established an office, found funding to pay for the office for six months and just found an intern from Lesley University, who will work with us for college credit. One of our dreams come true! And massmouth also hosted 5 story fabulous story slams/events and a few workshops.

Inside the office...

So, on many days, rather than feeling like the Red Queen,  I feel more like Alice: " Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next."

Not the "off with yer head" gal, the other, more reasonable, equally bossy, monarch.

The Way of the Woodcutter

We spent a gorgeous afternoon with Nelson. Patti, Robert and I worked side by side and it felt great to be outside and working with wood under Nelson's gentle direction. Nelson is pretty deaf from working with a chain saw for 60 of his 86 years so my questions are loud. I recorded him by turning on my cell phone memo function and putting it in my pocket while we worked. The pics are all from my iPhone as well. Though I have been splitting wood for years this was my first time using a chain saw.

Nelson is 87 years old.

He is thoughtful and wicked funny.

Neslon said I would "starve" if I tried to earn a living cutting wood. He also said that he had "never burned oil" only wood.  He does not miss a trick and he loves to tease us.  He noticed that I was taking pictures - without actually looking up. He chided me to get the "beautiful side" of his handsome face. Later Nelson asked me when he sussed that I was up to more than just splitting and stacking wood, " Who is your media outlet? FOX or CNN?" We love getting to spend time with him. The little video below does not do him justice.

Storytelling for Adults and Kids: Everybody Has A Story pt 2

Checked out my tape and here is what I captured with my video cam set up. I adjusted to catch Eric and the rest of the tape has my head cut off - I sure needed a camera person.

Everybody Has A Story: A Storytelling Concert by Norah Dooley

 Great fun at Cambridge Center concert where we Skyped in Eric Miller in Chennai, India. NATIONAL STORYTELLING NETWORK: CONNECT WITH INDIA on 11/20
from my friend Jeff Gere and the ccae.org for sponsoring my performance
NSN Vision: Connecting people to and through storytelling

The Chennai Storytelling Association and the Mumbai Storytelling Association are wondering if there are adults and/or children in the USA who might like to videoconference with them in Chennai and Mumbai on Tellabration Day, November 20th -- just to tell and listen to folktales in English. It would be for 60-90 minutes, in the early part of the day on that Saturday (USA time)(Hawaii dunno). This 3-way videoconference will be facilitated by Reliance Communications, a huge Indian telecom company that has produced numerous Megaconferences. If interested, please contact: eric@storytellinginstitute.org , Eric Miller, Director, World Storytelling Institute, Chennai, India.

The video conference worked but seemed as if every piece of my recording equipment failed due to low then, no battery power. So I clicked a few shots with my iPhone and I have a story from the audience too. Very fun! Thanks Eric Miller for the inspiration. More connections to come, I hope.

Everybody Has A Story: A Storytelling Concert by Norah Dooley by Michael Cicone


"Norah Dooley is an entrancing storyteller." - Scott Alarik, Boston Globe


Critically acclaimed author and storyteller Norah Dooley comes to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Saturday, November 20 at 10:30 am for an all-ages storytelling concert: Everybody Has A Story. "Norah is an inspiration," says CCAE's director of education, Michael Cicone, "and she has a wealth of stories to share - from traditional folk tales to the real-life experiences of her neighbors."
Dooley has performed all over New England, including the winter and spring Revels, Newport Folk Festival, Cambridge River Festival and Three Apples Storytelling Festival in Bedford. She is also the author of a series of beloved picture books about her former neighborhood in Cambridge, MA - Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Serves Soup, Everybody Brings Noodles, and Everybody Bakes Bread - which highlight the commonalities of human experience that bring all of us together.
"Norah reminds us that everyone has a compelling story to share with the world," says Cicone. "And Everybody Has A Story is a great event for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors and friends to attend with the children in their lives. They will come away with lots of new things to talk about." Dooley is also a wonderful teacher - with a master's degree in education and a BFA in painting.

Eric Miller, PhD
http://www.storytellingandvideoconfer...
Director, World Storytelling Institute (Chennai)
http://www.storytellinginstitute.org
Assistant Professor of Story and Storytelling,
Image College of Animation, Arts, and Technology (Chennai)
http://www.icat.ac.in
"Methods and Options for Videoconferencing
in Relation to the Tamil Language in 2010,"
http://www.storytellingandvideoconfer... .
For http://www.infitt.org/ti2010 .
"Spin Yarns, Interact with Locals, and Visit the Places of Your Fairytales,"
http://www.storytellingandvideoconfer... .

The M&M Hotel - farewell to horror

Front entrance and waiting room where we spent hours

Looking for a story for the "horrified" story slam I bumped into an "old friend" and took some pics. Then I recorded my thoughts while sitting in our car, on an errand. In this short digital story, I have combined my thoughts and images with some images I found on line. They were amazing. These photos by Anna Shuelit were the exact mirror of images in my memory from my many visits to and from MMHC as a daughter and sister of mentally ill family from 1968 -- until 1990? Not sure.

The picture of our mother, sitting lost and alone, on our living room couch is seared in my mind.

Since I was not chosen as a contestant at the "horrified" slam,  I am posting my story, warts and all,  here. The Guess Who song "Undun"  in this soundtrack was popular during one of my mother's breakdowns and was kind of an anthem for us.



I was surprised to see this art installation and celebration of mmhc online. Check out the mmhc site and the project at:  http://www.1856.org/bloom/setting.html

The main entrance - all that was left on OCT 26, 2010

"THE MASSACHUSETTS MENTAL HEALTH CENTER
The Massachusetts Mental Health Center opened its doors on June 24, 1912. From its inception, the institution has been a partnership between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School. It is one of the oldest public teaching hospitals in the United States and has trained several generations of leaders in American psychiatry. Located three blocks from Harvard Medical School, it is both a state mental health facility and a center of academic psychiatry, combining public service with clinical- and research programs. MMHC serves an ethnically diverse catchment area of about 285,000 people in several Boston neighborhoods, with a mission to care for the seriously mentally ill regardless of their financial circumstances.

The center began as the Psychopathic Department of Boston State Hospital in 1912, under the direction of Dr. Elmer E. Southard. It separated from the hospital and was renamed the Boston Psychopathic Hospital (BPH) in 1920. It was initially created to provide for the reception, diagnosis, and disposition of acute psychiatric patients in Boston, usually admitting patients for short periods only. After diagnosis patients were transferred to state hospitals or discharged for outpatient care. As the institution developed a reputation for active teaching and research in psychiatry, cases from other state hospitals were transferred to it for observation or special treatment.

When a building is closed after nine decades of continuous use, its long history moves from a physical setting to an abstract place in our memory. In the course of closing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, the people who worked and stayed in this building for years, whose lives were affected - often unconsciously - by its dimensions, directions, and traffic ways, are moved to a new environment."

Taylor Mali poem on conviction!

I am so often chided for speaking too strongly and I noticed this trend at the charter school I taught at.
Thanks, Taylor Mali. And I love the graphics too.
Ya know?