STORYTELLING

Broadcast starting December 12, 2007

The magic words "once upon a time" transport us to other worlds and other times. Storytelling is the primary technology of a preliterate age and has traveled through time to make its mark on history. Our brain constructs images and puts them into a narrative flow; our body projects those images onto an audience in front of the hearth, around a fire, sitting in the kitchen or on a stage. Guests include Diane Wolkstein, a master storyteller from New York City; Dr. Joseph Sobol, director of the Storytelling Graduate Program at East Tennessee State University and author of "The Storytellers' Journey: An American Revival;" Donald Davis, one of the nation's foremost storytellers; and Linda Blackman, founder and director of The Mothers' Living Stories Project. With commentary by John Hockenberry.

Host Dr. Fred Goodwin opens the show by sharing his thoughts on storytelling. He reflects on some of his favorite moments in his childhood, times when his father gathered all five of his children around him and told them stories of his own childhood on a ranch in Idaho. Dr. Goodwin goes on to question whether children today have the same opportunities with their parents that he did with his father. Because we live in an increasingly mobile society, many children do not know their extended families well, and do not learn their own families' stories. Children seem to rely more and more on television to hear stories rather than having the opportunity to explore their own imaginations through family stories. Dr. Goodwin suggests that this adds to the lack of interest in our history in our culture.

The first guest, Diane Wolkstein, is a storyteller who has been weaving her tales in New York City and around the world for over 30 years. Diane spent several years in Haiti learning traditional Haitian folk tales and begins today's story, "The Magic Orange Tree," with a Haitian tradition. In Haiti, storytellers always begin with an exchange between themselves and their audience: they storyteller shouts out an enthusiastic Cric? (pronounced "creek") and the audience must reply with an even more enthusiastic Crac! ( pronounced "crack") before the story will begin. The Magic Orange Tree is the story of a little girl who lives with her cruel stepmother. The girl often visited her own mother's grave in order to get away from her stepmother. At the grave the girl finds an orange seed and plants it… as the girl sings to the seed it grows into a beautiful orange tree and it started to produce beautiful luscious oranges for the little girl. The girl takes some oranges back to her stepmother's house and the stepmother demands to be taken to the orange tree… (The story continues later in our program.) Diane Wolkstein is reachable at www.dianewolkstein.com or you can write her at 10 Patchin Place; New York, New York 10011-8342.

Next, we are joined by Dr. Joseph Sobol, director of the Storytelling Graduate Program at East Tennessee State University and the author of The Storytellers Journey: An American Revival . Sobol discusses the role of storytelling in our history and in America today. He begins by defining the storyteller and telling us that the storyteller brings a narrative line to life and paints a picture, in words, for his/her audience. The struggles that are part of our everyday lives are "writ large," he says, in stories. Stories move us into those struggles in a picture form, through the all-important direct connection between the storyteller and the audience is all-important in storytelling. Sobol explains that storytelling is one of the first ways to record history… it goes back far before any forms of written history and was the primary way for families, groups and communities to pass on personal as well as communal histories. Writing, which requires the intervention of technology - pen and paper -- is now the prominent way we have of passing history on to future generations, but Dr. Sobol explains that it isn't the same as storytelling. Storytelling, he says, is imprinted on the storyteller's heart, and is brought forth out of the mind of the storyteller in a new way each time the story is told. Storytelling is alive. Dr. Sobol talks about his own book: The Storytellers Journey: An American Revival," and the role of the revival of storytelling that is currently happening in America. The Revival, for Dr. Sobol, is not only a revival of storytelling, but also a revival of 'us' that takes place in storytelling. In other words, storytelling helps us to connect with our souls, our selves and what we are capable of in this world. Dr. Sobol goes on to explain what a storytelling festival is and there format. In Dr. Sobol's opinion, storytelling is a tool that can be used, at festivals and at home, to bring generations together. The magic words, "Once Upon a Time…" opens up a sacred space for the listener of stories and relaxes away their everyday concerns. Those words, Dr. Sobol explains, allow a procession of images to enter the listeners mind through the voice of the storyteller. Because storytelling is entirely in the minds of the storyteller and listener it exercises the brain through use of imagination, and creates the release of neurotransmitters which flood the brain with positive chemistry. Storytelling creates a situation where our emotions, our imaginations and our minds work together as a whole. It unites generations and helps us move toward the preservation of our own stories and our own histories. Dr. Sobol can be contacted at SOBOL@etsu.edu.

Storyteller Diane Wolkstein joins us again to finish the story of "The Magic Orange Tree." When we last left "The Magic Orange Tree" our heroine's stepmother was demanding to be taken to her stepdaughter's tree. The girl decides that she will take her evil stepmother to see her orange tree, but when they arrive at the tree the stepmother eats all of the little girl's oranges. In response, the little girl uses her magic orange tree to destroy her evil stepmother and to grow oranges that she can sell in the market to take care of herself. Diane Wolkstein joins The Infinite Mind's Dempsey Rice after the story. She describes storytelling as participation between the storyteller and the audience: together, they explore the inside meanings of life. As a storyteller, Diane is always listening, she enjoys hearing and caring for other people's stories and hopes that in giving people a story she will be giving them comfort. Diane hopes that every school, every town and every city will have a storyteller in the future and that we will all integrate storytelling into our lives.

The Infinite Mind's Vince Pearson visits storyteller Donald Davis at the Timpanagos Storytelling Festival in Utah in our next segment. Davis offers a hilarious and often profound look into his own life and tells stories that open up into other people's lives and allow them to connect, on a very personal level, with his own tales. He tells common stories that help his audience to explore their own importance and the humor and pathos of their own lives. Davis' primary goal as a storyteller is to help people recognize their own stories and to encourage people to tell their own stories. Davis says that when we tell a story and we make someone else laugh or cry the teller of that story has a newer sense of themselves and who they are. Davis is reachable at www.ddavisstoryteller.com or at Storyteller, Inc.; PO Box 397; Ocracoke, NC 27960.

Stories can help us to recognize the positive importance of our own lives. Our final guest is Linda Blachman, founder and director of "The Mothers' Living Stories Project" in Oakland, California. Michael Leaver, a listener for The Mothers' Living Stories Project also joins us. The Mothers' Living Stories Project was set up to help mothers with cancer to record their life legacies and stories for their children. Blachman says she began the project because our culture is reluctant to talk about death, and because women with cancer, who are also raising children, need to be heard. In addition, Blachman says, she wanted to offer support for the families and the children of the women if they died of their cancer. Once a woman gets involved with The Mothers' Living Stories Project, she is paired up with a 'listener' from the project. The listener's role is to meet with the mother weekly for six to eight weeks and to record, on audio tape, the stories, the legacies, that the mothers choose to tell. The listeners create a safe environment for the mothers to tell their stories and they simply listen to what the mother needs to say. In doing so, they do not judge the mothers and they do not act in any sort of therapeutic sense; they just listen. Both Blachman and Leaver share a few stories that they have been told by the mothers with cancer and talk about how important it is for the children to have their mother's story if she does die. The mothers who participate in the project say they feel like the project affirms their value as women, as mothers and as people. The goal of The Mothers' Living Stories Project is to being the mother's voices to a large community and to create a model that can be replicated in communities across the country. The Mothers' Living Stories Project can be contacted at http://www.motherslivingstories.org/

Finally, John Hockenberry shares his thoughts about storytelling on public radio with a spoof of the popular radio program "This American Life." ("Sorry Ira," he apologizes. "I couldn't help myself.")

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