My First Storytelling Review

(Tombstones on my 10-day, solo cycling tour in Ireland)

One of my fellow storytellers sent me this link the other day, for a blog post made after my storytelling event: http://thewanderingjewess.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/artist-date-45-the-sometimes-kindness-of-strangers/

It is very exciting to write something, have an audience member relate to it, continue to think about it after the show is over, and then write something too!

(one of the many spots on Mt. Haguro where I sat and listened and thought)

I was especially happy since I had some doubts about the story. This was a tough writing and editing process and it was an intimidating performance process too -- that began with a directors suggestion that I try out Welsh and Australian accents and included a lot of tricky jumps in scene and timeline and thought bubbles verses narration. I was aware a more seasoned performer could have brought something to the piece that was beyond my limited skills.And I admit, when I arrived at the technical rehearsal and performance night and heard Clover and Eric's stories -- with deep revelations about poverty, mental illness, abandonment -- I was worried that my mostly perky little story would come across as "Whenever I get sad, I take a trip!"

My blogger/reviewer is not alone with her tendency to compare!!

(Camping in the Outback)

I hope I get to read (or hear) some of the art that comes from this blogger's year of self-discovery and loneliness too.

Cream Clock

From one of my Black Boxes filled with Favorite Things.
I believe this belonged to my Grandma Schemanski but it possible belonged to my great Aunt Val. I even love the yellow stains left by the scotch tape that, for years until it dried up and fell off, covered the crack. This palm-sized clock, like all of the watches in my favorite things collection, does not work.

Creamsicle Orange or Robin's Egg Blue?

I am telling a story tonight at The Kindness of Strangers storytelling festival. This weekend, in addition to rehearsing and being nervous, I had to decide what to wear. It came down to a choice between two much loved pairs of shoes. One is creamsicle orange and the other is robin's egg blue. I wasn't sure what I would choose before I went out for a walk. These are the things I passed.

Turquoise doors and bright blue domes.

Blue porch chairs, window frames and mosaics.

Old blue cars, splotches, and dots.

I decided on the blue.

Black Boxes and Favorite Things

Comcast is too expensive and never works.
I can't remember the last time I turned on my tv.
I miss looking at my little shoe collections.

So, while I need to figure out something for internet eventually, I cancelled, packed up the TV and filled the gap in my shelves with things I love.

Enter photo documentation project Number 2: Black boxes and Favorite Things.
These boxes are PACKED with treasures!

Locks and Keys and Doors

Starting up a locks and keys and doors project.

"All day long consciously and unconsciously I thought of Mary. I love her"

I'm looking for some things I can't find. But, while looking, I came across this journal that I bought many years ago. It is dated from 1912 to 1916, written by a machinist, in Denver I believe. I know that between the pipe and the mines there is also a broken heart and a love of music and a lot of technical lingo I don't quite understand. Maybe it will all be clear as I become more familiar with it.

I am a reader of spoilers.
I have been known to page forward in mystery novels, I don't mind. I want to know the end, it is reassuring, and I enjoy seeing how it all develops without the anxiety.

So I especially like this five year diary, with all the January 1s on one page and then all the January 2s. I plan to read down five years and follow each year's plot forward until they all meet. I want to know about Mary at the bottom of my page and then meet her in the middle of my book.

Knowing the future creates suspense even while it soothes it.

January 1 1912
(?)ate. K's keys to gate (?)ore opens up 140 mt(?)s of new cable on P.M. and composition of cable socket filling. Other (????) wound. Eve. Fooled around sitting room. Setter to M. (?)

January 1 1913
Juan and I set up one pole & get O(???) line fixed. Ask central for pulleys, no bay. R. is in school next door. Harrow goes hunting. At 5th (mine?). More about R. in school. Hard to (slep?) M. on R.

January 1 1914
Plant runs. Juan & I clean heating pipes. Harrows to S.P.S. St. (????) Get pipes finished by 4:30. H and I have tie to get (??/) started.

January 1 1915
Doerr, Bill and I at mine. (?)add, Lucas, Bill, Doer and I at dinner. Julia cooked well. Turkey fine. Back to mine on Lucas' mule.

January 1 1916
Read "news" in depot. A long walk past St. John's and the Immaculate Conception: P.M. Bed not made up; walked to City Park, saw skating; a girl almost exactly resembles Mary. To Hotel by 4:30. Low cut shoes. Wet. Snow is melting. All day long consciously and unconsciously I thought of Mary. I love her.

Lend Me Your Eyes?

I'm starting to gather illustrations for a project: a supplement to a story called "Lazy Eye."
Lazy Eye was supposed to be Volume One, Number One,but I think it is probably going to be Volume Three or Four now.

It's got a complicated moving part, and I've got limited art skills.

But since there is a delay, I want to work on a supplement to it and the supplement involves a call for submission:

If you are willing to send (email, snail mail, whatever) an artistic, mostly two-dimension version of an eye -- a drawing, collage, photograph... whatever, anything goes -- that you will allow me to print off 10 color-copies to put together in a booklet and eventually dump off in the Free Library box on Chicago Avenue, please do so.


And let me know how to credit you.

I'll scan the whole thing before dumping the originals into the box and post it here so you can see it, if you like.


My gmail is: bbqpickles@gmail.com

Pushing the Button

Pushing the button --

Send, Buy, Accept --

will never be quite as exciting to me as closing the door to the mailbox.

But it's still exciting.





In the past two days, I've had several opportunities to push big buttons and feel that swirly in my stomach it can bring.

One group of big buttons I pushed are too personal to talk about, but they reminded me how scary it feels to send what's on your mind to someone you love.

Another big button push came when I hit SUBMIT in the eGMS Federal Government Report system (with 2 hours to spare on my deadline!) for the final report of the NEH grant project we've been working on since 2009. I only came on board for this one about 18 months ago, but they have been a packed 18 months. End result of all this work is the Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey. This is one of my favorite digital resources we've worked on. Where else can I come across a reference to the Roentgen Ray machine?

That button push reminded me what a relief it can feel to send something out. And also how frustrating it is to see typos, or poor choices of words, or things you want to change .. but it's too late.

The last big button push was a simple invitation to dinner to someone I don't know and didn't imagine, before yesterday, I might be sharing a roasted pig and beer with. That button push reminded me how funny and strange life is.

When you push the button, you can't go back and correct the typos.
When you push the button, you can't change the ideas.
When you push the button, you can't take it back.
When you push the button, you risk criticism and rejection.

I'm really close to finishing Volume One, Number One of my Museum of Round.

I think this weekend.

It's personal and weird and not at all how I imagined it looking in my head.

But it's mine and when it is done I am going to push the button.


In this case, I actually do get to close a door, to the Free Library Box.
I wonder how it's going to feel?

Opportunities

It's 1994, maybe late 1993?
Either way, Bill Clinton is president.
Star Trek is on to Deep Space Nine.
Everyone is either talking about or about to start talking about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
Kurt Cobain will soon be dead and OJ is about to take a white Bronco ride.

I'm fresh out of Library School (yes, you really do need a degree for that, a Masters degree, and no, I don't read books all day)and somehow have the unwarranted responsibility and trust to direct the Hamtramck Public Library. The city is broke, my salary can't be much more than minimum wage, and the book-buying budget is practically non-existent. I try to make do. We can do Inter-library Library Loan with other WOLF libraries(Wayne Oakland Library Federation)and we've got a depository agreement with the Detroit Public Library for a rotating set of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian language books.

Until one-day, two opportunities--two grant opportunities from the State of Michigan--make their way to my desk. The first is for a computer(!) and the second is for collection development. The entire staff is skeptical about that first one. Especially since this computer is supposed to be available for the public to use and that's just going to be trouble. What do we need a computer for? Our catalog is not online and, even though people are starting to talk about some thing called the World Wide Web, its not like we're NASA or MIT, why would a public library need access to that even if it does take off? I write it anyway, and we get it.

The second grant opportunity garners a bit more excitement, we do a survey of all of our science books. During science fair at the schools we are swamped with kids trying to figure out how to make a lava-spewing volcano or make a lightbulb shine with twist-ties and a damp sponge (I thin I might be making that one up?)There are never enough books, we have to limit check out. And worst of all, we during the collection survey we confirm that more than 80% of the books are more than 20 years old... the library has been broke for years. So I write that one too, and we get it. We all have a great time ordering and putting those new books on the shelves, and I have become ...a Grant Writer.

Fast forward a couple years.
I've broken up with my high school/college/grad school/first job boyfriend and I am ready to leave my home state. I pack the cat into the Honda a few days before Christmas, head west, and soon find myself at the Denver Public Library. In a beautiful office with a view of the mountains and the expectation that I will get some grants to digitize and catalog the amazing photography collection in the Western History department. Based on those two Hamtramck grants and my library degree, I've somehow convinced people to give me chance. I try hard not to act as clueless as I feel.

One-year and two million dollars later, Im lucky enough to leverage my success to become the Curator of Photography and the Digital Imaging Projects manager, And when I leave Denver in 2002, to move back midwest to Chicago, the Newberry Library hires me first to manage cataloging projects and grants and then to start up a new department, managing and digital humanities grants and always .. always... looking for more money, looking for more opportunities.

(A dragonfly woman flaps her wings in Hamtramck Michigan in 1994 ....)

I've spent a fair amount of time in my life, day-dreaming about and hoping for that event (or that day, or that chance meeting) where life turns on a dime. You see it happen in movies all the time. Of course I only dream about the good magic moments -- taking that class and discovering I have an amazing and previously unknown talent and a new passion at the center of my world. Meeting eyes with the man at the end of the bar while Bell Bottom Blues is playing, and falling in love. I never hope,of course, for a bad magic moment like those middle of the night calls from a hospital, bad mammograms, two soldiers in dress uniform on the doorstep.

But I also spend time wondering what things have happened that didn't shake-up my world right away, but will turn out to be important, turn out to be transformative. Maybe the disappointing class or hobby I'm no good at is going to give me an idea for something else? Maybe someone at this boring book club will become a friend ... and invite me to a party 5 years from now, where I will meet eyes with a man on the other side of the room? Writing those grants 20 years ago, for the science books and the public library computer, turned out to be like that. I never dreamed how many opportunities those two opportunities would send my way.

I am very excited to say that another one has arrived! I've been asked (and accepted and been voted-in and approved) to serve on the board for 2nd Story, an organization I've loved for several years now. I am honored to be able to put my fundraising skills(also known as a willingness to ask for money for things I believe in) to work for such a great organization. 2nd Story believes that sharing stories has the power to educate, connect, and inspire. 2nd Story exists to host the celebration and ritual of shared stories. In practical terms, 2nd Story has fabulous classes (you should take one, it might change your life!) and wonderful story telling events. I've had so many great evenings with them: listening, eating cheese, drinking wine. I've been inspired, I've gotten to know friends (and my mom) better during between-story conversations.

Life is twisty and you don't always know what will end up being important. It sure is fun though and its exciting to see it unfold.

I've been working with rare books and special collections for 15+ years, but I can honestly say that I've learned more in the past month while working on this zine about the economics of printing and publishing and the role it (they?) has on size and number of color plates than I did in my entire career before.

I just found myself at grumbling at Kinkos about the cost of photo copies... I have 11x17 color ambitions! At this rate I am looking at production costs of more than $10 per copy, for something I plan on dropping off at the Free Library box at my corner.

I did make a few artistic compromises, and then thought about my friend who works with metal and what his supply costs must be. And my actor friend who, in order to work his day job, take care of his dog, and get to rehearsals at a theater out in the boonies (considering public transportation)5 days a week for months on end, winds up taking tons of taxis and eating out at the pub across the street. And all the guitars, amps, keyboards, cords, pedals, and strings that my musician friends have bought over the years.

And kept pushing that copy button ...and grumbling.

News

Since last time:

I bought iPad
I bought typewriter ribbons
I procrastinated on my writing
Mom got cancer
I got older
I did not get any wiser
I developed gluten sensitivity
I started up my yoga practice again
I had wonderful and romantic trip to South Carolina
I had a delicious visit to one of my favorite people in the world in San Diego
I saw both oceans in the span of two weeks and have the sea shells to prove it
I got dumped for woman who dresses like a Mime
I got dumped again for same woman who dresses like a Mime (I've decided it would be easier if this was a DIFFERENT mime and said man had Mime fetish I just could not satisfy)


I've got pages and layout and am two weekends away from an actual first issue of my Museum of Round!

I am very happy about at least three things on that list since January.I really need to work on improving things in the next 2-3 months.

Inspiration and "Brutal honesty. At our own expense."

Last night I went out to the Heartland Studio Theater to see two of the Fillet of Solo shows. Every time I take the Red Line up north I am reminded how long it takes. Worth the travel though and it gave me some good things to think about in terms of my own writing.

The first show I saw was EnSOLO,"An enSEMBLE of solo performers who write together and perform alone. A little bit of non-fiction, story telling, performance art. No 4th wall. enSOLO strives to find Universal truth through brutal honesty and specificity."

The second show was a longer solo performance by Kim Morris. I've seen Kim perform other pieces through 2nd Story and she was the curator for the short piece I did before Julie Ganey's piece at the Choosing to be Here storytelling festival in the fall.

Both shows were great and I was left thinking a lot about something I have struggled with over the past few years:

When is revealing yourself in story telling brave and in service of helping listeners relate and share common experiences and when is it still too self-indulgent, too personal and specific?

When is it still the stuff of journals, blogs, drinks with friends, and therapist office verses being shaped enough into a still very personal story that is meaningful to the audience?

When is brutal honesty not just at our own expense but also "at the expense" of a listener because it is too much about us and not enough interested in the audience's role?

While these questions are phrased as "when" I don't think there is a time-based answer. Some people can artfully shape raw emotions as they feel them, they can bring perspective, they can think about a listener and a bigger meaning. Sometimes 30 years is not enough time to process in way that is ready to share.

The answers are different for each story, each talent, each person.

I should say that this train of thought is not a criticism of any of the work I saw last night. Those pieces (in addition to being wonderful to watch) simply inspired me to think harder about something already on my mind. And, it turned out that my good friend B. has actor friends who are in EnSOLO, so he was at the show too. We started a conversation about this late last night on the phone and I'm looking forward to talking with him about it more soon.

For my Museum of Round issues, I don't think any of my ideas so far push my buttons in the way of "Am I Ready/Able to Tell This in a Way that is brave not self-obsessed." All delays in getting this together are pure procrastination and the need to develop some art skills (or delegate tasks to a collaborator!)

Eye Can't Start this Project...

I've been writing and planning out my first Museum of Round issue for a couple (few?) years now. My favorite doodles and ideas surround the page that I am struggling to make. My giant eyeballs with moving part sketches always look like boobs: I've gotten strange looks from other bar patrons who look over at what I'm doing.

Since my Saturday sewing plans have been cancelled due to flu, my goal is to conquer this page and come up with a working model that doesn't freak me out and make me think of Gothic.

Little Feet: Holiday Cheerfully to Cheers

What can I say, I love lists and I love little games with myself. In addition to the "word a page that I read lists, I do lots of stream-of-conscious word association. This one came out of a Top Flight Composition Book with the name "Rem. of Things Past" (more on that one later):

cheerfully
full of cheer
Christmas
stocking
fishnet
sardines
too small
full through
all done
burnt
sunburn
red
rosacea
roses
lillies
valley
how green is
envy
sloth
Jabba
fat
Rubenesque
body art
piercing
noses
pig
swine
flu
Kleenex
Xerox
copies
originals
one and only
true love
young love
'til death do us part
bangs
mash
monster
Frankenstein
Chloris Leachman
Bea Arthur
abortion
religious right
civil right
MLK
Boulevard
Deroit
train station
travel
Japan
little feet
babies
American Girl
creepy doll
baby nubbins
amputee
pin ball wizard
Merlin
owl
Mrs Soulliere
Red
again?
repetitive
procrastinating
not cheerful
cheers
toasts
roast

Next to this list I jotted some story ideas, inspired by the phrase "little feet." I remember it clearly. I was going to write a story about a woman visiting Japan who buys a Japanese pin that I used to have. A pin that was stolen in break in 3 of 3. I still have the box for the pin.

-tall woman
tan, large feet

-how would it feel to be small and delicate?
-what would she wear it with?
-how would it feel to stand on tip toe and lean your face up to be kissed?
-women say they would like long legs but they never say they want ugly mannish shoes.

Right now, little feet just makes me think of Little Feat though:

Crazy Stuff from my notebooks: Post No. 1

It's hard to read my own handwriting and most of the insane scribbles are lost to me, but I love coming across things years later and wondering what in the world my idea was. What was I supposed to do with this stuff? What was I thinking?


Here are a few favorites from a blue Mead Composition book with teal, orange and white stripe, based on the boring food logs, not fully dated but with things like July 18 (Sunday, I think most of the entries are from 2004. But then again, I am filling in pages now in 2013, so I might have grabbed it on any day or year in between:

Stupid Elton John
"House of Celine Dion"
"Cheesy graphics video for Paul."

And this great list, probably made while I was playing the "write a word down from each page/column/paragraph read":

crocodiles
perspicuously
cloudy impression
wax-candle
buttons
corkindills
gauntlet
disfigure myself
aspersion
infer
mangy
hoisted
coverlet
famous geranium
black whiskers
snorting
pawing
He had that kind of shallow black eye -- I want a better word to express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into.
boat-cloaks
incumbrance
favorable
knife and fork
broached
morsel
expostulate
supposititions
Hidee Hidee Hidee hi
fish and pitch and oakum and tar
supp
superannuated
Dutch clock
Sarah Jane
lugger
eked
lobsters, crabs and crawfish
fortnut
rubicund

More Pens

I told you there were more than one hundred pens, so clearly there will be several posts about my pen collection!



One subset is the dry erase pens for the dry erase calendar board that is currently at work. I once had a big idea that I'd plan out my workouts on a changing calendar. Never happened but, these days, I am putting stickers in my regular calendar for every day I go to yoga class.



I think my favorite collection is the Arlington Park Race Course set of pens and pencils. All of these were found in either my orange or black "travel" purses that go diagonally over a shoulder and settle flat against my body. Every time I go to Arlington (or Dairyland before they closed)I use one of these purses. Don't know why. I never win, I always choose horses or dogs based on name and a complete lack of wins in their history.



I love mechanical pencils but I write like a ham-fisted first grader. really, I should have those big fatty pencils and huge pieces of paper for everything I do. I have never been able to use a mechanical pencil without breaking the lead every 4 or 5 words.

How Many Pens Does One Woman Need?

I have a favorite fork.
A back up fork.
And lots of other forks that disappointment me every single time I pull them out of the drawer.
I was raised right: when I have company, I let my guest use my favorite fork ... but I secretly want it for myself.




I also have a favorite kind of pen to use.
I hate using other types of pens.
And yet, a couple weeks ago, I cleaned out my office and cleaned out my book bags and cleaned out my purses and I had more than 100 pens.


My sister has a legitimate pen collection.
She collects floaty pens.
In the process of buying her pens when I've been out an about, I have also picked some up for myself.
I don't like using them, they are not good pens.
I have an Alamo pen and a Liberace pen and a roaming buffalo pen.
I also have the sperm meets egg pen from my sister's baby shower.

Archives

"My special problem was with archivists. The University Library, not content with the promise of a splendid haul of manuscripts and rare books, wanted all Cornish’s papers. The National Library in Ottawa, which had been left nothing, put in a courteous but determined request for Cornish’s letters, records, papers, everything that could be found relating to his career as a collector and patron. The two libraries squared off and began, politely but intensely, to fight it out. Cornish had never, I suppose, thought that his old letters and junk might be of any interest to anyone; he kept no records, his method of filing was to throw stuff into cardboard cartons in whatever order came to hand; his notebooks—preserved simply because he never threw anything away—were a muddle of scribbled reminders of appointments, notes of unspecified sums of money, addresses, and occasional words and phrases that had meant something to him at some time ...

There were treasures, too, and nobody knew about them except myself, because I would not permit the librarians to snoop. There were letters from painters who had subsequently become celebrated, but who wrote to Cornish when they were young and poor, letters of friendship and often of touching need. They illustrated their letters with sketches and scribbles that were funny and delightful, and sometimes of beauty. When I explained all of this to Arthur Cornish, he said: “I leave it up to you; Uncle Frank trusted you and that’s quite good enough for me.” Which was complimentary but unhelpful, because the librarians were tough.

The National Library’s case was that Cornish had been a Great Canadian (how he would have laughed, for he had as little vanity as any man I ever knew) and everything about him that could be preserved should be given the archival treatment, catalogued, cross-indexed, and preserved in acid-free containers so that it would never perish. But the University Library saw Cornish as a great benefactor of the University who had shown his esteem for its Library by leaving it a splendid collection of fine books and manuscripts; his memory should repose, so far as possible, in their hands.

Why? I asked. Were not the treasures themselves sufficient without all the rubbish, much of which seemed to me to be good for nothing but the incinerator? No, said the archivists, in controlled voices beneath which I could hear suppressed shrieks of rage and horror at my ignorance and obtuseness. Surely I was not forgetting Research, that giant scholarly industry? Students of art, students of history, students of God knows what else, would want to know everything about Cornish that could be recovered. How did I expect that the official biography of Cornish could be written if all his papers were not in responsible hands, forever?"

Grumio enters the Dining Room

One interesting thing about having a million notebooks is that I stumble across long forgotten things, things I recognize ... a little bit.

I was just packing up my bag to go have a pot of tea and do some writing before a yoga class and I grabbed a green, Stuart Hall, 80-sheet, "Clean Scene" wireless notebook. A notebook that i remember exactly when and where I got it, but that's a different story.

I flipped through to see if there were blank pages to use and came across this, in my writing:

Grumio enters the dining room.
Grumio is carrying the peacock.
Clemens carries the wine.

It was so familiar but I had no idea what it was.
It was disorienting.
Did I write that?
Was I crazy?
Drunk?

Is it something I read and copied out because it was important to me?
Why?

Grumio.
So familiar.

Wait .... no, not Gollum.

Grumio.
Who is Grumio?



And then I remembered.
This was Latin homework.
Cambridge Latin Course, Book 1.
What a relief.

Notebooks & Organization

Last night, I wanted to make my first blog post to officially kick of my Museum of Round project.
The idea had been rattling around my head for awhile and grew out of several other ideas that were rattling around up there too, but there was an official turning point. A moment of fertilization, I guess.

I had just gone to Quimby's to pick up something to read while eating dinner next door at Lillie's Q and, not finding a magazine that really grabbed me, I bought a small stack of $1-$2 local zines. Ten minutes later, with beer and brisket in front of me and zine pages weighted open with a spare knife, I decided I was going to make one too.

I pulled out the notebook from my backpack, borrowed a pen from the bartender, and began to write down my ideas and my "rules."
So last night, in preparation for my "launch" post here, I went to get my notebook.

Which notebook?

I know that some people, organized people, people who also probably have neat and legible handwriting that they can read the next day, keep one journal at a time. I just took a class with a guy in his 50s or 60s who proudly talked about how he had been keeping a journal since 6th grade. He waved the current one, neatly dated on the front, before us. Well, great for you Mister, I have been TRYING to keep a journal for years and all I have to show for it are crazed and illegible scribblings in stacks of notebooks. I have no idea where my first day Museum of Round ideas are. I took all my notebooks off the shelves of one room of my house and this is what I discovered:




I knew the ideas would not be in either of these two, tall skinny books I made in a book-binding class from scrap paper. I have not used either of these in several years.


And I just bought this carrot book made from hemp paper from a hippie shop in Victoria BC at the beginning of June. I think I jotted those ideas down in March? Maybe April?


This is my current favorite journal, I think this is the one that is going to work. I'm really going to fill this one up and then move on to another. I think I like to write on grid paper ... maybe I should put a date on the cover?


So, this post is nothing at all like I thought it would be. It provides no direct information about my Museum of Round zine that I am in the process of creating. But in some way, it is the perfect introduction to the spirit of my project (and me). I'm going to poke through these half-baked journals and see what I find.