All’s well that ends well. Well, it ended well today.  But, not all’s well. We will miss our storytellers.  From what I have read on this blog site, we will not be the only ones missing the elder ones.

We had a picture of some people who looked to be pioneers. There were seven in the picture. Four children and three older folks. The kids were all on a donkey. The setting was in the woods.

The story our group came up with was about some pilgrims on the move from the country in Georgia to maybe Florida. They were possibly evicted because they were poor and they were shooting too much. Our storytellers gave everyone a name as well as the donkey,Hoppalong Zeke. They would get another donkey and name him Danny. When Jean heard the name Danny she started to sing Danny Boy.

When Danny joins the family and Zeke, Zeke will tell Danny to get the kids off his back. Jean was quite sure the reason the man in the picture had a rifle was to prtotect the family from squirrels. Squirrels don’t like you, or her, or anyone and they are dangerous. They bite. Besides squirresl there are other dangerous things in the woods. And they make sounds like arrrgg. Jean was very good at making the sound and reacting to the sound as well. She was having fun and everyone was enjoying her today. She even howled a bit with me.

We got some good responses from Dennis, as usual. Rudy had some good answers.

Anne was there today and her laughter always adds to the event. She knows way too much about these folks. I think she has been there many many times!

Everyone seemed relaxed and enjoying themselves today. The storytellers and us students, both were laughing. It makes it harder, in a way, not to chirp up with an answer of your own sometimes.  Speaking of chirping, Jean managed to sing a bit of red red robbin bob bob bobbin’ along. Maybe we can get some of her songs into our celebration.

I look forward to seeing the celebrations. Mike

oops and fixed

revised flyer for all celebrations  with St. Ann’s spelled right…

thanks eagle-eye willer!

A

flyer for all 4 celebrations

Hey guys…I made this up this a.m. – feel free to download and use as you will.  I made it for Theatre faculty.  This way, I can control the space for celebrations if people do want to join us. flyer for celebrations

East Castle 4/17

    Our teams session this past Tuesday at East Castle was yet again another good one.  At first, things seemed to get off to a rocky start.  The storytellers just didn’t seem that into it at the beginning.  As the time went by, they got more and more involved.  Some of them looked very tired.  June, Bealuh, Helen and Betty were the storytellers who have been there consistantly.  They were joined by one more story teller this week.  I think that the storytellers have gotten the hang of being able to say whatever they want  when a question is asked about the picture.  This week we were able to finish up two stories.  During the creation of one of the stories, June wanted to tell us a story about a painting that she brought with her.  It was a very interesting story that she told and parts of it were used to help add more to the current story.  June is always the first person we see when we first get there and the last person when we leave.  She is a great person to talk to and a lot of fun.  I think that our party is going to go very well.  Our group has made a point to mention the party each visit at the beging of the session and at the end sometimes. 

St. Johns, 4/17

This week at St. Johns was a lot of fun. I sat next to Jean and Rudy, two people who’s contributions to our stories I always find very interesting. Rudy seems to notice the things in the background , and I can imagine that in Rudy’s younger days he used to notice little details about people or situations that others overlooked. We had a picture of a man painting the sky, and although this confused the storytellers a few times, we overcame the strangeness of this act and came up with a pretty good story. Jean even graced us with a little “Blue Skies, nothing but blue skies, do I see” serenade, and that was great. Jean seemed a little angry about something on Tuesday however, and every once in a while she would insult the main character or say he was dumb. That is also where his name came from – “Stupid Robert Jeff Plus.” All in all, however,I was feeling a little nostalgic because I realized this was our second to last session with these great folks. Dennis must be mentioned in this, he is probably one of the people I will miss most. Although he has a slight physical handicap and some problems getting out what he wants to say, once he does, his responses are golden! Out of all of the people we have worked with, I feel that Dennis has been the most alert and attentive member, really trying to move the story forward and help to create a great tale. I will miss all of them, however, and its not going to be easy to say goodbye.

Externally, this was a story about Stupid Robert and his 18 year old girlfriend, both workers on the country western movie set and lovers of making out. Internally, this was a great session with our storytellers, a real bond has been formed and I feel that we know just how to work with them now. Leaving will be harder than I thought.

Mary Kelly

Eldertales: Tanya Werchowski Tues. 4/17/07 Session

Our storytelling session was just a bit different from our usual storytelling session. Usually there is alot of laughing and our group being “shocked” by what one of our storytellers (or more than one) has just said. But last Tuesdays storytelling session was alot tamer, there were no mention of parties, alcohol or lovemaking by our storytellers as ideas to put into the stories–I think the first in a long-time. But our stories (we were able to do two) were still good. Later as we were just about to finish our last story one of our storytellers started to tell us about her late husband and her wonderful stepchildren. Even though the children weren’t her biologically you could tell that she and they adored each other. It was very nice to hear since that is very rare I think. Our storyteller had mentioned something about her life when coming up for an idea for the last story of our session and that is what started the discussion. We asked if we could put the information about her life in the story and she said she didn’t mind which I think was very nice of her. I think that she must really trust us (our group and the storytelling session as a whole) to be able to tell us something so personal. That its nice to realize that and makes one realize the responsibility that one has in listening to the storyteller and using the story in our storytelling. So that you don’t want to do anything to lose the trust that a storyteller would have for us. Its very daunting and yet reassuring to know that our group must be doing something right in our sessions to inspire such trust and makes us want to keep doing whatever it is that we are doing to keep that trust. 

Tanya

Hello everyone. It seems we are at the end of the eldertales road. Just one more interractive web-convo to go. Anywho, Guess what!? My group and I finally got the final celebration info from Bridget. I will go into details about that next week. However, I must admit it felt pretty good for the group and Bridget to exange words as a whole. Everyone was present Tuesday. Bridget Actually spent time with us. Plus, we even saw Ann. It was great! With that dark cloud of confusion gone, I was finally able to emerse myself into the Timeslips process. The session itself went great. However, there were a few pot holes. The story began to drag in the end. Plus little miss Ruth was giving us the ever popular, “i don’t know”. Luckily we had Mary Lou and Gretchen to save the day. Overall it was a great session. It felt good to see the team as a whole again.

Phantom photographer…

Hey all,

sorry that Wing surprised you – I’d been telling him about the sessions, but he hadn’t confirmed when he was going to come to one…so I’m sure it came as a bit of a surprise.  He’s working on a project I’ll tell you about in class – and you can learn more about him at www.wingyounghuie.com

Anne

The elephant was a hit!

The image we chose to create our story was the little girl and the elephant. As I walked into Mary Lou’s room to bring her to the session, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to help us with the story. When I told her our story had an elephant in it, this motivated her to come to the garden room where our sessions are held. I told her she could bring Boo-Boo her stuffed dog but she said, “oh, I better not.” Then it was story time. As I sat in the very hot room, I began to look around as the elders tried to figure out what was going on in the picture. Gretchen is always full of answers. She has figured out that timeslips is pure creation. The other women unfornately haven’t figured it out yet. As they looked at the picture not much was coming from their creativity. I watched as Mary Lou struggledto help write the story. She would start saying something but then would get lost in her words like she had forgottten what she was going to say. Whenever she did speak it was always there’s something out there in space. As she looked at the elephant with the girl that’s all she could see. While Ruth was clearly not paying attention at all. She was looking out the window. I wondered what she saw because she stared for a long time. Anytime we asked her a question she didn’t have an answer at all. She would always say, “I don’t know.” The elephant was a true hit in the story. Even though the other two elders really didn’t contribute to the story, they did enjoy the elephant.

Ericka Watkins 

Real Living

Yesterday was probably the most interesting and moving sessions we have had.  Usually our sessions are full of laughter and scandalous comments but we dove much deeper this time.  Part of it was that Beulah could not remember anything about the storytelling and she is usually the firecracker of the group making all the scandalous comments. She was quieter and seemed a little more confused than usual. It was hard to have to re-explain what goes on during the activity because just last week she was telling us how much she enjoys the activity.  The most moving moment of the session was when we started the a new story with a picture of an old lady driving a car and June said “she’s not really driving. she’s pretending to drive and wishing she see the things she used to see…” Other comments that followed were about being young again and the problem with remembering until June have us a story about her life which ended with the importance of going on living.  It was great. I felt like the residents really opened up to us and shared who they really are. Its hard to describe what happened in words…