Oy Vey!

What a week it's been...

I get the common cold every two years or so, not a bad thing. Nope. This past week I was apparently due for one. Today I am feeling much better.

Good thing too, because I have busy, busy days ahead.

I'm one of the storytellers for a Quaker Storytelling Event on Sunday. I've never been to a Quaker meeting house so I'm looking forward to the experience. They are doing this as a fund raiser for renovations to their children's area. Good cause.

Then on Wednesday I travel to Louisiana with three other storytellers. As a team we will present two days of workshops to librarians and others who are interested in promoting storytelling in their communities. Our workshop is titled, "A Lifetime of Stories". We will discuss the various ways one can present storytelling programs for listeners at every stage of life. My topic is young adult audiences. I'll be doing my particular style of telling that relies heavily on improvisation and character protrayals. I am both very excited to have this opportunity and nervous about how it will turn out. This is the first time we're doing it. We have plans to do more in the future too, so of course we want to be informative and entertaining both.

I should probably get to work on polishing up my portion of the workshop.

Bye, bye folks...

Tejas Storytelling Festival 2008

The Tejas Storytelling Festival in Denton, Texas will be the second weekend of April this year. I have been asked to present an original story on Saturday for a concert about ethnic/immigration stories. My story is called "lefsa". Lefsa is a Norwegian flat bread that we "Norsky's" eat "up Nort" in Minnesota. The story combines personal remembrances of learning how to make it with my Grandma Peterson with a delightful, old Norwegian folktale.

Every time I tell this story to audiences, I am amazed at how it affects them. It triggers memories to surface. Listeners don't need to come from the same ethnic background that I do, rather they just need to come from a family that is striving to preserve some part of their ethnicity through the preparation of a traditional, cultural food.

This is one of those stories that popped up into my consciousness as a complete tale - it simply did not require a lot of work to write. I love to tell it and feel that when I do, I am honoring my dear Grandma Lillie who was such a positive role model in my life.

I have one other story about my early childhood in Minnesota; a humorous piece about the perils of young love. When it is complete, perhaps I will post it. I have already done an improvisational version of it and it went over very well with my listeners. Seems everybody can relate to childhood crushes that go awry.

With that I leave you folks to ponder this. Tell me...do you remember your first love? Who was it? What attracted you to that person?

An Evening with Elizabeth Ellis

Yesterday was a productive and enlightening day. It started off in an afternoon meeting with three of my very best storytelling friends. We are working on a unique workshop project that we will present as a group to librarians, educators and others who are interested in storytelling. We are doing our first workshop together in February - very exciting!

We then had our guild meeting with special guest Elizabeth Ellis http://www.elizabethellis.com/ She is an AMAZING storyteller and a very humble, lovely, human being. She told sacred stories that are not to be confused with religious stories. These are wisdom tales that appeal to all people of all beliefs & practices. They are "universal" truths. She lives in Dallas, but travels constantly for she is a much sought after teller. If you have had the good fortune to hear her tell stories, you will know why this is so.

It is people like Elizabeth who inspire me to keep working at being the best teller I can be. This is a profession that one often feels "called" to do. It is frequently not easy. It requires a diligent work ethic - not always easy for creative dreamers like myself. Your work is always public, so mistakes are never private. Aarrgghhhh, how embarrassing that is! However the chance to connect with people in human, moving ways...to make them smile, laugh, care, think, consider another perspective...is so rewarding.

So, I am off to write & work on stories at the library this afternoon.

Ever onwards I goes towards my dreamsssszzzzzz... Oh wait, not literally - oh dear.

J.M.W. Turner: Master Painter of Light

The DMA's next exhibit will be the works of J. M. W. Turner, one of the greatest landscape artists of all time. It will be an awesome show! Turner really could "catch light" with his paint brush, thereby creating moving, mystical, ethereal, magnificent, frightening...I could go on and on, viewing experiences.

For my story preparation, I am given (permanently - Yippee!) beautiful exhibit books for the shows that I can study and select works of art to put with my stories or create a story from. For the Turner exhibit, one of the tings I"ll be doing is a gallery walk with families where I will talk about his paintings and tell a few stories. The more I read about this brilliant artist and look at his work the more excited I become. I already have two tales that I know will work. This show opens Feb. 10 and runs until May 18. If you are in the Dallas area, do stop in to see it. They have started hanging it already and it looks like there will be huge paintings that you can stand in front of and just lose yourself in. Magical!

@%*& DIET (a.k.a. The Candida Diet)

I haven't blogged in a while due to the need to go on an extreme diet for health reasons. It is taking every drop of my diminished strength to keep up with the food preparation, grocery shopping, and other activities like house hnting with hubby. Oh, and of course story research, writing, gig preparations...etc.

So, why am I on the diet? Well, my daughter Lily had to go on it and I am along for support. Plus, since it is a whole foods diet I expect to feel healthier too. I will say that I lost nearly 3 lbs. during the first week! Oh, and since we eat absolutely NO SUGAR, not even fruit for the first three weeks, my teeth are really looking good. You have idea what kind of gunk we can get built up on our teeth from eating sugar until you stop.

So, long story short. Lily has been ailing for YEARS. Mostly its been all related to her digestion - especially in the beginning. Then other illnesses started springing up; muscles pains, joint problems (she literally threw her shoulder out of joint skipping rocks last spring!), dietary mineral depletion's, anxiety & depression. I mean wouldn't you get depressed if you were sick all the time and know one could figure out why? Finally, FINALLY we have been able to discover that back in the beginning she had several ear infections (her molars were coming in) and she had to take antibiotics. The antibiotics caused an overgrowth of candida in her digestive tract. She happens to like to eat all the foods that candida thrive on, so she was really creating a yummy host for them to thrive. And boy did they. Candida can negatively affect all kinds of organs over time.

Hence the Candida Diet is now a necessity for her to kill-off the nasty candida and learn to eat a diet of whole foods. This means lots of veggies (she hates most of them), ancient grains (no white flour), no yeast, no sugar, no fruit for 3 weeks and then only certain fruits for 3 to 6 months minimum, no milk, no cheese, no vinegar, no soft drinks, tea or coffee. Now you see why we lost weight the first week. We are in the "die-off" phase which is a sort of withdrawal. Not pleasant. We cheat with 2 cans of diet soda a day - otherwise, I think we'd dehydrate. You can get really tired of only having water to drink. I did discover brown rice milk, which is mildly satisfying with our puffed, sugarless cereals.

We don't always suffer though. Today I am making guacamole in a corn tortilla bowl with corn ships for lunch. Yummy! I have beef strips to saute in peppers and onions for dinner that will go with our veggie side dishes. Oh, and carrots can really taste sweet when you have a terrible craving for sugar.

You may have wondered about the other person who lives in our household - my hubby Jeff. He won't TOUCH this diet. Though he has eaten our soups & buckwheat pecan pancakes with us. He is a tad worried about never having homemade cookies again, but never worry. If we are successful, Lily will be better in say 6 months, or at the very most 2 years!

Here is my warning: use antibiotics with extreme care. Always follow up their use with a round of Acidophillus tablets to help keep your stomach good & healthy. You can have all sorts of blood work and not catch these little candida buggers. If you are curious about this diet or illness check out this website:http://altmedicine.about.com/od/popularhealthdiets/a/candidadiet.htm

Meet Rufus

God I love my sister Ruth, whom I affectionately dubbed "Rufus" when she was a wee, pesky, bug-eyed tot.

I ask you, how can she send me such an amazing picture and not expect me to want to share it? This picture proves what an incredibly fun and adventurous soul she is.

Plus, you gotta believe that she is one hell of a good listener too. No? Just look at those ears and tell me you don't believe me.

P.S. We have different fathers. The ears come from her fathers family. Snork! Me so baaaddd.

Season's of Life: Spring

One day I looked at the last painting and knew it was time to put a new one up in it's place.

"Bloom Where You Are Planted" was created in the early days of my getting gig after gig at the Dallas Museum of Art. They had not yet metioned making me their storyteller in residence, but things were looking really good. I had received the honor of representing my storytelling guild as their chosen "Texas Rising Star" at the state storytelling festival in Denton. I was bloomin' folks and it felt GOOD!

We were all bloomin'. Jeff was uber satisfied with his new job and bowling better than ever with his new bowling buddies. Lily had just gotten her drivers license, and had finished the registration process for starting college.

Spring is not over for us yet, we're still blooming with new beginnings. Tomorrow we go look at several houses. Hopefully, we will soon find ourselves a cozy home where we can settle down and have a whole fricken (word???) garden of flowers that will bloom many times over into a future summer filled with contentment, peace and joy.

The Seasons of Life: Autumn

Here is an acrylic & copper collage I created not long after arriving in Texas two years ago.

Note that the sky is boiling with turmoil, the swirling wind has ripped the copper leaves off of a black tree exposing waving bare limbs to the elements.

Anyone want to conjecture a psychoanalysis of the state of my mind when I created this?

The move here brought dramatic life changes not only for myself, but for Jeff and Lily too. I don't want to go into all the juicy details, but there was a lot of crap we had to deal with. Some good, some bad. How does that David Bowie song go? "...Ch-ch-changes" yeah thats it.

Art is my therapy. This collage was created from an image I had in a dream. At first, I did not see the significance, the meaning. When I did I was amazed.

The move to Texas caused us all to go through an identity crisis of sorts. It involved releasing the old that was past its prime much like nature experiences autumn.

The "winter" that came was often cold & disorienting, but we did enjoy our time in hibernation where we rested and prepared for a spring that was indeed filled with new, exciting possibilities...

Great Quote for 2008!

My friend Marie in Panama City emailed me a great quote. She said it is a great sentiment for the new year and I agree. So much so that I am sharing it with you all.

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God, your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Nelson Mandela

Howdy T and N in Panama City!

Hi all!

As a relatively new blogger and a miserable techno geek, I have recently realized that folks can leave comments to my blogs. Wow! Little slow there Ann Marie. Yes sirree.

So, I was thrilled to read the messages left by my dear friends in Panama City, Florida. Friends who, alas, I did not visit with while I was there. Sorry girls...I go into a brain fog after the long drive over and become sooooo lazy out there by the great blue.

I have decided that the next time I am in town, I will invite people out to the beach to see me instead of thinking that I will drive into town and try to see everyone. This past visit Lily and I drove into town only once! We went to our old library and were again overcome with the realization of how blessed we are to now have the fantastic libraries for our use in Plano. The place is a mold infested, stinky mess but not to worry, they are building a new one.

Yes folks. My daughter and I are whole-hearted bibliophiles and damn proud of it! We regularly use not one, not two, but SEVEN libraries in the area.

We drove past our old house trying not to look like two crooks greedily casing a neighborhood. The place looked okay...I guess. It doesn't appear as well cared for though, it now has a somewhat unloved ambiance about it. The Christmas ornaments were truly pathetic and minimal too.

So, T and N (I wasn't sure if I should use your full names, so hence the initials) I want you to know that I loved reading your comments. Also, that I was so impressed with your blogs that I thought I might try doing one myself. And I did. You inspired me.

Thanks girlfriends.

Oh, Lily says hi. She is frantically trying to finish a 16x20 acrylic portrait of her boyfriend. It's her Christmas present to him, and yes he is a patient fellow for it is indeed late.