The little tales that speak volumes. . .

I’ve been focusing on telling the stories of my maternal grandmother, Edna Buckman Kearns, in a blog and web site called Suffrage Wagon News Channel. It’s not only the original stories gleaned from my grandmother’s papers, but I’m making a bridge between Edna’s times and today. It’s about how we can build leadership today by telling stories of the suffrage movement. I have storytelling in my bones. I believe it’s a human trait going back to the beginning of recorded time and before.

Every once in a while I tell people about how story brought my father and I closer at the end of his life. It’s a reminder to myself that I will get back to putting together the “Big Brother” stories that Dad and I created. It’s a collaboration. And a tale of relationship. A way for me to see my dad as a human being, not merely a parent. We fall into that pattern so easily. This summer, I will. . . And here I am again, blogging on what I plan to do. Every year I inch Big Brother forward. So far in 2012, it’s slim pickings. But it won’t always be this way.

What Dad could only imagine

My father was a storyteller. The world in which he lived was much smaller than the global village in which we live now. So, storytelling became a form of survival, of entertainment, of adaptation. Dad could describe neighborhoods, streets, who lived there and for how long. He described people, their character, how they looked. He didn’t call himself a storyteller. That’s just the way he was. Dad learned storytelling from his grandfather, who lived with the family after his wagon business didn’t survive The Big Crash. Dad stayed home from school a few years because he had rheumatic fever and was confined to bed and limited activity. So he spent time with his grandfather and learned storytelling.

Now, this isn’t anything I learned directly. Dad never sat me down and confided how he’d learned storytelling from Grandpop Carter. I had to press and probe, and afterwards I found out the details. My father’s stories were in large part, I believe, why he succeeded in winning over my mother. She loved his stories. And I did too, years later, as a child and then later when we spent time together after my mother’s death. If he were here today, we’d be sending each other the Big Brother clips that I’ve managed to post on this blog. “Isn’t this awful?” we would inevitably say to each other. And here I am, now. Remembering.

What Big Brother could only imagine

The big cyber listening center underway in Utah is the focus of an article in Wired Magazine that would have Big Brother drooling. There’s only one way to lay out the details and that’s to suggest clicking on the link to the article.

Internet, a field day for Big Brother

It’s hard to read the paper these days or surf on the internet and not find a reference to Big Brother.

Storytelling for social change awards

There are storytelling grants known as Brimstone Awards, and they highlight programs using storytelling for social change. Pretty impressive stuff. Three winners are featured in a recent issue of Storytelling Magazine. Yeah, I’m inching my way through aback issue which will be replaced soon (if it hasn’t already been buried in the clutter). Some provocative storytelling projects were funded to the tune of $5,000 in 2011, and this can go a long way when it comes to storytelling. Queen Nur and her sustaining culture and traditions project, Gwen Griffith and a model forest policy program, Lenora Ucko and intergenerational storytelling, and grant guidelines to help storytellers fund their pet projects. If you never thought about the Asian-American storytelling movement, the Storytelling Magazine is sure to bring you up to date with feature articles about this fascinating topic.

Storyteller Alton Takayama-Chung has this to tell us: “Younger generations may not have an interest in their culture or family history, They may not have the stories of their ancestors to fall back upon when faced with new situations. Culturally specific, historically accurate stories can be used to fill this need.”

Storytelling Magazine emerges from the clutter

It’s the November/December issue of Storytelling Magazine. A hard-copy even. I was excited when it arrived in the mail. The publication comes with my membership in the National Storytelling Network. These are folks like me who believe that storytelling is key to getting our message across. It’s not that easy to tell a good story, so the bi-monthly publication is filled with terrific stories and with bios of people who are devoting themselves to telling tales.

There’s a beautiful traditional Japanese love story about a white butterfly. There’s a lovely piece about Ted Gup’s book, A Secret Gift: How One Man’s Kindness — And a Trove of Letters — Revealed the Hidden Story of the Great Depression. Gup’s grandfather collected stories of people’s experiences during the Great depression. Then Gup published a book about the process. This led to a “secret gift” project among college students by Kevin D. Cordi who collected stories about gifts. Noted Cordi: “What I took from this is to never throw away valuables from the past, to share my story, and listen to others.”

No small accomplishment. It requires slowing down, first of all. Digital cameras are really big right now. Folks can have thousands of images in their family collections that are posted online or kept in digital clouds. But do they have stories to go with them? Perhaps. But most likely not. Which is why I persist in the documentation process of my father’s stories. Have I figured out the best way to share them? Not yet. I’m still working on it. Which reminds me. The newest edition of Storytelling Magazine just arrived in the mail.

Time Magazine honored the protestor!

Protest is what started this round of Big Brother storytelling, not by me but in many quarters and settings. For more information. Whereas on one hand, social media and people wired throughout the world is a concern for civil libertarians. On the other hand, there’s competition for people who want, even demand, to be seen and heard on the net. Someone I know is pushing to build his video business. He doesn’t have an online presence. I suggested that he get on the stick. “I know, ” he said, “that if you don’t have a web site you don’t exist.”

People power is in the face of corporate and government power. Where will this go? It depends on who controls the internet. And it’s not about who can get the most information out there. It boils down to who can be noticed. The power of viral networking has been proven again and again. And there’s something to be said about storytelling. The person or persons with the best stories win. The ongoing work of my father’s stories continues, but so slowly that I become frustrated sometimes. “I’ll get to it,” I tell myself. I observe the big internet censorship protest, hear about other attempts to control information worldwide, go about my business and worry.

Push back against internet censorship

75,000 web sites participated in censorship protest.

 For more information about related legislation and updates on the issue.

Storytelling has many levels of meaning and process

I took the “Big Brother” memoir out of the closet during the first week in October in 2009. It had langusihed there for ages for a number of reasons –including time and focus. The introduction has been rewritten at least three times. Part of the challenge is competing with my father’s voice. It’s his story, isn’t it? Or, whose story is it anyway?

It’s our story. He was the storyteller. I was the listener. We were also writers, editors, readers and audience. As the story progressed, I shared the rough draft with family members. Some parts were a hit, like my parents’ courtship. Other selections elicted no comment.

When I revived the “Big Brother” memoir in 2011, it was with a sense of apology. “It’s a holiday gift for family members. I’d better get busy,” I said to myself. The harder I worked, the more possibilities developed and the vision died. I made up a small 20-page photo book which I gave as a gift over the holidays two years before, and then I decided to dedicate 2012 to completing the text. How many times have I said this before?

Inching forward. That’s my motto now. Preparing this book for publication involves going through old photos, reviving memories, speaking with family members about our shared past, and sorting through the layers and layers of buried joys and sadness, confusion and unresolved conflicts. No small accomplishment.

Happy Holidays from Big Brother and Friends