Last year on this day, I marked my 40th birthday with a celebration with friends and family and a pledge that this decade would be one of narrative (my 30s were devoted to writing).
A year into my 40s, I’m happy with where this is going, highlighted by the Tell Your Own Story session I organized — along with my friend and Duke colleague, David Jarmul — for the Duke In Depth weekend in February. (I wrote about it here.) At that session, I started off with a story of my own, about my path to the Peace Corps and how my service in the Republic of Vanuatu informs my online community building. I’ve posted video of my story:
My goal this next year is to tell a story at a Monti StorySLAM (listen to Monti founder and impresario Jeff Polish interviewed on The State of Things) and, at work, to begin the Voices of Medicine project that will feature the physicians and researchers of the Department of Medicine.
In Cleveland earlier this week, I met up with Jack Ricchiuto in Tremont late one night. We headed over to the new hot spot, The Tremont Tap House, for beers and conversation.
Jack’s got some good ideas for teaching people to develop a good ear for storytelling. I’ve learned much just from observing how Jack interacts with people, asking small questions that get a person talking, and soon enough, that person’s story emerges.
From my coversation with Jack, I realized that, in developing my mistersugar brand and online identity, I’ve been developing a story that gives context to the brand.
Now, I’m thinking about a story from my Peace Corps days, about a lost dog and a funny parable from my brother Noel about where that dog might have gone. Watch, or listen, for it here soon.
At lunch today with Michael Ruhlman, we talked about talking with people. I mentioned how much I learned from Jack Ricchiuto, author of (among other things) the jack/zen blog.
Today Jack writes about how storytelling talents are diminishing:
I suspect that the literacy of story telling declines with the emergence of public media. I saw this with my grandfather, 19th century born Italian shepherd, whose story telling diminished in direct proportion to the amount of TV he watched.
And earlier today, I got confirmation that I’m on the program for the third annual ConvergeSouth conference, to talk about how blogs and new media can be used to collect and promote storytelling. Join me for that discussion, please, in the comments and at the conference.
A call from a friend earlier this week, about an upcoming announcement from a local institution, has me brainstorming ideas for the still nascent StorybBlogging initiative.
With encouragement from my local blogging friends, I’ve already begun the process of creating a nonprofit corporation for the BlogTogether group, and once that’s born, StoryBlogging can become one activity of the new organization.
Then, we set in motion this goal for StoryBlogging: by the end of 2008, we’ll have gathered 1000 oral history entries from citizens across North Carolina. Each of those entries (blog posts with a short memoir and an audio clip) will be tagged to capture the key concepts, historical events, geographic markers and people, and the site will have a strong search engine to give students a way to search and learn about the state’s history.
To prepare for that, I’ll be taking the Oral History Workshop at the Friday Center next month.
Chapel Hill is buzzing with activity this week as the university gets set to start a new academic year.
Yesterday, I played my part by serving as a discussion leader for the Carolina Summer Reading Program. The book, as I mentioned here, was Jhumpa Lahiri’s most excellent tale of immigration, identity, family traditions and naming conventions. Ten incoming first-year students joined me for a conversation about the book and our own lives and upbringings.
Today, I went to the retirement community Carol Woods to pitch my StoryBlogging idea to a group of seniors. David Lorenc from Playmakers Repertory Theater was there with me to talk about our collaboration. At Carol Woods, the five residents we met with had a healthy dose of skepticism—“Who’s going to be interested in our oral histories?”—but warmed up to the idea of spending a few hours in conversation with my fellow bloggers.
I’ll be posting more about this opportunity over at BlogTogether and StoryBlogging, but if you’re interested in participating, let me know. We’ll pair up with the seniors at Carol Woods, independently meet three times over the next couple of months, and listen to their stories. And then blog or podcast those stories. Should be fun. The few stories I heard today—one woman attended the Nuremberg Trials, another man rode an elephant during a tiger hunt—were enlightening and entertaining.
Tomorrow, the science writers book club convenes to discuss Omnivore’s Dilemma.
After Sartor, NPR senior editor Marcus Rosenbaum will talk about his grandmother’s diaries, which he edited into Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman.
Then I’m up, to talk about how blogging can be like journaling, and how blogs are different than written diaries. I’ll draw on my decade of journaling (from college through my Peace Corps service) as well as my reasons for writing a blog (to practice writing, to record my observations, to share news with my family and friends).
This will also be a good time for me to talk about the StoryBlogging project, a grassroots oral history plus blogging initiative. This effort has been germinating for quite some time, but just this weekend I stumbled upon a perfect occasion around which to organize a StoryBlogging event: at UNC this fall, Playmakers Repertory Company will stage Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, a play based on the bestselling book about Albom’s conversations with a beloved but dying professor. I’m hoping to put together a workshop on oral history and memoir writing for a group of senior citizens and younger bloggers. Stay tuned for more about that.
For tomorrow’s show, listen in on WUNC 91.5 FM (live stream from the website) at noon; the show repeats at 9 p.m.
In the mailbox on Friday was a package from my Cafepress StoryBlogging store with ten mini buttons sporting the StoryBlogging icon (if you can’t make it out, the icon is meant to signify two people having a conversation).
Little by little, I’ve been improving the StoryBlogging website. At the same time, I’m working on a new website for my father, who will announce later today his campaign for political office. As I was searching through old picture albums for snapshots of my father in his various civic roles, I came across this picture of me at age two, when my dad had me on the campaign trail for Jack Shaffer, who unsuccessfuly ran for Congress in California in 1972 (notice the button I’m wearing):
Later, when we lived in Idaho, my dad helped on the campaign of another politician. He took me along to a meeting at our favorite Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, and I ate a fifty-cent hot fudge sundae while the adults talked campaign strategy with the candidate. Weeks later, we were back at the same tables, but this time the talk was different: the candidate had died the day before when his small plane crashed in the north of the state.
My dad’s own civic activity has always inspired me. His service in the Peace Corps (see Step to Freedom for more about that), his participation in political campaigns and local governance (he’s on the Makiki neighborhood board), his commitment to the poor, his constant generosity and his passion for running will make him an excellent candidate.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m slowly making my way through John Hersey’s classic narrative journalism about the bombing of Hiroshima. This week, I got a more personal connection to that historic, though horrific, event in history.
On my way to work Wednesdy morning, I stopped at the Shangri-La that is the Cedars of Chapel Hill retirement community at Meadowmont Village, where I met Thomas Karnes. He’s a sage and wise man, a former history department chairman at Arizona State University, and a perfect individual for a pilot run of my StoryBlogging efforts.
When I’d asked him he’d ever written about his time as an Air Force officer during World War II, Professor Karnes said he’d written plenty, and then offered an example: In 1996, soon after the Smithsonian Institution put on its controversial Enola Gay exhibit, Karnes wrote a letter to the Journal of American History to share his recollection of Paul Tibbets, who Karnes served as an adjutant—it was Karnes job as personnel director of an Air Force base to gather some 1800 servicemen to support the bombing mission. In early 1945, Karnes told me Wednesday, Tibbets and the others didn’t know if the first atomic bombs were to be dropped on Germany or Japan. (Soon Germany would surrender, and the bombs were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
As a historian who had been part of the history, Karnes had an interesting perspective: younger historians (and me, I admit), he said, feel that dropping the bomb was wrong, and yet veterans of the war want credit for ending that horrible conflict.
I was awed to be talking with Karnes. He’s agreed to meet me again and share more of his history and the history he lived. My challenge is to craft his recollections into storyblogging worth reading. Stay tuned.
This is exciting: Kelly Marks has created a logo for the StoryBlogging project. Watch for a new look to that site, and for the project to really take off now.
late morning on 03/09/06 in "Storyblogging" | permalink |
1001 Stories
Ira Glass in Memorial Hall tonight was just, well, “effing brilliant.” The man talked and riffed and paused and spun stories for nearly two hours, brilliantly building a case for storytelling and support for public radio and advocacy for the FCC backing off the obscenity crusade. What an inspiring talk—pefect for planting the seed of interest in the StoryBlogging effort. Glass ended with a gripping synopsis of Arabian Nights and had us on the edge of our seats.
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In the mailbox on Friday was a package from my 
