On the road again...

Hey, folks.

We haven't been posting for awhile, most likely because there hasn't been too much to post about. Well, that's not entirely true.

After Nashville, we decided we needed to take some time off from both travelling and filming to 1). Relax and make sure we don't get burnt out and 2). Take the time to plan out the rest of our trip; where we want to go and who we want to talk to. Turns out we were only four hours from Springfield, IL., my hometown, so we stayed there for a nice relaxing week or so and got our bearings.

Needless to say, most of the week we worried a lot about next semester. We both have several important decisions that need to be made about going back to school, like where do we live, where should we work, what classes we should take and so on. So Katelyn and I have been actively persuing answers to these questions. One development I'm very happy about is that I managed to score an internship with the Weinstein Company in Los Angeles, reading screenplays for their development departments. As an added bonus, I can do the work from home in St. Louis so I can also go back to school and take a few classes I've always wanted to take but never got the chance to. Looks like I'll be graduating next December with a billion elective credit hours. Oh well.

Now we're in Cincinnati, Ohio, staying with an old friend and former roommate of mine, Kelly and her boyfriend, Ben. Our big event here so far is tomorrow we're touring the brand new Creation museum, which apparently tells the story of creation through a series of interactive exhibits. We'll see if this strictly a Biblical thing or if they mesh science into the mix as well. It looks very intriguing on their website: www.creationmuseum.org

Tonight we're interviewing a few local musicians about their former band and their experiences of telling stories through song. From there, we plan to hit up some good ole' U.S. history in Philadelphia as well as Williamsburg, see New York City and Washington, D.C. and talk to a few psychologists at Cornell University in Ithaca.

Take care and thanks for reading...we'll let you all know how the Creation Museum is soon!

frustration

Not being at school when registration for next semester rolls around is
FRUSTRATING
Having to talk on the phone to someone who's accent is thick and I am not bright enough to understand what they are saying is
FRUSTRATING
Playing transfer tag around the infinite web of Webster University departments is
FRUSTRATING
realizing that it's not as easy as I thought it was is
FRUSTRATING

Not to say, of course, that it's hard. In all reality, I am having to do very little after having taken a semester off. The hard part is being able to talk to the people I need to talk to when I want to talk to them...that's hard. They, of course, are not revolving around my universe.

In the meantime, the weather is finally fall, it's raining, the trees have changed, and we're getting close to ending this adventure and replacing it with structure structure structure of time and school.

AGH PULL MY HAIR OUT

A Superheroic First-Grade School

I think today was my favorite day so far since Katelyn and I began travelling with Rosie. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I first want to share with you a little about our time actually in Jonesborough at the National Storytelling Festival. Simply said, we had a great time. We were exhausted most of the time, going to bed late and getting up early and running every which way trying not only to attend and enjoy the storytellers but also interview some of them (not to mention people who attended). It was definitely a different experience. I'm still trying to gauge exactly how I felt about it, because nearly 10,000 people crowding this tiny town and filling tents to the brim made for an interesting time. Most of the time, if you want to see one of the more popular storytellers, you have to sit around at least half an hour ahead of their show to save yourself and only one extra person a seat. This makes it difficult to eat sometimes.

We were also a little dismayed by the lack of the diversity. But we confronted it in almost all of our interviews, including with the founder of the festival, Jimmy Neil Smith. He confirmed that due to the price of tickets, most of the attendees of the festival are middle class, white and from the South. Although one of the storytellers we spoke to, an energetic, vivacious man named Teju, believed that having a diversity of tellers (which they pretty much did) will eventually bring the diversity of the crowd.

All in all, it was enjoyable and I might like to go back someday, although I want to see some smaller festivals where the telling is more intimate. I also happen to think that some college-age storytelling festivals are long overdue.

The Southern Festival of Books: amazing. Not so much going to see the authors or any of the events (I didn't really know anyone who was being featured, which made it hard to figured out what I wanted to see) but rather the booksellers. Especially this one, Pennyworthbooks (located in Chicago) with an entire TWO BOOKCASES full of new, pristine-condition books FOR ONLY $5 A PIECE. And not just second rate books, either. This included titles as diverse as Angela's Ashes, Bridget Jones' Diary, Le Morte de Arthur and Democracy in America (by Tocqueville). As strapped for funding as we are, I can always find money for books, seeing as how given a choice between eating or reading can often be a pretty tough decision. So I got some great stuff that I'm really looking forward to reading (only one of those in the aforementioned list I actually purchased, I'll leave it to you to guess which one, but here's a hint: it's about King Arthur).

So, back to why today was my favorite day. In Jonesborough, we ran into Dr. Judith Maloney, who teaches first grade at Una Elementary in Nashville. Katelyn had been trying to contact schools that she attended here but we had been having no luck and were feeling rather disheartened. Nashville was where we had planned to go next but so far no opportunity to actually get anything done had presented itself. So by a stroke of fate we happened to overhear Dr. Maloney say that she taught school in Nashville. We brought up what we were doing and she said she would love to have us come and talk to her class about what we had learned about stories.

So over the last weekend we wrote up a brief activity to do with them, involving going over the main parts of a story; beginning, middle, end, good guy, bad guy, problem, solution. We wanted to tell them a story and write a story with them. But since neither of us had either ever told a story performance-style before, or been in front of a class that young, or even had a third person to film the whole thing for us, we were a little nervous about how the whole thing would go.

Turns out we couldn't have asked for a better class. These kids were bright, attentive and fun. We were able to switch off the filming duties to one another with relative ease, so we each got to spend a good amount of time working with the class. Katelyn began by leading a brief opening discussion about what a story is, where they hear them and what kinds they like. Then I told them the story of the Billy Goats Gruff, and let me tell you: the things they say about kids snapping to attention and listening to a story is true. It was like a spell had fallen over them, and I know it had nothing to do with my technique, considering I worked out how I was going to tell the story in the shower that morning. After that we went through the parts of the story and identified the beginning, middle and end. They knew who the good guys were and why, who the bad guy was and why. I didn't have to tell them anything.

Then came the best part. Katelyn facilitated a story crafting time, in which the class wrote a story of their own. They settled on their story taking place in, of all places, a school, but not just any school: A SUPERHERO First-Grade school. First they wanted to populate their school with Batman, Spider-Man and Superman but fearing copywright lawsuits we had to steer them away from that. Once Katelyn led them to a Halloween theme, their ideas sprang up like lightning: The Ghost, Skeleton and my personal favorite, Pumpkin-Man, whose head is a big orange pumpkin and who can shoot pumpkin seeds at his enemies, as well as take his head off and throw it (I gues a lawsuit from Washington Irving is not as possible). But a serious threat plagues this Superhero First-Grade School in the guise of The Vampire, who cunningly disarms you with his charm before giving you a hug and sucking all of your powers (not blood, sorry, kids) away, leaving you "weak and sad." Good thing our heroes are resourceful, and can make a plan to capture this evil man by hiding a hole in the ground with leaves and leading him over it, causing him to fall to its depth and subsequently restore their powers.

Then the class divided into groups of three and illustrated their story, and Katelyn and I hope to find somewhere we can publish their story for them and send it back to them, although we didn't tell them that in case we couldn't make it happen.

So we were truly blessed to come to Nashville after all, thanks to Hume-Fogg Academic High School, and Humanities Council of Tennessee, and Una Elementary, and Meaghan and Jared who have let us trash their guest room with our many clothes, books and camera equipment. Speaking of camera equipment, I almost forgot to mention that we had to purchase a new shock mount for our microphone because the one we were using became stripped. Good thing we were in Nashville, the Music Capitol of America.

Funny thing, after this, who knows where we'll be? We certainly don't. Like everything else, we seem to be deciding at the last possible moment.

But of course, when we know, you'll know.

The Travellers Inn

I know it's been a little while, and Matt and I were getting really good at updating every so often, but we had a bit of a mishap in Jonesborough that prevented us from blogging.

After New Orleans, we headed to Jonesborough, TN via Birmingham, AL for the National Storytelling Festival. We spent the night with a friend of mine from high school, Brydee. Then we went to Jonesborough to stay at a motel that Matt's step-grandmother bought for us. We checked in at the Traveller's Inn in Elizabethon, TN. Elizabethon is not that far from Jonesborough, and it was the only place with a room open. We had problems checking in, but that is really not important. It ended up being worked out. We went to our room, room 111 on the bottom floor, an easily accesible non-smoking room. As Matt was using the bathroom, I sat down next to the TV reading a brochure about the motel when I noticed a jumping black period sized dot on my hand. A flea. I looked down at my socked feet. Covered with fleas. I yelled for Matt, he came out of the bathroom and I by-passed him in, pulling the fleas off of me and dropping them into the toilet. Matt checked his legs and began pulling his off as well. We grabbed our things and went to the front desk to get our room changed. We were met with the manager from Hades.
"How do you know there are fleas?"
"Well, it jumped on my hand. Matt just killed one over there. I left them in the toilet in the room if you want to see them"
"Well, you have to understand that I'm really busy right now."
"Umm...ok?"
But she handed us our new keys. And although we discovered that the wireless internet was secluded to the lobby, only open until 11pm, and it was already 10:30pm, we passed the night rather comfortably.
As did our second night of our stay, although we did pass the cleaning ladies in the morning smoking cigarettes at the same time pushing their cleaning carts.
The third night in Jonesborough we were out late at the festival, attending the midnight cabaret. We got back to our room around 12:30am. Matt went to use the bathroom and came out, "The toilet isn't flushing". I went in to look at it. It sounded like the chain had disconnected inside the toilet, something that happened frequently at the res halls in Webster University. We tried to lift the lid of the toilet in order to fix the problem, but the countertop extended over the toilet seat and we could only lift the lid about half an inch. Matt disappeared downstairs again to speak with the manager from Hades. He returned, agitated, with a key in his hand. "We can use a bathroom in another room, but we can't change rooms. There isn't anyone here to be able to fix it tonight. She'll have maintenance in the morning."
We went to the room, but I couldn't get the door open. I went to get some more help. The woman met me at the night check in window, and started to talk to me with the window closed. I asked her to open it so that I could hear her better. She looked at me, and I said, "The key won't open the door"
"So what, you think I can call mainetnance now?"
"No, I don't. I just can't get the door to open"
"Is your toilet still broken?"
"Yes"
"How do you know it's broken"
"It doesn't flush"
"It doesn't work?"
"No. We even tried to fix it ourselves but we couldn't because the counter is in the way."
"You guys need to stop coming down here and complaining."
"I can't get the door open."
"Lift the door handle, not push it down."
"Oh."
"But don't touch the bed. If you touch the bed, I charge you $80 to your credit card. Don't make it look like you've used the room at all. I charge you."
And so I left, running, fuming up the stairs. It worked. There was a protective sanitary strip on the toilet holding the toilet seats together. I lifted them both, squatted and used the bathroom. Didn't want to get charged for taking the sanitary wrap off.
When we left the next morning there was a woman's purse floating in the pool outside. Matt told a worker, she said maintenance would take care of it. She was sitting right next to the pool.

Anyway, now that that is over we are at my sister and her husband's in Nashville. We went to the first day of the Southern Festival of Books today. I got to see two long lost friends, Linda Ragsdale and her daughter Jessie. Linda was there with her books she's just published, and her daughter went to a session of an author of a book she was just reading.

Can we have more information on the documentaries that anonymous said are out? We'd like to look at them to ensure that what we creat isn't what has been created.

Cowboys and Musicians

Today was a productive day. We had an interview with Chris Jones, a grad student who's teaching a course on Myth and Life for the anthropology department at Tulane University. I was a bit trepidatious about this particular interview, specifically because we didn't get much of a chance to talk to Chris before we began the interview and so I didn't know much about the class he taught before we started.

The more it went on, though, the more it became evident that this class is searching for the exact same sort of thing we're searching for. Specifically, the course examines the influence of mythology in our daily life. Chris said that many people think of "myth" as a story about a god or a great hero, but this isn't always true. Myths can be more commonly seen as stories (and, within these stories, situations or archetypes) that are embedded in our subconscious rather than our conscious. Let me give you the brilliant example that he gave.

There's the myth of the American cowboy; how many times have you seen this in Westerns? A lone gunslinger riding through the desert comes across a poor town of common folk who are being terrorized by a sinister "baddie," usually an escaped convict or a notorious gang leader. The sheriff of the town, a well meaning, likeable kind of guy, is nonetheless completely ineffectual at bringing said evil to justice. Lo and behold, the stirrup-laden hero, after deciding that this is one fight he'll have to tough out alone, charges in on wherever the bad men are, guns blazing, and after a thrilling fight, stands triumphant. Once justice is delivered and peace is restored to the town, the hero rides off into the proverbial sunset, awaiting the next time he may be called on to intervene.

And here we have George W. Bush; quintessential cowboy trope with the Texas swagger, and Iraq, the poor town of depressed citizens being terrorized by the big, bad Saddam Hussein. Obviously the protectors of Iraq, whatever they may be, are rather ineffectual at their job and so Bush, deciding it's his heroic duty to go in alone without the help or approval of the U.N. (or for that matter any other country), charges in, guns blazing, captures the bad guy, and is now working on setting up peace and prosperity in Iraq (i.e., democracy) so that he can ride off into the sunset and leave the country to its own government. But always, America will be there, riding around the desert somewhere, ready to be called on again to save the day whenever need be.

Now, regardless of your political affilliations or how you feel about Bush or the war or even America, you'll have to admit that there are some very obvious parallels going on here. People who support Bush and the war are honing in on this very American myth of our country as great protector and any other country as damsel in distress. How many other times throughout history has this happened? And aside from any political underpinnings of this particular example, this motif is common in many other kinds of stories.

After I recognized this "myth" is also chracterized in the comic books of Batman, Chris humored me. Here we have Gotham City as an urban jungle taking place of the desert town, and Joker, The Penguin, or Catwoman as the threat that needs to be dealt with. Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City Police are the enforcers who more than have their hands full, and so Batman, as the lone dark vigilante who acts outside of the ranges of the local law enforcement, takes matters into his own hands.

Obviously, Chris pointed out, we would hesitate to recognize that there is something like a "Batman myth," but certainly the stories of this costumed hero are very mythic archetypes in their telling. So then we get to delve into the influence of characters like John Wayne and Batman on the public conscious, and specifically the imaginations adolescent boys. How many times do boys want to see themselves as the lone hero who can stand up to the bully, using force only when necessary, and make the playground safe once and for all? I know I did. The fact that it never actually got around to happening didn't matter, the possibility was always there. And still there are certain things that come up in life that seem I'll have to handle alone, and I need only to call on mythic archetypes or heroes to remind myself that it can be done. This, Joseph Campbell would say, is the "Power of Myth."

We are going to a coffee house tomorrow night to hear some free live music (what else is New Orleans known for, right?) and then hopefully we'll score an interview with the band who I suppose uses music to tell stories. At least the man I spoke with on the phone told me "that's where you need be" to find what we're looking for.

So, like I said before, today was a productive day.