Pointless post, just because I can.

Tonight I decided to get a little outside prospective on our project. You'll all be happy to know that my kitten, Calliope, approves of all the work done so far. She especially seems to enjoy the giant drumstick on the foodTUBE blog.

Jessie_11_I

On page 242 Simmons asks why people don't tell more stories. I think that a lot of the time people just don't consider stories a valid tool for whatever it is they're trying to do. If I'm trying to sell someone on an idea I don't walk into their office and launch into a big pre-planned story. I walk into their office and try to spit as much information out as I can before they start in on the "Do you even know what an appointment/office hours are?" spiel. If I overdraw my checking account (actually, that should be when, not if) I don't go to my fiance with some big sob story about really needing whatever it was I bought that pushed me into the red. I just go tell him I overdrew my account and he gives me money. Most things in life that I need, I can get just by asking for them. Maybe I'm just lucky like that. The sad fact of the matter is that unless you are in an environment that is actively judging your stories you probably won't take the time out of your day to tell them when cutting to the chase will get the same outcome.

There are, however, some things in life that are best served by telling stories. Getting to know someone over a cup of coffee would be pretty boring if all you were doing was tossing your stats back and forth. Unwinding at the bar would be pretty pointless if all you and your friends did was compare DayRunners. Getting a child to sleep at night usually involved more than explaining the benefits of a good night's sleep. Fortunately, we have this great thing called "life" that requires more than just cutting to the chase and gives us plenty of storytelling practice every day.

Jessie_10_I

Back home my family attends a Pentecostal church that is headed up by an old-time Georgian minister. The man is a great storyteller in the way that only Southern gentlemen of a certain age can be. He started out preaching at 14 years-old when he got on a bus with his twin brother and a guitar and travelled around to summer tent meetings and hasn't stopped since. But the fact of the matter is that he's getting older and a couple of years ago he decided that it was high time he started training up another preacher to eventually take his place. He contacted his wife's nephew, a former youth minister in his late forties who had just moved back to Indiana and asked him to come try the job out.

The first time I went home while the man was preaching I came out of the service feeling uneasy. It's not like I've never felt out of place in a Pentecostal church. I'm the lone Catholic holdout in a family of Holy Rollers, it kind of goes with the territory. But I felt especially uneasy this particular day and I didn't know why. This uneasiness persisted every time I went home and this man preached and this past spring it finally hit me. He has some of the most negative sermons I have ever heard in my life. They aren't sermons that are designed to make the audience feel guilty or fearful for their own salvation. You spend enough time in parochial schools and you get used to that sort of thing. No, he gives sermons preaching against other religions and other people. He likes to get going and flash around pictures he's recieved in e-mail forwards (sort of like these) and tell everyone how bad the rest of the world is. That isn't what people want to hear on a Sunday morning. Our senior pastor tells these great stories, some from the Bible and some not, that demonstrate the principles that are supposed to help us grow and be better people. Those are the kinds of stories people want to hear when sitting in a country church on a Sunday morning staring out at the cornfields.

Telling stories that hold that much negativity can only get a storyteller so far. As negative as the world can be sometimes I refuse to believe that the majority of people want to feel angry and upset. You tell people stories that make them feel good and show them how to keep feeling good and they will listen to whatever you have to say. Fire and brimstone should only be used when it is really needed to drive a point home and even then you have to be careful with it.

Jessie_9_I&Q

"A healthy sense of curiosity is the best long-term strategy to ensure that your stories are interesting."

I really like the idea that keeping your audience interested in your stories isn't just dependent on their interest in what you're saying, but also on your interest everything else. The best example I can think of to illustrate the idea is a little kid telling a story or explaining something. I love listening to little kids go on and on about some idea they've gotten into their heads. There's something so amazing about listening to these little people who are figuring out how the world works for the very first time. They want to know everything about everything and they think it is all amazing and something to share with the rest of the world. You don't really meet many adults like that. Adults, for the most part, are sneaky and like to hide information away until there is something to be gained by sharing it. Maybe that's why most adults are really boring to listen to, because they are so stingy with their thoughts and discoveries.


I don't really know what happens to kids when they grow up that they stop expressing curiosity as freely. I do know that the most interesting adults to listen to are those who haven't lost that childlike sense of excitement over learning something new and are excited to tell you about it. There's nothing worse than getting all excited about learning something new just to have the person telling you about it act like it's no big deal. When that happens I tend to lose all interest in hearing anything else from that person. Many people loose all sense of wonder and excitement as they get older and they get to where they don't want to seem too interested in anything. Why is that? Are they afraid that people will think less of them if they find out they don't know everything? Does it have something to do with that ever present pursuit of "cool" that I keep hearing about? Or is it just a natural part of growing up? I really hope it isn't, the last thing this world needs is more boring people running around.

Jessie_8_I

I tend to have some song going constantly in my head. My life seriously has it's own soundtrack, its neat. There's this song called Little Wonders by Rob Thomas that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. This chapter made me think of a line in the song.

Let it slide,
Let your troubles fall behind you
Let it shine
Until you feel it all around you
And I don't mind
If it's me you need to turn to
We'll get by,
It's the heart that really matters in the end

Everyone needs someone to talk to every once in a while and more often than not they need someone to talk to that understands what they're going through. You can pay a therapist to listen to your problems, they might even offer some helpful advice. Usually, though, they aren't in a position to really understand what it is you need to talk about. So what do you do? You go looking for a friend, a collegue, a significant other or even your mom (guilty on that one). But if you notice, they number of people you have to turn to when you need someone to listen is pretty closely related to the number of people in your life that you are willing to listen to when they need it. Does that mean that everyone you ever listen to is going to be that receptive when you need to talk? No, not in the slightest, sometimes not at all. There isn't an exact formula to quid pro quo that says someone owes you for the time you spend listening and sometimes people have enough of their own problems without taking on yours as well. Then what can you do? You do what you can to let people know that they can open up to you when they need to. You listen, you offer to help, you let them see they can trust you. You let them know that you really don't mind if they need to turn to you and you mean it. You take a chance and listen, not with any expectation of return, but with the hope that when you need to be heard someone will return the favor.

Jessie_7_I

So I have this "friend" who frequently accuses me of smiling "too much" and she is not joking when she says it. She is possibly the most negative person I have ever met and employs every one of the negative emotions discussed in the chapter on a pretty regular basis. We're in an organization together and I can honestly say that the other members of the group and I have tried everything we can to improver her disposition and nothing has worked.

This girl was very suspicious of me for a very long time. I'm really a very cheerful person (you're all shocked, I know) and she didn't see how someone could be that cheerful without having some dark motive. After knowing me for a while and not seeing any dark motive appear she concluded that I am, in fact, an idiot. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, I am not an idiot, just annoyingly cheerful. And honestly, if she just wanted to think I'm an idiot I would have been OK with it. But she started treating me like an idiot despite all the effort I put into being nice to her and that made me mad. I was still nice to her, but I started looking for ways to knock her down a peg or two. I had developed that dark motive she was looking for. When I realized what I was doing I had to take a step back and re-evaluate my relationship with her. I decided that I just had to stop dealing with her all together on a personal level.

As much as I enjoyed this chapter I feel that it really needs to warn the readers that there are just people like her, people you just aren't going to be able to get through to without drugging them into submission. When I was growing I always heard this saying, "stop throwing good after bad." I really think that there comes a point when you just have to accept that someone is unreachable and you have to stop wasting your resources on them before they drag you down with them. I would really be interested in Simmons' "professional" thoughts on when that point occurs and how to deal with it once it does.

Jessie_5_I

I believe that telling stories to influence people has to be the most frequent use of a story. If it isn't the most frequent, it is certainly the use that has the most impact. In Mein Kampf Hitler used personal narratives of how he never met a Jew until he came to Vienna as an adult and was, at first, very liberal and tolerant. He gradually reveals the reasons he came to distrust and later hate them as a people. Warren Jeffs convinced his followers that he knew the path to salvation not by standing up at a pulpit screaming to the heavens that he knew what was right. He did it by weaving hypothetical stories and examples of "good" behavior and the rewards and consequences associated with that behavior. The use of influence isn't all bad though. In Sunday Schools all over the world little children are not taught values through "because I said so!" They are taught through the use of parables and other stories from the Bible.

To me most storytelling can be boiled down to the need or desire to influence others. Good or bad there isn't really any denying that the use of story can be a powerful tool, maybe the most powerful tool available to us as humans.

E-mail from Jane Ellery

Hey guys, here is the e-mail I got back from Jane Ellery about our "Health Messages." Think about these this week and I assume we're going to talk about them in class on Tuesday.


Let me take a stab at this, and I have copied Curt Sutterfield, Cathy Whaley, and Gina Edghill who are all involved with the schools in different ways.

You asked for 7 health messages, but I am first going to refocus that a bit to programming areas to see if you think that works with your current thoughts/planning. Some areas I would propose:

Advisory Councils
After School Programs
Staff Wellness
Family/Community Events
School Culture
Resources and Facilities for Change
Key Partnerships
Walking Clubs and Walking Trails
Developing and Implementing Wellness Policies and Plans

If this doesn’t work with your plans, some actual messages that I can think of (and please use your creativity to improve these titles!):

Walking your way to wellness
Eating to fuel our bodies and minds
Great students working in a great community (community engagement)
Make One Change to improve your health
Climbing for fitness
Fun for the whole family
Friendships… I get by with a little help from my friends
Character Counts

I know of that are going on in the schools that should be able to fuel stories in most of these areas. Cathy, Gina and Curt may be able to provide additional insight!

I hope this helps!

Jessie_4_I

The parallels between storytelling and acting are something I've been avoiding talking about so far, but since Simmons pointed out the big pink elephant in the room in this chapter I'll go ahead. In this chapter she talks specifically in the section on Facial Expressions about actors needing to conjure up whatever feelings they need to be projecting to make them believable. This is true for some actors, probably most of them, but I've seen many actors pull off some amazing performances on the sheer merit of being incredible liars. There was one actress who had a lead in a musical we did here a few years ago. She had the flu for most of the run. One night she was literally running off stage between scenes to throw up in a bucket and then going back on stage to sing and dance. She was nominated for a regional acting award and performed at the American College Theatre Festival for that year. I could honestly dredge up a million stories from the decade I've spent working in theatre. They aren't that unusual. Does it help to have emotions to draw upon in a performance situation? Sure it does, especially for less experienced performers. But, it isn't really necessary to carry off a good performance. You don't need to believe in what you're saying as long as you believe in your own ability to convince others of it.

Here are the groups we formed last week. If something isn't right please comment and I'll fix it.

Group 1
Liz Meyer
Josh Schum
Brian Handler

Group 2
Brian Boswell
John Behrle
John Jackson

Group 3
Chad Buterbaugh
Tim Underhill
Sarah Anderson

Group 4
Iris Antonietti
Brandon Prebynski
Sarah Jones

Group 5
Tonya Naylor
Sam Chiou
Han Wang

Group 6
Erik Crosier
Luke Trout
Jeff Guilkey

Group 7
Martin Ryder
Kyle Hufford
Matt Graf

Group 8
Jessie Roark
Vince Martin
Kellie Gammon

Jessie_3_Q

So let's talk for a minute about cynics. Historically cynics were a group of philosophers in ancient Greece who believed that extolling the virtue of one's self was the only way to achieve happiness and enlightenment. The rest of society frequently referred to them as Dogs because of the way they lived. They rejected all forms of social niceties, up to and including personal hygiene, lovely. They abandoned all ties to family, society and country. They gave up all forms of pleasurable pursuit as they were considered to be distractions from personal virtue. They were also said to have been suspicious, untrusting people who mostly tried to get their point across by mocking the human condition. Needless to say they weren't very popular.

I have a hard time dealing with cynics. I'm kind of the anti-cynic. By nature I'm pretty trusting, I'm fairly respectful of authority figures, I like to listen to what others have to say and I just like people in general. I don't get cynics and I'm pretty sure they don't get me either. I tend to think that they're cowards and they probably think I'm an idiot.

As I'm reading this book, especially the "10 Situations," I recognize myself in the "good" audiences, the ones that react to stories in a positive manner, who see the point of the story and want to alter their behaviors, who trust the person telling them the story. Really though, I have to confess that I am completely terrified of the day I walk into a room full of cynics and have to tell them a story. One or two cynics in a room I can handle. When I was an instructor in the leadership program last year I had to deal with a few students who just wouldn't let the walls down long enough for me to get through. I had some leverage because I controlled part of their grade. But what do you do when you don't have that? Have any of you had to deal with groups that just won't listen to what you have to say? What do you do to combat that?

Jessie__1_I

I once had a professor who would open the first day of his classes every single semester with a story about a group of cavemen sitting around a fire telling each other about the day's hunt. Out of the darkness a single figure lumbers through the cave door. It is Ook, he is neither the strongest nor the largest of the caveman. He doesn't track animals or fish any better or worse than the rest of the pack. He is as unremarkable as a caveman can be. But on this night Ook drags the carcass of some animal to the mouth of the cave and leaves it there. He is bruised and battered and covered with blood. The rest of the pack is curious and they make space for Ook around the fire. He begins to tell them of walking through the forest, tracking a deer for their supper. He tells of the long, hot hours under the canopy of trees spent waiting, spear at the ready, for that moment when his prey walks into his line of sight. He tells of the moment he realizes that he is not the only one tracking their supper in the forest.

Everyone waits for Ook to go on. Clearly something has happened, something big. Ook is covered in mud and blood and bits of fur and that is certainly not a deer laying at the mouth of the cave. Ook covers the distance to mysterious pile in a few long strides. He whispers from the shadows about the moment he turned and saw...

All of a sudden a massive lion jumps from the shadows roaring to the heavens. The group cries out and scatters and a few brave souls grasp for their spears. Then the lion starts to laugh and he shakes off his fur. The cavemen all stare in amazement, it is no lion, it's Ook. He's just become the first storyteller. From that point on Ook's arrival back at the fire every night was something to look forward to because he always brought some interesting tale. And every once in a while they would be able to convince Ook to pull on the old lion skin and tell his story. And even though they all knew the end, they still huddled in anticipation when Ook disappeared into the shadows and cried out when he leaped forward roaring. They had become the first audience.

To sit here and type the story doesn't even begin to do it justice. I heard this story maybe a half dozen times in the few years this professor was here, as did a lot of other students in the theatre department. But we were up on the edge of our seats every - single - time waiting for him to jump up in front of us pretending to be Ook pretending to be the lion. He could have sat in front of us and told us how important storytelling is and how if we really are dedicated to our craft people will come back for more time and time again. He could have told us a lot of things, but he didn't, he showed us with some of the best stories I have ever heard.

What I'm trying to say is that storytelling is a skill, we all should know that by now. But it's a skill that has to be practiced and thought upon if it's going to get anywhere beyond the weekend recap at the watercooler stage. Breaking the process of telling stories down into categories and processes could completely rob all of the fun from storytelling, but in our text the use of stories to teach about storytelling just gives us more stories to draw examples from. So, yeah, I guess that's it for my big idea for the week.

P.s. did anyone else notice that the subtitle on the front of the book is different from the subtitle on the title page inside the book? I borrowed the first edition of this book from Chesebro a year ago and it was like that then. I was sort of hoping they would have fixed it for the second edition, it's sort of driving me up the wall.