New Storytelling Radio Program
KSVY-FM 91.3, Sonoma, CA
http://www.ksvy.org
Sundays, 5-6 pm Pacific time (adjust for your time zone)
Live audio streaming: Go to the KSVY website. In the upper
right-hand corner, click on High or Low Speed and find
yourself listening to the live program.
Or access the archives later and download.
PROGRAM 2:
Sep 17 & Sept 24 Tall Tales — You gotta be kiddin'!
Richard Martin
(Jack Goes Hunting)
Jane Crouse
(The Legend of Slappy Hooper)
Dave Chittenden
(The Pisquatica River Disaster)
Steve Otto
(Max and Margaret and Bass Fish and Walnut)
Jackie Baldwin
(Pecos Bill and Slue-foot Sue)
Theme music: Special thanks to Petra Koch in Germany (she works with Storyteller Richard Martin), who performed the beautifully haunting alto recorder music of Como Podem from the 13th century collection Cantigas de Santa Maria (copy of Kynsecker, Mollenhauer & Co.). Used on this program with her kind permission.
Guest tellers...
• Richard Martin, Germany — Jack Goes Hunting
— BIO
Richard Martin tells stories, often together with music by Petra Koch or Vera Spillner: throughout Germany and Europe, and as far away as India, Singapore, Hong Kong and America - in theatres, universities, schools, for business companies or private parties.
Richard's life in as few details as possible.
I was born in 1949 - so it must be the storytelling which keeps me looking so young.
I spent most of my childhood in Cheshire - and there is still a slight northern accent to my English.
I disliked school, where I was an erratic and rather temperamental pupil.
I managed to fail 'A' levels completely at the first attempt - which puzzled the school as well as me since they had considered me rather bright!
At last I scraped the necessary three 'A' levels together to go to Liverpool University in 1970, where I eventually read History and Politics.
At the advanced age of 25, not knowing what else I could do, I recalled George Bernard Shaw's dictum and decided to become a teacher.
I compounded this mistake by deciding to teach primary school children; the logic that being larger than the pupils would make life easier was soon disproved in practice.
After 18 months of being an over-stressed teacher in a small North Devon town, I chose to follow my fiancée back to Germany for a year.
That year began in December 1976 and has yet to finish.
During that time I have learnt:
• to speak (although not yet write) reasonable German;
• to discover that teaching English as a foreign language is something I could not only do but enjoy;
• that storytelling is one of the most powerful things in the world;
• that storytelling should be part of language teaching;
• that many other teachers want to use storytelling in their classrooms, too.
•••••
English storytelling in Germany? Well, 14 years ago I had never told a story to a public audience before, let alone to a public audience of non-native speakers. But I was asked to put together a two-hour show with a group of musicians who played medieval music - and walked out to see 200 adults sitting there. Admittedly, as an Englishman working here as a teacher and teacher-trainer, I had always told stories to my classes in the school where I worked - which was why the musicians invited me. But with 200 to perform to, this was for real!...
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More on Richard's website:
http://www.tellatale.eu
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CD available (you can listen to these tales as well):
Jack goes Hunting and Other Tales
Stories to make you laugh, stories to move you with beauty and truth. You will listen again and again.
The tales are:
• Jack Goes Hunting (MP3) — a story which shows that a man can sometimes make his wife happy!
• Jimmy No-Story (MP3) - a popular tale in Scotland and Ireland; it shows how important it is to have a story to tell.
• The Tailor and His Wife (MP3) - one of my most popular "adult" tales.
• The Wounded Selkie (MP3) - a beautiful Scottish tale of forgiveness. And you can read The Wounded Selkie here.
• The Silent Princess (MP3) - like many oriental stories, this has more tales embedded in it
"Richard's style reminds me very much of a cross between Taffy Thomas and Richard Walker ... the stories are well told, the audience enjoys them and so did I. ... Thanks Richard."
Pete Castle's review Facts & Fiction (Feb. 2004).
•••••
Recordings index
Two CDs:
Latest recording
Jack goes Hunting and other Tales
Recorded live at Brüder-Grimm Märchenfestspiele, Hanau 2003.
The Well of the World's End and other Tales
Six more great stories.
DVD:
Latest release
The Tale of the Brown Calf and other Tales
Recorded live at Brüder-Grimm Märchenfestspiele, Hanau 1997.
Originally available on video, now re-released in DVD format.
Video:
The Strongest of Them All
Tales and Music for Young Learners. Includes Teacher's Handbook.
The Tale of the Brown Calf and other Tales
Tales for the English Classroom
Audio cassette:
The Wife's Letter and other Tales
To accompany the stories on this cassette, A Handbook of Teaching Ideas is also available.
•••••
Contact Richard:
richard@tellatale.eu
http://www.tellatale.eu
Richard Martin
Bornstr. 83
Darmstadt 64291
Country: Germany
Phone: +49 6151 377 175
•••••
• Jane Crouse, Virginia — The Legend of Slappy Hooper
(adapted from Aaron Shepard's retelling of this tale at http://www.aaronshep.com/ — used on the radio program with his kind permission).
Jane first stepped on the Storytelling Path in the early 1970s when she lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. From North Carolina to Tennessee to Virginia, while the physical paths have changed, her storytelling path has remained constant, ever-growing and evolving in surprising ways as any good story does. When her hair started to turn white, her husband John told her those were her storytelling stripes and with each new story she told, she'd get another storytelling stripe. As her storytelling stripes increase, her devotion to storytelling continues to grow and unfold. She shares stories in the standard places: libraries, schools, festivals, preschools, retirement centers and even conferences from time to time. She says: "Have tales, will travel!"
Jane is a member of The National Storytelling Network, The National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc., The North Carolina Storytelling Guild and The Virginia Storytelling Alliance, of which she is a second-term board member. She is the Virginia State liaison to the National Storytelling Network.
Jane says: "I share my heart and home (and occasionally my toys) with one husband, ten dogs and one brave old cat. I share stories with old friends, new friends and friends I've yet to meet. What a marvelous adventure the Storytelling Path is!"
The Legend of Slappy Hooper
"I am indebted to Aaron Shepard, who led me to this story. He has a wonderful website (http://www.aaronshep.com/)
and that's where I was first exposed to it. Now, the story about the world's biggest, fastest and bestest sign painter was collected in Chicago in 1938 by Jack Conroy for the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. It was first published in B.A. Botkin's The Treasury of American Folklore in 1944, and in the foreward, Carl Sandburg called The Legend of Slappy Hooper 'a fresh modern masterpiece that will not fail to be passed along from generation to generation.' His words were true because Aaron Shepard has passed it on to this generation of story lovers and storytellers."
Contact:
Jane Crouse
11945 River Road
Chesterfield, VA 23838
Phone: 804-590-9087
Fax: 804-590-0230
crousej@comcast.net
Universal Storyteller, VA state liaison to the National Storytelling Network
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• Dave Chittenden, Orange, CA — The Pisquatica River Disaster (personal)
Dave was trained to be a chemical engineer, and tried to be one for many years before discovering that he was actually a storyteller. In 1989 he joined Toastmasters and began to complete the basic Toast-masters program. For reasons that are still unclear, every speech he gave turned out to be a story. Cynthia Callard heard Dave tell and suggested that he join the South Coast Storytellers Guild. The Guild storytellers helped Dave to hone his stories and provided storytelling venues. The Guild members also provided a community where stories were important and accepted. Get information about the Guild at
http://www.storyguild.com
Quotes from Dave:
"Tall tales are just my kind of story, I guess. The way they turn out. You know, these are original stories; they're not from somebody else. Sometimes you think about an adventure of some kind that you had and you find that it wasn't really as interesting or as amusing as it should have been, so you think you'll change it and make it more interesting, and the audience seems to like it. Do I exaggerate? Oh, my!"
"The Pisquatica River Disaster — well, I've been thinking about that and I realize that telling a story is really like canoeing or running a river, because there's lots of turns and twists, especially in a small river. You never know what might be ahead. There might be things that are really dangerous or you might hit a rock or you might ground on a sandbar, and this kind of adventure and telling a story is a lot like that."
"All of my stories are true, but some of them are more true than others. They are true to life, but maybe not as true to the experience that I've had."
Dave's CD is entitled Outdoor Adventures of My Youth
Stories on the CD:
Karol, Karol with a K
Climbing the Mesa
White Waters of the Peshtigo
Ski Jump
The Umbazookis Portage
The 4000 Foot Club
The Pisquatica River Disaster
The Dispensable Man
A Real Southern Gentleman
O'Malley, A Real American Hero
The Ugliest Man of 1955
Powder Blue
•••••
Contact info:
Dave Chittenden
2218 E. Parkside Avenue
Orange, CA 92867-4038
dchittenden@socal.rr.com
•••••
• Steve Otto, Missouri — Max and Margaret; Bass Fish and Walnut
Go to http://www.story-lovers.com/radiopgm1.html for more details about Steve.
Max and Margaret
"This is really an old, old joke. It was a one-minute, or a two-minute joke, and I took the punchline and built a story back from the punchline, so that I had a complete story with a beginning, a storyline and then an ending that was the punchline. And it's just finding what you need to have to build that tnesion as you go through the story so that your audience is saying, 'Oh, something's going to happen! Something's going to happen! Something's going to happen!' And zap! You cut them off at the knees. And you hit them with the big ending!"
Bass Fish and Walnut
"This is, of course, an old tall tale, and the thing about tall tales is that they have to be believable or there's no feeling of the story having the impact when you get to the end of the story. If it's not believable, they don't do that, so what I did with Bass Fish and Walnut was I took something that actually happened to me back in the forties during rationing when we didn't have any way to go fishing anyplace other than just out on the creek bank. And my dad used to take me out fishing all the time, and I could remember that, and I thought, ooh, if I take this and make it a personal story, people are going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I remember going out fishing. I remember dropping my big old line and watching that bobber going, and I remember that old cottonwood tree leaning down into the water. I remember that really well. Yeah, I can remember that!' And they're just ripe to be taken to the cleaners!
"I have to say, I'm probably a country boy and, you know, that's part of being a storyteller is, I think, you have to love what you do and country boys tend to love what they do. And I just feel that this is the best thing that ever happened to me, to be able to get out and sit with a group of people and say, 'Hey, I gotta tell you this story. I gottal tell you this story or I'm just gonna die!' And watch those eyes, 'Yeah, yeah, tell me the story!' And there's absolutely nothing like it!"
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• Jackie Baldwin, Sonoma, CA — Pecos Bill and Slue-foot Sue
(Adapted from the retelling of this Texas folktale by S.E. Schlosser as found on American Folklore at http://www.americanfolklore.net/ . This folklore site contains retellings of American folktales, Native American myths and legends, tall tales, weather folklore and ghost stories from each and every one of the 50 United States.)
Jackie Baldwin
Winner of the 2006 National Storytelling Network's Oracle Award for Distinguished National Service
Recipient of a 2006 NSN grant for scholarly research in the field of storytelling
Story-Lovers http://www.story-lovers.com
SOS: Searching Out Stories http://www.story-lovers.com/listsofstories.html
About Story-Lovers and Jackie: http://www.story-lovers.com/jackie.html
What Others Have to Say: http://www.story-lovers.com/testimonials.html
New Book: An Enchanted Garden of Seeds and Stories!
http://www.story-lovers.com/seedsandstories.html
New Collection of Public Domain Stories and Illustrations: Come Sit on Grandma's Knee! http://www.story-lovers.com/grandmasknee.html
Board member of Storytelling Association of Alta, California (S.A.A.C.)
Board member of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA)
Producer of Teller-to-Teller, S.F. Bay Area regional sharing events for professional storytellers
Producer and host of Story-Lovers World!, a weekly radio storytelling program on KSVY 91.3, Sonoma
P.O. Box 446, Sonoma, CA 95476 707-996-1996
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(Page created 8/14/06; updated 8/31/06; 9/4/06; 9/16/06)
