June - Full and well-storied.

June has been full. 

Anticipating THE HELLO GIRLS and the Capital Fringe. First show July 10 - - that's just 17 days from now. Tickets are on sale HERE 

So I have been juggling. Some days its hard to keep track as the lists grow despite my scratching items off and keeping at them 24/7.

So I am looking back to take stock - and to remember how doors opened to let me in where I have wanted to go for years.

My friend came for a visit and she and I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a sentimental journey. It was a sweet and wonderful time.  And I thought that would be that - but I was mistaken.

Kay was special guest at a dinner honoring her late husband and she invited me along. A dinner conversation with a surgeon who was interested in history and in storytelling has opened doors for me to talk to several very senior guys about a long-ago surgeon who was a "consequential stranger" in my life.  It is a story I have wanted to gather for 25 years but the stars never aligned for me to meet and talk with the right folks. It has been amazing networking - one conversation leads to two more and then more.  It is happening now and I am fascinated by the stories people are telling me. And by the rhythm of the hand-offs to more information.

I feel the story. I know I can get to the heart of it. But, whether its something I will bring to a stage, well I don't know. Even if I don't - gathering it is pure joy. I am feeling the old excitement that attracted me when I was working with genealogy - except this is not a genealogy story. And, I might not see the possibilities if I had not created The Hello Girls - which is a new departure in storytelling for me. I feel so fortunate. 

But more than my getting the story I am fascinated by the way these two men have kept the stories of earlier days alive by the telling of their stories - stories they know first hand and melded with those they have been told. Its been like a fire brigade - stories passed along a bit at a time. A man who was bigger than life during his lifetime could so easily have been forgotten if there were not a hand full of doctors who value the history and pass it along - even to a non-medical storyteller who asks questions. 

This reverence for the importance of history is part of the reason I have had such a strong affection for the Hopkins medical world since I landed here in 1954 as a wide-eyed eighteen year old. I would never have come to Hopkins if it had not been for the larger-than-life legend I am finding out about. That's worth a story, don't you think?