From an Afternoon in Baltimore: May 2000

The book shelves in my office are bulging with books, stacks of files, three ring binders stuffed with papers and stacks of sketch books. It is space that cries out to be cleaned out and neatened-up. The other day I pulled down a sketch book thinking I could toss it. Wrong. Its dated May 2001 - the notes are from a Doug Lipman storytelling workshop in Baltimore, MD. Storyteller Gail Rosen had organized it. This was one of my first workshops. It was held in a fine old house downtown. A lovely space. The notes are interesting but the drawings on most every page from doodles to contour drawings of other storytellers were the surprises. They hold the memory of the experience more vividly than the notes.

Several potted plants on the window sill with light filtering over them now look animated and amusing. This head of someone pleases me.

 Some one's story prompts me to think of my father in Presbyterian Hospital dying in the town where he was born, Charlotte, NC. Hmm. I never worked with those memories to create the story - whether to tell for an audience or just to leave for my children.

Ah, me. This is a bit of treasure for me. It is the quickly assembled outline for my Africa Story.

That afternoon as the light faded in the room where we were gathered was the first time I organized my thoughts on that adventure and told it as a story.
The next year I told it - as my first one-woman show - in a solo performance at the Washington Storytellers Theater - quite a thrill.

This is an except from the Africa Story told for a performance with Better Said Than Done.

Interesting to look back  - all from a few pages in a journal - which I am NOT tossing out.

Would you? Do you?