Discovering INKHEART

Am I the last one to find out about INKHEART?

It is a bestseller in Europe and this country. It is the first volume of a trilogy. The author, Cornelia Funke, is considered the German J.K. Rowling.

And how did I find out about it?

By checking on when Mummy 3 is going to be made and if Brendan Fraser - yes, yes, back to that- is going to reprise the role of Rick O'Connell.
(The answer to that is yes.)

In that surfing search I learned that Brendan Fraser is right now filming in INKHEART.
INKHEART? What's that about - tatoos, what?

I wasn't nudged to find out more until I was sitting in a doctor's office, reading an article about that queenly woman Helen Mirren - who is also right now shooting INKHEART.

That sent me looking for more information and I bumped right into this wonderful author, Funke, a woman who has imagined a world where words, books, stories - imagination - are the central focus. The heroine is a twelve year old girl whose father, a book-binder named Silvertongue - played by none other than you know who - brings characters to life when he reads books out loud. Helen Mirren plays her aunt. What a family!

Barnes and Noble has it in the children's section but the Public Library has it in Young Adult Fiction. I don't care where they shelve it - I cannot put the book down.

I checked it out of the library but then I had to buy it. I am underlining metaphors, and phrases.

I like this world.

I am looking forward to the movie.

Would you believe that Cornelia Funke dedicated the second volume of the Trilogy, INKSPELL, to Brendan Fraser?

Doesn't surprise me one bit.

They Remember My Stories

Storytelling brings such joy into my life.
I love to tell the stories.
It is a great feeling to look out at 180 or more elementary school children seated on the gym floor with their eyes glued to me - -waiting for the stories to start.
Sometimes their mouths are open - like little fish gulping water.
Sometimes their eyes light up when they jump ahead of me to the ending of the story.
You can see the "I got it " in their eyes.

This is the third year I have been telling stories in the schools, as storyteller-in-residence for the Audubon Naturalist Society, Chevy Chase, Maryland.
In some cases I have been to a school last year and the year before.
That keeps you on your toes - you can't tell the same stories.
Sometimes I don't remember what stories I told in each school. I know, I know,
I should write them down and I do - but not always.

This afternoon I looked at the fourth and fifth grade students settled on
the floor in front of me. 150 kids quieting down to listen to stories. I asked
how many had heard me tell stories last year and two thirds of the group raised
their hands. On an impulse I asked, "what stories did I tell you last year?"

Hands went up! "The story about the three brothers and being turned to stone." Yes, The
Queen Bee, a Grimms Fairytale. Another called out, "the story about the mosquitoes."
That's, All Things Are Connected.

Imagine that, they remembered.
They remembered my stories!

The stories have entered a child's memory.

wow!

What a privilege!

Running In Place

I love it when my schedule is packed. I think I have everything set. Telling stories, meetings, you know all those things that we think are our life and then - Mother Nature comes up with a big surprise




Being off-schedule gave me time to work on the "list".

Put up the new cyber exhibit I have been meaning to. These works are small drawings made with colored "sharpies" on discarded family snapshots. A little recycling.



March 3 and 4 I am telling a new storytelling program, Second Hand Rose, at the Rogue Festival in Fresno, CA. In case you are wondering why I wanted to go to Fresno I answer that question here.

Bouncing Off the Wall

"mirro mirror", collage and digital print, ellouise schoettler

Sorry I am not here right now. I am so blessed with opportunities to TELL my stories that I have not had time to write - but I will be back.

If you want to hear a story and you are in Montgomery County, MD my new Cable TV show, Stories in Time, premieres Monday, February 26 at 7:15 pm on Channel 16. Every week I will tell you a story. My stories are for adults (but suitable for young ears.) Hope you will stop by if you are in the area. http://ellouisestorytvshow.blogspot.com

Shades of the Plaza Theater

I have to admit it. I have watched The Mummy 20 times, maybe more, since my Christmas when I bought the dvd.

Do you think I am obsessed with this movie?

My daughter accuses me of having a crush on Brendan Fraser. Well, he is a hunk of a hero and, at first her accusation embarrassed me - -
but, no, its not that.

I have continued to watch the film and I have figured out my fascination.

I have not been so caught up by a movie since Star Wars (episodes 4,5, and 6 - NOT these three latest digital graphic awfuls) was reissued ten years ago. Then Han Solo captured my imagination - not Harrison Ford - Han Solo.

In my opinion there are plenty of connections between The Mummy and Star Wars - both are fast moving adventures using the George Lucas style of storytelling. Watch for the visual footnotes The Mummy has to Star Wars - as well as references to other movies, especially Indiana Jones.

The music is compelling and propels the story.

In The Mummy the lure of my favorite period in history, Ancient Egypt, makes it doubly hard to resist.

But I realize that beyond all this is something more personal. My memories of the Plaza Theater on a Saturday morning are the attraction. They keep me coming back to revisit The Mummy - again and again and again and again.

I watch it - to once again to see a handsome hero rescue a damsel in distress and save the world.

Nothing wrong with that!

What's not to like?

I will keep watching until I find another film that also satisfies me with such pure enjoyment.

Small Blessings

Following; up with my new determination to focus on the small blessings every day;

It was a warm and sunny Washington day that feels like Spring instead of January - but I went ahead and made arrangements to have someone on stand-by for snow removal.

Jim found the favorite silver earring I thought I had lost in California. It had sneaked into his suitcase when we swapped for an overnight.

I found a two hour parking meter one block from Dupont Circle where I was gallery sitting all day. That means only 3 times back and forth up 25 steep marble steps to the gallery. That IS a real blessing.

One call and I completed my storytelling schedule and money goal for March!

YES! In March I will premiere Second Hand Rose at the Rogue Festival in Fresno, CA. Learned today there is a date available so I can have the east coast premiere of Second Hand Rose at my first choice location in April.

Among the accumulation of junk mail that has piled up while we were in CA, there is treasure - Christmas cards from very special friends who have graced our lives for many years.

Hey - naming the small blessings begins to build up!

Perspectives

Robin has three boys, Jamie (15), Danny (12) and Scottie (10). They went back to school today. The house feels empty. Imagine the quiet.

When 10 year old Scottie's friends Joey and Kevin stopped to pick him up to walk to school Robin heard him say,"hey guys, come see what we did in the back yard."
"Wow!" they said. "and you helped?"
"Yeah, I knocked the nails out of the wood with a hammer."
"Wow!"
Don't you love it?

Having a ten year old around would really help with keeping the big things in perspective.

We have an 8 am flight to Dulles tomorrow morning meaning we will have to leave the house at dawn. No matter what time we leave it will be hard. We have been here three weeks and so having this family around us feels routine as well as special. It will be our house that is abnormally quiet when we get home.

All right, all right. I will welcome some of that quiet and getting back my focus on my list. I have storytelling gigs to prepare for and stuff to write and etc and etc. Jim will get back to his routine and seeing patients. But it will not take the place of the vitality of life with three active boys-and their stream of friends who move through here.

I am looking forward to coming back in February for a few days when I am out to tell stories at the Rogue Festival in Fresno.

Celebrate the Ordinary Day

Happy New Year.

News Year's Day brings football and gatherings.

We are still at our daughter Robin's in California. We fly home on Wednesday. Jim and I have been here since December 15; our daughter Karen arrived on the 21st. There are five in Robin's family, We ARE a gathering.

Robin proposed several outings for the day but there were no takers. We all wanted to "hang" as her boys say. So, we enjoyed an ordinary family day. The boys played x-box, and an occasional computer game. Jamie loaded a movie, the Mummy, on my iPod for the plane ride home. I worked on email. Karen watched a movie with ten year old Scottie. Robin walked.Jim and Brad checked out the various Bowl games.

About noon Robin organized everyone into a crew for a family project. A small old deck was in the way of a larger basketball space. It needed to go! So within three hours they had demolished it. I reneged on that and cooked instead.

As I watched the work progressing I realized how significant this was. We live on the east coast, 3000 miles away - our being here is an event. For us being part of an ordinary day is special.

Robin asked me to take some pictures of the crew at work - - for the family albums.

For the New Year I hope to keep my sights on the value of the ordinary and celebrate it.

New Year's Eve

I sent my BURN IT email to West Virginia storyteller Susannah Holstein. She will toss my troubles on her annual midnight bon fire tonight and free me to start the year feeling lighter

I read through my 2006 calendar. It has been a full year.
Some high points sure -

Mama at 90 made it though hip surgery -
our family is still in decent health -
Jim and I made a trip to Ireland which had mixed reviews but was something we had long wanted to do -
Jim and I spent a wonderful week-end in NC at Patti Digh's first 37 Day Retreat -
My storytelling career is healthy and busy -

But I have to ask myself - are these really the most important moments?
If not, what are the important moments?

Jim and I lived another year together and celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary yesterday.
My girlhood friend Carolyn died and I have to face the reality of my mortality with sharper clarity.
I am off track about some really significant stuff.
And on and on.

Do I make resolutions to change things -
ordinarily I would have said yes,
until I read Holly Stevens essay on Storyteller and LIstener. Her touching story and suggestion of using "themes" has caused me to rethink things.

This is much like the new take on things I picked up from Patti Digh and her "reframe it" exercise at the 37 Days Retreat.

I told Patti as we left Bend of Ivy Lodge that I thought of her as a significant person in my life. I could not quite put my finger on why then - now I can. I first read her 37 Days blog in Janaury 2006. I loved the writing, her take on the world and her reverence for serendipty - which I share. I appreciated how she added the links that expanded the world related to the essay. Relatively new to internet and blogging it took me a while to really GET it. My world was expanding wider and wider through those links and connections.

At about the same time I discovered 37 Days I met Nellie. She is the mother of my grand-daughter's best friend. I was fascinated to learn that her job was writing a blog. Imagine getting paid to play with ideas and the computer. I started checking her blog New Persuasion regularly, but the content did not touch me personally.

A few weeks ago Patti wrote on 37 Days that she had been tagged for more information about her - tell me five things I don't know about you. I checked the b log of the woman who tagged her. She had tagged 4 others: Nellie, ___, ____, Patti and _____. Yep, that's the same Nellie I met a year ago.

It knocks me out.

The wide wide world - is really a small world.

Berkeley Surprise

We started out for field trip to explore near-by Berkeley.
Oops, need coffee.
So - - an unscheduled stop at the Whole Foods store on a corner of San Pablo .
I took my camera inside thinking to grab a few still life shots in the store. Not gonna happen. I raised the camera and a woman wearing her Whole Foods apron called out, "sorry maam, you can't take photos here."
"What? Why?"
"You will have to ask the manager." I decided to follow that up. Why no photographs - is this a terrorist target?

I had to wait a few minutes for her to come down from her cat-walk office to speak with me, I assured her I just had a couple of friendly questions.
" I am an artist. I like to take photos of produce and store displays but several people have told me there are rules against photographs. Why?
"Its marketing. We are very particular about our set-ups and proud of them and we protect them from our competitors. I have a friend who is a food photographer and I can't let her take shots in here."

So - nothing personal, except my disappointment. It is a beautiful store. I would have loved to spend some time in there snapping away.

Back in the car I told my daughter about my conversation with the manager - she laughed. "I am not surprised. Did you buy anything? Notice the prices? People call this place, "Whole Pay Check."

Our next stop was a salvage yard - a yard which specializes in vintgage house leavings. My daughter watches home remodeling tv shows and is planning a re-model of her home. I am past that stage and was impatient at having to make this stop.


OK! OK!
It was interesting - old windows, doors, claw foot bath tubs, the remnants of a church that had been chopped up - from the communion railing to stained glass windows.

I wandered through aisles of this stuff and had begun to lose interest when I turned a corner.
Wow!
Metal skates, with ball bearing wheels. I had a pair like these. My skates are long gone and I had not thought about them in years.

Looking at these skates brought back a flood of memories.

I got my first pair of real skates, like these, for Christmas when I was ten years old.
They were my "wheels".

I lived in a neighborhood with sidewalks. With my skates I could go anywhere within my zone - to my grandmother's house a mile away; to the Big Star grocery store; to the Plaza Movie Theater on Saturday morning for the kiddie show. On skates I had a special kind of kid freedom.

The metal skate key was all important. You used it to tighten the toe clamps and to shorten the one-size skates to fit kid-size feet. I put the key onto a long plaid shoe string; then tied the ends together and wore that key necklace around my neck. When I walked the heavy key thuddded against against my chest. I wore it everywhere I went, whether I was skating or not. My key necklace was my badge of independence.



Later I saw two boys on skateboards in the neighborhood. I stood at the kitchen sink watching them glide from side to side of the cul de sac. It looked so graceful, so effortless, so free. I asked ten year old Scotty if he thought I could ride a skateboard.
"yeah, I guess you could - if you can keep your balance, jump the curbs and are crazy enough to try it."

Hmmm! Why bother - especially since they don't have a key.

Tackling BART

We had to pick up another rental car at the Oakland Airport. It was not convenient to get a ride there so we took the BART - that's the San Francisco area subway.

We started in Lafayette - took the train to the MacArthur stop where we got off, walked across the platform to wait for the Fremont train - our connection to the Airport. We got off the Fremont train at the Coliseum stop as we had been instructed.
Rushed down two flights of stairs to the street level to board the orange and blue bus - the Air Bart - to the airport. So far so good. We got off at Terminal One - walked a few blocks and crossed the street, watching two rental car shuttles pass us by because chain link construction fences herded us several extra blocks up the street to a cross-walk. Waited ten minutes for the third rental car shuttle to arrive. It took us to the off site rental car pick up center.

It was not hard. We had clear directions.

It took one hour and forty minutes and we paid 10.00 for two 5.00 tickets - one-way to the airport.

Lessons learned:

The person who gave us the directions is not a senior and forgot to factor in the dollar benefits we reap because we are -- so we paid full fare for the tickets and added 2.00 for the bus which is just 50 cents for seniors.

If we ever do this when catching a plane we will be leaving our daughter's home five hours before plane time and only carrying a backpack.

And, most importantly, the adventure reminded us that riding public transportation gives you a real view of the diversity of a city and affirms that strangers can be friendly and helpful.

California Holidays Begin

We flew Jetblue to Oakland today to spend time with our daughter and her family for the holidays.

Caught Writing In My Book

"odd wasn't it, that the crispest memories were of aberrations." (Mirror, Mirror, Gregory Maguire, page 163.)
I was caught off guard by how true that is - so I took out my pen and underlined the sentence - to make sure I would remember it or at least could find it again.

A woman sitting next to me on the couch, also waiting to have her hair cut, saw me do it.

She waited a few minutes and then said, "you wrote in your book."

I was startled. "yes, I did. But, its ok."

She looked puzzled so I blundered on. " I own the book."

That was not enough. She did not look either satisfied or forgiving. She looked at me - like a librarian - - so I added, "I mean its not a library book."

"oh."

I knew she would tell people.

Christmas 1957

During the Christmas Season I glimpse many Christmases of the past.




Christmas 1957. Jim and I lived on Argyle Road in Brooklyn, NY where Jim was an intern at Kings County Hospital. This was our first Christmas without any family around. Jimmy was 13 months old. Christmas morning was exciting for him; so many packages to open.

Here Jimmy discovers the surprise of a Jack-in-the-box.

Mix-ed Up Mail Delivery

Ever had a day that felt like this?

I am, more than I like to admit.

Whenever I have nothing to write I put in a picture and hope it will

inspire me

remind me

prompt me

or whatever.

Sometimes it works.

Today

it

isn't.

PA Sunset

Jim's picture of a November sunset in Pennsylvania.

Being Still

floating

drifting

gliding



resting



quiet

silence

stillness



ahhhhhh

at last


being


still


November 10 - 12, 2006
Fallen lotus blossoms were floating over deep reflections on a pond at Bend of Ivy Lodge near Asheville, NC. during the recent 37 Day Retreat. Patti Digh and her colleague David set a space and time where you could find a quiet place inside yourself to see such wonders in the world around us.

Early Morning Light

Split

Split

in halves

or more

where is

balance

ever?

Juliana in Her Underwear

Our grand-daughter Juliana ( center) is a theater student. She has been an actress from the first moment she took a breath twenty years ago - but we are learning to see her acting in a different light.

We journeyed two hours to see her in her latest romp on stage - actually in the basement of a dorm because the main theater at her college is closed for renovations. It created an intimate venue - putting the actors and the audience in each others laps.

The play was fairly predictable - a look at 3 males and their life passages - mostly through their libido. Juliana played Jack's girlfriend - I don't think she even had a name.

In the playbill Juliana did not list any personal details. There was just a note - "see Juliana's underwear". We did.



A late scene opened on a darkened stage-area. As the lights came up Juliana leaped out of bed with Jack - and wearing only her scanty black silk bra and panties. As her character pulled on silk stockings and later a dress she effectively delivered raw language lines directed toward Jack who had betrayed her with a casual sleep-over.


Ah, now I get it -

Juliana is an actress.

This is not really her.

Whew!