trickster
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Never Underestimate the Power of Smell in Storytelling by Sharon Gilbert
Smells bypass the thalamus. Smells go straight to the olfactory bulb, or the brain’s smell processing center. This bulb is directly linked to the amygdala (responsible for emotion) and hippocampus (responsible for memory). The olfactory bulb’s proximity to the brain’s emotion and memory centers might explain why scent can immediately trigger a vivid memory or…
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To Tell or Not to Tell by Kate Helm
Like many Americans, I am not one but many. My roots have been planted and dug up many times over. My mother's family all came from Ireland and migrated here in the mid-1800s looking for opportunity and a fair shake. They started out in New York and then moved westward to settle in towns and…
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Storytelling and Play by Myranette Robinson
Experts have found that pretend play affords children opportunities to express different processes. Cognitive, affective and interpersonal processes are all important for creativity. Storytelling can teach lessons without making children feel that they are being lectured to. Storytelling can also promote creativity and teach reading structure. Both playing and listening to stories are a fun…
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Who is a Full-Service Storyteller? by Diana Dinshaw
Who is a full service traditional storyteller? Well to answer this question let’s break it up into two; full service storyteller and traditional storyteller. A traditional storyteller is someone who tells (not reads) stories from the oral tradition. These are stories from the preliterate societies. A full service storyteller is someone who can tell any…
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Let’s Make Magic by Bryce Barraza
Let’s make magic! …by using imagination! Yes, your imagination! You know, the willy-wonka-style contraption making inventions in your head. There is logic to what I’m proposing. I swear. Just follow the trail of everlasting gobstoppers. Elizabeth Ellis explains that, as storytellers, “When we help others use their imagination, they make an image, and something magic…
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Storytelling at the Westward Ho by Stacey Gandy
When I started working with the residents of the Westward Ho, I quickly saw the need for residents to be seen and heard. I recalled attending a storytelling event during the holidays and remembered how connected I felt to the tellers on the stage even though I had never met them. That is what the…
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Recognizing the Other Through Story by Kate Helm
You can’t hate someone when you know their story. I remember reading that line in one of the texts for our Personal Stories class and it has stuck with me ever since. It assumes that humans are inherently bound to each other. Many times we forget about that connection and hate and suspicion grows. When…
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Budding Entrepreneur Storytellers by Lauren Besich
I was asked to give a storytelling presentation to entrepreneurship students at ASU in October. The instructor wanted his students to learn storytelling skills that would serve them through their careers in business, because ultimately, they are in the business of people, and people connect to stories. He had spent some time earlier in the…
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The risks are worth it, all the time! by Donna Martin
It is the end of the fall semester – the last class meeting of STO 297: Creating and Telling Personal Stories. We gather eagerly to hear these last few personal stories thoughtfully crafted by our classmates. They do not disappoint. I have avoided telling personal stories since 1999 when I earned my storytelling certificate. I…
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Digging for Treasure by Chrissy Dart
One of the weekly assignments for the Personal Storytelling Class at South Mountain Community College is to listen to all kinds of personal stories. One week I chose to listen to Elizabeth Ellis tell the “College Aid” story. I am fascinated by her cadence, her humor, and her use of pauses. Though she sits, she…
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Humor in Truth by Karen Burns
One of my favorite things about storytelling is its weird, mystical ability to turn the wretched into funny. Honesty is the storyteller’s best friend in all things, but with humor, it’s just required without question. Nothing is funnier than the truth. In 2015, Kevin McGeehan told a story on The Moth about the final days…
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From Memory Scraps to Life Stories by Mark Compton
I have a lot of old lady friends. There’s Dorothy, 93, the last of my Mother’s (R.I.P.) great friends. She’s completely with it and seems not to have forgotten anything. There’s Barbara, 85, who I swore I’d never talk to again because she’s such a narcissist, but of course I continue keeping in touch because,…