Lindsi Learns Her Lesson (and I finish the very 1st, first grader's story)

Love and Forgiveness, oh yeah...

loveandforgive.org My story is here, and I was featured in the newsletter with the big names in love and forgiveness. Cool, and a great reminder to keep up with the loving and forgiving:


April 2008
loveandforgive.org


In This Issue
Campaign Blog: New Orleans Volunteer
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee...Community Spotlight: KEET/Eureka
Elie Wiesel, Thich Nhat Hanh Featured in The Power of Forgiveness Book
Let's Talk About It
Spring: What's New Again
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee...
Community Spotlight: KEET/Eureka's Digital Stories

Do a loved one's habits get on your nerves? How do you summon love or forgiveness when daily irritations get the best of you? Check out Harriet Watson's story of how she got past a "grinding" irritation to find her husband endearing all over again!

Harriet's digital story came out of a workshop sponsored by campaign partner, KEET/Eureka in northern California. In January, participants from the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project and the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre came together to transform a brief personal story about love or forgiveness into a digital story.

Participants used their voices, artwork, photos, and even the "Ken Burns effect" to create humorous and serious stories of love and forgiveness. Sample a few for yourself.



Fetzer Institute | 9292 West KL Avenue | Kalamazoo | MI | 49009

Wake Up & Smell the Coffee

This story's theme is Love and Forgiveness, in this case a small thing that made a big difference.

This is a little story made with funding from the Fetzer Institute and their Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, and with KEET TV, our local PBS station. The story tellers in this project were from the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project or Dell' Arte, and they were amazing. I hope to see their stories broadcast.

ooo--Trish's digital story debut!

This is my friend and colleague Trish's first digital story, made at the Center for Digital Storytelling's first Workshop for Educators. Trish and her mom kindly agreed to share it. Trish came to my digital story premiere (a big do) and then enrolled in the Redwood Writing Project's tech institute with me (where we floundered together and learned a lot to take back to our classrooms and apply to the rest of our lives as well).

The stories produced at CDS were great, especially considering many people didn't have images. Trish had her mom's dress and dad's letters, and very creatively filled in with other images. Beautiful.

"Lucky", my first digital story

Everyone has stories, but I wasn’t sure how to tell mine. Coming together with the other people in this project, I learned how to listen to their stories and also listen to my own.

It took a lot of time, listening, sharing, talking to get to the heart of our stories. It took a lot of risk and a lot of trust.

The actual putting the words, images and music together required an intense, scary, grueling and thrilling 3 days. None of these stories could be shared in this amazing way without the generous support of many, sharing their time and talents, and their money.

Humans have always told stories. Around the fire, at the market place, on cave walls, even around a favorite watering hole, be it a river, a well or the neighborhood bar. Stories have been shared on cave walls, on paper, by phone, or email.

And our stories? Even with the latest technology, they are really just the same as stories have always been—the unique voice of one person sharing part of the human experience with another .

Poet Muriel Rukeyser says “Say it! Say it! The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

Amen.

I hope you take some time soon to share one of your stories with someone else.

"Blankie School", a digital story for my kids

I made this story at the Center for Digital Storytelling with a group of other educators.
I wanted to make a story for my own kids, to teach them a few things I might not be around to pass on to them. I realized I'd feel better if the story told them things that they knew, and had actually taught me.

The music is "Heliotrope Bouquet" by Scott Joplin.

I might have added a few more seconds to the end, but did keep it under one minute!

It's a Wrap! the 1st 1st grade movie

Woo! Our first class production, just in time for Back to School Night. The kids bonded over this experience. We have two more stories in production. I hope each student can make a personal story this year as well. Onward!

Jack Johnson's song "We Are Going to Be Friends" was a natural for the soundtrack.

I love my class!