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Who’s “the
Old Harry” Gram?
(Jay and his grandmother
Alice O’Callahan) |
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As a boy, I liked tree climbing, tag foot ball and listening
to the radio. Little did I realize I was absorbing language. Mother
loved language. I’d say, “Mom, I’m goin’
out.” “Going!” Mother’s voice would ring
out. “You are going. Don’t drop your ing’s.”
The boys and girls at the parish school dropped their ing’s.
And they said “hache” for “h.” I found
that intriguing. By the fourth grade, some of the boys were saying
fiery words that were not said elsewhere. They were “the
bad words.” How mysterious some words were full of danger.
Playing hide and seek when I was five and six, the word I loved
best was “ollieollieinfree” because it had a beautiful
sound. As did “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Janet right over.”
“I hosie” had power, as did “Let’s chose
up teams. I’ll be captain.” We’d all freeze
hoping we’d be chosen for the team.
When we played tag football we knew exactly what each word meant.
We’d argue fiercely about the scrimmage line. The scrimmage
line was the line to which the ball had advanced. Every inch was
important. When we huddled to make the next play, we’d use
language that was precise as a lawyer’s. “I’ll
center. Russ, you fake left then zigzag right. I’ll throw
you a bullet.”
There were phrases and words that were said only in the family.
I might say, “Dad, give me fifty cents.” Dad would
say, “Get off your feet,” which meant he felt the
request was ridiculous. Grandmother, who lived on the third floor
of our house, would be sitting in her kitchen and say, “I
think I’ll lie down in my chamber.” Not her room,
her chamber. And she’d say, “I think I’ll give
him the Old Harry.” Later we figured out the Old Harry may
have been the devil.
Mother loved to tell us the latest Jackieism. My uncle Jackie
would say, “I got so mad I got in my Cadillac and walked
away.” Mother would laugh telling about the policeman who
said in a rage to Jackie, “Next time, drive around me whether
I’m here or not.”
There were special languages. For instance, the language of religion.
The Latin mass had mysterious sounds and chants. Religion itself
introduced me to the mystery of Adam and Eve. I was sure that
Adam and Eve didn’t drop their “ing’s”
or say fiery words. The language of prayer for me was, above all,
the Hail Mary and the Our Father. The bible stories introduced
me to huge images: the Red Sea parting, the Burning Bush, and
Samson getting his hair shorn. I hated Samson losing all of his
strength and being crushed. Speaking of Samson, when I was eight,
I’d sit in the barber’s chair and say to Louis the
barber, “Just trim a little off the top.” Louis, who
looked like a seal, would leave me bald and weak as Samson.
There was the language of courtesy. I might call across the
street to Sally Graham. If Sally didn’t hear me she’d
call, “Excuse me?” If we disagreed about something
Sally would say, “I beg to differ.” I thought that
howlingly funny, yet secretly I had a deep respect for her being
so courteous.
My neighborhood, Pill Hill, was filled with the rhythms of language.
Neighbors calling their children in the evening, Mrs. Lawrence
talking to her dog and the rhythms of tennis scores being called
out.
I loved the rhythms on the radio. The Lone Ranger program would
begin with the William Tell Overture. The Shadow began with the
dark words, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of
men. The Shadow Knows.” This was followed by the strange,
dark laughter of The Shadow.
Baseball sportscasters, like Kurt Gowdy, who broadcast for the
Red Sox, knew all about rhythms and language. My friend, Peter
Wetherbee, loved those rhythms. When we were teenagers, three
or four of us would be walking along when Peter would suddenly
stop and become Kurt Gowdy. “Williams takes ball three.
The crowd is tense. The whole season is coming down to this pitch.
Williams swings. It’s a long drive! It’s going, going,
gone! It’s a home run! The Red Sox have won the World Series!”
We’d cheer at the fantastic and totally imaginary World
Series victory.
The language of baseball summoned up the world of myth. Not Achilles,
Ajax and Ulysses, but The Babe, The Kid, and Joltin’ Joe
DiMaggio. Baseball names themselves, summoned up a changing world,
a world which we were rooting for. The world of Jackie Robinson,
Roy Campanella and Sam Jethro.
As a boy I revolted against anything that smacked of school or
learning, but unbeknownst to me, I was absorbing the rhythm, mystery
and beauty of language.
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To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
-by Emily Dickinson
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Ah, the power of a
statue. |
Statues are a language of sorts. If you walk on the Mall in Washington
D.C., you see the Washington Monument and nearby the Jefferson
Memorial and Lincoln Memorial. They speak of struggle and commitment
to freedom. Where are the statues of the great poets, writers,
storytellers and artists of the country? I’d like to see
statues of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, two great voices
of our land, in the nation’s capital. It’s important
to honor our political and military leaders, but we mustn’t
forget the artists who are the soul of the land.
I’d like to see a statue of Brother Blue and Ruth on the
Cambridge Common, and one of John Langstaff, the founder of the
Revels, outside Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And
a statue of Ray Hicks and Jackie Torrence in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
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Everybody loves Michael!
Gratia Banta,
Michael Parent,
Linda O’Callahan |
Michael Parent:
Coming Together in Lewiston
Michael Parent is a writer, playwright, translator, storyteller,
juggler, singer and teacher. He’s added another talent, that
of director.
Michael recently directed a play called, Love in Cactus Village
written by Omar Amed, a Somali playwright in Lewiston, Maine.
The cast was made up of people from Somalia who recently arrived
in Lewiston and others who have been in Lewiston and the U.S.
for a few years. A number of Somali refugees were arriving in
Lewiston and the mayor, in an open letter said that Lewiston could
not support an additional influx of Somalis. The mayor’s
words were misinterpreted and a hate group began to protest the
Somalis presence in Maine.
Michael was asked to direct Love in Cactus Village to
help bring the community together. The play was supported by and
involved people from the local community. Directing is hard enough,
but directing when the expectations of one culture are different
from another and when the whole enterprise is surrounded by a
touchy political situation, is very difficult. But the play went
on and was well attended and well received. Michael loves people
and language. He used both skills to help bind the community of
Lewiston together.
Michael will appear next year in his one man show, “Frog
Stuck In The Ice” at the Pontine Theatre in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire. Michael’s e-mail address: miklparent@juno.com
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Beth Horner rocks |
Beth Horner Rocks
Beth Horner is smart. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University
of Missouri, and got her Masters Degree from the University of
Illinois. She was a librarian at Yale. Beth is one of the superb
storytellers on the national circuit. She performs at festivals,
concert halls and conferences. And she also loves to perform in
high schools.
There’s nothing like the energy of high school students.
The truth is many performers are scared of high schools. Not Beth.
Beth will go into a high school auditorium packed with hundreds
of students. One of the stories she might tell is The Pipeline
Blues, Beth’s story of people in Columbia, Missouri,
being galvanized by a local songwriter into stopping the dumping
of partially treated sewage into the Missouri River. Instead,
they created an innovative wetland sewage treatment system. The
chorus of the song:
Columbia’s got a sewer to the ocean
Full of do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
Beth told Pipeline Blues recently and heard one high school
student say, “That rocked!” Beth uses language to
galvanize and inspire high school students. This takes courage
and talent. This is the opposite of Columbine.
Beth will be giving the keynote address for the South Carolina
Library Association Annual Conference. Beth’s email address:
BethHorner@earthlink.net
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I grew up in a neighborhood called Pill Hill. All during my youth
I’d go across the street to the Grahams and sing songs.
There were Norwegian graduate students living on the third floor,
and they’d come down and sing Gilbert and Sullivan, which
Dr. Graham loved. I had the habit of singing la, la, la, la, la
for all songs. I loved the rhythms so much I never learned the
words.
Recently, I was working on my upcoming concert with John Langstaff
and John said, “We’ll do a duet from Gilbert and Sullivan’s
The Mikado.”
“Oh no, John,” I said, “I don’t sing.
I tell stories.”
“You’ll sing,” John laughed, “you’ll
be Katisha and I’ll be Ko-Ko.”
“But John —”
“Katisha is the daughter of the emperor. She is big, elderly,
and has a beautiful elbow. I’m Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner.
I’m in trouble with the emperor because I haven’t
been chopping enough heads off. In this duet, I’m trying
to convince you to marry me. Here’s the music, let’s
go.” Will John Langstaff and I sing the duet? Will Ko-Ko
marry Katisha? Will I rely on la, la, la? Come see on November
2nd. Click here for the details.
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| “Sing Jay, sing!” |
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| Night at the Opera |
The best way to go to the Metropolitan Opera is to dress up,
go to supper with Diane Wolkstein, and then sit back and enjoy
Verdi’s Nabucco. My wife, Linda, and I, did just that last
spring.
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| Diane Wolkstein |
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And what dinner conversation. Diane told us about the extraordinary
book she’s been working on for years, Treasures of the
Heart, holiday stories that reveal the soul of Judaism. I’ve
read one of the stories. It’s fascinating. Diane is interweaving
little known oral legends into the Biblical text, highlighting
the role of feminine characters and introducing Shechinah, the
feminine presence of God. The book, published by Schocken (Random
House), will be out this fall.
We stayed with Linda’s brother and sister-in-law, Jason
and Deborah McManus. One night Deborah fixed an elegant meal and
Jason and Linda told memories of growing up in Missouri. Wonderful
characters emerged. Even better than Verdi!
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by Laura O’Callahan, Guest Contributor
At my friend Jeff’s house, ringing the doorbell makes the
lights flash inside. If you want to get his folks attention, you
have to walk to the room they are in and flash the lights or tap
them on the shoulder. It is rude to put something large like flowers
in the center of the dining room table, and certainly never during
dinner. If Jeff is looking down during dinner, it’s ok to
bang the table to get his attention if he’s missing a good
joke. Lights out means no whispering in the dark, unless you can
talk in each others hands. Jeff and his parents, Jack and Rosalyn,
are just like any other family in their Silver Spring, Maryland
neighborhood. The only difference is that theirs is a Deaf household
where Deaf history, culture, and the language of American Sign
Language are used and valued everyday.
I was lucky enough to have wandered into the lives of Deaf people
ten years ago. I’ve been there ever since. During my junior
year “abroad” at Gallaudet University in Washington,
DC, the liberal arts college for the Deaf, I was introduced to
Deaf culture and language, and I cherish that experience. At Gallaudet
I’d be awakened to fire drills by both very loud alarms
and strobe lights. The library maintenance crew vacuumed during
study hours and I was the only one who noticed. One night when
my roomie was in the middle of a story, I turned the lights off.
She snapped them on and said in sign, “Hey, I need lights
on to talk.”
The Deaf community is as intricate, varied and challenging as
the hearing community I grew up in. In many ways it’s much
the same, and in many ways it’s very different. Like any
cultural minority, Deaf people face prejudice and misunderstanding.
It was only forty years ago that the hearing culture agreed Deaf
language was a language. Ninety percent of Deaf people are born
into a culture that is foreign to them. They are born into a hearing
culture, and they don’t hear. When these students, who have
been isolated, come to Gallaudet, they feel they have come home.
They are thrilled to talk with fellow students using sign. And
proud to be part of the Deaf culture. I have been humbled by Deaf
people again and again. It’s challenged me to think about
language and culture. I grew up in a family that valued language
and community. So did Jeff. We just did it in different ways.
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I. King Jordan, first
Deaf President of Gallaudet,
presents Laura her Master’s Degree with honors. |
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*Tom Weakley’s new CD, Rebels in Vermont! is a gripping
story of Confederate soldiers trying to wreck havoc in a small
town in Vermont. It’s a true story of daring, bank robbery,
death and the irony of battle. It’s groundbreaking work.
It is very moving. Tom’s e-mail: tomweakley@adelphia.net
*Pat Schneider’s new book, Writing Alone & With
Others, Oxford Press, July 2003, is full of insights from
25 years of helping others to discover themselves as writers.
Peter Elbow, America’s primary voice in the writing process
movement, says of Pat “the wisest teacher of writing I know.”
Pat’s e-mail: pat@amherstwriters.com
*Tim Tingle’s book, Walking The Choctaw Road, explores
the heart of what it means to be Choctaw. The images in these
stories were so gripping, they turned me upside down and let me
see anew. The subjects range from the Trail of Tears to Tim’s
own memories of childhood. Tim’s e-mail: timtingle@hotmail.com
*One night I sat in my study, turned off the light and listened
to Libby Franck’s CD, Women of the Sea. It was like
the best of old time radio. I was transported to Botany Bay, a
penal colony in Australia. Mary Bryant, a convict, led the only
successful escape from Botany Bay. It’s terrific work.
Libby’s e-mail: lake@gis.net
Classics
In the past thirty years, a number
of storytelling recordings have become classics. Let me know which
ones you think are classics.
*Doug Lipman's Hopping Freights, A Wild 60's Adventure,
is a classic. It's the story of Doug and a friend thumbing from
Chicago to New York. Hopping Freights is filled with real
and bizarre characters like Papa Mario, who's shooting his pistol
as he tells Doug to keep singing Sugar Babe. It brings us into
South Bend, Indiana at the time of the race riots. We travel with
Doug and his friend, Ed, in a freight car where they come close
to death. The music, the humor, the adventure itself capture the
60s. Doug's website: storydynamics.com
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