Shingebis

My latest story-craze is - no surprise to those who know me and my cell phone ringtones - a duck. Not just any duck, mind you: a merganser duck, called Shingebis.  

                      (This one is a hooded merganser.)

It should come as no surprise that I like ducks.  They are cute, waterproof, and they make great noises.  What's not to love?  But Shingebis takes waterfowl to a whole other level.  

The tale of Shingebis is Ojibwe (Chippewa) in origin, and it is set by the shores of Lake Superior during winter time.  Shingebis - typical of animal protagonists found in folk tales and legends around the world - has both bird and human traits.  He goes diving in the frigid lake water for fish, like any self-respecting merganser - but then he takes his fish to the snug winter lodge he has constructed himself, and eats them there, seated by a roaring fire.  

Shingebis, through no real fault of his own, has a formidable nemesis: the North Wind, known to the Ojibwe as Kabibonooka or Kabibonokka.  The North Wind - an irascible curmudgeon of the worst sort - takes pride in his ability to freeze water into ice, bring snow, and drive away all the birds from the Lake for the duration of the cold season.  All, that is, except Shingebis! Looking down on this cheerful and mildly anthropomorphic duck going about his business with no concern for wind and weather, North Wind feels stimied and disrespected.  A battle of wills ensues, with Shingebis emerging as the unlikely victor.

Like so many of my favorite heroes, Shingebis is an underdog (underduck?) who does not conform to the classical heroic mold with which we are accustomed.  He is not big or particularly powerful, in fact, his strength lies in his ordinariness and his authenticity.  He triumphs simply by being true to his essential nature, and by refusing to be bullied.  

When the North Wind blows snow on him, Shingebis ruffles his feathers and shakes it off. When the North Wind freezes the Lake, Shingebis makes a hole in the ice and keeps on fishing. When the North Wind blows his way into his lodge - rather like the Big Bad Wolf! - Shingebis merely sits by the fire and waits.  The North Wind beats a hasty retreat when he finds himself melting - à la Wicked Witch of the West - in the heat of Shingebis's fire, and the little duck returns to his routine, unruffled.  

                              (The Wizard of Oz is perhaps my favorite movie of all time.)

In the battle between the Duck and the Blowhard, it comes as a relief when the duck prevails and emerges from the conflict unscathed, shaking snow off his well-oiled feathers "like water off a duck's back!" as my mother always says.

Stories from the Stoop

Last night (Wednesday, November 5th), I managed to descend a bit from my post-election high and return to my Storytelling responsibilities.  This included co-running (with fellow-teller Andrea Lovett, and her daughter, writer Laura Lovett) a wonderful performance of new young Storytellers and Writers from the Franklin Park Development Tenants Association, at the Egleston Square Branch Library, in Roxbury.  We titled the performance "Stories from the Stoop", after Andrea's fond memories of her childhood, when she and other kids in her neighborhood would gather on the front steps of their homes and tell tales.

For the program, the younger kids (who Andrea and I have been working with for the last six weeks) presented their Group-Tellings of two very different folk tales.  One was a North American ghost story called "Baby Louise" narrated by Andrea, featuring Shaunice, Nydea, Khyasia, and Destiny.  

The second (narrated by moi) was an  Iranian-Persian folk tale called "No Doubt About It"- featuring a clever boy and his parrot, and two suspicious but gullible townsfolk -  starring Stanley as the Clever Boy, Nikhia as the Supposedly Magical Parrot, and Eric and Lehms as the Easily-Fooled Townsfolk (see picture below).  They were all terrific, and Nikhia's parrot voice did me proud!

 

In addition to the two Group-Tellings, Laura's young ladies impressed us all with some excellent readings of their brand-new poetry and short stories.  The kids also took turns demonstrating their expressive storytelling skills in our favorite game "Walks of Life".  Each of them used pantomime and facial expressions (no voice or sounds) to imitate an adult practicing their chosen profession, leaving the audience to guess at what job they were portraying.  We had so much fun that one of the Moms got up and got into the act!

Our audience of parents and siblings was warm and supportive, and they laughed at all the right places!  A fun time was had by all, and we are SO thankful to Juanita Pitts of the FPDTA, the staff of the Egleston Square Branch Library, and the parents of all of our young Storytellers! We are very proud of how well all the kids and teens performed last night, and look forward with eager anticipation to their performances at First Night on December 31, 2008.

YES WE CAN!

The Hairy Toe

I love this story so much, and was so inspired by the unnamed girl who told it in the YouTube clip I posted recently, that..............

I told it at Toscanini's in Central Square, for MassMouth's third MouthOff!

Hallowe'en is on its way!  All Hallow's Eve, Samhain, All Saints, The Celtic New Year, Tout-Saints, whatever you want to call it, it's my favorite holiday of the year.  Sure, I love Three Musketeers bars and wearing costumes as much as the next person, but Hallowe'en is about more than just free candy and the chance to wear a wacky outfit in public (I live in Cambridge, Mass. for crying out loud; people dress oddly here all year round!).

Hallowe'en offers us the opportunity to hear and tell scary stories.  The ones that bother us, make us jump, and otherwise provoke unusual reactions.  Our relationship to these creepy tales is ambivalent; monsters and ghosts are scary, but being afraid can feel almost delicious under the right circumstances.  I find that the following equation is virtually foolproof:

cozy couch + purring cat + hot cider + scary story = marvelous fun

I've found that reading, hearing and telling scary stories can help us to recognize that our fears provide us with common ground; we may not agree with each other about politics, or how to solve world hunger, but we can all agree that Dracula, Mega Sharks, and Zombies are very, very scary.  The things that frighten us all can bring us back in touch with our common human vulnerabilities.  And sometimes they can help us to laugh at ourselves just a little bit.

Boo.

Story Telling: The hairy toe.

Just in time for Hallowe'en, here is a terrific version of one of my favorite spooky stories, as re-told by a spunky kid!

Raining cats and dogs......

Rainy days are great for storytelling!  This past weekend my family and I enjoyed a number of terrific performances at the Three Apples Storytelling Festival, held in beautiful Bedford, MA. We were regaled by marvelously gifted tellers of every style, warm and snug and spellbound inside Bedford's beautiful First Parish Church, as the rain poured down outside and all around us.  No better way to spend a rainy weekend!

I was so inspired by the high quality of these tellings, that I ran out yesterday (naturally, in the rain again) and pillaged my local library for collections of folk tales, spooky stories, ANY stories to read through and devour, in my never-ending quest for more, More, MORE stories.  I read on and off throughout the day, alternatively checking on my slow-cooked Rosh Hashona brisket, but didn't find the story I knew I was hungering for.  [This happens sometimes.  I comb through books, take notes, over-use Google, stretch the patience of the local librarians, reading and reading and reading until I find IT: that one story that makes my brain go CLICK.  At least for that week; the next week, I'm hungry again, and the search resumes.]

This morning, I was assembling story outlines and ideas for a series of Storytelling Classes for children that I'll be co-teaching in Dorchester with my good friend and fellow-Storyteller Andrea Lovett.  As I skimmed the various outlines, checking to make sure that they were age-appropriate for our intended group, my "Story-Sense" began to tingle.  My story-sense is similar to Peter Parker's "Spidey-Sense", only instead of helping me avert danger and fight crime, it lets me know when I've found a really great story.  In fact, I'd unwittingly stumbled upon what is probably my storytelling jackpot of the month.  Here he is:

 Yes, that is, in fact, a dog.  (Read some amazing facts about chow chows here.)  The story of Shippeitaro - like all the stories that grab me by the collar and yell "TELL ME!" - challenged me as a Storyteller, in this case because I am a devoted cat-lover.  Shippeitaro is one of those unexpected heroes who bravely and emphatically saves the day, despite being faced with some very nasty Bad Guys (in this case, Cats Gone Bad) that ordinary sensible human beings are really afraid of.  Also, I just love an unlikely, dopey-looking hero, don't you?  Here's how it happened:

Long ago in ancient Japan, a young samurai was forced (by rain!!) to spend the night in a haunted temple, where he accidentally overheard a group of evil man-eating cats yowling about their fear of "Shippeitaro".  The next day, he walked to the local village, where everyone was preparing for what he learned was an annual sacrifice of one of the local girls to the denizens of the very haunted temple he had just spent the night in.  Out of curiosity, the samurai asked if anyone knew who Shippeitaro was, and was told that this was the favored pet of the local lord.  The brave and sensible young man politely asked to borrow the nobleman's beloved chow, who proceeded later that night to heroically dispatch the feline fiends, thus liberating the village folk from the tyranny of nasty girl-devouring puddy-tats.

  vs.  

(This bare-bones variant is based on translations and retellings I've read by Lafcadio Hearn, M. Oldfield Howey, and Mary F. Nixon-Roulet.)

Now, initially, the idea of an entire community of people being ruthlessly terrorized by cats struck me as improbable.  Let me introduce you to my housemates, Mabel and Larry:

      

Tyranny in their case amounts to repeated elbow-licking when they don't get fed by 8AM on weekends. 

To be fair, cats do have an impressive heritage as dangerous carnivores.  One Japanese description of the cat refers to it as "a tiger who eats from the hand", according to Carl Van Vechten, author of "The Tiger in the House".  Living with these noble, if somewhat diminished, descendants of the saber-toothed tiger, I am occasionally reminded that if our respective sizes were reversed, my appeal to Mabel and Larry would instantly become nutritional rather than emotional.  Could it be that the love and adoration that I think I see in their stately yellow eyes is actually a measured consideration of how favorably I would compare to Science Diet Indoor Cat Formula?

Food for thought.

Mouthing Off for MassMouth

Last night (September 8th) I co-hosted the second MouthOff for our wonderful organization MassMouth with Andrea Lovett.  Many marvelous tellings were shared, which Andrea and I video-taped using equipment lent to us by the masterfully savvy and multi-talented Norah Dooley.   Check them out here at the Massmouth site!  

In addition, I told the following tale, 

called "The Dubner Maggid",  as retold by Eric A. Kimmel 

in his delightful book  "The Spotted Pony: 

A Collection of Hanukkah Stories."

This book is one of those gems you 

come across in the library while

 looking for something entirely different, which sends you off in a delicious  folkloric tailspin.

                                  

Here is my version, as told at Toscanini's in Central Square, after one of their sublime micro-sundaes (hazelnut ice cream and hot fudge, thank you very much).

                            

While researching this story, I learned not only that the Dubner Maggid was a real historical person, but that the places mentioned by Kimmel - Tarnopol and Dubno, most notably - are real as well.  An important reminder that these stories are more than just entertainment (and excellent entertainment at that); they are part of Jewish oral tradition and history, and they need to be remembered and retold.  

So often, as a storyteller, my stories teach me.  They teach me to laugh and to cry and to think, but most especially to remember.

Storytellers unite in Cambridge

Here is a nice article from Wicked Local in the Cambridge Chronicle, about the very first MassMouth meeting, held in Cambridge on August 11th, 2008:

"Storytellers unite in Cambridge"

by Caitlin Gallagher

Our next MouthOff is on Monday, September 8th, 2008, also at Toscanini's (yummy) from 7-9pm.  We'll be telling stories on the theme of "school".  Be there and be cool!