"Goodnight, Pete, I'll see you in my dreams"*

I wrote to Pete Seeger in 1969, inviting him to perform at our Earth Day celebration at Cornell University, the first one, to be held on April 22, 1970. He wrote back, saying he couldn't come because "I am up to my ears in projects which I have started on and have not finished ..." (He added, "There is another singer from the Hudson River Sloop who I believe would be very good ... Don McLean ... He is an extraordinarily talented young fellow who within a year or two is going to become very famous." He was right. Don McLean's American Pie was a number 1 hit song in 1972 and the number 5 Song of the Century.)

Pete ended up singing at the Washington, D.C. celebration of Earth Day, but he did give a concert for us at Cornell.  One of my friends, also a Pete Seeger fan – and an automobile enthusiast, was eager to find out what kind of car he was driving. He was disappointed when Pete called from the Ithaca bus station asking if someone could pick him up and give him a ride to the campus. When Pete found out that his concert at Bailey Hall was sold out, he offered to give a free performance afterwards. We had to scramble to find a sound system that we could use outdoors.

While Pete Seeger was best known for his songs and music, he was also a great storyteller. Telling a story to introduce or reflect on a song is part of the folk music tradition, and the stories were a good part of what attracted me to folk music (although aspiring to play Pete Seeger's guitar instrumental, Living in the Country, was a big attraction too).  Here is one of his many stories that has stuck with me, from “Seek and Ye Shall Find,” on his album, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs. It's no coincidence that in 1974 I named my publishing company This Too Shall Pass Press.

The King and His Wise Men

There was once a king in the olden days. He had three sons and he wanted to give them a good education. He called in his wise men, he said I wish you’d boil down all the world’s wisdom into one book that I’m going to give my sons and have them learn it. So the wise men went away, took them a whole year, and they came back with a beautiful leather-bound volume, trimmed in gold. The king leafed through it. “Hmm. Very good. Yes, this is it.” He gives it to his sons, and said, “Okay, learn it!”

Then he turned to the wise men and he said, “You know, you did such a good job with that, I wonder if you couldn’t boil down all the world’s wisdom into one sentence. Well, the wise men went away, it took them five years. They came back, their beards must have been dragging on the ground, and they said, “Your majesty, we’ve decided upon a sentence. “What is it,” says the king. “This too shall pass.”

I guess the king didn’t have anything better to do with his wise men. He said, I wonder if you couldn’t boil down all the world’s wisdom into one word. The poor men must have groaned. They went away. It took them ten years. When they came back they were all bent over. The king said, “Oh yes, what was that word?” He’d forgotten all about his little whim. They said, “Your majesty, the one word is: maybe.”

As I mourn his death and reflect on his life, I am pondering, "this too shall pass." And too, I am recalling his words from that letter he sent me in 1970, "I am up to my ears in projects which I have started on and have not finished ..." There is so much more to do, Pete, and you have done your part.

 "Goodnight Pete, Goodnight Pete, I'll see you in my dreams"*

* This line is adapted from Pete Seeger's first best seller, recorded by The Weavers, Goodnight Irene, which repeats the line, "Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams." I heard it this morning on WAMC radio as the closing line of one of the listeners who called in and thought it was a great tribute.

Sharing the Fire: The Northeast Storytelling Conference

Sharing the Fire: The Northeast Storytelling Conference 

March 28-30, 2014, Amherst MA 

Be a better storyteller. Participate in workshops, panel discussions, performances, and story swaps with the greatest storytellers in the Northeast. I hope to see you there!

Same and Different: The Never-Ending Story of Chanukah

My given name is Sandor, which is derived from Alexander, and I am named after Alexander the Great. You should ask, why was a nice Jewish boy from New York named after Alexander the Great? …


For the rest of the story, told live at Sharing the Fire: The Northeast Storytelling Conference:

Happy Chanukah!

Stop Action Storytelling

 I began my story …

I never knew who this guy was, but even before the meeting started he sought me out. Undoubtedly he had just arrived from the airport for this big meeting we were running for the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the Great Flood of '93, when the Mississippi overflowed its banks for months. He walked right up to me, a mass of curly black hair, green-canvas backpack slung over one shoulder. He extended his hand, not to shake mine, but to push a computer disk in my face. “This is my recommendation,” he said, “I need to print this out.”

… and then I stopped. I asked the group, “What would you do, and why?”

“Stop Action Storytelling” is a technique I use in training workshops. I tell a story that is pertinent to the subject matter – a true story or a composite of true stories in which I was involved, often with names and places changed. At a critical point in the story, where I or someone else in the story had to make a decision – to choose one action or another – I interrupt the story and ask the group, “What would you do, and why?”

Typically a number of people respond, describing the action they would take and their rationale. Each response can spawn a group discussion to explore the underlying reasoning and alternative actions that could be taken. Afterwards, I continue with the story, explaining what I actually did and why I did it, and – too often – what I wish I had done instead. The intent is not to find the single best answer, or even to agree on what should have been done, but rather to explore the underlying reasons – the values and principles that guide us – and the repertoire of actions that might be used to enact them.

The approach is based on the Critical Incident Technique. I first used this approach at the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) conference in 2000 in a session entitled, “Critical incidents: How do our values and principles guide us?” This well-attended session led to the creation of the Ethics and Values Task Force that developed IAF's Statement of Values and Code of Ethics for Group Facilitators.

Many of the stories I use in Stop Action Storytelling have multiple stopping points. For examples, here are two stories I have used in workshops for group facilitators: The Meaning of Wilderness and The Unaccustomed Participant.

Sources

Flanagan, John C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51, 4, 327-358.

The Jewish Grimm

Dov Noy z"l founded the Israel Folktale Archives in 1955, resulting in today's collection of nearly 25,000 folktales from 70 Jewish and non Jewish ethnic groups. His contributions to the study of folklore – Jewish folklore in particular – are astounding, extending beyond the more than 60 books he wrote and edited (the muti-volume Folktales of the Jews, Folktales of Israel, and many others). He influenced countless students, storytellers, listeners and readers over his career. He died September 29, 2013 at age 92.

An example of his insights into Jewish folktales can be found in his essay, “What is Jewish About the Jewish Folktale,” that is the forward to Howard Schwartz's book, Miriam's Tambourine. My one-sentence summary in What is a Jewish Story does not do it justice. Another example, his analysis of the Angel of Death in Jewish Folklore, was excerpted in Jewish Heritage Online Magazine.

His obituary in The Jewish Daily Forward and on the Jewish Studies Network/ H-Judaic email list provide more details of his storied career.

More Sides to Another Side to the Story

“No single story captures the full complexity of real-life events … even the stories told by those whose practices and beliefs we reject can be as coherent and compelling as our own.”

I came across this statement at the end of an article written by Moshe Simon-Shoshan that explores the nature of a conflict that took place 2000 years ago (involving the throwing of etrogim at a person) and its parallels to a contemporary one (involving the throwing of eggs at a group of people). I couldn't resist calling attention to the concluding line, quoted above. The full story: At the Wall, is it Religion — or Politics?

Then, in a conference call this afternoon on organizational storytelling, Thaler Pekar referred to “the story that is told, the story that is heard, and the truth,” noting that they might all be different, and then added, “the story that is not told.”

There is always another side to the story.

Bill Greenfield, The Goldarndest Liar

When I heard my first story about Bill Greenfield, “the goldarndest liar,” my fascination with tall tales turned into a decades-long quest. Was he a made-up character like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill? Or was he a real person from upstate New York? Here is my introduction to “Bill Greenfield, The Goldarndest Liar,” which appeared on Story by Story, the TV program hosted by Kate Dudding and Joe Doolittle.