VASA Gathering

Jul. 13th, 2025 06:34 pm
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[personal profile] fauxklore
Moving on to April in my catch-up, let' start with the first weekend of the month.

I drove down to Williamsburg the first weekend in April for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA)annual gathering. The drive down was about what I expected for a Friday afternoon, with a few areas of heavy traffic (inevitably around Quantico and around Fredericksburg), but I didn’t have any trouble getting to the hotel where the event was being held. I had plenty of time to get dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before the informal story swap that kicked off the Gathering. Since this was just before Passover, I told a story that essentially combines two of my father’s jokes about the crossing of the Red Sea.

Saturday was a very full day. The first event was a workshop by Jeanna Lee on Persuasive Storytelling. She focused on the rhetorical triangle, which includes ethos (appeal to credibility and authority), logos (appeal to logic and reasoning), and pathos (appeal to emotion). The handout talked about these in terms of neurotransmitters. But the real tie-in to storytelling was an exercise where we were divided into groups and each got one of these approaches to use in telling the story of the three little pigs. I was in the logos group and we pointed out to the big bad wolf that he was supposed to be avoiding high cholesterol foods like pork. And then there was the matter of his criminal record … Overall, we had a lot of fun with this.

After an intermission, Gwendolyn Poole presented a workshop title Attention Please which had to do with practical tools for capturing the audience’s attention. This included voice inflection, call and response, and physical movement. That was followed by the first of two story swaps with feedbacks.

Then came lunch, which also included the annual VASA business meeting. That includes the financial report, membership report, and board of directors (including filling any vacant positions). I served on the board for several years a while back, but I’m committed to too many other things now to consider doing it again.

Next up was a workshop on Storytelling Ethics, led by yours truly. This is a topic that I’m passionate about. My handouts covered how to define ethics, basics of copyright protection, and several case studies. For example, what is appropriate to tell for a given audience? Can you tell a story from a culture other than your own? How should you deal with organizers of storytelling programs, including financial considerations? The discussion was lively and I think it went very well.

The second story swap with feedback followed that. The day ended with filling out evaluations and some closing remarks.

I could have driven home that evening, but I had decided it would be more relaxing to stay another night. That was, indeed, a good decision. I got dinner at a barbecue place that had been recommended to me and my drive home on Sunday was noticeably faster than the drive down had been. All in all, I’d say it was a successful event, though the attendance was on the low side.

April 2025 Prompts

Jul. 1st, 2025 07:54 pm
fauxklore: (Default)
[personal profile] fauxklore
1. Do you have any piercings? When did you get them? I have no piercings. Nor do I have any interest in getting any.

2. What is the longest you've had a "borrowed" item but not been able to return it? Why not? No idea. I may have kept some item of jewelry I borrowed from my mother until after her death.

3. Consider some of the parents others had growing up. What type of person would you be if you had those situations? I think my parents were, in general, less strict than many of the other adults in our neighborhood. I think if I’d had some of our neighbors as parents, I wouldn’t have been able to go into the city alone as a teenager, for example. And I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to read some of the books that my parents had out openly on their shelves.

4. What about a goal makes you most likely to procrastinate? I’m most likely to procrastinate on things I’m not sure I can actually accomplish. There’s a thin line between fear of failure and fear or success.

5. What tempted me today? I don’t know what tempted you. But I was tempted to go back to sleep.

6. If you could learn any new language, which one would you choose and why? I’ve started doing Korean on Duolingo, with the aim of being able to read local signs in Hangul. Korean syntax is very confusing to me.

7. What’s one place that you would like to visit but never will? Why will you never go there? I wouldn’t say never, but I think it’s unlikely that I will ever make it to North Korea.

8. If you could be a color what would it be? Why? I am rather partial to teal.

9. Describe a babysitting experience you have had. I didn’t babysit frequently. There was one boy on our block who pretty much every girl babysat for once. Exactly once, because he was a total brat.

10. Have you actively changed your habits and behaviors to help the environment? What kinds of things do you do? The most obvious thing here is that I’ve gotten quite good about bringing my own bags when I go grocery shopping.

11. Who is a friend you haven't seen for a long time but would like to see. I just mentioned to another friend recently that it’s been ages since I’ve seen Frances.

12. What is your favorite month? Why? September, because that’s when my birthday is. And the weather is usually nice in most places.

13. What would happen if animals could talk? What are some of the questions you would like to ask animals? It depends on what kind of animal we’re considering. Cats are intelligent, but I doubt they’d converse about much other than food. I think that bears might have deep thoughts. The most tedious animals to talk with would obviously be elephants.

14. What does self-care mean to you? What are you fav ways to practice self care? How are these activities fulfilling to you? How can you prioritize self care more? Self-care means finding ways to find soothing and satisfaction without depending on other people for those. Reading and listening to music are high up on my self-care activities.

15. Do you have any food intolerances or allergies? I’m lactose intolerance, but not severely and, with the help of lact-aid, can handle reasonable amounts of gelato.

16. What in life gets you really excited? Traveling and crafts projects.

17. How would things change if you were okay disappointing others? I generally don’t really worry about disappointing other people. However, I try to avoid disappointing myself.

18. Whenever you order from a certain restaurant, do you have a specific thing you order each time? Do you always order something new? It’s somewhere in between. There’s a Thai restaurant I go to somewhat regularly and I tend to get the same appetizer all the time, but order different entrees.

19. What age would you consider the prime of life? Why? I have particularly good memories of my early 40’s.

20. Something new you’d like to try? I’ve seen a couple of interesting crochet stitches I’d like to try, e.g. cat stitch.

21. Milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Dark chocolate is my usual preference.

22. Have you ever played ice hockey? Do you know how to ice skate? I have no interest in playing ice hockey. Having had to play field hockey in elementary school was bad enough. I went ice skating a few times in elementary school, but I was never any good at it.

23. How did you meet your first boyfriend or girlfriend? It depends on how you define “first boyfriend.” The first boy who kissed me was someone I met at summer camp. But the person I consider my first real boyfriend, a categorization based largely on our level of sexual experimentation, I met as a teenager (10th grade if I recall correctly) at the Saturday science program I went to at Columbia University.

24. If you could build a car customized just for you, what would it contain? I am really boring when it comes to cars. I do admit that I like the idea of heated seats in the winter.

25. What was the first thing that you did when you got your driver's license? Rent a car on a trip to Los Angeles.

26. What is your strongest memory, as a child, of your parents and what were you all doing at the time? There are a lot of things I could choose, but I think the most interesting one was the family music nights we used to have. We’d all gather around Dad’s reel-to-reel tape recorder and sing and play instruments. Both my brother and I played the piano and I was the designated accompanist for my grandfather when he sang Yiddish songs. My mother was learning to play folk guitar from a program on PBS and we all sang along with her. Dad used to say that we had a very musical family and what he played was the hi-fi. Sadly, those old tapes were lost to eternity many years ago.

27. What music makes you want to get up and dance? Ther’s lots of music that falls into this category, but no single song encapsulates it as much as “Johnie Can’t Dance” by Wayne Toups and Zydecajun. Other possibilities include “L’Oranguta” by Pepe and the Bottle Blondes, “”Desi Girl” (from the Bollywood movie “Dostana,”), "La Bamba" by Richie Valens, and “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” by Jonathan Richman. Oh, and let’s not forget “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s.

28. How has your upbringing, education, and environment affected your beliefs about money and wealth? I always understood that what is important is how you use your money to support what is most important to you. For example, my father sat down with me to help me make a budget when I started college.

29. What gives you confidence and why? It’s hard to say this without sounding arrogant, but I love getting positive feedback. There’s nothing quite like being told I’m really good at something.

30. Tell about a cultural clash/experience you have had with a culture other than your own. There are a lot of these since I’m part of a minority culture. One recent example that comes to mind is that I had a discussion with somebody who was complaining about not having been invited to a wedding rehearsal, which is something completely alien to me because it isn’t something Jewish people do.

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