HONY

I love social media, not only for reconnecting or keeping in touch but for being exposed to new ideas and creations.  I use Instagram, FB, and Pinterest regularly.  A couple of my favorite pages include Word Porn, Dangerous Minds, Higher Thinking and HONY.  Of the four, HONY ties to storytelling as it shares the everyday lives, memories, and thoughts of the people of New York.

Blogger Brandon Stanton took candid photographs for three years showing people of all demographics.  He started in 2010 with 6, 000 portraits, posting them on FB. In his first year, he was only taking photos; however, as his project grew he started sharing stories with his subjects.  Today, there are photos of people alone, with their pets, with lovers, with friends and family.  Each picture tells a story, a “photographic census”.  Stanton focuses on focus on interesting people and their stories, demonstrating every emotion, condition, and magnificence of the human being.   Stanton’s  project has had numerous “copy cats”.  Many universities have started their own pages to tell the stories of their staff, faculty and students. 

Capturing FAU's stories might prove to be a cool idea for a service learning project/fundraiser.  Stanton has successfully raised money with both his blog and book.

Significance of Objects

Every object has a story, right?  Objects carry the tales of where, who, when, what, and why.  This week my nephew, Aaron, sent me an eBay auction listing of one of my Grandmother’s needlepoint purses. I wondered who had owned it, and if they knew the story behind my Grandmother.  These people didn’t have the memory of seeing the colorful rows of silk fabrics, threads, and beautifully painted canvases.  And certainly, the purse didn’t evoke the memory of eating chicken salad with grapes on Melba toast while hearing the buzz of sewing machines above for them. So it got me thinking stories create value in objects. I wondered if anyone else had thought about this before.

Through a little research, I found an anthropological experiment that took 100 meaningless items rounded up from thrift, stores, yard sales, and flea markets costing a mere $128.74 to show the effect of narrative on any given object’s value.  Researchers recruited 100 writers, comedians, storytellers, and almost anyone they believed had great creativity.  Each storyteller took one item, wrote a story, and the team posted the ad on eBay.  Each listing included a note explaining the significance of the object had been invented by a storyteller; therefore, no one was deceived in thinking the object had significantly more value. The result was a profit of over $3500.  What became most fascinating about the experiment was that the project itself became a story, one that became co-created. The objects of significance became a souvenir of the experiment. 

This experiment then spawn an “object slam”, where audiences invented competing stories about an insignificant object.  Expanding even further, the idea became a Museum exhibit, demonstrating human-object communications. The entire string of events was amazing me, further demonstrating how humans are homo narrans, each of us deeply ingrained with the human propensity for story-telling and its value.

Storykeepers

 

During Spring Break, I caught up on rest and TV documentaries.  While scanning through the TV guide, a title caught my eye, “The Storykeepers”.  I thought perhaps this would be a show about storytelling as memoriam.  However, I was surprised to see that it was an animated Christian cartoon set in Rome around 46 AD.  Using Rome as a frame, the story tells the tale of a group of Christians who share Jesus’ stories during the 1^st century.  I found this interesting due to Marc asking if the Bible was/is a frame during our last class.  While I typically would not have stopped to watch the cartoon, I did.  .  The cartoon ended with the phrase, “There are as many story keepers as there are stars in the sky.”  I felt that this really summed up the idea that within each of us there is a storyteller with tales that need to be heard.  “The Storykeepers” demonstrated the importance of oral narrative as a key medium through which people came to make sense of their world. Before man learned to write, he relied on a strong memory to gain knowledge.  For this, he had to be an active listener, eager to engulf every piece of information to share his story.  Today, this art form has evolved into something more intense.  Storytelling is an integral part of society and culture, defining values, desires, dreams, as well as prejudices and perceptions.

In the Kitchen With An Appetite

This week I worked on my thesis: The Legitimacy of Cookbooks as Rhetoric.   One of the cookbooks that I have selected to look at is Melissa Clark’s, In the Kitchen with an Appetite, featuring family stories of eating and cooking.  Each chapter begins with a short essay, typically including a story about Clark’s childhood or memory, and concludes with a recipe.   Clark begins the book by sharing childhood memories of travelling with her foodie parents, being exposed to all kinds of food that children normally “squeal over” and refuse to try.  One story that I found particularly entertaining reveals how Clark’s family used a technique called, “Clarkwise” to rotate their plates clockwise after eating only one quarter of their plates, so each member could experience something new.  Cute idea, right?

I love this cookbook.  Perhaps it’s the Whiskey Soaked Dark Chocolate Cake’s ingredients, but I venture to say that it is more likely the story that Clark perfected the cake to win the hearts of all the boys in her class I love most.  Or it could be her updated Thanksgiving classic, Pumpkin Pie that uses Butternut Squash to woo her friends and family, staunch traditionalists when it comes to Turkey Day.  It is not only the recipes and stories within, but the emotions that are evoked when I read the stories.   It was as if I was sitting at the table, moving plates Clarkwise, or being fooled by the “Butternut Squash” at Thanksgiving with the Clarks.  

Clark demonstrates how deeply people care about food and the traditions that surround the food.  Top Chef, Francis Lam, frequently says, "I eat food because I love food. I cook food because I love food. But I write about food because I love people." Food and the meals we share, tell stories about who we are and how we want to live.  If the occasion is significant, we mark it with food.  It tells our story.