Tell Me Something Good

In Context by Mindy Tarquini

The other day I told the story of Ada Gobetti, the woman who is credited with starting the Italian Resistance. Before I could tell Ada’s story, I had to set the scene, that of a woman passing out pamphlets on a street corner on a major thoroughfare in the city of Turin in September of 1943. A woman who believed Benito Mussolini’s fascist nightmare to be over and that Italy would finally head into a fresh and hopeful future. A woman stunned to see a string of Nazi automobiles drive right past her.

To tell that part of Ada’s story, I needed to give a little history of Mussolini’s rise to power, his relationship to Adolf Hitler, as well as Ada’s already more than a dozen-years history of resisting the rise of Italian fascism. That meant I had to talk a little about Italy at the end of World War I, in debt, smashed up, ripe for being lulled by fascism’s false promises. I had to speak about Ada’s handsome young husband of the time, his resistance to Mussolini, how his fight got him killed. I had to speak of the unusual bits of Ada’s resistance as a young widow with a young son, of Mussolini’s propaganda arm, ironically titled La Luce, which means The Light. I had to relate the propaganda films to a story for children Ada published in the thirties about a rooster that was sneakily anti-fascist. I had to relate that children’s story to Ada’s post-war publications, parenting help for Italians raised only in fascism who were starting families of their own. I had to speak about the core of Italian culture, her history, the fabric that holds Italy together, Italy’s heart, her home: the Italian family.

And I had to do all that in ten minutes. Because without the context, Ada’s story of a woman in a patriarchal society starting the resistance falls flat, might be confusing. A story told to an audience who may have heard of Mussolini but not understand his role in the twenties and thirties, his part in the Axis powers, his effect on Italian history might feel like no more than a listing of dates and events.

All those bits and pieces are referred to as context and context is everything. Without context, it may be difficult for an audience removed from an event or a person by decades or centuries to connect to the happenings, the attitudes, the nuts and bolts that may have shaped a life, yet finding sources for the context, those bits and pieces that define the times may be difficult.

I am a novelist. A few years ago, I published an article for writers on unconventional sources to round out a historical novel. The article is linked below, the research ideas given as applicable to oral storytelling as to written.

The secret to providing context is the choice of what context to give. The storyteller will find plenty of information that will never make it into the finished story, yet that information provides the web that supports the story. If the story is to be used in an educational application, all that deep research might find its way into discussion questions, or part of a workshop given after. In my process, I write the story down – the main points. Then I note the smaller points I want to make. In time, what context must be included so the audience will understand the story’s purpose become obvious. Context is adaptable to the audience. Careful consideration should be given to the ages of an audience’s members, their backgrounds, where the story is being told, what history might be mother’s milk to them versus history of which they may have no knowledge.

In American folklore, Paul Bunyan is a largish lumberjack on the east coast, by the time he makes it out west he is enormous and carrying an axe big enough to dredge the Grand Canyon. In the east, spaces are closed in, surrounded by trees. Out west, landscapes feel vast, overwhelming. I think Paul Bunyan grew to reflect the changing environs and experience of the people telling his story. I consider Paul Bunyan’s metamorphosis a reminder that I need to be sensitive to the experience of my audience in deciding the context in which to set my stories.

Link to Writer’s Digest Article:

https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/unconventional-resources-historical-fiction-research

Link to the translation of Ada Gobetti’s Partisan Diary:

https://www.amazon.com/Partisan-Diary-Womans-Italian-Resistance-dp-0199380546/dp/0199380546/

Will We Learn? by Rhonda Brewer

What will our world will look like on the other side of this social experiment we have all been living through for the last six weeks?  Will we be able to sustain any of the positive changes we have made?

 

Will families spend Friday nights cuddled on popcorn-strewn couches laughing and teasing or will we once again fill the dark theaters where talking is prohibited? 

 

Will we rush to answer the phone when friends and relatives call or will we let it go to voice mail?

 

Will we smile at neighbors from our porch as they walk around the block or will we hide behind our Ring doorbells and security doors?  

 

Will we spend weekends at the park grateful for the grassy areas in which to run or will we spend Saturday at the office catching up on our work?

 

Will we think twice about spontaneous trips to the mall or will we go back to filling our tanks and skies with pollutants?

 

Will we sing and dance around the kitchen while preparing the family meal or will we pay for pizza, a babysitter, and dinner out?

 

I fear most of our old habits will reappear.  We will go back to filling the spaces in our lives with things, people, and activities we don't love, need or even like.  But I hope that a few positive changes and habits stick around.  Maybe if we are willing to leave some spaces in our lives open and wait for things, people, and activities we love and truly bring us joy to fill them, we will be able to retain some of the lessons we have learned!

 

(The image at the top of the post can be found here.)

Validation Through Listening by Ken Shaw

A few years ago, I took a Santa job at a retail store. Their purpose was to allow the families to spend time with Santa and get some great pictures. There were many memorable people and children that came through this venue. One family came in with a girl around age six and her little brother who was around three. The young little lady was so well spoken and all she really wanted was to keep her brother calm and have a good family picture with them both. The little brother was not having it; he was in full blown fit mode. He was screaming ,scratching, hissing, but the sister was so patient and kind and soft spoken.

The mother started apologized profusely and explained to me that the boy was autistic. Listening to the mother and understanding how most autistic people react to stimuli gave me an idea. I do a little magic show with lights in my fingered gloves. I also at that moment changed my behavior as Santa. Most autistic people need to make the decision on their own without external pressures. Also, too much stimulation causes some autistic people much stress. And the only way they can deal with that stress is to lash out. My whole demeanor changed, I became very calm very stoic, (no extremely jerky movements or facial expressions), and my voice became very soft.

I worked with the older sister first to show the younger brother that I was not a threat. I perform a little bit of magic with the little lights in the fingers of my gloves which got the boy's attention. In just a few minutes the little boy wanted to be with Santa. We took many pictures. After the session was over, the mother came to me with tears in her eyes saying that was the first time her son has ever been able to take a picture with Santa.

It’s very important to listen to what people have to say. If we listen and hear and then modify our behavior, we can get much more accomplished.

Scaling Down by Kaden Sheffield

Just a few short weeks ago my life, like yours, was normal—full of trips around town to stores, movies, theaters, museums, restaurants, classes, parks, full of meetups with friends, full of plans for future outings. My extroverted, never-a-dull-moment, Red Bull American Dream seemed thoroughly on-track.

Then came The Virus, followed by The Shutdown, and suddenly everything changed.

Like everybody these days, I find myself scaling down my life, re-centering it closer to home, and while much that I enjoyed has been taken away, The Shutdown has given me one great gift: it’s given me permission to do less, and be more.

You’d think that, being retired, doing less would have become the norm by now, but as my friends who retired before me had told me, “You’ll soon find yourself doing more than you did before retirement.” They were right. There’s a sort of continual social pressure throughout our lives, it seems, to always be out there doing, running, socializing--life as one endless beer commercial. And so we hurry along out of habit, even in our Golden Years.

So I’ll admit, during the first week of The Shutdown I was restless. I found I was always thinking about the things I used to do outside my home, the places I used to go. At first I found the lack of places I “needed” to be and things I “should” do strange. But I’ve been surprised at how quickly they’ve ceased occur to me, and at how little I miss them, for the most part.

To be honest, because I’m lucky enough not to have to play a front-line role in this pandemic (so far), my life seems to have actually improved. Each day, I wake when I wake, get up when I feel like it, put on whatever old comfortable thing I’d be ashamed for anyone to see me in, and begin the bliss of puttering—wandering about my house and yard, doing whatever comes to mind. I read, write, play and compose music, draw, paint, garden, pet my cats. Sometimes I just think. Bliss.

I’m also started doing things that if you’d asked me a few short weeks ago I would not be doing.

I’m reaching to the back of the pantry, pulling out ingredients and spices long neglected, searching for recipes to use them in. I’m not sure I’m cooking any better, but at least I’m cooking more interestingly.

I’m reading and binge-watching things I’d have eschewed a few weeks ago as “useless trash,” and loving it. I’m freeze-framing head shots of my favorite newscasters’ broadcasts from home, checking out their décor and especially the book titles on their shelves, shamelessly nosy and judgmental.

I’m wasting time relearning “cool skills” I had as a kid: whistling, yo-yoing, juggling sock balls over the laundry basket as I fold the wash.

But amid my new petty banalities also blooms something more. I find myself storying—remembering, creating, crafting, preserving and sharing—and having deeper conversations than I used to, both virtually with friends and family, and in person with my husband. Even with myself. The gift of time, quiet and solitude allow me to converse with myself in ways I haven’t since my college years, when, sitting under a blazing red tree under a blindingly blue Indian Summer sky I wrote this:

We unspool into life, slack,

Responsive to the slightest breeze.

Then, slowly at first, we are stretched, pulled

Tighter and tighter, until we become

One thin line, and we never again know

Whether the breeze is blowing or not.

I sensed even then what modern life would bring, would do—and it did, at least to me.

But now I find “the slack is back.” Life has cut us all a little slack, even as it stretches us to the breaking point. I think we used to call this collection of odd symptoms “real life.” I like it, and I don’t think I want to go back to the way things were before.