The Power of Storytelling

Dear Diary,

I attended a wonderful talk in a nearby town by Jo Radner a renowned Maine folklorist and oral historian.  Since I'm creating a family chronicle I was interested in her thoughts on the power of storytelling.  She made one comment that really resonated with me:

"When you tell a story to some one the result is really two stories.  The one you are telling and the one that is drawn out of the listener as a result of hearing your story."

As she talked about the courage it took as a very young girl to walk out at night to the outhouse, it sparked a memory of mine.  We had a place on the property where we dumped glass bottles and tin cans and it was my job to bring them there.  If I forgot to do it in daylight I had to do it at night and I remember walking with a flashlight and singing shaky verses of "Onward Christian Soldiers" to give me courage.  I hadn't thought about that in years but her story brought out my story.

I wish I had a story about my great-great grandfather bottling wine, about 1880, but I just have this old photograph with the writing on the back.  My extra photo is of something my grandfather kept.  It was made by the same man in the photo and given to him on his first birthday in 1891.  A box of some sort as I think this is the lid of it.  There was a story there but it is lost.  Sometimes all we are left with is some small part of the story and we have to be content with that.