Category Archives: making a story

Circling

making a story, Memoir, memories, storytelling, , , , ,
 
Working on my new story, Love Notes, keeps me focused on days in Baltimore when Jim and I met.
Not complaining. I love it.
Especially as it seems to be creating some serendipity connections between then and now.
When I boarded the train in Charlotte to head to Baltimore to enter Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing I was carrying a book that a nurse gave me “to read on your trip.” I did read “Miss Susie Slagles” by Augusta Tucker as the train clipped off the miles toward Baltimore. By the time I reached the nurses home to check in my imagination was fired by Tucker’s novel and her romanticized version of Hopkins in the early 1900s. I loved it.
I have been re-reading Tucker’s novel as part of my “research” for my new story. It prompts many memories.
Yesterday my friend Kay called from Texas, “Do you want to go back to Hopkins in June?” Before I could say, “YES.” she added. “lets stay where we did last year?” She read my mind. Those words were on my tongue. Last year we stayed in a renovated row-house on the street where Jim and I lived when we got married. Talk about walking back into the past – – it was great. “YES”
Now, the plans are underway and I am very excited to return to the old neighborhood.I have also been reading a history of Hopkins as a teaching hospital.
Last night at family gathering a new acquaintance suggested I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” which is the story of a major breakthrough in research on cervical cancer which occurred in 1951. Jim came to JHH in 1952 and I arrived in 1954. I recognized the names of researchers. I was sure Jim would have known them. It would have been so great to talk about it with him.
That led me to call one of Jim’s classmates. He is an OB-GYN – its his field. “Yes, I read the book – went to see the author speak. She was terrific. Several of the researchers had been professors at time we were there. You were right to recognize the names.” He and is wife may be coming to the scientific meetings the same time Kay and I will be there. Maybe they will try to stay in the same area we are.  Yes, he would like to talk about the days he lived in a boarding house very like the one in Miss Susie Slagles. “I remember it well.”There are others I want to see and talk with and places I want to go.
I know I will have to work hard to walk down memory lane because so much has been changed.But  – – it will be worth the struggle.
I really love it when life moves in circles

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A New Story – Premiere June 4

making a story, Memoir, memories, storytelling

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First performance JUNE 4 –

Information on June 4 Performance – Place and Time  HERE

Several years ago I found this little calendar which was filled with memories. My new story, “Love Notes” began there.

From the press release:
” Love Notes”

Happily Ever After is a matter of perspective.

A 1954 blind date between an 18-year-old nursing student and a fresh faced Johns Hopkins medical student launched Ellouise and Jim on a lifetime together. Love Notes, a one–widow show performed by Ellouise Schoettler, is a funny and touching journey of a 57-year marriage traversing through the peaks and valleys of the marriage vow. 

Death? 

It’s not a clean break.”

 

Ode to Family Photos

genealogy, making a story, Memoir, storytelling, Uncategorized
TWO WOMEN COLLAGE

When my husband Jim and I started dating I don’t remember his talking about his interest in documenting family history. It came to light steadily over the years and we have the legacy to prove it…. photos, home movies, videos, and audio tapes. I am now gathering them from storage boxes, closets and drawers to be sure they are all together in one place. Its our treasure.When we met in Baltimore where Jim was a student at Johns Hopkins University Medical School he casually took pictures with one of his father’s range-finder cameras. Developing the black and white film was expensive so we don’t have many photos of those days – but the ones we do capture the moment. I could never take pictures with that camera. It baffled me. My speed was a Brownie box camera.

Jim learned to take pictures from his father who was one of those camera-smitten amateur photographers of the 1930s in California, land of the movies. Jim helped his father take creative 16mm movies of the family. We have copies of those movies – scripts written by Jim’s mother and performed by his brothers and sisters – with sound. Jim often told me about them but I did not understand how priceless and precious they were until I saw them

I remember the first time I saw the movies I had heard so much about. One special evening in 1969 when we were at his parents house in Madera, CA for Christmas Jim’s father brought out the big movie projector. It was a small crowd that evening – Jim’s mother and father, Jim and me and our three kids. Hal showed the family movies and a selection of Castle WWII films.

In 1984 video cameras were large, heavy, clunky and expensive. We did not own one — yet. Jim was so determined to interview my father on film on his 70th birthday that he searched out a video rental in Charlotte, NC. That’s how we have over an hour of my dad and me on camera going back over old stories and hearing new ones and some good jokes. Not to be left out my mother insisted we interview her as well. And, am I glad.

A dozen years ago Jim’s oldest brother Harold transferred those movies to DVD for each of his siblings. They are wonderful – except that he backed the films with the theme from Chariots of Fire. I challenge anyone to watch them without crying as those kids of long ago cavort in the snow at Bass Lake and act out their mother’s scripts in their Fresno living room. We all should be so lucky as to have our childhoods captured on film so that we can revisit them over and over.

With the advent of digital cameras photography became more immediate and much easier so I took up photography as well. Family albums became part of my art form. Today I never leave the house without a small camera tucked in my purse. And, Jim often brought out his newest video camera to capture a bit of the life around him – delighted as they became smaller and more convenient to use – a great contrast to the earlier heavyweight cameras he lugged for his father.

Jim and I enjoyed and shared a passion for documenting everyday life. Jim got it from his father. I inherited it from my Aunt Katherine who kept photograph albums of all the family. Today our grown children document their families and we all share stories.

Nothing as grand as the first crop of California 16mm movies but its all quite fine – – and it tells our family story – – for our grandchildren’s children. What’s my point? To encourage you to take out your camera if you are not doing that already. You will be glad you did.

 

An Eye-Opener

domestic abuse, making a story, Memoir, memories, Uncategorized, women's history, , , ,
TWO WOMEN COLLAGE
Thumbing through some old journals I stumbled across an entry in one that brought back the memory of something I thought I would never forget ….. But I had.
 In 1999 I booked gigs in North Carolina for my first on-my-own storytelling road trip. I was performing at Meredith College in Raleigh and at the Museum of the New South in Charlotte for an event sponsored by the Mecklenburg County Women’s Commission. I was so excited about telling, Flesh on Old Bones, my stories about my North Carolina women that I did not think about the dreaded eight hour drive ahead.
Saturday afternoon before I was to leave on Sunday, I was moving fast around the house to get ready for the road trip. I stepped out onto the deck to ask my husband, Jim, who was working in the yard, a question. He answered and when I whirled around to go back into the house I tripped on the doorway. I splatted forward and met the kitchen floor full on my face. I felt my glasses dig into my cheekbone on the right side.
Jim heard the commotion and rushed in. “Stay still until I check you out.” His doctor-self always jumped to the rescue. He did his checking and then he helped me to a near-by couch.
“Ellouise, this eye is going to look bad. It is already swelling. I will ice it for you.”
 I reached up and when I touched my forehead and the area around the right eye it was tender.
“Jim, what will I do. I have to drive to North Carolina tomorrow.”
He was crushing ice in the kitchen.
“We will see. Just keep you head down for right now.”
” I have to go.”
His doctor’s voice answered,  “We will see, Ellouise.”
By next day my face was swollen and the right side was now a deep magenta. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror.
 “Jim, ” I called out. “I look like I have been beaten up. How can I tell stories to people?”
Please look at this, my eyelid is so swollen I can’t see out of my right eye.”
Jim carefully lifted my eyelid. Then he reached in the medicine chest and brought out the band-aid box. “This might work.” He taped my eyelid up so that I could see out of the right eye.”
“Ellouise, I don’t think you can drive to NC like this ….
plus the way you look you are going to scare people.”
“I am going.” And, I did. Changing the band-aids frequently and wondering how I was going to get along.
First stop was Meredith college where those folks were ever so delicately, so painfully polite they never mentioned my face. Only the young guy who wired me up with a lapel mic said anything –
 “what happened to you, Lady.”
 After that I told my hour program of stories feeling like a gold fish in a bowl as I stood in an amphitheater looking up into about 100 young faces who looked to me like they were wondering “what happened to you, lady.”
When I called Jim that evening he was encouraging,
 “Jim, they act like they don’t believe me when I tell them I fell.”
“ Honey I was pretty sure they wouldn’t.
“Sounds like your eye is all right. You are doing a good job. Keep it up.”
“That felt good but I would have felt better if there had been a strong warm hug to go along with it.
Next day, still using the band-aids to hold up the eye-lid so that I could see to drive, I drove on to Charlotte, to perform for the women’s commission event. A woman met me at the museum to help me set up. She gasped when she saw me. Then she explained that the issue they were working on for this year was Domestic Violence. We both agreed I looked like they had brought me in as a poster for the issue. I was embarrassed and felt a bit dumb, that I had not made the connection between my face and their issue work.
I swallowed hard and explained how I had tripped in the kitchen.
“Well, tell them that when you start your program. Some of the women will believe you – some won’t.”
At least that would be better than ignoring what a sight I looked like  as I had done at Meredith.
Oops. I had forgotten about my mother.
She lived in Charlotte, where I was born and raised. Part of my trip was a visit with her. Yes, she was coming to the performance – with my Aunt. Sure enough, they came all dressed up and a little early.
When I saw them come in  I hurried to the back of the room to greet them. They both gasped. Mama seemed to have lost her voice but my Aunt Katherine was never without words,
“Good lord a mighty Ellouise, what happened to you, girl”.  And I told them the thumbnail version of the story.
Mama had gotten her words back,” well, I knew Jim didn’t do that.” I hugged her..
The woman who spoke after my stories was a survivor of Domestic Violence who now spoke to groups to  educate the public. When she was called to the microphone she paused and waited a moment before she said –
“I used to look like that,” she looked over at me “but it wasn’t because I fell in my kitchen – like she did. It was because my husband hit me.”
They liked my stories that night – they laughed and listened and they told me so afterwards.
But there is no question that the story that was the “eye-opener” was the survivor’s story.

Turning to Anne Lamott

making a story, Memoir, , ,
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Once upon a time,  when I was giving my talk, THEN AND NOW – about what women artists had achieved for their equality in the art world from 1972-1992  – at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA the Gorilla Girls ran in on a special appearance to give me a hug.  That was a high spot for me. I thought about them and wondered where they were when I needed them earlier today.
Getting started this morning I needed some encouragement so I re-read @Anne Lamott’s FaceBook post of last week. Maybe you too look to her for a different way of thinking or an unexpected perspective about life.I stopped at these lines and started laughing out loud.
From her March 4, 2015 long post -” Or, as my pastor said when I was fearfully headed on a plane 10,000 miles away, “When you step onto a plane, it’s a little late for beggy prayers. It’s time for trust and surrender.”Yep!! Right on Anne – “a little late for beggy prayers” in more situations than taking your seat on a plane.
“Beggy prayers.” That’s it isn’t it – – – in my case begging instead of thinking of the blessings and thanking God for them. Instead of looking a situation straight on and working out a solution – I was lamenting one of those situations last night – and hurt and insulted when my daughter charged me with begging about something — instead of deciding about it. Fortunately I got over my mad in time to see that she was right.Do you you hate that like I do — seeing when people are right and having to admit you are about to head out on the wrong plane — well anyway – no beggy prayers right now – – thanks to my daughter and now thanks to Anne Lamott I have a name for it.
I think I should make a needlepoint pillow or have a tatoo – “no beggy prayers – trust and surrender”- oh, darn…trust and surrender…now that’s another challenge.
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Why Remember?

making a story, Memoir, memories, Story

Johns Hopkins Hospital, circa 1954.

Jim took this picture when he was a 1st year medical student at Hopkins. A California guy raised in the shadow of the Sierras he loved the snow in the mountains but never had to slog through it to work until he landed at Hopkins.  A camera buff he enjoyed seeing the world transformed into black and white.

This morning snow is pelting down outside my window and I am thinking a lot of Jim, even more than usual.

Tomorrow is the 3rd Anniversary of Jim’s death. Its been rough lately  – – because you see he is not really dead for me. He is very much alive to me – and I intend to keep it that way through my stories.

Some days I forget to write checks to pay bills but I have vivid memories of most of the 57 years of days Jim and I shared starting with the first time I set eyes on him at St. Michael’s Catholic Church on N. Washington Street in Baltimore.

Maybe its my storyteller mind-side that keeps me remembering like I do.  And, you know something- -I am grateful for it. I have worked hard to hone the ability to retrieve times, places and people. Since I tell family stories memories are the “stuff” I work with.

Twenty years ago I attended my first five- day-out-of-town storytelling workshop which was led my favorite teacher, the incomparable Donald Davis. He started the first session with the instruction “take us somewhere we can’t go if YOU don’t take us.”  Donald’s direction was electrifying for me as I walked into my grandmother’s long-gone house.  Every step brought it more clearly into view. 2301 East Seventh Street, Charlotte, NC wasn’t gone after all.

On a trip to Fresno our daughter Robin and I sat in the car with Jim outside his favorite childhood home. Talking it through he brought the interior of that house to life for us without stirring from the car. He also pointed out the spot on the block where he ran his bike into an oncoming car when he was 11 years old. He laughed, “I was showing off for a girl coming down the street”. He was tossed in the air, hit the hood of the car and landed in the street. His brother Tom told me, ” I saw it. We thought he was dead.” Lucky and  foolish yes, fortunately not dead.

An African folk tale, The Cow Tail Switch is a golden nugget for me. In the story five sons find their father’s bones in the jungle where he was killed by a wild animal when he was hunting. They conjure him back to life. The story ends with the wisdom, “no one is truly dead as long as people tell his story.” 

I came to storytelling through Genealogy and that “raising of the dead”, at least on a chart, has always been the heart of my mission. When my kids were not interested in my charts I turned to storytelling to breathe  life into those names and dates I had worked so hard to find.

And what about this?

At this time in my life I want to take my children and their children back through time to know Jim and me over the years. Seems to me that is a good thing for me to be doing. I have been known to say, “Your Story is Your Legacy.” Now is the time to do more than talk about it —

Wearing My White Hair Proudly – 1

making a story, Memoir
Lately I have begun to really appreciate my white hair.
For instance, last week I attended a large professional gathering where folks had come to meet and greet, to see and be seen, and hopefully to make some contacts. This is not the first one of these cattle calls I have attended but I have not been to one in a few years. It hasn’t changed but I have.
I do remember a time when people wanted to talk to me but certainly on this day, a white haired woman, a storyteller at that, was not someone today’s eager beavers, up and coming 40-50 year olds thought had anything of value to impart, so I was free to watch them and to learn.
These days government buildings in the Washington, DC area are set up like airports with long lines for baggage screening, ID checks and waiting. Finally when the checking in was done, it was a long walk to the building where the meeting was being held. Since I am no longer a daily sprinter I was gasping for breath by the time I got inside, out of the cold, and took my place in another long, slowing snaking line to approach the registration table. Finally I was next. What a relief! But just as I was about to give my name a
tall, well-suited man, chatting with his companion, stepped in front of me and gave HIS name. The woman behind the registration desk scurried away to retrieve a red packet and name tag for him. He noticed me, smiled a charming smile, and said, sheepishly, “I guess I broke the line.”
” Yes. You did”
” Well, we are co-sponsors.”
“Oh – then you knew you could get away with it.” I replied, smiling sweetly.
He blushed, took his packet from the woman and dashed off.
I picked up my registration tags and my red packet and stepped to a near-by table to re-assemble my belongings.
It was a surprise when the very same man approached me. “I want to apologize for cutting in front of you.”
I smiled and nodded graciously like a benevolent grand-mother and asked, “Well, who are you?”
He was indeed from an Agency that co-sponsored the meeting.
I was glad to meet him and we had a few minutes of polite and interesting conversation.
He was surprised to learn that I was familiar with his Agency and with the subject of the day.
I could see in his face that he was also surprised there was a person under my white hair.
We exchanged cards.
That would never have happened if I had not laughed at him and spoken up.
Hmmmm.
Something to think about.
Definitely a lesson learned! A day well-spent.

A Valentine Delivery

Arlington National Cemetery, making a story, Memoir

A bit of story for Valentines Day.

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The other day as I fiddled with my roses for Jim I was surprised when the Arlington tour bus made an unusual stop at the edge of our Section. Two men stepped down – the older man stepped down and the younger man jumped to the road. The older was carrying a large coloful bouquet wrapped in clear cellophane.  I watched them walk through the tombstones to deliver their Valentine near-by. In the bitter cold of the day we were all about the business of Love.

 

Weaving Women’s Stories

making a story, Memoir, The Hello Girls, women's history

Weaving Stories of Women’s History

February 15 was Susan B. Anthony’s birthday. She is a legendary women’s rights advocate from the early 19th Century who led the struggle for Suffrage so that today we women have the right to vote.

When I was reading through some past blog posts and I came across this one from October 2007.  It seems right to re-post it on Susan B’s birthday as an homage, a connection, and a bit of reminder for the gift she and the women following her won and passed on.

October 30, 2007 The Veteran Feminists of America held a reception at the Sewall Belmont House on Capitol Hill, DC. which was once Alice Paul’s home and the seat of the National Women’s Party, particularly during the fight for gaining women’s right to vote.  This evening was an induction ceremony and I was one of the inductees. So many familiar faces. For any one who had been actively involved in the many parts of the struggles of the 1970s it was a flashback of those days.

I came to be a part of this group on that evening because of my activism in several roles for national organizations during the struggles to gain equal rights for women artists and for work as ERA Campaign Director for the League of Women Voters the last three years of the campaign to ratify the Equal Right Amendment.  It was a proud evening!!!

I reported on it for my blog that night.

Well, a lot has changed since that evening.

For one thing, I stopped dying my hair shortly after that and my budget is grateful.

Since well before 2007 I turned the skills learned in my lobbying days toward becoming a professional storyteller.  I still keep women, their history,  and their lives at the center of my work. www.ellouiseschoettler.net

Last year I introduced a new story that is more personal to me than anyone would guess unless they knew my history as a feminist activist or know women’s history of being told to wait for years for the right to vote or for the Equal Rights Amendment – which, by the way, women do not have yet.

Months ago I discovered the story of THE HELLO GIRLS – switchboard operators who volunteered to the Army Signal Corps and served in France during WWI – and when they returned home after the war were denied their veterans benefits. Sound familiar? But they were determined to fight against this unfairness. They lobbied for 60 years – finally gaining their veterans benefits in 1977. Audiences gasp when they hear – “of 233 who served in France there were only 18 were still living.”

The “plucky” women of THE HELLO GIRLS have been left out of history books and remain in the shadows of history.

You can see, I am sure, why I am devoted to this story.

I consider my telling this story as lobbying for women’s rights but using a different megaphone.
THE HELLO GIRLS will return to the 2015 DC Capital Fringe in July. Perhaps they will show up in your area. Their story is our story.

Let’s celebrate Susan B. Anthony – she never gave up – – and neither can we, or our daughters, or all the women after us.

 

They Left Me Laughing

making a story, Memoir

Textile Collage

Today I braved the cold to keep my doctor’s check-up appointment. First time I have been out for a few days so I was enjoying the window-shopping,  people watching and just noticing things hoping for something that might be particularly interesting  or maybe spark a story.

I sat in a straight chair in the small reception room, thumbing a magazine and “noticing.”

Then I really looked at the two women who were sitting across from me. They were dressed for being “on business” and chatting about several pieces of paper they shared. Then my eyes fell on the over-sized, bulging black sample case on the floor near the feet of one of the women. I have seen drug detail sales men and women many times in doctor’s offices  but I had never seen representatives from a company that billed itself for providing, “innovative hospice care” and had that slogan embroidered in white on the side a large black canvas sample bag.

It took me back. Then I was curious. And, since I was the only other person in the doctor’s waiting room I spoke up when it was polite to ask, ” I see your sample kit. May I ask – just curious – how do you market hospice care?”

They were surprised by the question but since I was friendly and just sounded interested  – one of the women confidently responded about the quality of their service and that they like to come in to educate the doctors on what they offer. “We sometimes have to explain the Medicare benefit too.”

Now here was something I knew about, ” Oh, that should be pretty simple – they take it all – at least that was the requirement when my husband signed the forms to enter Hospice Care.”  “Well, yes.” they replied.

There was a lull in the conversation and since  I felt we were at ease with each other – so I lobbed another gambit. “Would you mind a suggestions?”

“No” They both nodded me on.

“I suggest you put something over that sign on your case.” They did not say it but I heard the “why” they were thinking so I laughed – “it struck me as being a bit out of place in a doctor’s office where patients are here hoping to get well.”

” You know you have put your finger on something. As it happens – they have changed the name of our company – to XXX Healthcare.” “Really?” I gasped.

At that moment the doctor who was seeing them arrived on the scene. They gathered their sample cases and went in for their meeting.

I just sat there and laughed.

At least I was laughing,