About Me

It's always fascinating to know something about the kind of material an artist chooses to develop.  Why, for example, does a pianist enjoy playing Debussy more than Mozart?  Or what does a sculptor enjoy about working in wood rather than, say, marble?

As a storyteller, I'm drawn to certain stories or poems or songs....or, as a storyteller friend says, "If a story comes and taps you on the shoulder, you need to pay attention."

Below are some "signature stories" of mine that have "tapped me on the shoulder."

FAVORITES

    1. A favorite childhood story is one that happened to my mother during her school-teaching days in central Illinois.  I've called it "Mother and Paul Moore," and it tells about a particularly challenging 8th-grade student who outweighed my mother by 90 pounds, and stood a foot taller.

    2. A story from the Georgian Republic is "The Earth Demands Its Own."  Gela Charkviani told me this folktale in 1989, while I was in the capital city of Tbilisi.  (Gela later served as a diplomat in the Georgian government, after the fall of the Soviet Union.)  I was allowed to photograph an illustration for this story of a youth and a stag  (see accompanying picture).  It's by Elgudia Berdzinishvili, a Georgian artist.

    3.  A  chant from the New Testament of the Bible (Philippians 4:8-9 KJV) sums up the essence of beauty, integrity and value, and it makes a fine call-and-response choral speech:  "Whatsoever things are true....whatsoever things are just....whatsoever things are lovely....think on these things."

    4.  The American folk song "Jimmy, Crack Corn"---Burl Ives' version. (Ives was a classmate of my mother's, and I grew up on his records.)

    5.  ISLAND CHILD...my first ever trade book for publication (that means a "real" publisher).

    It's a children's biography of Barack Obama's childhood.  This story grew out of volunteer storytelling that I did on January 20, 2009---Presidential Inauguration Day---at Baker Elementary School in Canadian Texas, as well as the Comancheria Chapter of the D.A.R.  My program included anecdotes from various Inauguration Day foibles and tragedies over the years, and concluded with a recollection from Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" (pub. 2006).  He describes his feelings as a new senator as he stood one evening at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, and gazed out over the Reflecting Pool, thinking of so many events that have taken place on that very spot. 

     When I detected the mixture of curiosity and misunderstanding by both students and teachers of the biography of our 44th president, I realized that a story of this man's early life was needed.  So here I tell that story through his 10th year, the only time he remembered seeing his father....and it was at Christmastime.  "Island Child" is a story to both tell and write.  And the written version is newly-finished. 

     Here is an excerpt from ISLAND CHILD.

Enjoy....

     [INTRO: Barry and his mother had moved from Honolulu to Jakarta, capital city of Indonesia, when he was six, to live with Lolo Soetoro, his step-father.  Ann Dunham Obama had married Lolo Soetoro after divorcing Barack Obama who had returned to Kenya.  She and Lolo married while they were both studying at the University of Hawai`i.  Then Lolo Soetoro's passport had been canceled by the Indonesian government, who were calling back all students studying overseas.

     Barry lived with his mother and step-father until he was ten, attending Indonesian schools and learning Indonesian history and language.  At that time, Barry's mother decided it would be better for Barry to return to the States in order to attend an American school.  He could live with her parents in Honolulu.

     It would be an adventure and a challenge....]

  He'd be going to a new school.   His lessons would be in English.  He hadn't attended a school where English was used as the teaching language since the short time he was in kindergarten in Honolulu before he and his mother had moved to Indonesia.....

  He would be attending a private school started over one hundred years before by American missionaries, long before Hawai`i became a state and when pineapple and sugar cane were big farming industries.

  The name of the school is Punahou Academy, and it is still a popular and respected school.  Punahou is nestled in a lovely part of Honolulu, and spreads over several acres of smooth green lawn with palm trees and tennis courts, as well as many library and classroom buildings.  That Hawai`ian spirit of Aloha seems to keep everyone calmer than might be expected at a school with over one thousand students from kindergarten through high school.

   Barry entered the fifth-grade class to discover that his teacher, Mrs. Hefty, had once taught in Kenya.  She was quite entranced by his real name, Barack.

   "Do you really prefer us to call you 'Barry'?" she asked.  "Barack is such a lovely name.  And it mean 'blessed' in Swahili."

   The rest of the class giggled.  "Ba-RRAHHK!" they whispered, sounding like a chicken cackling.

    "Do you know what tribe your father is a member of?"  she continued with questions.

    When Barry finally mumbled, "Luo," the class broke up in laughter.  And some of the boys imitated the sound of monkeys:  "Loo-o!...hoo---hoo---hoo!"

    "Class!" Mrs. Hefty hushed them.  "That's enough!"  They finally settled down.

    But Barry's first day was horrible.  One boy asked if his father ate people.  A girl wanted to touch his hair.  "No!" he sputtered.  She seemed puzzled and hurt.

    This was not the kind of school he had hoped for.  He felt like a freak.  Or a monkey in a zoo.

    Part of the problem was that so many of the students had been together since first grade.  Having a new boy in the class was really odd for them, because they were such a close group.

    And Barry WAS different.  Besides looking different, he had lived far away in that country called Indonesia, made up of islands like Hawai`i, but not at all the same.  Even the games he played in Indonesia were different from those played in Hawai`i.  Barry was skilled in soccer and badminton and chess, but he didn't know anything about throwing a football or balancing on a skateboard.  He didn't fit in.

    End of excerpt. 

     Remember, Barry is only about two when his father leaves Hawai`i for graduate school at Harvard, and then returns to Kenya.  Barry has no memories of his father until his 10th Christmas, when his father comes from Kenya for a month.  ISLAND CHILD is about his growing-up years in between. So there's quite a bit more to this story.

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The National Storytelling Network (NSN) has approved this project to receive tax-deductible donations through NSN, with NSN serving as a "pass-through" or "umbrella" 501.c.3 non-profit agency.  Any individual, business, or foundation may make a tax-deductible contribution [payable to NSN with a memo marked for Loralee Cooley], by sending the contribution to Loralee Cooley, 1604 Crestview Drive, Cordell OK 73632.  [The payment will then be sent to NSN for processing, and the designated funds returned to Loralee Cooley.]                                                                

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For more information on (NSN) --- originally National Association for the Preservation & Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS) --- check out their website:  www.storynet.org.  This is the organization which has sponsored the National Storytelling Festival the first weekend of October in Jonesborough Tennessee since 1973, and coordinates the annual National Storytelling Conference every summer.  In 2010, the conference was in Los Angeles.  In 2011, there will be multiple regional conferences rather than one national event.
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If you're looking for an artist who enjoys telling stories from a variety of sources,  who appreciates all sorts of music from folk to classical and can provide examples of each, who spouts off poetry from nursery rhymes to Edna St. Vincent Millay, let's talk.  If you want someone who is convinced of the NEED for story, please contact me.  I subscribe to a statement that the late *Augusta Baker wrote in Storytelling Art & Technique.       "Storytelling brings to the listener a heightened awareness---a sense of wonder, of mystery, of reverence for life.  This nurturing of the spirit self [comes first], and all other uses and effects are secondary.'"    [*Augusta Baker, venerable long-time storyteller in New York City and Columbia South Carolina, co-authored this book with Ellin Greene in 1977.]