Philosophy

What I enjoy about storytelling is working to give each member of the
audience the view that I see in their own mind, and hopefully when I say "look
over there", they see over there. I bring them on the journey.  I know the
trails and treasures of the story, and they're scouting it out with me.

One of my favorite quotes is by Joseph Campbell, "There is a romantic idea
that myth comes from the people. It doesn't; it comes from the teacher, the
shaman and visionary as the giver and interpreter of myth. The visionary
translates what he sees into an art or ritual form."

I've grown to enjoy history stories from listening to my father, and from some
of the teachers I had in school, some of whom I'm still in touch with more the
twenty years later. My father said, "You must learn your history, for without
it you can't know where you've come from, or who you are. Without that
knowledge, you can't know where to go, you'll just wander through life with no
direction or understanding."

Telling stories helps me to pass on that history, whether it be in folk tales
from pole to pole and as far as the east is from the west, or here in our own
back yard. Stories are an integral part of us. They bring us the richness of
times past. The hopes and fears common to all. They help us to see our lives
today in better perspective.

As Jane Yolen states in Favorite Folktales from around the World, "It is
because of that ability to structure and change, a seemingly magical ability
to hold past, present, and future in the Word, that storytellers have been
venerated in oral cultures all over the earth."  - Jane Yolen