“Every Story I Tell is true,...
...except for the parts that I make up!”
Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner 1912 – 2006 Who was she? Born in Monroe County, NC in 1912 Mary Davidson was born to invent things. Her first attempt was to make a self-oiling door so that when her mother went out the back door in the morning the squeaking wouldn’t wake...
Charles Richard Drew 1904 – 1950 The mister has been giving blood since he was in his twenties. These days he gives platelets. He donates at least twice a month. Sometimes, if the Red Cross is having a shortage of his blood type they call him and he makes a...
Sarah Marshall Boone 1832 – 1904 Sarah Marshall was born in 1832 in Craven County North Carolina near New Bern. She married freedman James Boone in 1847 when she was 15. Prior to the start of the Civil War, the couple moved to New Haven, Connecticut where they lived...
Archie Alexander Archibald (Archie) Alphonso Alexander (1888 – 1958) He was an engineer and mathematician. Born in Ottumwa, Iowa, He attended the University of Iowa and was the first black football player for the team. They called him Alexander the Great. The professors in the engineering program tried to...
I don’t ever remember celebrating black history month when I was in school. I don’t ever remember anybody even mentioning it. I thought it was a pretty new thing, and that was why I hadn’t heard of it when I was a kid. Maybe...
source This has not been a stellar week in the world of storytelling for me. I find myself wondering how children taste if you have the right recipe. I also wonder about the administrators at some of these schools. In the last two days, I’ve been hit by all...
Photo Credit Jonathan Van Ark I am an unrepentant bibliophile and logophile. I love words and word games and reading. I could spend months sitting by a lake with a stack of books and little else and I would be in Heaven. I can’t imagine a life without books....
I love doing sets that challenge audiences when I work in schools. I’m always trying to challenge them linguistically and developmentally. I try to challenge their imagination and their assumptions. We are the sum of the stories we believe, and the stories we reject. We can’t incorporate any...
The Gig Economy can rip your heart out. January you have so much work you don’t know if you can do it all, and February you have one gig and it was a ‘take it because I need something’ type of show. March and April are a wasteland, and...
Bullet Trains move at ridiculous speed! As a touring artist, most of my life moves at ridiculous speed when I am awake. Ridiculous speed is something many people can relate to. Got a manuscript to my agent on Wednesday. Hooray! A moment to breathe….not so fast. Hadn’t really cleaned...