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People remember experiences over things. Accumulating stuff doesn’t increase life quality unless it is indispensable to experience. My Dad told me about many people who came to visit us at home in Yosemite Valley, some I remember as a small child. They would visit by the fire in winter, or by summer on the screened-in front porch, looking out on the chapel, meadow, and Cathedral Rocks in the distance. One of those visitors was Gertrude "Cosie" Hutchings, John Hutchings’ daughter, pioneer Yosemite hotelier and publisher of Hutchings California magazine. She was spare and sprightly, and wore a long coat with big pockets. In those pockets my Dad said, she kept bread and nuts, and other small snacks to sustain herself when she hiked to Little Yosemite Valley above Nevada Falls, or up the four mile trail to Glacier Point, often spending the night alone, wrapped in her overcoat, cradled under a friendly tree.  

Story Telling

Story telling is an experience that interactively encompasses all tenses. Listeners take that experience and pass it on to others. In this way it becomes part of a larger human experience. There are as many kinds of stories as there are people, and just as many ways of telling. Consider all the people in your life alone, each one with a wealth of stories. I know a wonderful lady named Fay, whose life was one of giving. From Brooklyn New York, Fay came west with her husband Don whom she met at a USO event in New York. Fay told me she was in the Empire State Building working on a government project, when a plane crashed into the building in 1945. When she and Don left New York for Modoc County California, the bulk of her luggage was books which she could not bear to leave behind, and which she loved for a lifetime. I worked with Fay amidst the books for six years. Any frequenter of the Modoc County Library could tell you about Fay. She was a volunteer there after her retirement, from 1983 until she died in 2013.

Fay on the right, Emily on the left listen intently as I explain a printmaking process at Modoc County Library

Story telling in literature

Experience is distilled in many ways. I believe it is carried and evident in a person. Although one must be careful to not make snap judgements (you can’t tell a book by its cover) nonetheless, certain clues are there in a person’s visage, posture, dress, etc. Here is one from “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens describing Ebenezer Scrooge: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.” Visual storytelling in literature accompany  classic books, old and new, particularly those for young people. Some fine examples are Arthur Rackham, Maurice Sendak, and I especially love the illustrations in the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Painting is Storytelling

Painting is storytelling. Though not necessarily narrative, painting addresses a gamut of emotion and intellect that is relative to poetry and music. It tells the artist's story in a language of color, choice of subject and other elements making up a painting. As the skill of an artist develops, the art changes, and evolves, reflecting experience and growth over time. I think there are many early efforts of writers and artists that their author would be embarrassed to claim. I could include myself in that count. And not all current paintings are up to snuff either. So just like a lot of things, there is always room for improvement. 

Here is a painting that I did a while back, but is still one of my favorites. 

Council 111 by Moira Donohoe