Jack’s weekly guest blog, flying solo!

Wendy has been away in Philadelphia since the beginning of the week and won’t be back until Saturday.

How strange the place is without her! It’s quiet professor – too quiet!

– and I have to feed the felines and doggies, handle all the bookstore stuff, liaise with the cafe, think about upcoming events, keep the place clean, feed myself and keep up with the needs of a 111 year old building.

– then on Sunday we head off together to Florida for a week where Wendy will be presenting on rural health issues at a conference.

– but that means a ‘shop-sitter’ and they arrive on Saturday and need an orientation to get up to speed.

– but that means the guest room has to be ready, and the ‘bookstore manual’ has to be re-written to be up to date.

– uh, oh – the dogs are barking and I think I hear a cat fight, and someone just phoned to see if we can take in five kittens!

Did I say it was quiet? QUIET??

I love you dear – please come home – – – –

Kevin sent this book to be reviewed; he and Wendy were in graduate school together, at the ETSU storytelling program. Jack wrote the review.

Wendy asked me to review this book because she knows the author personally. I’m pleased about that as I found it fascinating!

This is a book about storytelling; specifically it’s about the combination of storytelling and play (in the many senses of that word). In the opening section of the book, Cordi talks of his introduction to stories as a young child in a family setting.

My own introduction to storytelling as an integral part of traditional culture happened in the 1960s when I was honing my skills as a singer of ballads and folk-songs in my homeland of Scotland. I visited with the Stewart family in their home in Blairgowrie and was immediately immersed in a wonderful mish-mash of tunes, ballads, songs, stories and riddles. It was only later, when I met Wendy, that I realized that storytelling was an art-form that could stand on its own two feet and wasn’t just what you did between songs. Later we became friends with Duncan Williamson and through him many other wonderful ‘traveler’ storytellers.

So I was interested in the idea that stories don’t live apart from other activities. In my case they live alongside music and songs. In Cordi’s book they are aligned with play.

Cordi makes important arguments for the use of storytelling and creative play as a counter to the culture of standardized testing and ‘league tables’ in the education system. In other words, he uses stories and play as ways to open up minds and encourage real learning.

He also uses ‘play’ in many different senses – having fun, playing with words and language, setting old stories in modern settings etc.

As someone who worked as a professor in a Scottish college for more than twenty years I can completely sympathize

Going back to my own experiences –

Some years ago I was staying over the weekend of the Auchtermuchty Traditional Music Festival with Duncan Williamson. Also there were some of the Stewarts and another iconic traveler storyteller, Betsy Whyte. As the night wore on the stories and songs gave way to riddles and finally homed in on riddles about death. The next morning we discovered that Betsy had died in her sleep in her trailer parked in the yard outside.

I don’t know if Kevin Cordi knows that story, but it certainly reinforces his opinion on the strength of connecting stories with real life!

If you want to visit Kevin’s website, it’s http://www.kevincordi.com/