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For Storytellers this month we had a special Holiday design treat. Craig, friend of our group and floral/greens instructor, helped the group create a lovely centerpiece for the holidays. What a great way to end the year! We also enjoyed some warm beverages and chatting about the upcoming family and friend get togethers. Please enjoy […]
Writing prompts –
1.) Imagine a day with your best friend who happens to be your favorite character from a book, movie or TV show.
2.) Write about the day after Thanksgiving
Art project prompt –
Fall color piece with collage or mosaic.
You can paint some sheets of paper before our mtg and cut them up;
You could also spend some time cutting colors and/or words out of magazines
Tearing paper to make shapes is also fun and different.
Please see the attachments for some ideas about making a collage.
You can also use the mosaic materials.
Naomi and Joyce decided on a 3D fall project
Storytellers had a guest craft presenter. Our friend has provided Bamboo boxes that can be decorated and inspirational tokens to go inside in the boxes.
Writing prompts: Write about a song and a feeling it invoked in you.
Think about your more distant ancestors and write a story based on what you imagine.
Bamboo Box
This song means a lot to me because I sang it on my mom’s wedding day. I knew I wanted to do something special and meaningful. It took me a while to find the song but once I did, I rehearsed it for 2 1/2 days and once I heard the vows that were said I knew I chose the perfect song. (N.D.)
Sanctuary
Sanctuary is a song written by Sarah Siskind, Jill Andrews and Gary Nicholson
Turn the light off
Go to bed
Tell me all about the day you had
Lay beside me
It’s time to rest
You can close your eyes, you’ve done your best
Let me be your sanctuary
Let me be your safe place to fall
I can take away your worries
The refuge from it all
All this time
We have together
Is our shelter from the rain
I will share the weight you carry
Let me be your sanctuary
We have weathered
Through the storms
Taking comfort in each other’s arms
When the dark clouds come again
I will lift you up and take you in
Let me be your sanctuary
Let me be your safe place to fall
I can take away your worries
The refuge from it all
All this time
That we have together
Is our shelter from the rain
I will share the weight you carry
Let me be your sanctuary
I will share this weight you carry
Let me be your sanctuary
Artwork by Momma Kim.
September was a relaxed month as many people were not able to make it.
Art prompt: Paint, draw, or create something for someone else. No theme for this, it can be anything you’d like!
Writing prompt ideas:
Write about someone you admire.
If respect were an animal, what animal would it be and why?
Write about a dream you’ve had.
Our art prompt for August is, naturally, heat. Try using the collage or mosaic method to express heat. Heat comes through in design, color and objects.
Writing prompts:
Heat Wave: It keeps getting hotter, and things are also getting weirder. Write a scene or story that describes the strange things happening the hotter it gets. You can be logical, illogical, silly, etc. When temperatures rise, anything goes.
Write about your favorite summer of all time.
Art prompt: Mosaics
Storytellers is considering a large, community Mosaic project and decided that we wanted to try working mosaic art before we commit. Our mosaic project for this month was simple; given random shapes and pieces of glass, let’s see what we can come up with.
Writing prompt:
1). Choose a photograph and tell the story behind it.
2). Respond to this quote: “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic,” Jimmy Carter writes of the U.S. “Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”
Summer solstice. Summer solstice marks the longest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere), the height of its brightness, and the beginning of summer. The summer solstice is analogous to the full moon—a time of celebration, culmination, climax.
Storyteller writing prompts for this ancient celebratory time of year!
1). In summer, we find fierce fire energy raging through the forests. Forest fires have the potential for astonishing destruction. But, that destruction serves a purpose: it clears debris from the forest floor, it kills off disease and illness, it enriches the soil, it provides habitat for new life. Summer is the ideal time to invite that fire energy into our lives – use that fierce fire to burn away the things you’re resistant to letting go of.
2). Imagine a world where daylight operated differently: Perhaps four hours of sunlight is followed by four hours of darkness. Maybe inhabitants enjoy 24 hours of daylight followed by 24 hours of nighttime. Or maybe the night never comes at all. What impact do these light/dark changes have on the world’s inhabitants?
3). Design your perfect summer day. What does it look like? Who is with you? What activities are you enjoying?
4). Admire what is shining in your life.Where are you finding joy and inspiration?
What people, habits and places are supporting you?
5). Write about your summer rituals.
Art prompt.
Paint, doodle, collage or use clay to create your summer joys!
The art prompt for May was to choose a person or people who matter most to you in life and create unique art for each.
Writing Prompt for May:
1.Write a story involving a friendship between two different species.
2.If you have a pet, describe their day from their perspective.
3.Silence. How do you feel about silence? Does it make you uncomfortable or do you like it?
Silence is church bells.
Ringing, Ringing
Divinity, relief, tacit lacrimae
Silence is doors shut, voices swept
Choices made, baited breath
Another time, another way
I’ll hear it all another day
Tacet sunt lacrimae
Whats left is gone
Tattered flags and gas stop ruins
Apothecary’s of no use
tincture, powder, no panacea, no fruit
A poison for the fairy
Bottles on shelves, a noose to carry
By Anonymous.
Silence
How do you feel about silence? Does it make you uncomfortable or do you like it?
I love silence. I am very comforted in this place.
I embrace it and return to this place at least once a day. In this space, one can encounter the infinite. Within us all there is a silence in the gaps between our thoughts.
I once read…
“Within us all, there is a quiet place we can go and be ourselves”. I remember thinking, “this can’t be too difficult”, and soon learned this is not always so. Somehow one can easily get lost going such a short distance. Like learning anything else, it requires persistence and practice.
When I am feeling “less than”, either physically or emotionally, I simply close my eyes and attempt to transcend to this place. In this place I am not limited or disabled. I simply am.
Some don’t enjoy silence. It may be a lonely place. It can be peaceful , liberating, irritating, scary or blissful.
As much as I love silence, I don’t really get to experience it. I have tinnitus in both ears, so there is always a slight ringing. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
Maybe I just love the concept of silence.
Author – James Joyce
Art Prompt: For February and March our project for art was to create a spirit animal or other structure that inspires. We used clay to make it three dimensional.
Writing – We had a few choices for writing.
1. Karma means action. One can think of it as Newton’s spiritual law. The difference is that karma is an equal and similar reaction. Every action, whether physical, mental or emotional, causes an emission of karma, which will bear fruit at some point. Write about Karma.
2. You have invented a time machine and set off to the time you would most love to visit.
3. Write about measuring time with something not expressly intended for that purpose, like cracks in a floor, scuffs on a boot, or weeds in the flowerbed.
The Dolphin by Alexis.
I chose a dolphin as my spirit animal because I like to swim. Until I was five years old, I lived near the Chesapeake Bay and would often go to the beach. Sometimes I would see dolphins, and I like how they are friendly and communicate. I have seen dolphin shows at the Baltimore Aquarium and am impressed by the tricks they do. I enjoy swimming in the pool at my building and seeing my neighbors. I painted the dolphin blue because it is my favorite color and reflects the water. Dolphins are very social and have fun spending time with friends, like I do.
A. R.
The Angel by Nicole.
I did the angel because I wear a guardian angel necklace that I wear and I have done so ever since my friend passed away. I wanted to make the angel to remind me that I have people looking out for me.
The bear I did because I found the bear cookie cutter and I just thought he was cute.
Measuring Time by Steven Collier.
I confess that in the last two years, time feels as though it has lost all meaning. As an individual who is at high risk of covid, living with two high-risk parents, I have been bunkered up at Collier Bluff for quite some time now, I seldom go outside anymore, except to walk my dogs. All of my social engagements, including this one are entirely digital. I am dimly aware of the passage of seasons outside my window, but I have been living in isolation so long it rarely even registers. There are just some days when the trees have leaves and others where they don’t. Every spring feels like an extension of the last one, rather than a new cycle. On some level, I think my brain still believes we’re in 2019 and the year just refuses to end.
As such, the only real indicator that life is happening somewhere in the world and that the march of time continues ever onward would be my allergies. Even if it doesn’t yet feel or look like spring to me, my sinuses are screaming another story. Every violent sneeze is another trumpet call heralding the arrival of the new season. Just as I can count on my leaf mold-induced migraines to welcome fall, and my chapped and bleeding skin let me know we hit winter. I wonder if this is a sign that I am truly getting old, and if soon I will only be aware of the weather only so far as which of my bones are aching today. There is a sense that things are happening around me, but there’s no internal drive to figure out how, much less when.
Days all feel the same, and months bleed into one another so insidiously that I rarely even notice. With my senses so diminished, the only real measurement of time I have is prestige television. Since quarantine has confined me to my home, my world has shrunk to only recognize the chronology of what I experience in this house. Spring of 2019 lasted Better Call Saul and most of Breaking Bad. That summer was longer, spanning the entirety of Game of Thrones. It was a bitter Fall that seemed to go on for an eternity of Sopranos episodes, but Winter brought with it a Twin Peaks binge. I only recently finished several cold months of Weeds, with Killing Eve just now bringing in a late thaw.
With nowhere to go, media has become one of my only escapes and with little else to distract me, it has slowly become an ever more vital part of my lived experience. When I used to watch shows, it was something I did alongside everything else in my life. Now, it feels too much like they are my life. They are my culture, my nightlife, my vacations, even my social life. I think I finally understand what it was to shuffle into the movie hall every week regardless of what was screening.
All of my friends are in the same boat. And that means it’s easy to put together online watch parties. In a weird way, it feels like reclaiming a part of my life. No, I didn’t watch Mad Men when it was new. But, I got to watch it adjacent to a lot of other people seeing it for the first time and that lead to a TON of discussions that I missed out on around the water cooler. With nowhere to go, we all go back to try and see what we missed.
Last year, I watched every NBC sitcom I didn’t have time to watch when I was in college. And I watched it with people with whom I used to go to school. It’s hard to stay temporally grounded, to remember it’s still 2022, when so much of your life revolves around watching 30 Rocks from 2008. This period of my life has felt chronologically confused as I ping pong between the latest episode of Ozark right back to The Office with equal ease. As I experience them, both shows are new, products of the current year. For me, most American TV didn’t really exist until the Pandemic. And, while I am very glad I saved myself something for a rainy day when I would need literal years of quality TV backlog, I worry it creates a weird kind of disconnect from anyone else who has seen these shows.
After all, I didn’t see the same Breaking Bad everyone else did. My Breaking Bad was antiquated and cliched by the time I got to it. Heck, it wasn’t even the first in its series for me. I apologize if I lose people here, but I saw it after Better Call Saul. So, for me and maybe me alone, Breaking Bad is an inferior sequel to a show that actually came out years after it. And so, I count my seasons by a TV schedule that could probably only exist at this particular moment in time. Where Black Mirror was a sister show to Dead Wood and Tony Soprano seems to be a response to Trump’s America. I think there’s something fitting about quarantine time only being measurable by that which is itself displaced in time. Like one who is lost at sea and the only things to grab hold of are your fellow pieces of flotsam. But still I drift ever onward across still waters and violent storms, hoping that this Spring of The Crown will finally see me to a port…or at least another season of Russian Doll.
Family – by Laura.
I wanted to make something to symbolize my family, and the ducks seemed like a fun choice. We like doing nature walks and watching the birds, so that gave me inspiration when thinking of what to sculpt with the clay.
Spirit animal for Momma Kim. Clay bear modeled on Momma’s college bear.
Storytellers had a guest presenter for December. Craig donated his time and materials to our group and help everyone created fresh table pieces for our holidays. Thank you Craig!
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