HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Today’s mail brings a note from Elizabeth Ellis, one of my very favourite storytellers.

I thought you might like to know that I am
a. doing a conference call for the NSN's Healing Story Alliance tonight and
b. doing a keynote for the Timpanogos Storytelling Conference in Utah in February.
The topic for both of these things is HOPE: Storytelling in Economic Hard Times.
In each I am going to talk about the importance of the artist in helping a community maintain Hope and how essential it is to think about that responsibility
in these financial hard times. Gonna ask folks to look for the blessing in our current situation and remind them that many of their listeners are grieving
people.”

Now there is nothing I would rather do than hear a presentation by Elizabeth ellis. My enthusiasm wouldn’t be dampened, even if it was a presentation about taking responsibility and being careful. Regrettably, I won’t hear this presentation, but it has got me thinking.

So here we go now, into a time of great uncertainty where so many people fear that the comfortable future they envisioned will be swept away by financial melt down.

And here I go now remembering so many conversations from my youth and young adulthood, proudly told stories By people who somehow lived
Through the Great depression.

And I wonder if the people who are grieving in 2009 would fine comfort in the stories about how people made it through the Great Depression.