Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
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To move my target audience to action, I'd needed to ignite their passion, and to do that I had to put them inside the experience I was offering, not just the business plan. The keys to the kingdom weren't and never could be purely informational.
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Upcoming
Workshops
in 2012
Advanced Interp Writing
Oct. 7-12
Wallace Falls Lodge
Gold Bar, WA
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Stories don't vanish in the ash
The quote stopped me cold.
"...all those stories gone, lost in the fire."
And I thought: No, the stories aren't gone; they're never gone. The stuff is gone, the houses--259 of them--are gone, but the stories are not gone.
Maybe they're harder to remember. When we have an object to carry the story--Grandpa's pitchpipe, Aunt Lena's miniature teacup collection, the sewing machine you've lugged around since college--we have a known starting point. An object can be a literal touchstone that embodies memory, holding the code that unlocks the story.
But the object is not the story.
I'm fixing supper when I hear the screen door creak open and clack shut. Kris appears first, wearing heavy-duty green and tan camo that hides the fire grime but not her weariness. The upper half of her face is streaked gray with ash and dried sweat; the lower half is gray, too, stippled like a five o'clock shadow. I wonder if she quit wearing her dust mask--I can see where the line of it sealed against her cheeks and chin--or if the dirt's from rubbing the sweat as she worked.
Earl's right behind, same green and tan, same face grime pattern. He moves carefully, as if trying to avoid dislodging the dust from his clothes in the kitchen.
He opens his palm, displaying tiny pieces of something hard and off-white. Not ash.
"Concrete," he says, shaking his head in disbelief.
Kris and Earl weren't newbie ranchers with unrealistic dreams when they moved to the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colorado. They knew this was fire and wind and blizzard country, and they did everything right: ample clearance, metal roof, walls rated for 100 mph wind shear, concrete foundation and siding. Concrete. Their house and barn burned anyway, though the capricious wildfire spared the log homes perched on the ridge just beyond their property.
The concrete fragments, smaller than sleet, carry the story of hope, a house well-built, and the ferocity of nature. But the concrete is not itself the story of the home, its inhabitants, or raging wildfires.
They did everything right when they evacuated, too: llamas taken to evac centers and from there to host ranches who continue to care for them. Cattle guard dogs (so large we call them "donies"--dogs the size of ponies) to kennels and homes of friends who have more secure fencing than mine. One cat to a cousin's; the other, which hid when it was time to go, presumed (but not proven, as it's quickly pointed out) lost in the fire.
In a few days, a group called Samaritan's Purse will descend on the place that used to be their house and barn and, against all odds, will find Earl's wedding ring in a tiny clay plate buried under ash and rubble. It's a triumph, of sorts. Their marriage has endured for 44 years, which some might consider a bit of a miracle in today's world. The ring survived--another small miracle--and my friends will survive too.
Through its metaphors, the ring carries the story of an enduring relationship, the hope for recovery, the amazing things that can happen when 40 strangers come together to help. But the ring is not the relationship, the recovery, or the community.
 At the disaster recovery center, Kris stumbles across an old quilt. It's stained and discolored here and there, but beautiful. A volunteer tells her, "Oh, that's the rag pile." Kris points out the precise hand-stitching, explains briefly about the pattern. "You're welcome to take it," the volunteer says.
Later, Kris tells me about the quilts her grandmothers made, hand-stitched, well-loved, passed down to her, reminders of the safe havens those women created, now vanished in the maw of fire. She sways as she hugs the replacement quilt, and we wait while the grief washes through her. Later, I tell her about my mother's quilts, and later still, I email my mother and ask if she'd be willing to sew a new quilt for my friends. My mother says she'd begun thinking about making one as soon as she heard the news, long before I thought to ask.
Stories endure, even when everything else has burned to ash.
The house is gone; there is no denying that.
But the story of the house remains.  | | Glass mug partially melted by the High Park fire, June 2012 |
Judy
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Interp Writing News
Advanced Interpretive Writing Workshop
This 4-day workshop comes around only once every few years. Oct 7-12, 2012, Wallace Falls Lodge, Gold Bar, WA (about an hour from Seattle). Don't miss this opportunity to radically improve your writing and make fast progress on your project or program, regardless of genre or medium.
New 2-day Interp Writing Workshops in 2013
In addition to coauthoring a new book on interpretive writing, John Veverka and I are revamping my 2-day workshop, Inside Interpretive Writing. We'll be team teaching it, too, so in addition to new content, you'll get more personalized attention!
WE'RE LOOKING FOR HOST SITES: We want to keep the cost for the new workshops as low as possible, and host sites are a great way to help do that. Whether you're thinking about a writing workshop specifically for your site, staff, and/or volunteers or one that's open to all comers, let's talk! Call me at 888/886-9289 (toll-free) or send me an email.
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John Cleese on Creativity
One of my favorite topics is creativity--and one of my favorite actors and writers is John Cleese. This 36-minute presentation is worth every second.
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