Every Day A Holiday: A storyteller's memoir - Softcover

Ellis, Ms. Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1624910408 ISBN 13: 9781624910401

Publisher: Parkhurst Brothers Publishers Inc, 2014

Synopsis

“Elizabeth Ellis’s words jump off the page and into the secret part of your heart where you keep treasured memories and sacred feelings. She sings to you of her life and the lives of others with whom she intersects. Compassionate and thought provoking, an Appalachian/Texan with a whole-world point of view with a little rabble rousing thrown in, Elizabeth Ellis is a true master of the written and spoken word.”
 
                --Robin Bady, Storyteller, Arts Educator, Brooklyn, New York

About this title

From the Author

AN INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH ELLIS
 
The title of this book says that it is a storyteller's memoir”. When did you become a storyteller?
 
The truest answer to that question is that I have been a storyteller all my life. I think I came out of the womb telling stories.  As a child, I needed to talk as much as I needed to breathe.  I got in trouble at school every day. Every single solitary day. Always for the same thing: talking too much. My teachers often said to me, What on earth will you do when you grow up? All you do is run your mouth.” I am grateful that I thought of something.
 
In 1969 came to Dallas to work for the Dallas Public Library.  Storytelling was the part of my job I liked the best. Some days it was the only part I liked.  In 1978 I attended the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee with my old friend Gayle Ross.  We had never heard of anyone making their living as a storyteller.  On the long car ride back to Texas, we kept saying, We could do that.  We could do that.” About the time we crossed the bridge that spans the Mississippi River, We could do that.” turned into I'll do it if you will.”  By the time we got to Dallas the decision was pretty much made that we would quit our regular jobs and become professional storytellers.
 
Did each of you embark on a solo storytelling career?
 
No, we began as tandem storytellers, telling together as the Twelve Moon Storytellers. We had heard The Folktellers (Barbara Freeman and Connie Reagan Blake) at the Festival. Their work had a big influence on us. At the time I don't think either of us would have had the nerve to start out on our own.  It felt much safer to have a partner when jumping off the cliff, a sort of Butch and  Sundance  concept, though I wouldn't want to venture which one of us was Butch, and which was Sundance.
 
How long did you work together?
 
Four or five years.  It was so hard to get work as a storyteller back then it was impossible to make enough money to support our needs. I had kids. Gayle had a horse. They all needed shoes.  We needed to go our separate ways in order to pay the bills.  Each of us has developed a solo career. Gayle has become a widely respected Cherokee storyteller, focusing most of her energy on sharing Cherokee stories and culture.
 
Did you hear a lot of stories when you were a child?
 
Yes, I was lucky enough to have a childhood filled with stories. My grandfather, I.H.Gabbard, was a circuit riding preacher. He might have a dozen or more churches he would travel to in a month's time.
In those days travel was hard in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. He could not go home every night, so he would go home with a family from the church and spend the night with them.  That was a pretty standard practice back in those days.  That meant he was a guest in many people's homes in the days before radio and television were common.  He would listen to the stories at one home and tell them in another home in another community the next night or the following weekend.  He did not collect stories like a folklorist would. He recorded them in his head and his heart.  When I was a little girl, I thought every one's grandfather knew hundreds of stories.
 
His daughter, my aunt Ida Gabbard Moore, was an wonderful storyteller, too. She knew and told a lot of the old fairy tales. The stories she told were different from my Grandfather's. She was the most loving person I have ever known.
 
Have you always been a writer, too?
 
Yes, I have been fascinated by the concept of writing all my life.  As a little girl I was in love with every aspect of it. I mean every aspect of it! When other little girls were playing with their dolls, I was collecting fountain pens and nib pens. I asked for them for Christmases and birthdays. I made pens out of turkey feathers, too. I did chores for other people to make the money to buy ink. I needed lots of it. But, mostly I made the ink I used. I made it from polk berry juice and walnut hulls and any other plant material I could lay my hands on.  As I got older I worked on the colors and the texture, trying to get them just right. Then I discovered the joys of invisible ink. No lemon was ever safe in my presence! I tried to make paper too, but those experiments were always a dismal failure.
 
I wrote stories throughout my childhood that were original folktales”. As a teenager I graduated to writing teen romance stories. Writing was the private face of storytelling for me. My early experiences with sharing my stories with other people weren’t very positive, so mostly I kept them to myself.  As I have gotten older I have gotten bolder about sharing what I have written with others, but I still get frightened when doing it.
 
Are all the stories in this book stories you have told?
 
I have stories I tell from the stage. I have lots more stories that I tell informally. The Old Christmas” story is the one I tell informally. Though I have told it many times, I have never shared it from the stage. The others have all been part of public performances.
 
How does your family feel about being the subject of your stories?
 
I think of much of my work as being verbal memoir”.  I want to tell and write that which will have meaning for other people.  Sometimes that requires dipping into subjects that my family members may wish I would keep silent about. Each of them has their own level of need for privacy.  I know they have not always been happy with what I have told about them. In some cases it has made them wary of me or driven a wedge between us for a time.  It may not seem that way to them, but I work hard to be respectful of their needs. There are lots of stories I choose not to share because of their feelings.  There is always the tension between being true to the demands of my art and being true to the needs of my family.
 
What is the difference between telling a story and setting it down on paper?
 
When you tell a story you have your tone of voice, your facial expressions and your gestures to help you communicate. When you are writing the same story, you must find a way to do with words all those things that gesture, expression and other non-verbal clues have helped you accomplish.  It takes a lot more words on paper to tell the same story you have shared verbally.
 
One of the major differences is the level of patience that is needed if you are a writer. When you are telling stories, you have listeners right in front of you.  You can tell if what you are sharing is being understood.  You can see if they are restless or bored. You have the immediate response of laughter, fright or tears. Writing is a solitary pursuit. You probably will never even meet most of your readers. You get no immediate feedback. You have to imagine it for yourself as you go along. Any feedback that comes to you is likely to happen long after the writing process has been completed. So I think writers have to be far more patient people than storytellers are.
 
Have you published other books?
 
Yes, I have a book about the crafting of stories titled From Plot to Narrative.It was published by Parkhurst Brothers in 2012. I think of it as being a handbook for creating stronger stories of all kinds.  Back in 2002, Loren Niemi and I co-authored Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories.(August House). It is about sharing traditional, historical or personal stories that are hard to tell or listen to, those that deal with subjects we find difficult to confront.
 
Do you have other book projects planned?
 
I have several ideas for books I would like to do.  But, there is no definite plan for what might happen next. We'll have to see what happens.
 

From the Back Cover

"A glorious, memorable brew of witty, irreverent, profoundly wise, and deeply sacred autobiographical tales, served up in Elizabeth’s lyrical, insightful, humorous style.  Here we have written proof that the divine Miss E is both a master storyteller and an unofficial national treasure."
                --Geraldine Buckley, storyteller and pastor, Frederick, MD

"Elizabeth Ellis's gift, and a rare gift it is, is to illuminate the universal through her honest explorations of the deeply personal.   Sometimes hilarious, sometimes powerful and moving, her stories are always true to her own journey and her own remarkable storyteller's voice."
  
                --Gayle Ross, Circle of Excellence storyteller and author, Cherokee Nation, OK
“Elizabeth Ellis has long been one of my favorite tellers, especially when it comes to her personal stories. I don't know of anyone who can do a better job of crafting and then telling the sort of down-home, engaging, amusing, moving, and thought-provoking tales that characterize her performances and stick to you like a burr.”
 
                --Joseph Bruchac, Circle of Excellence storyteller and author, Greenfield Center, NY
 
"From her childhood in Appalachia to her adult life in Texas, Elizabeth Ellis has soaked up life's big stories, re-shaped them with compassion and wisdom, and now retells them with humor, honesty, and gentleness.  Readers and listeners can do no better than to sit at her feet, feeling glad to be human and ready to be kind."
 
                --Jimmy Neil Smith, Founder of the National Storytelling Festival (USA), Jonesborough, TN
 
"Elizabeth Ellis is pure psychic of a storyteller.  She somehow is able to always appropriately comfort the afflicted or afflict the comfortable...often at the same time!"
 
                --Donald Davis, Circle of Excellence storyteller and author, Ocracoke, NC

About this edition

• Publisher: Parkhurst Brothers Publishers Inc
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1624910408
• ISBN 13: 9781624910401
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 134