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Comment by Kenneth Weber on February 11, 2011 at 1:18pm

PART 3: “A SHORT STORY ABOUT…STORYTELLING…MUSIC”

 

One very important part of storytelling that I omitted in my last installments, and there probably were many others, is music and songs. It is probably one of the most popular methods of storytelling around the world. I would guess that it is even more popular and more used for storytelling than the printed word.

An example of how true this is: When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph for making recordings; he called it a “talking machine.” Yet, I grew up in the time when phonograph records were still grooved disc recordings and not CD’s, and I noticed that almost all of the recordings that I had were music of various kinds. Sure I had some story records, the best of which was a story called “The Little Lame Lamb,” recorded by actress May Martin on Disney records, and the classic of them all, “Peter and the Wolf,” by Prokofiev which told a story using different music for each of the characters in the story. But, most of my records were music and songs. But as I look back now, I realize that songs are often stories put to music.

There are classic blues songs like “My Grandfather’s Clock,” about a clock that sopped the moment that its owner died, “Old Blue,” about an owner and his beloved dog. (I am probably showing my age here.) There is also country western, jazz, classical, etc. and of course all the holiday songs of various kinds.

And then there are musicals! When I grew up there were a lot of movie musicals being made, and they became my favorite type of movie. Naturally the songs in musicals are each stories in themselves, and they also help tell the overall story in each musical. For instance, in “The Wizard of OZ,” “Over the Rainbow,” tells of a girls dreams of a far off land away from the problems of her life, and of course the scarecrow, tin man, and lion each sang their own stories of wanting a brain, a heart, and courage. And then the lions song “If I Were the King of the Forest” ends in a memorable way. As he sings of others who are courageous, he asks, “What is it that they’ve got that I haven’t got?” All the others reply, “Courage!” and the lion says, “You can say that again!”

Musicals were sometimes even educational. “Fiddler On the Roof,” taught about Jewish traditions and ways of life. And I remember seeing the movie with a group of friends. At the end of the movie as the Jewish families are being driven from their homes, a Jewish friend of mine leaned over to me and said that this was how his ancestors came to America.

So, please excuse me for omitting music as a way of storytelling in my last posts.

If anyone else has another method of storytelling that I omitted, please feel free to write in and make a post here in this group.

God Bless All Of You,
Ken Weber

Comment by Kenneth Weber on February 10, 2011 at 5:32pm

PART 2:  “A SHORT STORY ABOUT…STORYTELLING.”

In my last post, I began telling a story about…well, about storytelling itself. It was a short story about how storytelling probably came to be and a short history about how it changed and developed through the years. I said that I wanted each of you, while reading this, to think of how your unique way of doing things could contribute to something new in ways stories are told or presented. I had just gotten to the point where I said that pictures that accompanied the stories were going to begin to MOVE!

It probably began with someone with a large pad of paper who started drawing pictures on each sheet of paper in the pad, and each picture was slightly different from the one before it. When this person flipped through the pad of paper rapidly, he saw that the pictures seemed to move. He showed these “flip pictures” to his friends, and they became popular. Someone even created a type of machine that flipped through the pictures automatically. But, these machines only allowed one person at a time to view the pictures, and other people started working on ways to project these “movies” onto a screen so many people could view them at a time.

Thus the motion picture was born, and soon it became the new way of storytelling. Movie theaters popped up around the world, and soon audiences began experiencing the stories instead of just reading them. The addition of sound, color, a wide screen, and even things like 3-D made movies and the stories they told more of an experience.

Then the development of a thing called television brought the world, storytelling, and movies into our homes. In a way, it had sort of brought things full circle. Stories had probably been invented with a small group of people living together, and now it had conveniently been brought back into the homes of people living together. Television changed storytelling again in just as big of a way as movies had. And now being able to rent or buy videos and DVD’s have brought entire movies into the home.

The internet has become the most recent method of communicating and writing, and it is faster and farther reaching than any form of writing before. It is also now a new method of storytelling. Youtube is an excellent example of this. A story can be put out there INSTANTLY for people around the world to see!!! It can be in the form of text or in picture and sound form. It has become the newest form of storytelling. But, it won’t be the last….NO IT WILL DEFINITELY NOT BE THE LAST FORM OF STORYTELLING!!! (Actually my family introduced me to NetFlix in which movies can be watched on your computer or game console!)

Maybe one of you will create or invent something new that has never been done before! Maybe you will be responsible for the next development in communication or storytelling! Maybe you will be the next person to take storytelling to a new height!

Just think about it. This is my thought for the day.

Oops! I think that I forgot to talk about a major type of storytelling! Can any of you figure out what I forgot? I will write about it in an upcoming post.

Good Luck!!!
God Bless All Of You,
Ken Weber

 

Comment by Kenneth Weber on February 9, 2011 at 4:39pm

PART 1: “A SHORT STORY ABOUT…STORYTELLING.”

As you read this installment, please consider unique contributions that you can make that are distinctive to you, or are different from what anyone else has done before. Also, sit back and enjoy these next two posts. I don’t think I have done this type of post before. (Please forgive anything that is out of order historically.)

The crowd, which consisted of adults and children both male and female, sat around the fire. A man sitting in the crowd was talking, telling a story of a young boy and his adventures hunting huge beasts, the likes of which had never been seen before. Everyone in the crowd sat in rapt attention…listening…with mouths open…

It is probably in such a setting that storytelling began in the early times of our existence on the earth. But, oh my…how storytelling has changed…and continues to change!!! After awhile, another man in this same crowd probably improved on this storytelling technique by taking the crowd into a nearby cave and showing paintings he had made of these beasts…the likes of which had never been seen before...but could now be seen and imagined.

Time passed, and a technique was developed of something called writing. People gained the ability to write down things that were said, and one of the types of things written down were the stories that had once only been told verbally. Now stories began spreading to more and more people over greater distances. Some of these stories were just composed of writing, but some had drawn pictures of the things that were being talked about in the stories. Some of these stories told of things that had happened to certain people. Other stories told of fantastic or fanciful things. Thus, myths, fairy tales, and folk lore developed.

Someone soon wanted to tell stories in a new way, and got a group of his friends together, and they started acting out stories in front of other people. As this type of storytelling gained in popularity, people in different areas began building structures with stages where these stories could be acted out…and stage plays came into being.

As civilization developed, so did science…and suddenly storytellers had something new…something that came to be known as science fiction. Stories came to be written about voyages to the moon and the planets and journeys to the center of the earth, among other things.

In the midst of all of this, inventions were created which advanced storytelling. A device called the printing press came into being, and stories were now able to be printed and distributed over wider areas. And a device called a camera was able to actually capture images on sheets of glass and film, and soon these images were able to be transferred to paper as illustrations to what was being written about. …and storytelling grew in ways that had been unimaginable in the past.

But something was about to happen which would change storytelling forever, in really unique ways. Because of the work of various scientists, those pictures that now accompanied the texts and stories were going to begin to MOVE!!!

To be continued...

As I continue this story in my next installment, please consider contributions that you as an author or teacher can make to storytelling. Maybe you have something to contribute that is different than what anyone else before has contributed. Maybe your way of telling a story will be new, maybe you will develop a new way of visualizing a story. Maybe the type of story you tell will be different from anyone else’s stories. (One of my recent posts said to dare to be unique.) Consider that you could make some historical change in how stories are told or presented.

My thought for the day.
God Bless All Of You,
Ken Weber

Comment by Kenneth Weber on January 16, 2011 at 4:26am

I just posted a story as a blog called, "Countdown For Littleton." It is a sequel to my blog story, "The Great Tiger Of Littleton." Both stories have messages of unity and living for the sake of others that can be used in teaching. Where "The Great Tiger of Littleton" teaches about how strength can come from people being united with each other, "Countdown For Littleton" stresses how civilization can progress if everyone would live for the sake of others instead of living selfish lives. I hope that everyone finds these lessons valuable.

 

God Bless Everyone,

Ken Weber

Comment by saori ureta on December 27, 2010 at 7:29am

That is truly valuable way to teach!

Comment by Kenneth Weber on December 27, 2010 at 6:33am

TEACHING MY SUNDAY SCHOOL CHILDREN ABOUT FATHER

I just posted a new blog called, "My Experiences With Father Part Two: A Lesson In Taking Father's Words Seriously." This, along with other blogs that I have posted about my experiences with Father, are often lessons that I teach to my Sunday School class. I always relate these lessons to my children in a very interactive way, such as when I tell that Father folded his arms when he was angry for no one asking him how we could do the revival meetings that he had casually mentioned. I stand in front of my class with my arms folded and look at my class in the same way as Father looked at us. Then I show the class pictures of things like Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, and the Washington Monument, all rallies that came after this one casual comment that Father made after a speech at the Washington D.C. center back in the early 70's.

 

Using personal experiences that we teachers have had with Father is very valuable to the children. It then becomes more than a lesson that "Father did this," or "Father did that." Since it is from a real experience, it becomes real to the children. And the more the lesson is acted out, the more real these experiences with Father become  to the children.

Comment by Kenneth Weber on December 16, 2010 at 3:19pm

I am presently posting a two part story in the blog section called "Robin's Wings." It is a story about spirit world and life after death. The first part is very emotional and sad. But the second part takes you on a symbolic journey into the spirit world.

 

This is a story that I have used many times over the years in teaching Sunday School. Feel free to use it whenever you teach or tell stories to children.

 

God Bless All Of You,

Ken Weber

Comment by Kenneth Weber on December 4, 2010 at 2:23pm

MY EXPERIENCE SUBMITTING SOMETHING TO LULU.COM FOR PUBLICATION.

As I have said before, technology is much different now than when I first started writing. Someone told me that I could go to Lulu.com and submit stories in PDF format to have them published as e-books or other ways. Today, I gave it a try. I submitted my story, "The Littlest Disciple," as an experiment to see what is involved in the process, and to see what will happen. If you want to see the story listed on Lulu, you can go to my profile page at"

http://lulu.com/spotlight/kweber

I encourage all writers to try out different things like this. It is the first time that I have tried something like this. The way the story is submitted is as an e-book that is sold one copy at a time to people who order it. You submit your stories in PDF format exactly as you want it to appear, and it is published in the same way you submit it.

I know that we have writers in our group here. I recommend that you go to lulu.com and check them out. Doing e-books is free, and you get a percentage of each sale. I am going to look into other services that lulu.com has.

God Bless Everyone,
Ken Weber

Comment by Kenneth Weber on November 28, 2010 at 2:52pm

Today, another story of mine was posted as a blog: "A Little Boy's Question; Is There Life After Death?" I am going to share the comment that I put under it just now: "This is just a note. Today at church, I literally performed this story for my Sunday School class. I acted out the parts of the father and the son, and as I told the story I walked around the room interacting personally with each one of the children. There were also some parents present with their children, and the parents got just as much enjoyment out of it as their children.

As I have said before, I do not believe in lecturing to the children. I interact with them as much as possible. Also, adults enjoy what I do as much as the children. "

Feel free to use this story or any story that I have written. I hope that children you tell it to get as much enjoyment out of it as my children did.

God Bless All Of You,
Ken Weber

Comment by Kenneth Weber on November 26, 2010 at 11:07am

Dear Sandy,

As Diana states in her comment to my blog, we are very different. Actually, we did a lot of writing after our blessing in 1975. The 1800 Couples had to set conditions of separation and going to different countries, etc. Even though neither of us went on a foreign mission (Diana almost went, however) we were separated for over 6 years before we started our family. We wrote and sent tapes to each other constantly, and through our letters and tapes we got to know each other so well that, when we came together, it was as if we had never been apart.

But, yes, this is the first public love letter that I have ever written to her. She was a bit embarrassed, but very grateful.

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