Tonight is Christmas Eve and tomorrow many of us will be
opening gifts. Others of us opened
our last Hanukkah gifts last night.
We’ve all occasionally stopped unwrapping to affirm to one another that
the best gifts don't come in packages……health, love, etc.
This year, I’m very aware that I got
five precious, un-box-able gifts over the months leading up to our second
storytelling salon called “Foreign Correspondents: Immigrant Odysseys.” Five people shared their personal
stories with me and allowed me to help them shape 10-minute performance pieces
that they gave freely to an audience at the Media Center, November 20th.
Their stories included daring escapes from oppressive armies
and or poverty as well as amazing accomplishments - ranging from one septuagenarian
woman’s first time in a voting booth to one man’s involvement in the first moon
landing. It was a great privilege to be let into their lives and their stories were gifts that
they opened for me.
Four of them
presented their stories in the Media Center’s TV Studio. One had to cancel because his traumatic
story unleashed a terrifying wave of PTSD even 35 years later. He allowed me to tell a story about him
that included some of what he’d shared with me. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to know these five
neighbors of ours on a deeper level and I’m certain that the audience at our
salon felt the same way.
If you would like to receive another gift over these
holidays then I encourage you to open up one or more of the links below and
immerse yourself in the stories – no gift wrap to recycle. If you are surrounded by family and
your time is completely booked then I encourage you to sit down with a relative
and ask for their story. You’ll get a gift that will last your whole life.
Al
Kuhn recounts the amazing trajectory of his life.....from his family's escape
of Nazi Germany to a remote mountain in Bolivia...... and decades later helping
the US land a man on the moon.
Liz Gulevich tells a
captivating story about the empowerment of her immigrant mother during her
sunset years in Palo Alto, California.
Roberto Munoz shares
the details of his passage over the border from Mexico when he was 15.
Amber Stime tells how a
bomb altered her life path from Ethiopia to Minnesota.
This is a story I told
(with permission) about one of our storytellers who had to withdraw from the
event due to the PTSD his story triggered.
The stories are part of
a larger project called Made Into America featuring
an archive of family stories of immigration throughout US history. Come
visit the web site and read about some of your neighbors. You can even
subscribe to the site to get new (mostly written) stories as they appear (never
more than one a day).
shared by Elliot Margolies of the Media Center
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