Story Route - Cathryn Wellner » Stories

Riding backwards

storyroute admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:46:15 +0000

Some of you already know I’m a longtime fan of Story People. Brian Andreas’s little stories seem simple. But try to write a tiny story that says so much. Not as easy as it looks.

For Valentine’s Day this year, he created a couple videos with his whimsical, colorful, joyous illustrations.

This one reminds me of one of the delicious stories of the Mullah Nasruddin. One day he was riding his donkey backward. The villagers asked him why.

“I am not sitting backward on the donkey,” he said. “The donkey is facing the wrong way.”

The Mullah Nasruddin even has his own Facebook page now. You’ll find lots of his stories there. If you want more, check some of the other transliterated spellings, which can be found in the Wikipedia article cited above.

Old Homeland Security

storyroute admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:39:21 +0000

I first heard this folktale from Heather Forrest many years ago. In her version a peasant crosses the border every day for ten years. The border guard knows he is smuggling something but can never figure out what. Only when the official has retired does he learn what the man was smuggling .

Here’s a YouTube version of that same tale:

Some Kind of Ride

storyroute admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:18:48 +0000

Just before I launched myself on yet another adventure, dear friends gave me a copy of Brian Andreas’s Traveling Light. My life’s been richer ever since. I now have a collection of StoryPeople books and start every day with one of the whimsical stories Andreas sends to his subscribers. (Click here to sign on.) Now I’ve also become one of his thousands of Facebook fans and plan to check out his blog.

Back in the days when I was working for a large bureaucracy, loving my job but sometimes bogged down in the molasses of The Way Things Are, my screen saver was one of Brian Andreas’s little stories: “feels like some kind of ride but it turns out just to be life going absolutely perfectly.”

Here’s good advice from the StoryPeople Web site:

We believe the power of stories will bring a new world into being. It’s the work we do and it’s work that matters to us. To all of us. Tell your stories. Listen to the stories others tell. Imagine without limit. Remind & inspire & remember.