Thanks to everyone who came out to welcome us back to Zoom. When our first venue closed a few years ago it took me three months to find a place for us to tell again. This time, we had Zoom to go back to and we didn’t miss a single show. I was obviously a bit rusty on my Zoom hosting as I  inadvertently disabled the chat feature. I’ll figure out what I did before the next show so folks can leave nice messages for the tellers again. Chat room love is my favorite part of Zoom.

In spite of my rustiness, we still had a great show. We started out with Tracey showing us a chart that described the odds of someone getting married based on their age. I immediately noticed that my age wasn’t even on the chart. Thirty seconds into her story and Tracey had already told me that I’m going to die alone in an empty house and my body will be discovered by a delivery person. Luckily, things worked out for Tracey. Not so much for me. I guess I’ll have to make friends with the UPS guy now. 

Dawn, our first first-timer of the night, came next and told a great story about a haunted Harry Potter room she stayed in at a literary-themed hotel in Oregon. Was it really haunted? Who knows. But Moaning Mertyle certainly had her way with her that day. There’s no other way to interpret being pelted with shampoo and conditioner bottles than to assume that Hogwarts is messing with you. Expelliarmus!

Beverly was next with a kosher chicken horror story that I will be thinking about for a long time. Who knew chicken soup could start off so violently? Thank you, Beverly, for staying up late on the east coast and sharing that story with us. Three people turned vegan by the end of the night.

Raney, another first-timer, told a sweet story of a friend who was there for her in high school and ran with her every step of the way when she had to run her first mile in gym class. Everyone needs a friend like that to help them push through the times when we just want to quit. 

Zoe was next with a story of all the lessons she learned from acting in NYC in the 60s. Zoe told her story with perfect pacing and energy and illustrated the second lesson in her story. Pretend you have nothing to lose. Imagine waking up every day and going through your life as though you had nothing to lose. Think what you could accomplish! Zoe also introduced us to a casting agent named Vinny Googliotti. Has there ever been a more perfect name than Vinny Googliotti? No, there has not.

Shreya, our third first-timer, told a wonderful story about learning to geocache when she came to Seattle and what it feels like when someone catches you looking for something you can’t explain. Turns out that in the end, sometimes strangers are the treasures we’re searching for. Shreya just discovered us last month and I’m so happy she’s already telling stories. This only happens because we have the most supportive audiences I’ve ever seen. Thank you all for making it such a great place for people like Shreya to tell their first stories 🙂

Gretchen, who has been all over Seattle stages telling stories lately, was up next with a story of slowly losing her dad to Alzheimer’s. I hope we all take the time to say what we need to say to the people we love. If you’re lucky like Gretchen, you might get a moment with your dad where you see through the disease to the person inside. You never know when the last time is the last time. 

Matias, another first-timer, was next with a story of almost losing his mind during Covid isolation. I think I could have told Matias’ story myself with how much his state of mind mirrored my own during the beginning of the pandemic. Is there a helpline for existential crises? An ER for dark thoughts? There should be. I’m glad you survived, Matias. I would love for you to come back and tell more stories with us.

Deborah was next with a beautiful story about gratitude for finding storytelling and everything she’s gained from sharing her stories over the years. She said telling stories changes how she sees the world. I couldn’t agree more. Not only that, but it’s a great way to share your life with the world. Deborah, by the way, helps run 7Stories a great new storytelling show in Burien. Check it out when you have a chance. The more places we have to tell stories the better we get at telling stories. http://burienculturehub.org/7stories

Stephanie was our final teller. She told the story of hosting her son’s 19th birthday party, a year after he took his own life. It was a story of gratitude for all the people who showed up to share that day with her. There’s a moment in her story where she and her friends wrote messages to her son and attached them to balloons that they released into the sky. I’m still thinking about all those messages floating up into the sky. It was a beautiful moment in a heartbreaking story. Sometimes that’s what stories give us. A moment of beauty, a minute of respite from the pain we’re living with. Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing your story and reminding us of that.

Our next show is August 18th. The theme is “Best Intentions.” It’ll probably be on Zoom again unless something magical happens and I find a new place for us in the next couple of weeks. I have lots of places to check out and lots of people to call and we’ll be back together in person as soon as I can make it happen. FGS will always be free for everyone so I’m looking for places that won’t charge us. In the meantime, we’ll keep it on Zoom and get to hear stories from around the country 🙂

Take care.

I’ll get the invite out for the next show as soon as I can.

See you on the 18th!

Paul

Freshgroundstories at gmail dot com

Hi Everyone,

If you haven’t heard already, Starbucks is closing five stores in Seattle and one of them Is the Olive Way store where we do our show. I talked to Halley the manager there and she said they can’t guarantee they’ll be open this Thursday. So I’m taking the show back to Zoom until I find a new venue. 

I’ll be looking high and low for a new place to hold our shows in person. I’ll try to keep it centrally located so none of us have to drive too far to get to it. Until then, well be back on Zoom so we don’t miss any shows. The good part is that we’ll be able to hear stories again from all the people from around the world who we met when we were on Zoom before. We heard stories from Germany, India, Australia, and all over the US. 

I’m including this Thursday’s Zoom info at the bottom of this post.

In the meantime, I’m telling a story tonight at Unexpected Productions with one of our new FGS tellers, Zac. It’ll be the last time you see me in person for a while. Come on down if you want to see storytelling and improv. It will also be the first time Zac tells a story live on stage. He’s told with us twice on Zoom but this will be the first time he stares into the eyes of strangers while he shares a story. Come see him tell the story about the worst camping trip ever. Trust me. It’s the worst. You have never had this happen on a camping trip. You don’t want to miss this.

Here is the Zoom info for our show on Thursday:

Topic: FGS: Two themes this month. Stories of “Gratitude” or “Lessons Learned”

Time: Jul 21, 2022 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83874834295?pwd=b3lZbHAvUk9GU0JiaUtSQ094R2FHQT09

Meeting ID: 838 7483 4295

Passcode: 509468

One tap mobile

+12532158782,,83874834295#,,,,*509468# US (Tacoma)

+16699006833,,83874834295#,,,,*509468# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location

        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)

        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

        +1 669 444 9171 US

        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

        +1 646 931 3860 US

        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)

        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

Meeting ID: 838 7483 4295

Passcode: 509468

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcFgezXDf

Email me if you’d like to tell a story that night. We have some great tellers lined up but we still have room for a few more 🙂

Paul

Freshgroundstories at gmail dot com

Hi Everyone,

Our free monthly workshop is coming up this Sunday, July 10. It’s a great way to get feedback on a story you’re working on.

https://www.meetup.com/fresh-ground-stories-storytelling-workshop/events/286400818/

I’m looking forward to seeing you all two weeks from now on July 21 for our next show. We have two themes to choose from on that night “Lessons Learned” or “Gratitude”. Here’s the invite to learn more:

https://www.meetup.com/fresh-ground-stories/events/286768699/

Let me know if you have any questions or want help on a story.

See you on the 21st!

Paul

Freshgroundstories at gmail dot com

This month we have two themes. Choose whichever one you’d like to tell a story on. The first theme is “gratitude.” The alternate theme is “lessons learned.” The hard part about the gratitude theme will be to wrap a story around it. We all have people we could thank in our lives but for the show, you’ll need a story about a time when they did the thing you’re thanking them for.

If I wanted to thank my friend Stephanie for getting me an interview for the job I still have 16 years later, I’d tell the story of how I was working in a small office supply store at the time where the owner was so mean he once threw someone’s paycheck on the floor just so they’d have to stoop down and pick it up. 

If I wanted to thank Mike Moto, one of the first comedians to take me on the road with him as an opener, I’d tell the story about the time he got the audience’s respect by challenging the biggest, loudest guy in the room to a pushup contest onstage. I’d probably end the story with the time I went onstage and purposely took three times longer to tell a story just to show the audience I wasn’t afraid of their silence. 

A few years ago at FGS, I talked about how grateful I was for two of my old friends from Alaska who came down to Los Angeles in 1987 to save me from that town and myself. I started the story with going to LA to search for the ghost of my mother and ended the story with an old man giving me a bag of plums. I might still be living in my car in Orange county trying to figure out what to do with my life if Chuck and Paul hadn’t come down to rescue me. 

This is your chance to thank someone for something they did that you still think about today. Remember that a story has to contain action. Some things have to physically happen to make it a story. Talk about what you were thinking or feeling when those things happened. That will build tension and give the audience a reason to care about the story. 

Remember to practice your story out loud on as many people as possible and time yourself when you’re doing it. All stories have to be under 8 minutes. Stories can be as short as you want but not over 8 minutes. If your story goes long, someone else who practiced for weeks might not get a chance to tell theirs. Stories also have to be clean in both language and content. Send me an email or give me a call if you have any questions about that.

The rest of the rules and guidelines are below: 

Storytelling Rules and Guidelines

Workshops are a great way to get feedback on a story you’re working on. Here is one I highly recommend. It’s run by two people who have told many times at FGS and other shows in the area:  https://www.meetup.com/Fresh-Ground-Stories-Storytelling-Workshop/ 

I’m also happy to help anyone on a story. Send me an email through Meetup or directly at freshgroundstories at gmail dot com and we can set up a phone call. 

Here are four short articles by one of my favorite storytellers with all kinds of good advice on the kind of stories we’re looking for at FGS:

https://jeff-simmermon.medium.com/?p=cc29027b8cd8

https://jeff-simmermon.medium.com/how-to-structure-a-funny-story-d1730535f81b

https://jeff-simmermon.medium.com/this-is-a-boring-shark-attack-8-rules-for-fascinating-storytelling-3b9d2bab6dca

https://jeff-simmermon.medium.com/this-ice-cream-will-heal-your-heartbreak-how-to-find-your-storys-north-star-b818f50250ab

This is the best book I’ve ever read on personal storytelling: 

https://www.amazon.com/Storyworthy-Engage-Persuade-Through-Storytelling/dp/B07GT7BMJV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=matthew+dicks&qid=1582788172&sr=8-1

Here is a short piece by the author of the book on what questions to ask yourself when you start working on a story (it’s about halfway down the blog post): https://mailchi.mp/104f63f44a5a/you-should-be-able-to-answer-this-question-before-ever-telling-your-story?e=a4dd06ea14 

I hope to see you on July 21 at 7 pm at the Olive Way Starbucks! 

Paul

Freshgroundstories at gmail dot com

Before I get to the show wrap-up I want to let you know that one of our tellers, Mary Anne Moorman, is doing a show with the amazing Go Janes this Saturday at Kenyon Hall in West Seattle. If you’ve never heard stories and music together you need to see this show. It’s magical. Either one of these acts is worth going to West Seattle for. But together? It’s a must-see! So go see’em 🙂

http://www.kenyonhall.org/

Ok, now that you’re back from buying those tickets and changing the course of your artistic life…thanks to everyone who came to our show last Thursday! I was worried that I hadn’t worded the theme in a way that would jog some memories and generate stories but we ended up with eight tellers that night which is a perfect number for us.

We started out with Gretchen, star of Moth Slams and Risk! shows lately, who told us how she went from Thanksgiving novice to a turkey-carving samurai. Along the way, she reminded us that it’s never really about the food. Thanksgiving and other food-focused holidays are always about the people we gather around us. Or as she puts it,  “It’s about the company, not the cuisine.”

Next up was our favorite metro bus driver Nathan. I’ve been trying to get Nathan back to FGS for years but his driving schedule keeps him on the road Thursday nights. I’ve been this close to getting everyone in the audience to hop on his bus for a few stops so he can tell a story while we drive around town but then we’d all need to get Ubers and cabs back to Starbucks so…the mobile show will have to wait. But one day I will make this happen! Nathan’s story that night was about a young woman riding his bus one day who handed him a note that said, “Making friends won’t hurt you.” Everyone at the show that night knows now that anyone who gives a note like that to a stranger she sees on the bus is absolutely not the person you want to be friends with. Turns out sometimes making a new friend can hurt you. 

Chris followed Nathen with the first chess story we’ve ever heard at FGS. Is there something about being good at chess that leads to having a big ego? Chris told a sweet comeuppance story about beating the 8th-grade chess master in her very first game of chess. I love stories about tiny victories we still remember decades later. Chris’s story was a great example of taking a single moment in time, one move on a chess board, and turning it into a story. 

David was next with a story that also happened many years ago. Thirty-nine years ago to be exact. It was about a time he got lost in a Costa Rican jungle and was convinced he was going to be eaten by a jaguar. Or, if you’ve read your son too many Winnie-the-Pooh stories, a jagular. Yes, every time David mentioned jaguar in his story, I was hearing jagular in my head. When David was done there were two thoughts running through my mind. One, that I need to find those old Pooh books and see if it really was a jagular. And two, that I need to start walking through jungles so I can get more near-death stories.

Quinn, who we also haven’t seen in years, made a surprise appearance that night and told a beautiful story about going from acting and dancing to violin repair to soon a career in law. Somewhere in the middle of her story she said, “I decided to cauterize the wound of my poverty with art.” Such a perfect sentence! I’m still thinking about it a week later. Quinn and Nathan, by the way, came up with their stories in the 30 minutes before the show began when I told them we only had five names in Mr. Coffee. If you had heard their stories you would have sworn they’d worked on them for weeks. We truly have some amazing people walk onto our stage each month. Thank you Quinn and Nathan for helping me out on short notice.

Deborah was next with another story that began decades earlier. This time it was about a heart-shaped box of candy that she wanted every Valentine’s Day when she was a kid but never received. Was the story about a box of candy? No, it was about how the dreams of youth don’t always measure up years later when you live them out as an adult. Of course, for me, it was also about the importance of laughter and not taking yourself too seriously.

Carolyn was up next with a hilarious story about entering the workforce with her college degree in 1978 and discovering that there were still a lot of barriers for a woman to overcome even with a college degree. Normally, this isn’t the type of story we tell at FGS but Carolyn told it so well and without veering into a TED talk that she kinda found a loophole in my “no politics” rule. In the 12 years FGS has been around, only one other person has been able to tell a story like this without turning it into a speech at the end. It’s wonderful to see when it works and terrible when it doesn’t. That night it was wonderful. Thank you, Carolyn, for keeping it a story. According to my calculations, we have to wait at least eight more years before anyone else can try this.

Our next teller was a complete surprise. Shreya, a young woman who had never told a story onstage before, was so inspired by the tellers she’d seen so far that she walked up to me during the show and asked if she could tell a story. I love it when this happens! We usually have too many tellers to add more during the show but that night I was able to get her in toward the end. She told the story of how she’d started over by moving to Seattle from another country and all the things she had done to try to make this her new home. I hope Shreya comes back in the future and tells more stories with us. The audiences at FGS shows are incredibly supportive of new tellers and it’s exciting for me personally to see someone discover this wonderful art form.

I was so happy to see another teller from the old days of FGS walk onstage next. Elliot finally returned and shared a sweet story about what it means to find a job where you’re treated like a human being. We’ve all had jobs where we were treated like a lump of coal and wondered how we were going to escape. It made me happy to see that Elliot was able to do just that. He’d started his job just a week or two earlier and we could see the excitement on his face when he talked about how good it felt to enjoy going to work every day. Thank you Elliot for sharing that with us.

Emily was our final teller and she told us about falling in love with Iceland. I’m smiling right now as I’m listening to her story again and hearing her say, “Jenny, I think I love it here. I think I’m supposed to be here.” Tomorrow, Emily’s wish is coming true. She’s going to Iceland for two months and performing her one-woman show, “Iceland Please Love Me” at the Reykjavik Fringe Festival. I’m so touched that she chose FGS to work on the stories she’s going to tell there. Emily is an amazing writer and storyteller and Iceland is lucky to have her. Here’s the link to her show if you’d like to read more about it: https://rvk.ssboxoffice.com/events/iceland-please-love-me/

Thanks again to all the tellers and everyone who showed up to support them. This is where we learn how to tell stories and we are lucky to have such fantastic audiences every month. We’re also lucky that Starbucks not only stays open for us three hours after they close, they also provide free drip coffee and pastries. This is a big deal. When we changed venues in 2019, they were the only ones in Seattle who offered us a free place to perform. I’ve kept FGS free for everyone to attend and perform because I think the world needs places like this to share stories. I couldn’t do that if I had to rent a space. That this coffee shop also gives us free coffee and pastries while their registers are closed so they can’t even make money while we’re there is amazing. If you’re ever in the area, please stop by and leave a good tip. It’s important to take care of people who take care of us.

That’s all for now. I hope you can make it to our next show on July 21. There will be two themes that night. Pick whichever one you have a story for. The themes are “Gratitude – Stories where you get to say thanks” and “Lessons Learned”. We all have people we can thank in our lives but I also know it might be hard to find a specific story on that theme. So I’m adding “Lessons Learned” as a theme in case you can’t come up with a thank you story. I’ll get the invite out as soon as I can.

Write me at freshgroundstories at gmail dot com if you have any questions or would like some help on a story. Our next free workshop is July 10. Here’s the link for more info:

https://www.meetup.com/fresh-ground-stories-storytelling-workshop/events/286400818/

Take care,

Paul