History & Healing

Last Sunday, January 15th, 2006, we told our “Hero’s Journey” tale at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This is one of our favorite, original stories. As much fun as we had during our four tellings, it was a melancholy day. This was our last day for our current Getty booking. At the end of the day we had told the story to 32 different audiences in the gallery, over the course of two years. To our delight another of our biggest, little fans, Samantha (in the front row), and her family, came to see us. We had some very special connections with the audiences that day. One little girl came back to us to tell us she found stories in other galleries too! An important part of our mission when working in museums is to get folks engaged with the art. So her appreciation really warmed our hearts.

We were also pleased that among our audiences were a reporter and photographer from the Los Angeles Daily News. The reporter; Valerie.Kuklenski, was working on a piece about storytelling throughout the southland. Her article was the front page feature of the “U” section of the LA Daily News this week. The “U” section is that weekly, magazine section that features entertainment and cultural events. The Patchwork Players were not the only folks interviewed for the article. But our picture dominated the first page of the story. See a smaller version of that photo here in the Blog. (John McCoy / Staff Photographer)
That’s us telling stories at the Getty. For the next week, you can see the web-version of the article at: http://www2.dailynews.com/entertainment/ci_3414758 .

So Sunday at the Getty, Thursday we awoke to find our picture in the paper. Then on Friday, we were off to San Diego Children’s Hospital. Intrepid readers of our blog, may remember that the Children’s Hospital called us to interview for a storytelling job. We were recommended by our storytelling friend Linda Sue Whiteside. We were and are, very honored. Linda has been telling at the Children’s Hospital for about three years. Well the program is expanding and they need more tellers! So off we were to see Bob Davis, head of the Healing Arts Department. We had a wonderful interview. We were only half way through when Bob offered us the job. We will come on as part time employees, with real employee badges, going through new employee orientation; they take out taxes and Social Security, the whole ball of wax! We will start within the month, after the background checks, etc. We expect to be on site for eight hours, just about every Friday as long ad the funds hold out. Since a good portion of the funds are coming from , Audrey Giessel, Mrs. Doctor Seuss, we hope to be there for a long while. Both Patti and James need to do some juggling to make this happen. But it will be worth it! Remember, even though there is Seuss money involved, they are always in need of support. See http://www.chsd.org/ for more information. We feel like there is a whole new world of storytelling in the healing arts ahead of us.