Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, July 13, 2008
Joe Orso: Share your stories in new column
In the past month, I’ve heard one person tell about kick-boxing invisible demons while high on crack-cocaine and a 70-year-old ask how clouds move.
A single father showed me his newest tattoo.
And a young veteran talked about looking into the eyes of Iraqi children.
If there is a person, there is a story.
And as this Sunday column debuts today, I’d like to invite readers to contact me with stories of their own or people they know.
“We think that stories solve all the problems of the world,” said Terry Visger, a member of the Bluff Country Tale Spinners, a group that tells stories to children and adults.
That might sound too optimistic, but I’m not so sure it is. For instance, the most hopeful group I’ve encountered working for peace in the Middle East wasn’t politically oriented. It was made of Israelis and Palestinians who traveled through their land and others’, telling stories of how they, people from both sides, had lost family members in the conflict there.
These people had sought peace and reconciliation not through politics, but through sharing stories.
Of course not all story-telling is as serious.
Visger and another member of the Tale Spinners, Sara Slayton, told me about stories that give guidance, that heal, that entertain, and that are spiritual, educational and political.
Members of their group tell stories of all kinds — from personal stories to spooky stories to myths — and you can listen at a July 25 fundraiser (for more information go to www.lacrossestoryfest.com).
And stories won’t be the only way we can use this column space. We’ll have opportunities to pose questions to the community and bring a variety of perspectives together (one idea, based on a documentary with the same title, is to ask people “why we fight”).
I’m interested in exploring the environmental movement in this space, too, and there will be columns that are more informational, checking in on projects like the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming.
But I hope to regularly ground this column in people’s stories. So if you know a story about a struggle, or wonder about the person you always see sitting on the same park bench, or have a neighbor who is a character the whole world would be better for knowing, send your ideas my way.
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
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