About Writing and Story-telling, Spankings and Thinking

About Writing and Story-telling, Spankings and Thinking

Yes, they ARE Related!

ABOUT WRITING AND STORY TELLING

I was asked recently how I got started writing and my immediate response was, “I think I was one from birth but that can’t be right, I think it took a little longer than that to learn how to grasp a crayon!” (Jessica Johnson at EPB, mentioning her kindness today) The truth is, the Sabatini family came together each holiday as a family of story tellers. We all learned how to tell stories about ourselves, life, and made-up spooky, comedic, and/or adventure stories, too. I used to tell my little sister L.A. (and Suzy and Jay-Bird) bedtime stories when we were still young enough to believe in monsters in the closet and under the bed. We would lay down in the dark and I would tell her all the stories I could think of, mostly fairy tales (The Brementown Musicians [L.A.’s favorite: http://german.about.com/library/bllesen07E.htm], Stone Soup, Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Aesop’s Tales, Snow White and Rose Red, The Boy Who Liked to Draw Cats, and The Friendly Giant, etc.) Finally, I started making my own up.

On rainy days, or just a couple handfuls of summer nights, Ralph used to regale the kids on our block who came to our huge front porch to listen to him telling stories. We would sit, stand, squat or lean around in a fireside-like huddle (no fire, just Ralph) and let him take us wherever his brilliant imagination would take us. (Even when we fought as kids, we respected each other’s story telling.) Ralph would use his voice, varying his tone, the rhythm of his speech, and volume, using pauses and a wide range of facial expressions, all the while, we would be waiting for the PUNCH. He always got us. Whether it was a scary story or a tale with a comical punch line, his timing was everything. He would watch us, and wait for the faces to be screwed up in anticipation, hearts pounding, trying to guess the moment it would come, and BAM. He’d get us again. Uncle Joe’s and Uncle Bernie’s jokes were like that.

Only Uncle Joe would wait for the opportunity to burst in with Uncle Bernie’s punch line right before he could say it himself, right before Uncle Bernie. Uncle Bernie would not be happy, especially since everyone was giving the laughter to Uncle Joe’s punch line instead of Uncle Bernie, and also because Uncle Bernie was HAD again! Only a big brother could keep getting away with such antics. We loved it, and learned from the master in creating build up, anticipation, timing, and a worthy GOTCHA. We were always a family that liked to laugh, as well as eat, and share stories. It is no wonder that all of us have passed that story telling love along to each other. My children have been asking me for years to share the stories I told them. (They got tired of being given essays on “Oral Tradition’s value” every time they teamed up on me about it. I loved homeschooling.) Aisha, you were the straw that broke the camel’s back since Jessica and I have already begun conspiring to write humorous stories about our interesting experiences. We used our story telling to commune as a family, sharing something quite intimate in the shared memory of it. We use stories to teach our children, and to console one another in the grief of loved ones. We use stories to think about the future together, and we use stories to discipline. [see below]

FAMILY BRAG: Your father, being a photojournalist for News Week was something that we loved to share as a family. We were proud when was awarded the first  he photographed famous people from Bishop Tutu, to Baryshnikov, to a former President of the United States (during office), and the Great Fall of the Berlin Wall. His photographs of the ’67 riots were pivotal to his career, and the book, “Intersections of South Central: People and Places in Historic and Contemporary Photographs” http://www.caamuseum.org/store/store.php/products/intersections-of-south-central-people-and-places-in-historic-and-contemporary-photographs show not only some of his photographs, but also speaks of his dedication to his own story telling using words AND photographs. You recently published a book, The Fluency of Light: coming of age in a theater of black and white, which I just got in the mail from you. [Thank you, thank you, kisses and hugs…I owe you an essay!] http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2013-spring/fluency-light.htm

I self-published a children’s story, How the Ladybug Got Her Spots, (XLibris, 2003) http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0019956017/How-the-Ladybug-Got-Her-Spots.aspx as pseudo-auto-biography. (OR it could be described as a tale “of living through” the misdirection of every child’s quest to understand self.) I also corporate-published “Back-to-Back With Crack: A Drug Awareness Book for Children (used by the Michigan Education Association in a D.A.R.E. workshop), and authored HIV/AIDS: A Danger in Our Midst, (American-West African AIDS Coalition, Inc.) It is a community based prevention and response manual, used in Ikot Epene, Nigeria, in the fight against the AIDS pandemic. (A revised version for use in the U.S.A. is in the development stage).

 I have never wanted to attach a job with my creative writing, writing training programs and K-12 and Adult and Continuing Education curriculum professionally. As far as personal writing is concerned, I have published many letters to the editor in various periodicals, writing contests here-and-there, and poems from time-to-time, but not really wanting the headache of trying to figure out how to sensibly pack all the things we lived into a single book. I have several other children’s stories in storyboard form, waiting for my children to grow up to turn back to them. What time is it?

In case you didn’t know, I found out Uncle Paul wrote a mystery story but I don’t think he wanted to publish it, finding it enough to have it to share with his grandson, Benjamin. (Correct me if I’m wrong, family) Ralph started writing a history book and he is as great a writer as he was/is a great story teller. Arin is a blooming writer and her wit and intelligence can take her far as a story teller. Being home schooled now, she is working on her own blog site.

FAMILY BRAG: At a city-wide college prep high school with over 4,000 students in 1978, Ralph won the Vocabulary Bee (at Cass Technical High School in Detroit) and was exempt from all his finals as a reward. He was a Chemistry-Biology (called CHEM-BIO) student so he had challenging classes. We were taught by our family as well as our Civil Rights community teachers to learn words and learn how to use them well. He was/is a walking dictionary of finesse and cunning; his words are his magic.

One final word about writing, for now: My mom (also a GREAT story teller) also inspired me to write by finding another format that I was more than willing to use. Letters home. I wrote about my desire to travel early in life and my mother traveled a lot when my Dad was in the navy.

My mom used to write long letters to Grandma, telling all about her travels and experiences. She told me she was “being eyes for Grandma” who loved to travel and did much less than she would have liked. And I have years of letters to my mom and, I still remember the many stories still waiting to be captured beyond my own thoughts and breath.

It is great that we can, from a story telling family, support each other’s work. This blog is more proof!

 

ABOUT SPANKINGS

As a parent, I used story-telling and explanations as a way of teaching my children. I have been called “long winded” by my sister Jessica, and I have had my children actually ask me for a spanking in exchange for being excused from the “lessons” they knew they were about to face in intelligent conversation. They were taught to think about their choices, and they gained or lost privileges based on their responsible actions. They were always allowed to contribute to ideas on the table in decision-making, but as parents, we made the final decisions. Once they were ready, they took over their decisions. I think it was the best and only way for me to raise my children. As American citizens, we are responsible for ourselves as free individuals, and we are responsible for America as a self-governing nation. People try to do with Critical Thinking exercises what we did naturally in conversation with our children. Uncle Paul has told us that physical discipline against children is a form of child abuse when there are other intelligent ways to teach and correct children.

However, my children did get a couple of spankings. Running in the street, playing with electrical sockets/butter knife, hitting one another. That’s it. As an Italian family, we know that Grandpa was a strict disciplinarian, but he was fair. He did hit and at that time, so did everyone else’s parents. They were teaching the concept of CONSEQUENCE. When the new parenting trends eliminated spankings altogether, they seemed in many ways to forget to find other practical ways to demonstrate consequence. My father spanked, my mother didn’t, so when they divorced that was one less worry for us kids. My husband spanked my children a couple of times when they were kids, but mostly he could just give them “THE LOOK.” Every adult in our family knew how to use it. It is a shame that the power of THE LOOK is so under-utilized.

BTW: In my own nuclear family setting, we also employed the use of “Toy Jail.” It was invented as a way to put offending toys left laying around out of circulation until tidier habits are demonstrated—a compromise between throwing toys away and letting the toy problem solve itself. <3

ABOUT THINKING (and “Quiet Time.”)

As a home school parent, I started teaching my two youngest children how to use “Quiet Time” to foster the opportunity to consider…anything…everything. I could never raise a passive receptacle of knowledge any more than I could fit such a box over my own mind. I gave them riddles, and academic challenges for fun. Ralph and I used to do a lot of riddle telling and we made up quite a few of our own riddles. For one brief time in my life, Angelina and I played Dungeons and Dragons with Ralph and his amazing friends, and we were passing through a “Riddle Kingdom” filled with adventures. We had to write riddles and solve them with each other to pass through. (This was a special non-violent edition owning to my daughter Angelina’s tender age—10 years old).

Our imaginations were a requirement of our lives, the way we passed our leisure time and the way we solved life’s most serious problems and challenges. Teaching one’s children to clear their mind of clutter and learn to FOCUS on one thing at a time, build a series of ideas, and form new ideas was easy. They do it naturally, and if guided will astound you with their uncluttered insights! The way I started it was simple. As soon as any kid thought he/she was ready to be done taking afternoon naps, they had to show me they could do “Quiet Time.” I started out at 15 minutes and if they wanted they could look at books, magazines, draw, color, do puzzles or sit and think…quietly. If they fidgeted, they were sent to take a nap and I SAT WITH THEM until they fell asleep so there was no getting around my efforts to control them when it was necessary. After they achieved 15 minutes, I gradually increased the time until they had 1 hour a day when they engaged in quiet activities. This required imagination. Period. They produced some of the most amazing art work, and learned to take the noisiest of adventures by quietly reading. We talked about books and we talked about news. THAT was a Sabatini Tradition!

We were not allowed to be bored. Grandma Sabatini started that idea with us. We had many things to do (I am writing a blog now about the many games available before Internet, T.V. or even Radio!) If we did not find a productive way to occupy our time, we were given chores. Not fun things like dusting usually, but washing walls, hedging lawns, or cleaning up the play area in the basement. We quickly learned to amuse ourselves. As a “Smith Kid,” you’ll see that we created a wonderful world and there is quite a lively debate about whether we were wonderful or rotten. Personally, I sit on both sides of that fence!

About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855