Storytelling revival

Since neither conservatives nor progressives want to read about Guernica, perhaps the fact that April 26 ^th is also National Story Telling Day, could provide us with a chance to morph the focus of this column to the topic of storytelling?

Back in the day, when Jack Paar was the host for NBC's Tonight Show, talk show guests were given ample opportunity to tell amusing and entertaining stories.   Now the only reason for someone to be on a talk show is to sell some new bit of entertainment such as a movie or album.   The stealth talk show sales pitch spawned a new word.   Such unpaid ads can be called promobabble.

Traveling and story telling seem to go together like ham and eggs ever since the guy who wrote the "Iliad" the "Odyssey" was in J-school.

As we recall, TV personality Herb Schriner wrote a history of mobile homes.

War correspondent Ernie Pyle traveled about the United States before World War II writing columns in a Chevy coup that had a modified trunk that functioned as his portable office.  

Jack Kerouac made a career out of writing about the adventures on the road that he experienced with his pal Neal Cassady.

John Steinbeck wrote "Travels with Charlie" in the early Sixties.   Some critics compare that with Robert Louis Stevenson's "Travels with a donkey," which may have provided the motto for travelers with this sentence:   "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.   I travel for travel's sake.   The great affair is to move."

If that philosophy appeals to you, then you might want to do some Googleing and investigate the possibilities offered by spending July in Paris taking the travel writing course offered by Rolf Potts.   (What would the boss say about an assignment to go report on that learning experience?   Maybe we could include some reports about the 24 hour race at Le Mans for sports cars and get a twofer for our money?)

Speaking of an endless summer on the road, we noticed that the University of Sydney is offering their students who are studying United State Politics a chance to spend their winter (our summer) studying at UCLA.   Hey, fellows, what about turn about is fair play?   Gees any student who got into that program and who knows how to surf would only be a MTA bus ride away from The Call to the Wall surfing contest in Malibu while they were calling Westwood their home.

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