it's so great to be here hi everyone hello um I would like to read some excerpts from my book um it's called Dum Dum Dum my mother's book reviews and It's Fashion it's I tried to get at my mother's story after she passed away and so it's fashioned around all the book reviews that she wrote that we didn't know that she was keeping until after she died and all these book reviews sort of prompted all these memories about who she was and the parts of her I didn't understand because you your parents know you your whole life but you only know your parents for your lifetime so it was just a real it's a really an exploration of that so my mother possessed what she liked to call the Cadillac of tweezers they were forged in brushed nickel and the tips were so finely beveled they were like a surgical instrument for the small bristly hairs that sprung up on her chin she liked to faux casually name drop the manufacturer like it was a close personal friend wusthof those were always within arms reach of her recliner where she read for hours every day and she was at an angle for the better part of every day and she'd be tilted back a book in her lap and a pair of whimsically colored reading glasses on a chain around her neck and then there was the glass of water magnifying mirror and a stack of books on the cabinet next to the chair most of my adult life I would stop by my parents house once a week or so just to say hi or score a meal or pick up mail that's still occasionally got delivered to them even though I haven't hadn't lived with them for years and my mother would take a break from her reading and she'd set the book down on her lap and we talk she was short her her legs barely reached her feet barely reached the foot rest and at that slant I was looking up her nostrils more than in the eyes and we would talk we talked about my siblings and the grandchildren we talked about friends mine and hers my love life or lack thereof my job or lack thereof movies television food always food diets always diets recipes always low calorie and books always books whatever each of us was reading at the time and she would describe the book that she was currently reading it was be spread out on her plush lap all the while running her fingers along her chin in search of goat hairs that might have sprung up and looking over her reading glasses at me she'd slap the palm of her hand on the outstretched book and say but I swear I've read the damn thing before honest to Pete I can't remember what I've read anymore a few months after she died my father and I sorted through three large closets gorged with stuff she'd found at Goodwill garage sales consignment stores over the years she loved to shop there were kitchen gadgets and utensils books games puzzles crock pots heating pads all stashed away for birthdays or Christmas and labeled with the intended recipient's name we bagged up everything for Goodwill my father and I a sort of Mercantile circle of life and my once tall father reached on tiptoes for the clear plastic recipe box on the top top shelf and we clicked open the lid it was full of index cards with my mother mother's notes on all the books she'd read the past 15 plus years she read so many books she had to start keeping track brass verdict Michael Connelly can't remember but kept me interested coffin dancer Diva can't remember question mark forgot name but was good Stephen Cannell the closers Michael Connolly can't remember but enjoyed it for such a small box it was Hefty in my hands you keep it my father said as he tied up one of the many trash bags you're the writer in the family after all the last words I ever spoke to my mother were about cheesecake my sister had called me you need to get home now so I caught the last flight from Austin Texas to Minneapolis on a Sunday night and I got to the hospital close to midnight my sisters and brothers were crowded into the hospital room and my father raised his arms like he was going to hug me when I walked into the room but my mother's hospital bed was between us and he sat down again as if pulled back by his bewilderment the sheets and blankets were pulled up smooth under her arms she hadn't moved in 12 hours to must the bedding I leaned over and put my cheek against hers she'd given me her wedding ring when I got married and I slipped it back on her finger and even after a year of chemo and radiation her cheeks were still cool and velvety I ate the cheesecake mom it seemed like her face turned toward me all I could think was that my breath must be stinky from airline food in the long flight and she would leave this earth with that last sensory experience I looked at her so hard my eyeballs started to hurt my mother never quite knew how beautiful she was with her high cheekbones Tawny skin this graceful streamlined nose and full lips over front teeth that she was always self-conscious about as a kid I used to love to watch her get ready for a rare evening out after a spritz of Gene Nate and pinning in a Wiglet to make her hair poofy she'd leaned into the enormous bathroom mirror to put on lipstick this deep red lustrous against her olive skin and black hair she'd rub her teeth with her forefinger to clean off any lipstick that might have speared on them I ate the cheesecake Mom I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry of everything that went through my mind on the flight to Minnesota I hadn't once thought about the cheesecake she'd probably been waiting her whole life to win that argument the bone Setter's daughter tan Amy eight out of ten almost as good as her other books another mother-daughter relationship but loved the way she writes it was the night before Thanksgiving and my mother had already made potatoes and stuffing for the next day and the cheesecake she made once a year the recipe was actually a Jello box mix but she added cream cheese and extra butter and extra sugar my family does not understand what people mean when they say a particular food is too rich I'd come home from college for the weekend and after everyone had gone to bed I sneaked into the kitchen like a cat burglar I knew every Creek in the stairs every squeak in the hardwood floor and down the hallway and the point at which the suction of the fridge would pop open when you pulled the door I painstakingly peeled back the foil on the pan in the middle of the night on a secret mission foil reaches approximately 150 decibels it was just going to be a nibble and then suddenly this entire thin row at the front was missing it was crooked so I ate even more to even it out as if that would help camouflage that I'd eaten in the first place my mother discovered it first thing in the morning and was Furious and immediately blamed me in spite of five kids two in-laws my father and a dog in the house she assumed I had eaten it I was outraged and declared my innocence at the very least I deserve the decency of being a possible suspect at least put me in a lineup my mother never let it drop and it came up over and over and over again in the 30 plus years since and she would shoehorn it into some completely unrelated conversation I got mad every single time I denied it every single time my mother was unperturbed Shrugged his shoulder and continued on with the conversation with maybe just a little twitch of gotcha on her lips I can see I can hear the precise way my mother used to describe something as dumb the way she said it it was a Curt summation that sounded almost onomatopoetic her chin retracted slightly as the heart D came out and then her mouth went slack with the drawn out M at the end at the same time she'd give her head a little shake and her eyes narrowed a bit as the MB hung in the air like an underline and if some of the dumb books were really dumb she didn't even bother with her rating dark dreaming Dexter Lindsay Jeff dumb wood Stuart Dark Harbor dum dum dum read no more by this author there were a lot of books before my mother started her record keeping I can still see the covers of Dr Zhivago Gone With the Wind Lonesome Dove The Shipping News The Onion Field bonfire the vanities The Thorn Birds and fat is a feminine feminist issue I did not like that book even though I'd never read it and I took the long way around it wherever it might be in the house I never picked it up to read the back cover like I did with all her other books I was afraid I'd be identified as being fat by association if people should see me in too close proximity to the book I'd been born pudgy and stayed pudgy and I didn't want anyone to know and then my mother read the woman's room it was the late 1970s the height of the woman's movement and all my mother's friends had read it Maryland French's feminist novel tells the story of some women who married in the 1950s to the domestic Bliss promised them only for their husbands to leave them for younger women and leave them stranded and day after day the Hefty hardcover rested on her lap as she sat in her reading chair my mother was pressed against the brown plaid upholstery of the colonial style armchair jaw set breathing through layered nostrils as she turned the pages she seemed mad a lot after that book and in her book reviews I can practically hear her irritation about certain books be mine kasichi Laura boring I read 55 Pages thrilling but nothing Thriller but nothing thrilling get last get bad Boogie James Lee Burke read about half a real waste of time and then one of my very favorite reviews of hers Searcy David last things page four use the word eschatological made me so angry at the author I quit the book thank you so much I'm so excited to bring up our first Storyteller um I don't want to speak for Kevin but we just had such a great time with these storytellers and it was just so powerful and such a delight the way they were willing to open up and really dig deep in their stories so it is my pleasure to bring up Brian matuszak who has been part of the twin ports theater scene for nearly 40 years he has worn many hats including writer performer director and producer and tonight he is excited to try on the fancy Chapo of Storyteller Brian matuszak thank you thank you uh before I get started I just really want to say thank you to Ashley and wdsc for this amazing opportunity to practice an art form that I was interested in but had never dived into so I got a chance to do it and I got a chance to do it with Kevin Kling and Mary Jo peel so that was amazing so thank you all right the safest place I have ever found myself was not snuggled up against my brother in the back seat of a my parents car on the way home from a snowy Christmas Eve spent at my grandparents house and it was not hermetically sealed inside a warm Cocoon of blankets and cats during a particularly nasty cold and flu season the safest place that I've ever found myself was on stage with the Duluth comedy troop colder by the lake in the El Paso sketch a few people have probably seen it uh you may wonder why that's my safe place I mean one of the defining characteristics of live theater is that it's live you're in front of actual living human beings just like now anything could happen sounds like kind of the opposite of safe but it wasn't for me eventually I mean at first I was scared to death uh first time I took the stage to perform El Paso as soon as the lights came up the sweats started pouring off of me and came off of me and kept pouring off of me um when I joined Calder back in 1987 I didn't know much about the art of live theater at all I knew it was something I wanted to do but growing up out in the farm country of Saginaw Minnesota other than pretending to enjoy manual labor there weren't a lot of opportunities to act but that's why El Paso is a brilliant sketch it's a classic it's like who's on first or more cowbell it's always going to get laughs 100 guaranteed and the laughs would come at the same place every time we did it like comedy Clockwork you could set your squirting wrist watch by it um and that safety net of laughter gave me the confidence that I needed to carry me through to all aspects of performance I started to pay attention to why the labs were coming when they did what were the performers doing that helped enhance the silliness of that sketch you know a Grimace or a mug with the face or a gesture or an exaggerated movement I watched and I learned how to control an audience and make them laugh whenever I wanted to it was like an evil superpower another aspect of its Brilliance is a comedy sketch was that there were no lines there was nothing you had to memorize they just the way it worked was you play the classic Marty Robbins tune El Paso and then five actors just act out the entire song on stage that's it and it was always a hit it killed over the years I played many different parts I was a tied up horse I was a shiny bullet I was a part of the rotating desert landscape see one actor the way it worked one actor would uh have a stick horse and would stand in place at the front of the stage and then just Gallop in place while the rest of us hurried up and we grabbed some cards and uh they had a desert scene on it one card had a rock a couple cards had sand and one had a cactus and we would move behind the rider uh like this here so when you got to the end see it looked like he was a a writing and then when you got to the end you broke off it came back around the cactus was the Prime role in this part of the sketch um but it was pretty much just the luck of the draw if you got the cactus because we moved so fast from scene to scene within the sketch that when that part of the song came up uh you know you had four sweaty actors who were scrambling and grabbing cards and hurrying up to line up behind the lead of the sketch that guy on the stick horse that riding cowboy that was the part I always wanted or they never got the narrator of the song the person who walked into Rosa's Cantina in that fateful night in spied Felina that part had everything physical physical comedy a chance to be big and silly and goofy and have every single person in the audience love you which is why I never got it it went to Andy Nelson every time Andy seriously though Andy deserved it Andy had that it Factor uh Charisma very cool very funny people just were naturally drawn to watching Andy so of course it went to him and he was a fantastic human being R.I.P um but I was just destined to be the horse slash bullet slash Cactus and that was okay to this day after doing Live Theater for nearly 40 years most of it in comedy El Paso Remains the single biggest guaranteed laugh getter I've ever performed and I've done shows by Neil Simon David Mamet Shakespeare amateurs compared to the El Paso comedy sketch by providing a beginner like me with that safety net I gained the confidence and the craving to keep doing Live Theater I heard that laughter and that Applause and I was hooked but the most energizing laughter of all came from my parents my mom and dad came to every show I did which to be honest kind of surprised me growing up in a Tiny Town of northern Minnesota parental acceptance and encouragement was usually for the extracurricular activities like sports there weren't any artistic activities in our high school other than some silly slap together plays put on by the English teacher with Snappy names like Aaron slick from pumpkin Crick football was the main Friday night draw in Saginaw which worked well for my starting quarterback Brothers but not so much for so far down the bench she's in the next zip code me but my folks were there to support all of us no matter what we did they cheered for touchdown passes just as loudly as they laughed at the sight of me and 10 layers of stage makeup kissing a pumpkin that support followed me out of high school into college fall of 1981 and I am now a theater major at the University of Minnesota Duluth at this point I still don't know anything about theater other than a board English teacher who just sat in the back of the gymnasium and said we can't hear you which actually truth be told is a really good piece of stage Direction um but I just knew that there was something there for me it felt pretty cool to be in front of a group of people and have everybody looking at you and laughing at you um especially mom and dad my dad had a great laugh I loved listening to that bounce off the walls of the darkened theater where I was doing what can only be Loosely defined as acting even though I couldn't see him I could picture him with a crooked smile breaking up his big face beaming with pride a pride that again usually emanated from the faces of fathers at sporting events the best feature of Dad's laughter by the way was that it was genuine that catch of breath at the beginning it possessed the quality of surprise that suggests that he hadn't anticipated any of my silliness it was honest and more importantly it felt earned he didn't Dole it out like a participation trophy if it wasn't funny he wasn't laughing unfortunately I only had one opportunity to hear that laughter while I was at UMD I was only in one play a student directed one act play by Edward Albee called The American Dream I got to play a timid unasserted man who didn't have a clue what was happening all around him uh that perfectly encapsulated my time at UMD that's not say anything bad about the UMD theater program by the way it's a top-notch program with fantastic instructors it's a great a wonderful educational opportunity for students who aren't me it might be different today but back in 1981 freshmen weren't allowed to sniff the stage a first-year student back then you had to sit in classroom after classroom listening to instructor after instructor breathlessly expounding every magnificent aspect of Live Theater you were expected to audition for every show but you were not allowed to be in any show you were never going to be cast instead you just came and watched the shows while the sophomores and the Juniors and the seniors brought them to life and that didn't work for me nothing about being that far removed from creating the art clicked for me so after a year I dropped up well truth be told I actually did enroll and start my second year but then I found out that the fall Musical that I was going to have to audition for was Greece so then I quit so I'm 19 years old I'm living at home I'm a College Dropout with no idea what to do with the rest of my life it's every parent's dream luckily the support though didn't stop my mom and dad were so patient with me it was like that they knew something was going to click for me it might be theater it might be something else but they gave me the space and the trust that I would figure it out it took a couple years summer 1984.

I auditioned and I was finally cast in a show here in Duluth it was a small part in the Duluth Playhouse production of Neil Simon's fools I got to play something something snetsky that's not me forgetting the character's name that was the character's name it was a tiny part but it was big and loud and Goofy it was perfect for me the lead was a young man named Jim Gallagher and one day Jim mentioned while we were sitting around at rehearsal that he was a theater major over across the bridge at UW West University of Wisconsin Superior I told him my story about UMD how I couldn't really find my way into theater so he suggested that I crossed that bridge and check out their program invited me in fact to come and watch a rehearsal of the play that they were working on at the same time he was in two shows so I said sure what's the show it was Greece but I did I went over there and checked it out and that ladies and gentlemen is where something finally did click uws had everything for me I met my mentor the director of Greece uh professor John dimon Cell a tall lanky chain smoking theatrical genius um one day I was in his beginning acting class and after I had brought my 50th horrible monologue and performed it then we would sit back down and he would critique your performance so the the day I did this I sat down and he sat silently or felt like 10 minutes he was puffing on his cigarette remember this is the 80s so you could be in a classroom with a cigarette and then he slowly turned to me he said you act like you have a stick up here okay we need to get a few beers in you and figure out who in the hell you are okay let's do that so class was dismissed and we all went to the beer bar on campus yay Wisconsin uh but it was valuable because I did learn that not only were pitchers of beer only two bucks but also that you had to start with what's inside of you uh your experiences your beliefs your wants and your desires and that is a starting point to find your way into a performance and to start creating theater John also taught me that even though it's a lot of work it should be fun there's a reason that they call it a play he used to say uws theater is also where I met my wife Sue and uh actually on Monday we will be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary thank you no thank you um so a lot of good things in my life can be traced back to Crossing that bridge and going to uws the other aspect of uws that was advantageous to a theater beginner was that they put you on the stage immediately they had main stage Seasons experimental stage season student directed shows acting scenes for the TV studio acting classes for every style of acting imaginable I was in heaven every production was giving me a chance to be in front of an audience every opportunity I'm gaining more and more confidence in what I'm doing then I get involved in colder by the lake and experiencing that sheer Joy of El Paso while secretly hoping that Andy Nelson would trip and break his face kidding and then I'm writing the sketches pretty soon I'm confident enough to do that and then they're letting me direct my own shows and then in 1991 the power goes to my head and I eventually start my own Theater Company Renegade comedy theater where we write and perform not only sketch comedy but scripted comedies we get to pick the scripts that we want to do and it's fantastic and it's clicking along and then in 2001 I'm hired by uws to teach and to direct and it's like my dream job and I'm circled back to the place where I found my way into this amazing art form of theater and through that all the parental support that I received never wavered and I'm hearing dad's laughter echoing off lots and lots of different darkened theater halls and I'm feeling feeling fulfilled everything's clicking and I'm safe and it's great until 2008. you know that one day that you have where you wake up and the second you wake up the rest of the day is just nothing but dark dank sewage stink for me that day was a year and it was the year 2008. there was not a lot of clicking to be found that year there was no safety in February I was ousted from the theater company that I had founded and which I invested 17 years of Blood Sweat and dollar bills into um and that's all I have to say about that well one more thing it hurt a lot my love for theater took a hit a few months later my dream job of teaching and directing theater at the place where ahead all come together for me was eliminated due to budget cuts so that's a bigger hit but then the biggest smack around of all came Dad's health was starting to decline specifically his liver cancer had returned and spread to his lungs that booming laughter was fading farther and farther into the distance it was all challenging but I wasn't ready to give up on theater just yet Perhaps as it had done all my life it could help get me through some of these awful times my wife and I had started up a new Theater Company earlier in the year rubber chicken theater get it rubber chicken we bounced back yeah well we like the name yeah um so our first couple shows went well and we decided we were going to close out that year with a traditional holiday sketch comedy review just like we had done with colder and just like Renegade had used to do so there was a built-in audience of people always enjoying and coming to see that show so maybe just maybe at the very last minute uh I could turn this crappy year around no once the review opened the bottom pretty much fell out artistically and comedically the show was strong but audiences just weren't making the Trek to come and see it and the only venue that I could find on the outskirts of town then right before Christmas my mom sends out an email to the family that starts like this this is the hardest email I have ever had to send then being my mom she also apologized for the fact that it was a mass email like we were going to hold that against her but she didn't personally contact each and every one of us in the family to tell us that dad had to be moved into hospice and that is when I experienced the absolute worst week not only of 2008 but of my entire life we sat in that sterile hospital room day after day listening to my dad's struggling gasps and watching his crooked wonderful smile dissolve into a thin lifeless line there was no joy in that at the end of the week it came time for me to leave for the closing performance of our show for the review and I did not want to go it felt like I was abandoning my family my brother was experiencing the same thing he was a coach of a high school team that was in a holiday tournament that night and he didn't want to leave either but mom told us that it was fine to leave for a few hours because Dad would want us to go he loves watching you boys do what makes you happy so there's that support again I went in to let Dad know that I would be back after the show and then I headed out and all night whenever I got off stage I would check my phone fearing the worst after the big musical pie in the shaving cream pie in the face number because remember this is not Henry V it's a sketch comedy review um I washed out the shaving cream and I rushed back to the hospital my sister-in-law was sitting with Dad and I could tell by her face that it wouldn't be long so I stepped up to the bedside and I whispered I'm back dad and then I went into the family room my brother was back from the game and we chatted about how surreal our nights had been how our bodies were you know in the theater or in the basketball court but our minds were tethered back here at the hospital after a few minutes my sister-in-law came in and it was time mom rushed ahead and as the rest of us entered we found her in the position that she'd been in all week next to dad with her two hands clamped around his wrist as if she could keep him here through sheer will we gathered in a tight circle around my parents listening as the gap between dad's labored rattling breaths became longer and longer and then stopped we paused desperately listening for just one more breath but it never came immediately the silence was filled with choked off sobs and whispered Declarations of love and then it was over so a few minutes later we're back in the family room packing up our stuff and my other brother said something which I honestly only half heard at the time he waited for you to get back bruh I nodded I finished shoving my stuff into an overnight bag and I had it out nothing seemed real I was in this fog of grief and I just felt nothing you know empty and the car on the way home I was forming a goodbye to the cast and the crew of the show figuring out how I was going to tell him it was for the best the rubber chicken just went away for a while and that's when it clicked he waited my dad waited for me he waited until I got back from doing that show that night my father decided to spend his last few hours on this Earth waiting for his son to be loud and silly and get hit in the face with a shaving cream pie my dad who only had a couple hours left of life chose to spend them waiting for me to land in that safety net again if I walked away from Theater now just because of a dreadful awful suck Fest of a year I would be disrespecting his last few hours and I would also be disrespecting his laughter a laughter that I had spent a lifetime earning and that had completely blanketed me in safety and love so for the last 14 years since that night I kept on acting writing directing and producing live theater right here in the Northland I did it for him I did it for me but mostly I did it for a chance to finally play the lead in that damn El Paso sketch thank you Brian matuszak thank you Brian well at the risk of repeating myself I am thrilled to introduce Galen Lee she won NPR's music's NPR music's tiny desk contest in 2016 and since then she has captivated audiences around the world with her haunting original songs and traditional fiddle Tunes Galen has opened for Wilco The Decemberists low and the industrial Rock super group pig face most recently she composed music for Macbeth on Broadway starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Nega she is a sought after public speaker about disability rights and accessibility in the Arts and she has shared her perspective on PBS NewsHour on being with Krista Tippett The Moth Radio Hour now this the science of Happiness podcast and two widely viewed tedx talks and she is currently wearing working on a memoir about her touring adventures and disability advocacy please welcome Galen Lee [Applause] thank you so much for having me thank you to the wonderful storytellers I can't wait to hear the last two um and I'm gonna perform some instrumental music for you tonight this first tune is an Irish fiddle tune called boys of Blue Hill um but I and I got to play it in Ireland way back in 2016 for my first tour overseas where I accidentally introduced it as an English fiddle tune um and the audience was like so don't do that make sure you know where they come from so this is boys of Blue Hills foreign [Music] [Applause] no no no no no no no no no thank you thank you when I first started performing solo I began to use the looping pedal which is how I'm building up those layers live so it can either be really cool or go terribly wrong depending on when you push the button so um the next song I'm going to do is a traditional Irish Little tune called swallowtail jig [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you [Music] hahaha foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] Lee [Applause] [Music] well if you know nothing else about our next Storyteller know this he has a one-man band that writes songs exclusively about Scooby-Doo for 23 years Luke moravec has called Duluth his home in this community he has found support for his Endeavors regardless of the level of zaniness he created the game Professor prank which was ranked internationally as the 14th best virtual escape room of 2021 and he once ran up a streak of having jumped in Lake Superior at least once every month for 12 and a half years please welcome Luke moravec hey I've spent my life uh attempting to create a correct path through good choices my youth was spent absorbing and formulating a moral code of conduct I think this made me a really good candidate for the Dare program in elementary school s that don't know dare was an acronym and it stood for something that part didn't stick but the motto did it was dare to keep kids off drugs and for me it worked never done drugs and um back in the day it definitely kept me from talking to the taller fifth graders and anybody who could grow a mustache so yeah my life has been filled with wholesome good kid choices now despite that I still have managed to make some decisions that have been not quite right freshman year of high school I'm at a hockey game in the stands in the pep band playing my tuba and I'm sitting next to my buddy uh well this guy I should say Vinnie Arnold he's this cool kid in the band who could be cool and be in the band and somehow pull off that balance and he was next to me he's kind of giving me the business you know kind of like antagonistically punching me at the shoulder it didn't hurt or anything but uh I responded to this by saying you can't hurt me I'm made of cheese I don't know why I said it there was no context for it anybody who was able to hear over the din of the stick slapping at the puck they turned and they looked at me saying that you're made of cheese that's not necessarily a wrong thing to say but it certainly wasn't quite right now three years later I'm hanging out with like seven or eight guys who were also in the concert band we're at Ben Walker's house it was one of those winter nights Friday night in the winter time it was late enough in the season for the novelty of snow to have kind of worn off one of those evenings where everybody's in for the night by 6 pm Ben and his family they lived on Highland Parkway in Saint Paul and it was it was a nice place nothing too flashy but it was you know put together and presentable one of those places well for whatever reason that night the seven or eight of us decided that we were going to go down to Ben's basement I'd never been before not sure why we went but um as put together and presentable as the upstairs of the house was the basement was just like any other basement I'd ever seen in Saint Paul it was dated there were wood paneling along the wall it was just basically a clutter there was a desk piled with stuff there's a file cabinet old furniture just a whole bunch of stuff that was really one step away from ending up in the garbage now on the far end of this cluttered basement there's a door and through that door is an empty Square Room there's nothing in there there's no furniture there's no shelves on the wall no paintings hanging no windows no window wells just nothing I mean it seemed like the kind of room that a teenager would call dibs on you know or maybe there'd be a ham radio down there or a make your own fly fishing lures station a foosball table anything but there's nothing not even a hot water heater or an electrical box is nothing well there was it wasn't completely empty all over the floor there were condensed cardboard boxes like moving boxes it was the only thing in the room just these boxes maybe three to four dozen flat dry Brown rectangles that's the only thing in the room now we learned a couple things about this room pretty quick one is if you close the door behind you it would cut off any residual light from the main part of the basement also if you then turned out the lights you were in the complete dark I think it was Pete Vogel who turned off the lights and closed the door he was a first chair trumpet player and kind of a goofball anyways there we are in the dark and somebody picks up a cardboard box hauls off and just starts hitting people with it it I think that was Will Swisher I can't be sure I think it was Will Swisher he used to be a trumpet player but got moved over to the French horn section I think it's easier to hide a bad French horn player in the band than it is to hide a bad trumpet player anyway before we knew it we all had cardboard boxes and we are just hitting each other with them and we'd never said a word we didn't agree to this it just sort of happened and there were no alliances there were no sworn enemies there were certainly no rules this is just we somehow silently agreed that this is how we were going to spend our Friday night and we were at this for a while and then after a while the rules suddenly changed because somebody introduced a glow-in-the-dark Super Ball suddenly this glowing orb is bouncing around the room and again the rules they changed again unspoken it became very clear that if you were brave enough or perhaps foolish enough you could go and try to obtain the ball and hold on to it knowing full well that as the ball was the only thing in the room that we could see you were going to be the target for everyone with their cardboard boxes now not everybody went after the ball but I have to admit I did I liked it I would cast my cardboard box aside and I would run over grab the ball and I would just wait to be pinballed back and forth by the cardboard boxes before eventually of course inevitably hitting the ground where the assault continued from overhead and a lot of the boxes at this point in the evening had become kind of limp and almost like whip-like it was I know it's weird to say but there was a strange kind of comfort to being on the ground and still holding on to the glowing Super Ball it was almost like aggressively being tucked into bed eventually I just got a sportsmanship I would cast the ball away and play would continue now it wasn't a wrong way to spend a Friday night but it wasn't quite right but unlike when I said I was made of cheese at least we were being not quite right together a fast forward a decade I'm living in Duluth I am gainfully employed I am a homeowner living by myself and it's another weekend in the winter time it's midnight and my phone rings I pick it up into my buddy John he sounds really excited and probably a little bit drunk he says hey there's this episode of Nova hosted by e now e is Mark Oliver Everett he's the main musician in the eels it's one of mine and John's favorite bands he also happens to be the son of the doctor Hugh Everett one of the Pioneers in the many world's Theory this uh complex notion that our timeline will will fracture and multiply anyways John says I got the episode loaded up on my computer I'm coming over quick reminder it's winter time it's midnight I'm in Duluth and by the way John is living in Saint Paul so I say okay yeah John sure see you soon laugh hang up I go to bed and of course three hours later I wake up because there is somebody on my front porch and yes it is John maybe still a little bit drunk I honestly thought for a moment that he was there to kill me it went through my head but he's got his computer in hand and we fire up that episode of Nova now I can't generally say that I recommend watching TV at three in the morning but what I can say is this every day of my life I have spent one of those 24 hours between the hours of 3 A.M and 4 AM we all do it every single day we spend one of those hours of our day between 3 A.M and 4 a.m and on that day I learned more between 3 AM and 4 AM than I have ever learned before in my life in the episode we followed e as he learned more about the father that he never really knew it was very very sweet but the science takeaway from the episode for me was that the choices that we make each choice that we make creates a new and parallel Dimension a new and parallel timeline a universe this is mathematics this is this is based on quantum physics and maybe talking about science puts you to sleep but it did not put me to sleep it kept me awake and this episode finished at four in the morning sometimes it still still keeps me awake because here's the thing in some other reality that's really happening John didn't drive up to Duluth and I didn't watch that episode of Nova and if any of you are thinking at this point that this is sounding like pseudoscience and not real science consider this some five six decades ago when Dr Hugh Everett first presented this to colleagues He was largely dismissed but now there are many in the field who regard this Theory as highly as the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity we're talking Einstein and Newton smart smart people and you can trust me because I'm a smart smart person who once spent a Friday night hitting his friends with a cardboard box but that's neither here nor there I'd actually like to take a moment and get back to Vinnie arnoldi uh you might remember he was the guy he was kind I told him I was made of cheese that guy anyways over the course of high school Vinnie and I were never like super close buddies or anything like that but you know we were nice to each other we talked and we were both in band for all four years so that's saying something and one day we just kind of casually pass in the hallway at school senior year and he asks me how's it going and I said great this morning I ate my breakfast cereal using my favorite spoon Vinnie arnoldi had every right to say I'm Vinnie arnoldi I'm super cool and I'm in the Band not even Fonzie could pull that off and you think I want to hear about your favorite spoon and maybe in some other Universe he did say that maybe in some other reality he said that but that's not what I heard in this one instead I heard Vinnie say really tell me about your favorite spoon so I did I said it's it's all metal it's got a flat handle with these little Factory carved fleur-de-lis in these squares going down the stem I like the way the carvings feel in my hand and then Vinnie said nice my favorite spoon is and he started to tell me about his favorite spoon Vinnie arnoldi had a favorite spoon it is so easy to feel alone it's so easy to feel like your group of friends is the not quite right group it's so easy to feel like having a favorite spoon is like yours and yours alone Vinnie arnoldi having a favorite spoon for me that was that was the Clincher this this is the not quite right timeline all right all those other timelines they might have an easier go of things but we are not on those timelines we are on this one this timeline that I have helped create with my not quite right choices this timeline that you have helped create with your not quite right choices you see Dr Hugh ever at another high level uh Quantum physicists they'll tell you that there are countless other universes out there and there are countless other uses out there but this is the universe in which I had a really weird cardboard box battle this is the universe in which I said I was made of cheese this is the universe this is the timeline this is the reality in which you you know what you did you know all of your contributions even the best of us have a history that is Rich with not quite right choices not even Vinnie arnoldi could run from it and don't run from it because this collectively created timeline this is our community your truest Community believe it or not whether you want to believe it or not is not your neighborhood block it is not your city or your country it's not even your planet your purest Community is this timeline this not quite right timeline so I am done sweating my not quite right choices because at least I know that I am making them in the comfort of a community of a home that we have created together thank you Luke moravec thank you Luke I'm so happy to bring out my pal Kevin Kling is from Minneapolis Minnesota where he lives on purpose when you freeze Paradise it lasts a little longer close quote he has performed his stories in libraries School gymnasiums the Kennedy Center Off Broadway Regional Theaters and storytelling festivals around the U.S including the national festival in Jonesboro his International tours include Australia Europe and Thailand he has been a commentator for national public radio's All Things Considered and was featured in the Emmy winning PBS documentary Kevin Kling lost and found Kevin works with interact theater a company of performers with and without disabilities exploring how through our stories we are connected Kevin Kling [Applause] hi everybody oh now I know I'm in Minnesota hi everybody all right thanks um so yeah when I uh now you get an idea of the kind of experience we had with this Workshop I mean how about another hand for our two uh storytellers and and Mary Jo and Galen oh man yeah it was a dream it absolutely was a dream and uh so our our themes were Family Faith and Community those are the things that we we really focused on so tonight I wanted to go into a little bit of Well Community to start off with with Minnesota because when I travel I tell people what it's like to grow up here and live here and I remember one thing recently I read was that uh we use Siri less than any other state in the Union and I read a comment after that that said because we don't want to bother her [Laughter] and uh I was going down the Mississippi River and I got to Saint Cloud and I was staying across the street from this church and they had a sign in the window that said uh hot dish contest we have hot dish here and I was like well guy I got to go to that so I went to the hot dish contest and since I was the only person that didn't bring a hot dish I was the judge and uh so they made me the judge and I'm going through and I you know it's going to win uh tater tot tater tot High dish that was gonna be and I came to it so I knew okay there's my winner and I kept going and I got to one that they called steak hot dish damn it wrong wrong wrong you can't have a steak on Dish but then they had the recipe next to it and they had an asterisk by the word steak so I go down to the bottom and it by the askers it said steak may be replaced with wieners winner winner winner so that one why when I travel I also tell people about ice fishing that we actually do ice fish here and I tell them about it there's a house that's about the size of this stage with holes in the corner where you fish and about a buddy of mine who one time he is fishing and all of a sudden bam something hit something bigger than he'd ever had in his life and he finally reeled it in and was a license plate and he threw it in a corner and Eagles looks at it and runs outside to see the hole in the ice where his truck used to be so I tell people about I tell them about uh let's see where are we here uh oh wait I don't know can you get quadruple I got trifocals but oh okay so a while ago I'm in uh Ireland I'm in Ireland with my mom and I'm in Ireland with my mom because she called me up one day and she said I heard it's hard to travel when you're 80.

I'm 79 we're going to Ireland so we went to Ireland and uh and we're having the greatest time and uh and I tell people now I say whatever you do especially after covet don't put it off please go to Ireland with my mom we had the funnest time and I'm in this boat and I'm trying to get up a ladder and I'm in a really hard time and you can probably tell why because my two arms are different than each other and they're probably different than yours at my left arm I've got four fingers no thumb on this side uh I've got this brace that I've worn since I was three years old it's great especially if you've got a brother Perry thrust and uh so this my left arm and my right arm I was in a motorcycle accident 20 years ago and I lost the use of my right arm uh and so I tell people especially kids right away when I'm working with kids I tell them about my arms because I know they're going to wonder about my arms so I tell them about and I tell adults too because I know adults are out there I wonder if he knows about his arms and so I'm oh I'm trying to climb up this ladder and I'm having a really hard time and this boat captain finally turns to me this guy hasn't said anything all week and he turns to me and he says every man goes out of his mind in his own way yeah and everybody goes into their mind in their own way because a couple of days later I'm sitting in a pub with a guy from Germany and I'm telling him I'm a Storyteller and he goes you're a Storyteller and I go yeah and he goes there are jobs for that and I go yeah yeah and he goes do you get paid and I go you know sometimes I do and he goes and you just make them up you know sometimes I do and he couldn't believe it he couldn't believe there's a job for a Storyteller so I go okay if you could tell a story what would you tell oh he says I would never tell a story I go okay look if you could write something if you could write anything what would you write oh oh and he gets a dreamy look on his face and he goes a manual oh to write something and have someone do it so this is when I learned there are story people and there are manual people and so this is for the story people among us uh okay the stories stories connect us the Greeks thought of stories like a loom and that vertically runs the metaphor horizontally runs the sequence and where they come together they wove their invisible threads for their cloaks of immortality a story when I can tell a story about something it doesn't control me any longer there's this great phrase from Zimbabwe until the lion tells the story The Hunter will always be the hero and it's really true when we can tell a story about something it becomes our own it's in our vernacular it's how we see the world um and we we can tell a story about our community it's how we hold ourselves together one of my favorite words is resiliency resiliency actually defined means maintaining one's shape and how do we maintain our shape when it's been compromised we do it through Family Faith Community they hold us together until we grow into our new selves resiliency my friend Al Baker who's a medicine man on lacuda Ray he says you can make it through anything with sense of humor and sense of self sense of self okay I'm in New York City and I'm going to tell stories for the first time in New York I'm so excited and I'm sitting there and I'm having breakfast I got my eggs and potatoes and toast and coffee and the waitress walks by and I ask her if I can get some water and she goes it's in the coffee [Laughter] uh okay this isn't Minnesota I think I got to think what am I going to do tonight because I was thinking uh more happens on the subway than has happened in my whole life so I'm thinking okay I gotta come up with something so here's what I told these guys in New York City because I figured we all have the same parental there I mean the things that we've heard tonight about fathers I think of my father and I think when I look in the mirror I want to see him looking back at me but I don't look at my dad like my dad but sometimes I hear these phrases spring from my lips phrases that don't make any sense to me like it's colder than old Billy Ned he used to say what or he'd say it's hotter than a three dollar pistol and or one time he said Kevin you're about as funny as a hole in the fence like what and so many come from his farming background like you're so educated you're stupid or when I couldn't get my go-kart to work he said the loose nut is usually the one on the seat how about that it worked fine yesterday that's what the farmer said about his dead mule our neighbor the Sloans he used to mix and match his sayings like it ain't rocket surgery for crying outside uh oh I remember one time my dad's phrases were put to the test we're in the car and my sister and her friend are in the front seat my brother and I are in the back seat and we're going to swimming lessons and my dad said something was tight I think it was a jar lid and he goes yeah that jar lid was tighter than and then he stopped we'd heard many of his tighter than analogies so we knew none of them were appropriate for this present company and so finally goes tighter than the bark on a tree oh God we laughed our heads off we had to compliment him for his cobbled say no and then sometimes I wonder if I'm even getting his phrases right like uh my neighbor Misha he has a nine-year-old son and he was telling his son the other day a three-legged dog walks into the bar and says I'm looking for the man who shot my paw well the next day he overhears his son telling his little friend the joke a three-legged dog walks into the bar and says I'm looking for the man who shot my dad and both boys are laughing their heads off so sometimes like a couple of summers ago I'm helping my brother we're getting a dock out of the lake we're having a really hard time and we're trying to get this bolt off and it's rusted on we're trying and trying and finally my brother goes that bolt is tighter than the bark on a tree called we laughed our heads up well I look up and my nephew is staring right at us and I think perfect that phrase will live another generation oh so uh so um I'll say that my dad grew up on a farm and uh I love visiting those Farms we would go to that farm and we would have what was called unstructured time which now they call boredom but I was never bored on that farm I loved it I loved it and I've never been bored since I've been to some place where I wish I was somewhere else and other place where I would have fallen asleep if I hadn't been the one talking but I still have never been bored and I've got my grandparents to thank my grandpa was as wide as he was tall we would used to say if it wasn't for the direction of his buttons we wouldn't have known if he was laying down or standing up and my grandmother my grandmother two tonic farmer everything in its right place everything in its right order I remember there was a rooster on that farm and it would always Peck me and I go grandma that Rooster's pegging me to say just leave it alone well one day that rooster pecked my sister and that night we ate chicken toughest chicken I ever ate but from my grandmother I learned be careful who you pack so I love going to this Farm I loved I farming there's the Greeks call it an owneric space and an owneric space is a place where dream and reality can come together as one and I always think of that farm as my owneric space and I have a buddy Named Dave and he lives down in Worthington and Dave is a farmer and he used to say when he was a kid whereas most kids held a blanket or a teddy bear to get to sleep he couldn't fall asleep unless he was clutching an ear of corn and Dave said he's at the State Fair his family's on that plaque of 100 year old farms and Dave's family is on that plaque but he came across hard times like so many farmers do and he had to start selling off his farm a little bit at a time he ended up getting a job in town so that he could stay out there on that farm and now he just has a few Acres left and so he started calling his farm his art and uh and he's painted tractor on his tractor and he painted barn on his barn and one year he plowed up all of his land and he planted sunflowers and his neighbors are going what are you doing Dave why would you plant sunflowers there's no money in that and he said because I can't paint like Van Gogh and then I said Dave what do you do I'm do why do you grow sunflowers what do you like about them and he goes with my favorite thing he says I love standing in the field with the sunflowers as the Sun Goes By Their Heads follow the sun across the sky and I said well what do they do Dave when it's cloudy what do they do when there's no sun and he said that's even better that's when they turn and face each other so I was thinking about Gathering the way we do gather I remember in college I I was in theater too and my dad would send me these letters there weren't letters they were uh newspaper clippings with actor starves to death in New York and two percent of the actors Union employed and Bob Crane star of Hogan's Heroes found stabbed to death in driveway and I I would get these in the mail and it was my dad's way of saying don't go into the Arts I don't want my son in the Arts and so I wanted when I got out I thought I'm going to get a job I'm going to get a job in a theater and I did I got a job at the Guthrie Theater it wasn't on stage I was dumping out garbage and working backstage but I got to see these amazing directors work leave you Chile leave you Chile from Romania just amazingly had this thick Romanian accent and I remember there was an actor on stage one time and he did this model like Shakespearean monologue and when he got done Julie said no no more eccentric more eccentric so the actor did the monologue again this time you put a little tick on his face and she was like no no more Etc so now the actor starts writing and truly no more eccentric so now the actor's frothing at the mouth wiggling on the floor and Julie turns to the dramaturk who is also from Romania and he whispers something and the dramaturg nods and tells the actor he wants you to stand more in the center so I wanted to prove to my dad that I I was meant for the art so I was meant for theater so I did get a job I got a job at the uh Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Bemidji Minnesota and we had the most amazing time we would do a show a week for a whole summer so like 10 shows in a row boom boom boom one right after the other it was the most incredibly intense wonderful time um and and so I was performing up there and there was a ghost and we all heard about this ghost most people saw it I think I saw him one time and in fact the mayor of the Town Ned said he'd seen the ghost and we're on a radio program one time and I I thought oh God I'm going to get NED here so I go hey Ned have you seen that ghost and he says oh yeah yeah of course I've seen the ghost and then after the radio program I felt so bad I thought geez I said Ned I'm so sorry I know in front of all your constituents I I busted John seen this ghost and he goes no more people have seen it than not you probably got me votes and so everybody had seen this ghost and this theater's going let's do something let's figure this out what this ghost is all about so they got this uh ghost talker who had talked to ghosts on the other side and they got this ghost talker his name was Gary and Gary didn't talk directly to the ghost Gary had somebody on the other side named Betty and he would talk to Betty who would talk to The Ghost and so uh Betty and Gary got in an argument that night and she wouldn't talk to him and so he goes who will you talk to and she said Kevin so he went knocked on my door and he goes come on she said he said I I need you because Betty will talk to you so I sat there I didn't even hear her talking to me but Gary could hear her talking to me and Gary stared at me and wrote on this yellow sheet of paper and his hand went up and down and it never stopped and then when he was done he crossed T's and dotted eyes Anna and he had the story and it was about of all things it was about a guy named he said my name is Dave I was walking home from Bemidji out of town I got to Rutgers Lodge where the theater was and he said I was hit by a car uh he said maybe a drunk driver I think but I'm not sure and he said and my spirit flew into the nearest thing which was the theater and Gary said yeah that's what their Spirits do they will fly into the nearest thing whether it's a tree or a building and Dave said he flew into this building and he said this is when his life really began because all of a sudden here's these people all of a sudden here's kings and queens and he said and even Ordinary People he said sometimes their lives would be so rich that they would just burst into song he said I didn't know life was this good and Kerry turns to me and he goes I don't think he knows he's dead and I said I don't think he does either and Gary said should we tell him I go no no don't tell him so Dave kept talking and he said I know I'm supposed to be somewhere else but I'm not ready to go yet this is so rich and Gary said I can move him along if you want me to and everyone in the theater said no no we've got we want to keep Dave here and so Gary said all right and we did and there were still many sightings after that nothing bad ever happened and debut and said I I won't hurt anybody I'm go I just want to stay and I want to be with these people and I started to think and I started to think when we do go to the theater or we do go hear a Storyteller or music and we're all in the same room together but we're not in the same place we weren't even tonight we're all in different places when we enter somewhere but then the lights come down and then as they come back up there we are and we're transported to this other place I mean we're like to the performers in the audience like two Wings on this belief holding it Aloft and I mean people some people get a much needed laugh some people get a much needed cry some people at least know that they're not alone and I realize that we love and hate and desire as much as any king or queen or hero that ever lived the story the play the music just reminds us of that When We Gather when we do get together it's not that we agree it's a bargain that we come together where we belong I bring Who I Am To Who You Are are heard or flock are pack a constellation each person like a star bringing a bit of light to the darkness each voice another instrument in the silence and this brings me to my final poem this poem comes from the fact that this Earth doesn't have the minerals that it takes to create life like iron iron had to come from a comet or an asteroid or a planet that crashed into this planet that gave us iron for our blood and so if that's true this room right here everybody's a piece of a star and this room is a constellation unique and to this very moment and these are some things that I've learned in my time among constellations I've learned there are families that I share my blood and families I would give my blood I've learned that knowledge is acquired but wisdom is recognized I've learned that love thrives in audacity it dies in carelessness and hides in simple gestures I've learned there's the trip you plan and then the trip you take and home has gone from a place that is to one I remember to one I now create where I know the names of the Gods what's funny what's edible what's sacred and now where I will find you so I'm looking up to the stars and I know now though not burning any longer some still send their light so I'm looking to the past and the future I'm looking to home and somewhere between where I stand and may send their light we meet me look into the heavens and the Stars looking down at what it's like to be alive thanks Kevin Kling please welcome again Galen Lee there's one more round of applause for all the story colors that is beautiful really really cool I had to try not to cry right before I came up you know so anyways here we go so this um I'm gonna do two more tunes for you tonight this is a traditional Irish tune called south wind and it's a waltz and I just love waltzes so here we go [Music] thank you [Music] foreign foreign [Music] laughs [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you so this was the last song I'm going to do is kind of apocalyptic I I don't I always like ending the show that way there's no real deeper meaning other than where else do you put the apocalypse but at the end so this is a Finnish traditional tune called mezzukia and it means forest flowers but the arrangements is quite a bit darker than the original that you would hear at like a Finnish traditional concert so this is masakukia and thank you so much to PBS for having us here for wgse and to Kevin and all the storytellers um this was just a beautiful evening so thank you for having me mm-hmm [Music] [Music] hahaha [Music]