National Geographic on Appalachia
Storytelling Festival Keeps Mountain Tradition Alive
John Roach for National Geographic News, October 5, 2005
Long before the Internet, TV, movies, and radio, stories were told the old-fashioned way-around a fire. Now an annual Appalachian festival devoted exclusively to the art of storytelling is striving to rekindle the flame.
"We want people gathering again to share their stories," said Jimmy Neil Smith, president of the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
The center organizes the annual National Storytelling Festival, which takes place this weekend. Started in 1973 as a way to attract tourists to Jonesborough, the festival now attracts the world's best raconteurs to regale crowds of some 10,000 people.
The tellers come to tell generations-old folktales, legends, and myths; they recite written stories word-for-word; and they sometimes relate modern personal stories about their own life experiences, Smith said.
The listeners come for the chance to participate in the world's oldest collective activity, according to Bil Lepp, a self-described "liar" from Charleston, West Virginia, who is a featured storyteller at this year's festival.
"The media we have today-TV and computers-actually have made people more aware of how much we need to do something very low-tech and very collective," he said. "Storytelling is one of the most collective activities people can participate in."
According to Smith, modern forms of media are a distraction to the time-honored tradition of sitting around the family table long after the dishes are cleared to tell and listen to each other's stories.
He hopes, however, that a revitalized storytelling tradition will lead to better movies. "Great movies are built around great stories," he said.
Good Stories Well Told
While it is important to acknowledge that everybody in their own right is a storyteller, Smith said, performance storytelling is an art form just like acting, singing, or playing an instrument.
"It takes not only natural talent but also constant refinement of the art," he said. "The more you perform the more you refine the performance and, further, the more you refine your story."
Lepp got his start as a storyteller in 1990 at the West Virginia Liars Contest. The grand prize was a hundred U.S. dollars and a scale model of a golden shovel.
"When I was 20 years old, a hundred dollars was half my annual income," he said.
He won the contest and has been honing his lying skills ever since. He said the secret to a good story is a grain of truth that stirs up an emotional reaction in the audience.
"To be good at storytelling you have to identify what the audience responds to and present the story in such a way that maximizes the audience's response, the audience's connection," he said.
The greatest reward, he added, is to tell a story he's worked on for six months to a year at the National Storytelling Festival and watch the audience respond, an honor he initially received through a stroke of "pure luck."
Five years ago he was selected as one of six lesser-known up-and-coming storytellers to participate in the event's Exchange Place, where regional tellers get 15 minutes to wow the audience.
"I got my fifteen minutes, and fortunately the audience responded well," he said. "So for the last five years I've become a nationally known storyteller. It's the most fortunate thing. I appreciate that people enjoy my stories so much."
Storytelling Revival
According to Lepp, the National Storytelling Festival has become the proving ground for the world's best storytellers. Since success at the event can make a storyteller's career-as it did for Lepp-tellers work hard throughout the year to perform well at the festival.
The result, he added, has been a revival in storytelling around the country, with festivals held throughout the year.
Smith, the International Storytelling Center president, said that most of these festivals can trace their origins to the national festival in Jonesborough.
"What we really did was ignite a revival, a renaissance, of interest in and appreciation for storytelling," Smith said.
According to Smith there are at least 200 full-time storytellers around the country and hundreds more who make it a part-time job. They speak at festivals, business seminars, schools, and anywhere else there is a need for community.
"What we are finding is people are seeing the wisdom of using storytelling as a tool to enrich their lives," he said.
*****************************************************************************************
Foliage, Tree Sitters Star in Appalachian Festival
John Roach for National Geographic News, October 6, 2005
Upwards of 75,000 people are expected to trek this weekend to a small New York town in the Appalachian Mountains to catch an eyeful of fall's crimson, gold, and yellow leaves shimmering in the breeze.
And as the leaf peepers gaze into the sugar maple trees ringing the local elementary school, they'll also catch the peculiar sight of people hanging out in the branches. These folks will be participants in the Cohocton Fall Foliage Festival's trademark event: tree-sitting.
"Everything has a gimmick, and the tree-sitting thing is kind of our gimmick," said Tom Cox, chairman of this year's festival, which runs from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon.
The contest begins at 5 p.m. on Friday with about 20 participants clambering up into the trees. There they'll try to stay until 5 p.m. on Sunday. The grand prize is a check for $200 (U.S.).
The official winner is the person who stays in the tree for the longest time with the least amount of equipment, such as food, water, or a hammock, according to Keryn Shaver, who organizes the event.
"The guy who won last year took nothing except the clothes he had on and just sat in the tree. That's hard to do without falling," she said.
Contest Roots
The tree-sitting contest started in 1968, two years after the annual festival began.
"All the adults were down on the ground selling stuff, but there was nothing for the kids to do, so some decided to go sit up in a tree," Cox said.
In the early years tree sitters played guitars, sang songs, and "did the kinds of things kids did back in the sixties," Cox added. Now the event is more organized, with a set of watchers and official rules.
For example, three minutes are deducted for any out-of-the-tree bathroom break. "The ones that end up winning don't come down at all," Shaver said.
In addition to such time deductions, participants are disqualified if they drop anything. Spectators are not allowed to touch the tree sitters or give them food or drink.
Some of the tree sitters use the event's popularity to advance their charitable causes. One woman this year will have a can at the base of her tree to collect money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
According to Shaver, the tree-sitting contest has become the festival's calling card, "but if we didn't have such a variety of arts and crafts and good food, people wouldn't come back."
Scenic Attraction
Cohocton's population hovers near 900, and the number climbs to 1,200 if residents in the surrounding countryside are included. The low population has kept the tree-draped hills pristine, so in 1966 the townspeople decided to capitalize on the scenery.
"We just wanted to do something to have people come out and see the fall foliage," Cox said.
At first locals set up arts and crafts booths in their yards. Once the idea caught on, the city moved the fair to public spaces around town. It has since grown to become one of New York's largest fall festivals.
In addition to the tree sitting contest, festival goers this year will be treated to a soccer tournament, an arts and crafts flea market, live music, and a parade and fireworks show in celebration of Cohocton's bicentennial.
"And all our food is unique to the area. We do a lot of stuff with potatoes, like salt potatoes and baked potatoes," Cox said.
Fall Festivals
For leaf peepers in search of other fall festivals in the Appalachians, consider the following:
• The Shawnee Fall Foliage Festival, Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, October 14 to 16. Take a hot-air balloon ride to view the foliage in and around the Appalachian Mountains, Delaware River, and Delaware Water Gap National Park.
• Shenandoah Fall Foliage Bike Festival, Staunton, Virginia, October 14 to 16. Cycle winding country roads and trails through rolling hills and countryside with the mountains on the horizon in a riot of fall colors.
• New River Gorge Bridge Day, Fayette County, West Virginia, October 15. Walk out on the Western Hemisphere's longest single steel arch bridge and view the splendor of fall foliage below.
• Keene Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire, October 22. Thousands of people are invited to carve a gourd and stick a candle in it. Last year, 27,854 lit jack-o-lanterns graced the street.
John Roach for National Geographic News, October 5, 2005
Long before the Internet, TV, movies, and radio, stories were told the old-fashioned way-around a fire. Now an annual Appalachian festival devoted exclusively to the art of storytelling is striving to rekindle the flame.
"We want people gathering again to share their stories," said Jimmy Neil Smith, president of the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
The center organizes the annual National Storytelling Festival, which takes place this weekend. Started in 1973 as a way to attract tourists to Jonesborough, the festival now attracts the world's best raconteurs to regale crowds of some 10,000 people.
The tellers come to tell generations-old folktales, legends, and myths; they recite written stories word-for-word; and they sometimes relate modern personal stories about their own life experiences, Smith said.
The listeners come for the chance to participate in the world's oldest collective activity, according to Bil Lepp, a self-described "liar" from Charleston, West Virginia, who is a featured storyteller at this year's festival.
"The media we have today-TV and computers-actually have made people more aware of how much we need to do something very low-tech and very collective," he said. "Storytelling is one of the most collective activities people can participate in."
According to Smith, modern forms of media are a distraction to the time-honored tradition of sitting around the family table long after the dishes are cleared to tell and listen to each other's stories.
He hopes, however, that a revitalized storytelling tradition will lead to better movies. "Great movies are built around great stories," he said.
Good Stories Well Told
While it is important to acknowledge that everybody in their own right is a storyteller, Smith said, performance storytelling is an art form just like acting, singing, or playing an instrument.
"It takes not only natural talent but also constant refinement of the art," he said. "The more you perform the more you refine the performance and, further, the more you refine your story."
Lepp got his start as a storyteller in 1990 at the West Virginia Liars Contest. The grand prize was a hundred U.S. dollars and a scale model of a golden shovel.
"When I was 20 years old, a hundred dollars was half my annual income," he said.
He won the contest and has been honing his lying skills ever since. He said the secret to a good story is a grain of truth that stirs up an emotional reaction in the audience.
"To be good at storytelling you have to identify what the audience responds to and present the story in such a way that maximizes the audience's response, the audience's connection," he said.
The greatest reward, he added, is to tell a story he's worked on for six months to a year at the National Storytelling Festival and watch the audience respond, an honor he initially received through a stroke of "pure luck."
Five years ago he was selected as one of six lesser-known up-and-coming storytellers to participate in the event's Exchange Place, where regional tellers get 15 minutes to wow the audience.
"I got my fifteen minutes, and fortunately the audience responded well," he said. "So for the last five years I've become a nationally known storyteller. It's the most fortunate thing. I appreciate that people enjoy my stories so much."
Storytelling Revival
According to Lepp, the National Storytelling Festival has become the proving ground for the world's best storytellers. Since success at the event can make a storyteller's career-as it did for Lepp-tellers work hard throughout the year to perform well at the festival.
The result, he added, has been a revival in storytelling around the country, with festivals held throughout the year.
Smith, the International Storytelling Center president, said that most of these festivals can trace their origins to the national festival in Jonesborough.
"What we really did was ignite a revival, a renaissance, of interest in and appreciation for storytelling," Smith said.
According to Smith there are at least 200 full-time storytellers around the country and hundreds more who make it a part-time job. They speak at festivals, business seminars, schools, and anywhere else there is a need for community.
"What we are finding is people are seeing the wisdom of using storytelling as a tool to enrich their lives," he said.
*****************************************************************************************
Foliage, Tree Sitters Star in Appalachian Festival
John Roach for National Geographic News, October 6, 2005
Upwards of 75,000 people are expected to trek this weekend to a small New York town in the Appalachian Mountains to catch an eyeful of fall's crimson, gold, and yellow leaves shimmering in the breeze.
And as the leaf peepers gaze into the sugar maple trees ringing the local elementary school, they'll also catch the peculiar sight of people hanging out in the branches. These folks will be participants in the Cohocton Fall Foliage Festival's trademark event: tree-sitting.
"Everything has a gimmick, and the tree-sitting thing is kind of our gimmick," said Tom Cox, chairman of this year's festival, which runs from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon.
The contest begins at 5 p.m. on Friday with about 20 participants clambering up into the trees. There they'll try to stay until 5 p.m. on Sunday. The grand prize is a check for $200 (U.S.).
The official winner is the person who stays in the tree for the longest time with the least amount of equipment, such as food, water, or a hammock, according to Keryn Shaver, who organizes the event.
"The guy who won last year took nothing except the clothes he had on and just sat in the tree. That's hard to do without falling," she said.
Contest Roots
The tree-sitting contest started in 1968, two years after the annual festival began.
"All the adults were down on the ground selling stuff, but there was nothing for the kids to do, so some decided to go sit up in a tree," Cox said.
In the early years tree sitters played guitars, sang songs, and "did the kinds of things kids did back in the sixties," Cox added. Now the event is more organized, with a set of watchers and official rules.
For example, three minutes are deducted for any out-of-the-tree bathroom break. "The ones that end up winning don't come down at all," Shaver said.
In addition to such time deductions, participants are disqualified if they drop anything. Spectators are not allowed to touch the tree sitters or give them food or drink.
Some of the tree sitters use the event's popularity to advance their charitable causes. One woman this year will have a can at the base of her tree to collect money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
According to Shaver, the tree-sitting contest has become the festival's calling card, "but if we didn't have such a variety of arts and crafts and good food, people wouldn't come back."
Scenic Attraction
Cohocton's population hovers near 900, and the number climbs to 1,200 if residents in the surrounding countryside are included. The low population has kept the tree-draped hills pristine, so in 1966 the townspeople decided to capitalize on the scenery.
"We just wanted to do something to have people come out and see the fall foliage," Cox said.
At first locals set up arts and crafts booths in their yards. Once the idea caught on, the city moved the fair to public spaces around town. It has since grown to become one of New York's largest fall festivals.
In addition to the tree sitting contest, festival goers this year will be treated to a soccer tournament, an arts and crafts flea market, live music, and a parade and fireworks show in celebration of Cohocton's bicentennial.
"And all our food is unique to the area. We do a lot of stuff with potatoes, like salt potatoes and baked potatoes," Cox said.
Fall Festivals
For leaf peepers in search of other fall festivals in the Appalachians, consider the following:
• The Shawnee Fall Foliage Festival, Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, October 14 to 16. Take a hot-air balloon ride to view the foliage in and around the Appalachian Mountains, Delaware River, and Delaware Water Gap National Park.
• Shenandoah Fall Foliage Bike Festival, Staunton, Virginia, October 14 to 16. Cycle winding country roads and trails through rolling hills and countryside with the mountains on the horizon in a riot of fall colors.
• New River Gorge Bridge Day, Fayette County, West Virginia, October 15. Walk out on the Western Hemisphere's longest single steel arch bridge and view the splendor of fall foliage below.
• Keene Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire, October 22. Thousands of people are invited to carve a gourd and stick a candle in it. Last year, 27,854 lit jack-o-lanterns graced the street.