New Blogs of the Storytelling Kind

I like a good story, don’t you?  

Growing up my sister and I would often end up hanging around the dinner table while our mother would tell us stories about growing up.  She had tales about riding her bike up and down the streets of the cotton mill village where she lived, she would tell us about spending most of her Saturdays at the movie theater in town, and there were stories focusing on the memories she had spending time on the family farm belonging to her grandmother a few miles outside of town.  

Once we grew up we talked Mother into transferring her verbal stories to paper, so that we would have a record of them after she was gone.    Today those spiral notebooks she left behind filled with her stories are gold to my sister and I.  

Storytelling is important but this article from Adweek says it far better than I can…

Stories define us.  Since early cave dwellers left their graffiti in Lascaux, listening to and telling stories have moved people.  Stories are powerful.   They give meaning and context to what would otherwise be a collection of easily forgettable facts.  Stories invoke the imagination so that listeners begin to own them almost as much as the teller.  In fact, there’s a growing body of research that points to the power of narrative not just as a way to engage people, but as the only way to change deeply entrenched views. 

All of this focus on storytelling is no accident…..

I’m adding a couple of brand new blogs to the Georgia Blogroll and both are authored by great storytellers.

Phil Hanson comes from a family of of storytellers.   He really had no choice considering Ludlow Porch was his father and Lewis Grizzard was his uncle. 

 

Can you imagine having both of those Atlanta icons in your family?

Phil has recently started a blog called Living in the Shadows of Greatness where he is already entertaining us with tales of being a Marine and what it was like growing up with Ludlow and Lewis.  His most recent tale regarding Hank the Gator is hilarious.

My second addition involves a blogger who used the dinner hour much like my own mother to fill his son’s heads with stories regarding growing up in the 1970s.  Now that his boys are grown he’s decided to use a blog to record and share his stories.   Visit Dinner Table Stories where one of my favorite stories is “Hey Preacher”.   Anyone who has tried to maintain a little decorum with their young children during church will relate to this story.

I welcome these two new Georgia bloggers to the blogroll, and I’m eagerly anticipating future stories.