Power of Story: The Man Who Invented Christmas

What makes a story come alive?

Think about your favorite stories, whether in books or movies. What is it about them that moves you? That intrigues you? That causes you to see the people in them, relate to them, care about them? That affects your heart, your mind, down to the marrow of your bones?

Because without that, there really is no story. There's just a text book.

And truly, how does a writer or director or actor do this? How do we engage the reader, listener, viewer, draw them into the story and make them part of it? Even the most famous writers have had to address this.

Even Charles Dickens.

Wednesday Poetry: The Storm

With Hurricane Irma bearing down on us and a new State of Emergency being declared for our state (SC), my mind for Wednesday Poetry ran to another strong woman - Emily Dickinson. In this poem she captures the eerie feel of an approaching storm yet manages to remind us that - no matter what happens - "yet abide(s) the world."

Be safe, all

XXVI. THE STORM.

There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost; The doom's electric moccason That very instant passed. On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day. The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled. How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!                     - Emily Dickinson