I’ve spent the last couple of days with my passionate and inspiring colleagues from the KnowledgeWorks storytelling project. At long last, our publications about early college and small school reform are out.
They are available to download online, or you can request free hard copies of one or both. Last year, our work won an award from the Council on Foundations. I have pieces in both of this year’s publications.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
Here is a column I wrote about my work with KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s storytelling project.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008
We decided to brave the city-sponsored “Family Fun Fest” on the waterfront over the weekend. We ran into a couple of people we knew who were leaving as we arrived and asked them how they had liked the event. Their response? “It’s kind of… a mess.”
And it was. I wonder why events supposedly designed for families with children are so often unoriginal, even a bit unfriendly towards the audience they seek? When corporations decide to sponsor these events and have an on-site presence, is their goal to actually offer a fun experience for kids, or simply to dole out logo-covered junk? If it isn’t the former, it should be. Your frisbee may or may not give me a lot of joy, but providing an authentically fun memory for me and my child will. You may not think so, but the experience is more important than stuff. And if you give me a bad one, I’m really really going to remember that.
Here is my free advice:
Rule #1
DON’T hold these events without providing a space or fun activity specifically for children under the age of five. Things that they are supposed to sit still and watch don’t count, because people under five, who are often members of families, are generally incapable of sitting still for very long. If you can’t do this, advertise that the event is for kids of a higher age.
DO come up with something specifically designed to engage the youngest people. It’s not hard. Throw down a big mat inside of some gates with some colorful pillows and balls. Get some bigger kids to volunteer to play with the little ones, because no one loves big kids as much as little ones do.
P.S. While you’re at it, make sure you also provide a space for nursing moms and babies. A tent with a few changing tables and rocking chairs will do. This isn’t progressive, it’s just logical and babies, it should be noted, are also often members of families.
Rule #2
DON’T give kids pre-drawn pictures to color. Or at least not only pre-drawn pictures to color.
DO try and inspire them to come up with some ideas on their own. Instead of giving something you think is “fun” laid out in factory form, give them a blank page and ask them to draw something they think is fun. Then praise their brilliance and ingenuity. A big open patch of road where kids could draw whatever they wanted with sidewalk chalk was one of the best things at the festival.
Rule #3
DON’T put any giveaway items out in public view that you do not actually intend to give away. This should be your rule at every event, but when children are the ones you are marketing to, the penalties for breaking this rule double.
DO try and make sure that the people who work at your booth like children and parents, and put them on in shifts, so that they aren’t worn out and disgusted by everyone as it gets later in the day.
Note: When we visited tent for the Columbus Crew – a soccer franchise that isn’t exactly burning up the ticket lines – the woman in it actually pulled a bunch of small soccer balls off of the table when Dan approached, saying “sorry, we’re putting these away, we have to save them for other events.” I’m only grateful that my two-year-old and I were far enough from the table that he didn’t quite clue into the fact that he was being denied a cheap promotional ball, especially since balls, spheres or globes are the most important things on earth. A toddler meltdown was narrowly averted by our parenting reflexes and the fact that he had a healthy nap that day. Bad form, Crew!
Rule #4
DON’T insist on having those infernal bouncy contraptions at every single event where kids may show up. If your goal is for a family to have fun together, this doesn’t cut it. It’s just a dangerous, temporary babysitter. But if you have to have it…
DO make sure that who ever runs the thing does so in shifts with big kids and little kids, or make sure that there are two of them – one for big kids and one for small ones, because small ones can get seriously knocked around just being in the proximity of a fourth-grade jumper. At least put the thing somewhere far enough away from the center of the event that it’s not there, torturing the children of parents who don’t want to either pay $1 for every three minutes of jumping or to watch their child narrowly avert death with every 11-year-old you allow in there with them.
Really, it would be better just to hire more strolling performers. Musicians, clowns, whatever. Seriously!
Rule #5
DON’T think of a family festival the same way you would think about a county fair or an amusement park.
DO try and be creative and considerate of your audience. Parents are dying for more events where the objective isn’t just a bald-faced sales pitch for stores and services. If you’re a corporation, consult educators about the activities and gear you provide.
What would you add?
Life soundtrack: Sly and the Family Stone, Anthology, “Family Affair”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007.
I got stuck in an automatic car wash on West Broad Street* two days ago. I input the code numbers to make it go, the thing pulled me in about 20 feet, then stopped. Trapped in the somewhat foreign space of my stepfather’s Crown Victoria, I watched the spindle of fat, soapy rags twirl through an entire cycle and realized that I couldn’t take the keys out of the ignition without putting the car in park. Being on a track that demanded the car stay in neutral, this didn’t seem like the smart choice. Instead, I chose to lean on the horn like the most annoying person who ever lived and hoped that my oil-stained white knight would arrive soon.
My mother called me on my cell phone at that moment. Learning of my peril while listening to me beep for several minutes without getting any response, she serenaded me with, “Did she ever return? No, she never returned, and her fate is still unlearned/Though for years there were fond hearts watching/for the little girl stuck in the car wash who never returned.”
She tried to call the BP station for me while I kept on honking, and after about 10 minutes, a young man finally showed up to help. After a series of “turn the wheel this way” and “hit the gas!” instructions, I wound up safely back in the right place and miraculously, without any scratches on the car. He sent me back though with an upgraded car wash, which is apparently more expensive because you get to sit there and watch yourself get encased inside of a rainbow of sherbet-colored foam instead of plain white soap.
Yesterday, on the same stretch of road, I stopped at a traffic light close to the outerbelt, right at the moment that an ambulance and firetruck pulled over to examine a person lying on ground beside the offramp. I saw an EMT pick up one of the person’s arms and drop it. As it flopped to the ground, I decided that I would add an errand or two to my trip, which had been to simply ship a camcorder back to Canon that they have now failed to fix twice. I didn’t find anything about this person in the paper today, so I’m hoping that means the man or woman (I couldn’t tell which) is okay, or recovering from whatever happened somewhere.
When I finally drove home, I soaked in the friendly sight of Westgate’s neighborly-looking streets. A young woman in a ruffled blue shirt and spectacles walked a three-legged dog in front of these 1940s homes, where canna and petunias and sunflowers are embroidered into the landscape. There is enough obvious house pride around here to keep us feeling the peer pressure to weed and fix our crumbling front step. As commercial or institutional as West Broad Street can feel, Westgate is equally welcoming.
Dan keeps joking that living on the West side is like being in the witness relocation program. In our old quarters, closer to North High Street*, he couldn’t walk ten feet without bumping into some musician, artist, know-it-all, music fan, cult of personality or new or old friend. I have run into someone I know out in the neighborhood (in this case, at the hardware store) exactly once since we moved here last November. Dan, of course, has run into a few more, but nowhere near the level he did around our old stomping ground.
This is probably a blessing this summer, because we certainly can’t go to a festival or music event without his experiencing some degree of interrogation about what happened to Little Brother’s and what he’s planning to do next. Around the closing, it was very touching when so many people said “I’m so sorry,” and a few people actually cried about losing the club, or because they hurt for us, knowing that despite Dan’s veteran status as a music man, our life as a family is very new and financial instability is scary. It is touching, but exhausting.
For the sake of trying to figure out how we are going to rebalance our lives, it’s good to get stuck in a West Broad Street car wash.
* For those not familiar with Columbus, West Broad Street is the primary east-west road that runs through Columbus, while High Street is its North-South counterpart. The two street intersect in the center of Downtown, where the Ohio Statehouse is located.
Life soundtrack: Doc Watson, My Old Country Home, “The Ship That Never Returned”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
My latest story in Columbus Alive.
Had a lot of fun seeing and writing about this one. The pictures are hilarious.
I also made it into my first blog carnival this week: The Carnival of Good Stuff.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
I had no idea that Columbus was home to an influential scientist in the search for intelligent life. (The comments tied to this story are a scream.) Too bad that this man is leaving, he might have found an acolyte in Declan.
I’ve run SETI at Home on my computers for years. You should too!
Life soundtrack: David Bowie, Hunky Dory, “Life on Mars”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
Its been a week since the final night that Little Brother’s was open. Dan and a few other folks have been busy clearing out the place, which has to be vacated by this weekend. They’ve been organizing a yard sale and silent auction, which has me wondering which things we should keep for Declan‘s teenage bedroom wall.
Those last couple of days were amazing, though. The outpouring of support and thanks for Dan was unbelievable. I posted many of the memories we’ve received through email all over the bar, and people wrote more in a couple of books my mom bought for the occasion, even wrote new ones on bar napkins and stuck them to the wall.
Despite some trickiness surrounding the fireworks, Dan had a great, cathartic set with his band the Wahoos, and Declan helped provide the finale. At the end of their cover of “The Weight” by the band, Declan and I walked in the side door and I put him up on the stage. When the band started playing exit music, Declan started dancing toward his dad, and Dan danced back, finally scooping him up in a hug as the crowd went nuts. That was all it took for Dec to be sold on a brief career in entertainment; he went back out on the stage in front of the crowd several times and danced while people cheered for him. The band started an encore and Declan became more and more distraught as he tried to get Dan’s attention, finally flinging himself back into my arms so I could take him back outside. It took him no time to recompose himself and ask, “more dancing?” But the set was officially over.
Old friends Ned and Roddy Wreckman played a wonderful, fun set that I could hear wafting outside as I settled Declan to sleep in the car, waiting out the Red White and Boom traffic. But the last act didn’t show up and gave no warning that they would bail, so none of the dozens of local musicians in the crowd really had time to work up something to fill the gap. It was disappointing, but a little fitting. The last hour or so that the club was open, the stage was empty. It’s just a reminder that as nourishing and invigorating as music can be, it can also breed dysfunction and a kind of selfishness that most of us, as fans, forgive easily. Dan forgives pretty easily too (many would say too easily for a businessman)
The next day, the Doo Dah’s Unband gathered at Little Brother’s for the last time. Dan walked alongside a coffin scrawled with “Little Brother’s R.I.P.” pounding on a drum inside and carrying a wooden musical note. About halfway through, Declan and I joined him. Lots of people yelled “thank you Dan!” from the street side. Periodically, the Unband would stop and Dan would die in the middle of the road, a group of women keening around him until he was resurrected (they took this so seriously it was hysterical – pictured on the right). At one point, I asked Declan to give his daddy the black musical note before they pulled the shroud over him. Just when it seemed he wasn’t going to do it, he walked over and handed it to him, but damn it all, I couldn’t get my digital camera to shoot quickly enough to catch that moment.
All in all, these were a really happy couple of days, with Dan feeling like Tom Sawyer – a pirate at his own funeral. When people asked how he was, the standard answer was “great today, ask me in a about a week.”
I’ve been through more than my fair share of job losses, including at least one that I had my sense of personal identity all wrapped up in, but that was a breath, compared to Dan’s almost 20 years. I am hopeful that the better part of his history will help him find something else to do that allows him to be himself.
It certainly was surreal on Saturday night as we drove past Downtown and saw all of the traffic on the cap over 670, briefly wondering about the size of the crowd at the club, then remembering that there wasn’t one.
Life soundtrack: Freedy Johnson, Can You Fly, “Tearing Down This Place”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
…both good and bad, but it’s just been too wild of a week to find the time to say it. It’s been a week of extraordinary highs and lows.
Aaron Beck wrote a really nice commentary in the Dispatch on the 4th, but it spent most of the week in error-land, so I couldn’t post it sooner:
Little Brother’s Won’t Soon Be Forgotten
There is also a slideshow.
Life soundtrack: Peggy Lee, The Best of Miss Peggy Lee, “Is That All There Is?”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
Here’s a story about Little Brother’s closing.
Here’s another.
Life soundtrack:
Lyle Lovett, Lyle Lovett, “Closing Time”
Rod Stewart, Smiler, “Farewell”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
As The Sopranos goes into its final three-episode countdown, actors keep making appearances on talk shows, reminding us that they first started filming the series ten years ago. That was right around the same time that Dan was holding staple-pulling, linoleum-laying and painting parties in a former library and used furniture shop, then gritting his teeth at commission and city council meetings as he encountered an unexpected and expensive fight to rezone the building.
Today, I also realized that 1997 was the year that Harry Potter first appeared on bookshelves in England, and his final volume is due this summer. (I was deeply relieved when I read this article on Salon a few weeks back, and found out that I wasn’t the only woman in her thirties who is steeling herself against the loss of these vivid characters.)
All I can say is, as far as endings go, at least we’re in good company.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
