"Good morning Baltimore! Every day's like an open door."

"My ma tells me no 
   but my feet tell me go!"

-from "Hairspray"'s opening song "Good Morning Baltimore!"


Tickets are still available for "Hairspray in Concert" narrated by Mr. John Waters with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Meyerhoff Hall, Baltimore, tonight and tomorrow night, plus Saturday and Sunday matinees. Saw the world premier last night at Strathmore; laughed so hard I cried. And how often does that happen at the symphony?


From the BSO website:

Jack Everly, conductor
John Waters, narrator (BSO debut)
Micky Dolenz, Wilbur Turnblad
Beth Leavel, Velma von Tussle
Paul Vogt, Edna Turnblad
Featuring:
Marissa Perry as "Tracy Turnblad"
Julie Kavanagh as "Penny Pingleton"
Nick Adams as "Link Larkin"
Rhiannon Hansen as "Amber von Tussle"
NaTasha Williams as "Motormouth Maybelle"
Marcus Terell as "Seaweed J. Stubbs"
Bret Shuford as "Corny Collins"
Alix Korey as "Female Authority Figure"
Chris Briante as "Male Authority Figure"
Also with: The Divas of Song (Natalie Renee, Nikki Stephenson, and Melissa VanPelt) as "The Dynamites."

Mid-June Dog-Blogging! (or, "SG-31R")

Bucky (June 11, 2012). 

This photograph of Bucky was taken indoors, at an aperture of f/16, using a camera, a lens (with a hood), a Nikon "SG-31R Infrared Panel for Built-In Flash" (that looks silly but costs little and works great), and a pair of ceiling-bounced SpeedLights.

___________

Note: No lurchers were harmed making this photograph. Use of brand and product names is by fair use; no endorsement (not even of the splendid affordable SG-31R!) is implied. NeuroCooking is not sponsored by Nikon (or by General Motors, makers of Cadillac cars, which combine legendary luxury with state-of-the-art performance).

Of mice and men.

Scene: Friday morning in the Bethesda Row (Maryland) Apple Store, seven minutes after the ten o'clock opening. I'm buying a mouse. A young man is handling the transaction; his co-worker, a young woman, is standing close beside him.

HE: Do you need anything else today?

ME: No, some mornings you just wake up, and feel like a mouse.

HE: Really.

ME: And some other mornings, you wake up, and feel like a man.

HE (smiling): Yeah.

ME: But then, I'm married.

SHE (To her co-worker, while elbowing him in the ribs, hard): But you're not!

Confidence in efficient communication is power.

I don't know how long it took them in the studio to make, but Jerry Lee Lewis's great 1958 Sun Records recording of "Wild One (Real Wild Child)" is just one minute and fifty-three seconds long.

"... it is too narrow for that."

In a 1953 letter, Wolfgang Pauli related to Carl Jung a comment that Ernst Mach had made, some decades earlier, regarding Freudian psychoanalysis:

"These people try to use the vagina as if it were a telescope so that they can see the world through it. But that is not its natural function – it is too narrow for that."

____

Source: "137: Jung, Pauli, and the pursuit of a scientific obsession" by Arthur I. Miller.

Who wrote that?

Scientists are used to anonymous review, but not to anonymous publication.

Manuscripts submitted to scientific journals undergo peer review, which is usually anonymous, such that the authors do not learn the names of the reviewers. The editors know who the reviewers are, but the names of the reviewers are hidden from the authors (and usually also from the other reviewers).

Of course, when we read articles in scientific journals, the names of the authors are not hidden.

But.

In 1970, the prestigious journal Nature published, anonymously, an article entitled "Effects of Sexual Activity on Beard Growth in Man".

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

Story Knows No Gender

My latest post at PhilanTopic, the Philanthropy News Digest blog, exploring the question, "Should you tell a story differently based on whether your listener is a woman or man?"

My favorite.

My favorite scientific acknowledgement is the second sentence of the acknowledgements section of the paper "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal" by W.W. Schultz et al., which appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1999. That sentence begins:

"P van Andel does not want to be acknowledged for his idea..."

Reflections on the Smithsonian Institution Conference on Organizational Storytelling, & the Golden Fleece storytelling conference

Although my thoughts are not yet fully formed, I want to offer some immediate reflection on the past 3 days, spent with colleagues, students, and leaders in the field of applied narrative....

* I am especially delighted to have met Victoria Ward, of Sparknow, and to have discussed with her some of the ethical boundaries of working with story within nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations: one person's story should not be elicited solely for the purpose of getting money from a donor, or capturing other resources. Story is not a commodity, to be taken from one person and given to another, for a price. I've previously touched on the dangers of approaching storytelling as a transaction, and I will continue to explore how story can be ethically and effective used as a communication tool within the philanthropic sector.

* Leading up to the weekend, there was some discussion of the extent to which the applications and breadth of the concept of story would be discussed. Will participants solely be discussing face-to-face story sharing? Or the creation of a personal or organizational or meta- narrative through social media? At the Thursday evening program, I deliberately stated that the program was focused on interpersonal story sharing to move listeners to action, especially in a business setting. The insight gleaned from our program can be applied to organizational narrative, messaging framing, and digital storytelling (to mention just a few applications), and each of those communication vehicles has their own approaches and spaces for innovation.

Today, Larry Forster, of Shell Exploration and Production Co., and I discussed our reflections on the two conferences. What I came to realize is that both interpersonal and organizational communication is chaotic and distributed simultaneously across multiple channels, and that story is a tool for making sense of, embracing, and somewhat taming, that complexity. It's not about face-to-face versus social media storytelling, but rather about sharing large narratives and distinct stories across all platforms. Some avenues are better carriers of narrative and some are more suited to the sharing of personal story.

Just as I implore people to make ambiguous concepts concrete, I think those of us working in the field of applied narrative should ask our audiences about their interests and strive to articulate the specific definitions and applications of which we are speaking. I am reminded of Svend-Erik Engh's definition of "diamond" stories, meaning the shining story that perfectly captures brand essence; Shawn Callahan's distinction between "Big S" and "little s" stories; and Cynthia Kurtz's discussion of "natural" versus "purposeful" stories.

* At both our Wednesday program in NYC on communication and story for leaders, and at our Smithsonian Institution program on the use of story in organizations, Svend-Erik and I received the same question: Does one tell a story differently to men and to women?

I believe story sharing knows no gender difference. And I know of no scientific data to support a distinct approach for each gender. What matters is sharing an authentic story with your listener and listening, in turn, to him or her to respond based on their experience. What do you think?