2012-05-18T00:09:23Z Gerald Hausman Copyright 2012, Gerald Hausman SPHPBLOG
One day we drove to the airport and when I opened the trunk of the car, there he was, all big-eyed and smiley faced. He thought he was coming with us and he hopped on my luggage.

I transfered him from the hot trunk of the car to a nearby oak tree. What else was I to do? We were on our way out of town. When we returned, five days later, I climbed the oak tree with a flashlight looking for him. It was late and I attracted a parkinglot cop who asked what I was doing.

He had a bigger flashlight and I convinced him to beam around the tree for a while. No luck. Our little friend was gone. We drove home, empty-hearted.

When we arrived home, we opened the trunk, and there sitting on my luggage was our friend, big-eyed and smiley-wily. It was night of course and he hopped on my shoulder and I put him in his safe little spot behind the coffee maker.

He was happy to be home. Late that night I heard him bouncing off the walls and Lorry said, "Good little tree frog." Frog by Ramon Shiloh]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100822-105351 2010-08-22T00:00:00Z 2010-08-22T00:00:00Z

http://www.staythirstymedia.com/201008- ... usman.html]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100804-112933 2010-08-04T00:00:00Z 2010-08-04T00:00:00Z
At our writing workshop last week in Las Vegas, Joseph Baca contributed his own version of fireballs. With his kind permission, I repeat what he wrote:

"Darkness down this narrow alley, then, quite suddenly, three big round fireballs appeared to my left. They were about the same size as medicine balls and they hovered an inch off the ground among the weeds that did not catch fire. I froze, watching them. The red and yellow light pulsating only five feet away from where I stood.

"I was not dreaming. I was fully awake. I was afraid -- and yet I hesitated. I wanted to know what they were. Should I try to touch them? I wanted to communicate with them but the voices of the past said they were witches. This was what I was led to believe anyway. I ran home with a cold chill in my spine.

"Next day I told my mother what I had seen and she in turn told my father who said -- 'It's El Diablo . . . Joseph hasn't gone to church lately.' But I thought, neither has he. How come the fireballs didn't appear to him?

Today, as a grown man, I find myself going back to that strange night so long ago and wondering if I will ever see again the fireballs that old ones said were witches. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder about that."

Joseph, I too am wondering. Just the other night in Sapello Canyon we saw a fireball descend from the sky and hover in front of us. More on that later . . .]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100725-102539 2010-07-25T00:00:00Z 2010-07-25T00:00:00Z
In the mid-nineties a computer-meister friend of ours said, "No one's ever going to make any money selling stuff on the internet." I told him I was posting all of my books on my website.

He said, "Good advertizing but it still won't sell the books." Seems like minutes ago when he said those unwise words. Books and books, editions and editions later the books are still moving along in their own stream of time, mostly propelled by the internet.

I remember saying to my friend, "I suppose you're going to tell me that Amazon.com isn't selling any books." His answer -- "Not that many cause they're still not making a profit." I didn't like to hear such discouragement because I was just setting up my first website. I was hopeful that it might help me make a little living.

It did - pre-google, pre-Amazon-making-a-profit. Publishers still had huge publicity departments then and editors took you out to lunch and if you did any promotion for your book there was a limo to pick you up. Those were the days . . . seems like seconds ago to me.

Is that what the brown lizard thinks on my doorstep? Moments ago, I was a great big, scary dinosaur. Now look at me!

]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100628-111608 2010-06-28T00:00:00Z 2010-06-28T00:00:00Z
I once had a conversation with Geronimo in Dunkin Donuts. Not the real Geronimo but one who looked like him. Iron Eyes Cody, or somebody who looked just like him, showed up at a reading I gave at Boca Raton. He said to me, "I'm here to draw them in; you sell the books." What a sweetheart. When I went to thank him after the event, he was gone.

Couple years ago on the streets of Manhattan, well not too far from Bleeker and the offices of my agent, I spotted a funny looking little guy with a cellphone and he was saying in a loud New Yawk voice -- "Yeah, I sawr it, but whatdaya want me to do about it?" I said to my wife Lorry, "That guy looks just like Danny DeVito." She said, "That's because he IS Danny DeVito."

Jackie Chan winked at me once in the Atlanta Airport but that was because I picked him out of a sea of faces, a wave of people coming at me. I wanted to throw him a kick but I'm very glad I didn't.

Yesterday we were in Washington DC and we were having dinner at a lovely Ethiopian restaurant just up from Eads St. when in the door stepped a mild little man with beautiful dark gold skin and a haunted sort of worried hawk-like proud, dignified face and Lorry said to me, "How is it possible?"

I said, "What?" She said, "Look at him. . . isn't it . . ."

I finished it for her -- "Haile Selassie, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah."

With no imagination, you would see the spirit of the beautiful little king in all his glory -- old workclothes. There it was, the crowning moment of the imagination -- truth -- the king who faced Mussolini and had him disgraced. The king, who with dignity and solemnity and bravery faced a modern day army with bows and arrows, slings and rocks. Did he not know it was the 20th Century?

Anyone who doubts Selassie I's courage, get yourself to the corner of Eads and 23rd St and walk a little ways, order dinner, sit down and eat the best food you've ever eaten. The king will come walking in. But he won't see you. You will see him.


]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100606-165010 2010-06-06T00:00:00Z 2010-06-06T00:00:00Z
Someone said, "I like those tall tales."

Tall is just another word for s-t-r-e-t-c-h. You pull the tale along like taffy, you exaggerate, you draw it out until it's laughable. Well, that's one way we do it. My way, anyway.

Our grandson Taj was present for each of the storytellings I did and so was his sister Anais. Our daughters, Mariah and Hannah were also there. My wife, Lorry was also present. I guess I am a family man storyteller: I bring my family along when I tell.

Taj did a stretch of his own when he wrote Mariah's Mom's Day card -- "You are the bestest mom in the world. I will behave for over 100 years."

That's sort of what Chipmunk said to Gila Monster when he was trying to get back in good favor with the wizard-lizard. I think I told that story for the thousandth time on Saturday. Or was it the millionth? Anyway, it was the bestest I ever did.

]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100503-090728 2010-05-03T00:00:00Z 2010-05-03T00:00:00Z
What a magnificent book this is for teachers. And for writers. Both of which Aram Saroyan is.

And do not forget, he also wrote a poem that completely changed the way I (and most of my generation) listened to crickets:

Not a
cricket
ticks a
clock

As I read, and the dinner cooled on the table, a blue glow came around Aram's book. And the room, and those in it, were lighter and brighter and wiser. I looked around. The book of the blue glow was still glowing. And that's how writers read books. Something may happen that has never happened before. Aram Saroyan, 1965]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100412-152439 2010-04-12T00:00:00Z 2010-04-12T00:00:00Z
Mary woke up and broke her foot. Nobody was in the house. Her closet doors were shaking. She got up very quickly. She went to the kitchen to get the telephone and called 911. When the police got there she was on the floor dead.


The above beginning of a story was written by Claire Lerner who was visiting our home two years ago with her parents, Higgy and Renee. I love the accidental ease with which Claire, age 11, just "fell" into her story. She did this while we, the adults at the table were talking. Bored, Claire opened my laptop, which is always on the long white pine trestle table in our kitchen (in all of our kitchens since 1972) here in Florida. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Claire tickle the keys a little. Then, satisfied she had a good beginning, she quit typing and went outside.

Claire's facile typing produced, I think, a good beginning. A springboard for more, and more. I don't know if she ever wrote another word, but it doesn't matter. In such good beginnings, the story lies in wait for the writer to return.

Here is another from a young writer in New York state. His reading teacher, an old friend of ours, Fred Burstein is a very gifted man -- poet, story writer, picture book author, fine woodworker, sculptor, former actor on daytime TV -- all rolled into one. But it's Fred's finesse and intuitive skill as a reading coach that has made him one of the best teachers in America. His student Joshua wrote this --

In the Woods
>
by Joshua Kenneth Swartz
>
>
>I don't know the last time I was in the woods. I don't live by the woods.
>The last time I was in the woods I had a tick on my shoulder and it was
>sucking the blood out of me. It was this big, about 2 inches, dangling
>from my shoulder. Another time I had two ticks on my leg. My mom used a
>hair clip or something with a rubber tip. She tried to burn the tick off
>with it and instead she burned me. Then she took her name tag with a clip
>and she grabbed it with that and then pulled it out. When she burned me it
>really hurt.
>
>In my back yard there is a water falls like Niagara Falls. It makes
>a "D" and I tried to walk through it and my hand got wrapped around a
>thorn. I don't know how. I can take prickers and regular thorns but not
>blood thorns. Those are the long red ones. That's what I went through and
>they went into my skin. I didn't bleed because I took them out a certain
>way. You have to twist the thorn right a little, then twist it left twice,
>then push down gently and you yank out quickly and put your finger over
> the hole and it doesn't bleed.
>
>Once I was in the woods and I heard a branch start to crack so I
>stood under it so it would hit me. It didn't really hurt. Then I just
>walked home.

Good work, Joshua and Claire, keep those stories coming. With a good beginning, the story will practically write itself.
>
]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100328-102653 2010-03-28T00:00:00Z 2010-03-28T00:00:00Z
Truthfully, no.

I love being in the midst of young readers.
I love talking about reading.
I love reading.
I love writing.
I love talking.
I love listening.
I love life.

So my motivation remains strong as the day I signed my first-year teacher's contract for The Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts. The year was 1968 and I earned $5,000.00 as a teacher.

That first year I had a troubled, and troubling, student named Devin. He gave me a lot of grief. He really didn't like me. He turned my second period English class into a tactical teacher-student confrontation each day. My other classes were going OK, but Devin made me ask myself every day why I was teaching, why I wanted to be a teacher. Devin made me want to paint houses for a living.

One day I received a letter in the mail from my grandmother who said her grandson was attending my school. She asked if I would look after him. His name was Devin. That same day, my particular Devin was harassing me in my second period English class, and I did something I've never regretted. I told Devin -- in front of the entire class -- that the reason we were always fighting was because we were related.

It could have gone any way at all. He might have thrown his desk at me. He didn't. Devin sat still as a mouse. At the end of class, he asked me if it were true, that we were related, and if so, how. I said, "My grandmother's name is Stella and she asked me to look after you." Devin's blue eyes filled with tears; he reached out and hugged me. He said, "I love my grandmother." I said, "I do too."

Teachers ask me how I like looking out at an auditorium full of strangers. I tell them -- "There are no strangers. We are all related. Each and every one of us."



]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100228-101033 2010-02-28T00:00:00Z 2010-02-28T00:00:00Z
My dad used to do a really funny little dance and he'd embarrass my brother and me in public by kicking up his heels and occasionally actually kicking us while walking along beside us. His left foot would come out of nowhere and -- thump -- kick our butts. If he was in a ridiculous mood and we were in town walking on the sidewalk, he might step off the curb so that his left foot was in the gutter and his right foot was on the sidewalk, and he'd hump along foolishly like Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Down deep, my dad man was a big clown and I picked up on his clownishness when I was very young.

As a storyteller I weave my dad into a number of little stories he used to tell and quite often I do his foot kicks and funny facial poses. I like to think he's out there in the audience, seeing me horse around, laughing with or at me, I don't care which. Or maybe, better yet, he's right at my side making faces and walking on air. I know one thing. He'd love to see the kids imitating my actions when I do storytelling. There's always one or two little mimers who give me a reflection of every move I make. Little do they know that their hoofer kicks go back to the days of Vaudeville when my dad was a kid. That's four generations of hijinks. Living history.

]]> http://www.geraldhausman.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry100122-125409 2010-01-22T00:00:00Z 2010-01-22T00:00:00Z