Terry Wooten: Elders Project
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Terry Wooten: A time of big snow
The winter of 1957-58 was a doozie. I was in fourth grade. Snowbanks were higher than school bus windows along sections of the back roads.
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Terry Wooten: Small town help
Your hometown stays with you like the marrow in your bones. I hail from the highlands of northern lower Michigan. It's a rolling land of plains, artesian wells and trees populated with more wild animals than people. That's where the poet in me grew up. ... Ellsworth, the site of my latest Elders Project, is a lot like my hometown and many others.
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Terry Wooten: Christmas past and present
I was terribly miscast as one of the three wise men. It was a fifth grade Christmas pageant at the Methodist Church in Marion. I wore my Grandpa's bathrobe, the closest I could come to a wise man's costume in a nativity scene. There was a piece of tinfoil shaped like a star on the church wall. I had one line. I was supposed to step out from the other two wise men, point at the star and say, "Look! It's getting brighter, much brighter!" I practiced those words for two weeks. The night of the play my saliva turned into paste. I was trembling like a melting icicle. I stepped out, looked at the audience and froze. I forgot my line and pointed at the tinfoil star. It was pretty obvious. Everybody could see it fine. The homemade symbol of a cosmic astrological event was glowing like a prism from all the church Christmas lights.
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Lifelines: A 'thank you' to Glenn Ruggles
An award-winning teacher, Glenn Ruggles' magnum opus has been collecting oral histories around the state and Elk Rapids area. I met Glenn in 1983 when Stone Circle was just getting started. He became our advocate.
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Lifelines: Thinking creatively again
- Monday, August 15, 2011
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Lifelines: Fair myth grew like grass
Today is the 66th anniversary of the end of World War II. I'm not going to share elders' poems on eyewitness accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs. I have them, but my heart isn't there. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on county fairs, a magical midnight in 1956, and empathy for unfortunate critters.
Continued ... - Monday, July 18, 2011
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Lifelines: Real life has film quality
The Traverse City Film Festival is coming back to town next week. Let's celebrate with three folk poems about early movie venues, theaters and promotional gimmicks in the 1930's.
Continued ... - Monday, June 20, 2011
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Lifelines: Friendship through poetry
I'd like you to meet Mary Joseph, 97, from Onekama. Mrs. Joseph participated in the Brethren Elders Project, and was interviewed by Alexis Forsyth, 12. Mary Joseph was 12 years old 85 years ago. Listening to these two girls sharing experiences, while transcribing the tapes, was an incredible experience.
Continued ... - Monday, May 23, 2011
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Lifelines: Kids, seniors share stories
Trains, airplanes, art and love; it's like a poetry salad for a Memorial Day picnic. In early March some Brethren students and I finished up another Elders Project sponsored by SEEDS. Since then I've been polishing up the kids' poems and writing a few myself.
Continued ... - Monday, April 25, 2011
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Lifelines: Celebrating Poetry Month
All we know about people who lived 2,000 years ago is through their art; their writing, songs, paintings and architecture. Art is how the future is going to remember us.
Continued ... - Monday, March 28, 2011
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Lifelines: Celebrate a lifetime of art
There was a lot of laughter coming from the room off the library. Betty Pearl Beeby was being interviewed by two students, Gabrielle Gualtiere and Ashlee Marshall. They seemed to be having too much fun.
Continued ... - Monday, February 28, 2011
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Lifelines: The battle of Iwo Jima
Stanley Holzhauer, of Elk Rapids, almost didn't make it to the Iwo Jima "Beach Party." A shell ripped through the armored plates of his landing tank and exploded in the water behind. This month marked the 66th anniversary of the battle and flag raising.
Continued ... - Monday, January 31, 2011
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Terry Wooten: Elk Rapids man publishes book of early memories
Glenn Neumann drifted from job to job after World War II. He couldn't seem to settle down — until, in 1949, one of his dreams came true. He bought an airplane, a Piper J-5 three seat. "To me it was like looking into another world. One could see things that weren't visible from the ground. There were old logging roads and railroad grades that made up a picture of the landscape many, many years ago. The rivers and streams were life streams to the early settlers. And old homesteads can only be seen from the air. I would almost get lost following trails and visualizing life as it might have been. The higher I flew the broader the view and the more overall picture I got of what I was part of back on the ground."
Continued ... - Monday, January 3, 2011
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Lifelines: A sweet poetry duet
Someone forgot to push the record button. It was the first taped interview with Betty Bowden at Kingsley Middle School. Mistakes happen when you're teaching kids how to record oral histories.
Continued ... - Monday, December 6, 2010
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Lifelines: Life on the homefront was scary
For the infamous anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, here is a different perspective through the eyes of the young wives and girlfriends.
Continued ... - Monday, November 1, 2010
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Lifelines: Honoring veterans near, far
In honor of Veterans Day, I thought I'd share Jack Reamer's story. Jack, 87, participated in the Kingsley Elders Project and was interviewed by two seventh-grade boys.
Continued ... - Monday, October 4, 2010
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Lifelines: Tackle with wooden leg
We hadn't finished shaking hands, or sat down before the stories began. The conversation ranged back and forth from football to basketball, sometimes in mid-breath. The wind off Lake Charlevoix was loud as the laughter.
Continued ... - Monday, September 6, 2010
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Terry Wooten: Workers and their rights throughout history
- Monday, July 26, 2010
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Lifelines: 'Beach party' in Iwo Jima
In the Navy Stanley Holzhauer was trained as a member of a "Beach Party." Their purpose was to land with assault troops, direct traffic, help take care of the wounded and blow up boats that got stuck on the beach.
Continued ... - Monday, July 12, 2010
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Lifelines: Poetry of lugs & shakers
This month the Elders Project explores our history in cherry harvesting. Marie Veliquette, Bruce McLachlan and Janet Morrison, local farmers, were interviewed by Elk Rapids junior high and high school students.
Continued ... - Monday, June 14, 2010
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Lifelines: Family affair turns poetic
I chose Julia Pascoe for the second round of Elders Project interviews in Elk Rapids for a selfish reason. She grew up in the house my wife and I live in. Where Stone Circle is now, was her dad, John Rutherford's cornfield.
Continued ... - Monday, May 24, 2010
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Lifelines: End of war experiences
I could fill this entire edition of the newspaper with war stories collected with the help of Kingsley and Elk Rapids students. The hard part was paring my column to three poems. There will be more here over the months.
Continued ... - Monday, April 19, 2010
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Lifelines: Roadkill is inspiration
Every poem I've ever written or said has changed me a little bit. Art makes the world more alive. I try to pass this awareness on in poetry workshops with kids. In addition to poetry giving elders a voice, art can also speak for all the critters who are not represented very well in our egocentric cosmology. The sad poem about Joani Braun's "Road Art" is an example.
Continued ... - Monday, March 22, 2010
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Lifelines: Rough gyms, terrifying bus rides
March Madness is in the air, so thought you might enjoy a look back through poetic windows at basketball in the 1930s. It's not always easy finding poetry in oral histories. Not everybody talks like Will Shakespeare wrote. What you often get is a pared-down style. I use stanzas and varied line lengths to make the poems more eye-friendly. For years I've been teaching kids to write free verse poetry by having them talk to write.
Continued ... - Monday, February 22, 2010
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Terry Wooten: Sharing the Elders Project
For the past few years I have been conducting a program called The Elders Project. We invite elders of a community into a middle or high school. I teach students about the interviewing process. After the interviews, students transcribe their favorite parts and then learn how to turn this rough prose into free verse poetry, using the elders' own words.
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