LaGrange

This week we are in LaGrange, Georgia, doing the first work since early March.

Each July Azalea Storytelling sponsors a week long storytelling workshop which I come to conduct.  Usually we have about twenty people in the workshop.  We meet at the historic Calloway home, Hills and Dales.

This year there were questions about whether we could have this workshop at all.  Joyce Morgan Young, the Azalea chair, and her committee worked through all the problems and all the possibilities and here we are.

Learning to maintain distance.

Instead of twenty people in the workshop we have only twelve.  Instead of meeting indoors at the visitor center, we are meeting outdoors in the estate pecan grove. Instead of going out for meals, we are having either catered meals or are having take-out food delivered to us.  Instead of staying in LaGrange College dorms, we are staying in private home guest spaces apart from each other. Instead of indoor public performances, we are having one outdoor performance and one drive-in performance. We are wearing masks when close together and practicing good distancing in our work times.

Our only problem comes when the afternoon temperatures go up in Georgia July heat!

Spaced out in the pecan grove.

And so, we are having a wonderful workshop and a fine week.  All of us realized when we got here that we needed conversation and presence with one another. The week has been a model example of a way we can have what we need in a time of care and crisis.