![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Story Reading is a low-key but persistent extracurricular activity at Yale; it was created as a study break in someone's room in Silliman 20 years ago. Children's stories, milk and cookies, an hour or so and then back to the books or to bed.
For the 20th anniversary, some of the current students and an alum put together an event. They got Dwight Hall (one of Yale's chapels) for the day, and set up chairs and cushions.
The schedule was for a couple of hours of set-up and random conversation and catch-up, followed by three hours of people reading aloud, another break, dinner, and then an evening party. I carried some chairs as part of set-up (may as well use those muscles I'm building at the gym). A number of old friends were there, and lots of fine people I didn't know. I got to talk to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
r_ness briefly, but since he knows everybody at Story Reading, only briefly. red_queen was absent; her Evil Twin (also an old friend) said that she was busy working on a show.
I'd hoped to read, but I sent my email asking for a spot on the schedule to the wrong person. Ah, well.cattitude did a fine job with "How the Whale Got His Throat", and many other people read good things, some of which I'd never heard before.
The stories were a mixture of children's stories and more adult material, the latter including things that aren't for children but would be fine for a child (Poe's "The Raven" and a piece about taking a two-year-old to various places in the Bay Area come to mind), and "Three Obscene Phone Calls", in which the recipient gets an obscene caller to hang up on her by being more explicit than he was prepared to handle. There was a distinct generational pattern: early people (mid- to late-1980s) and current Yale story readers read children's stories, and people who had been there in the 1990 read both that and adult stuff.
Unfortunately, I started to zone out by the end of the reading, and didn't really pull out of that. Dinner was tasty--clam pizza, mushroom pizza, grilled peppers, orange slices. Other people ate other kinds of pizza, cold cuts, and so on, but clam pizza seems to be a New Haven–only dish, so I took quite a bit of that. I can get cold roast beef here at home. I was sort of half-there mentally, probably feeling more distanced than I appeared. I decided that I wasn't up for partying or even talking (or going to a play, as some people were discussing) through the evening, so we took the 8:00 train back to New York. (I had arranged crash space in New Haven, but I just knew that if we walked up there and I lay down for a "nap", I'd be out for the evening.
I felt better on the train: my mental state was more suited to reading Le Guin than to talking to people. Got off at 125th, as usual (for those of us who live uptown, that's quicker than riding down to Grand Central and then back up). On our way to the bus stop, I fell. No major damage: denim is tough, and while landing on a pile of miscellaneous garbage is yucky, it's also softer than the sidewalk would have been. I wiped my hands on a spare sock (since we'd planned to stay over, I was carrying a change of clothes), and eventually a bus stopped (after three passed us by).
I'm a bit bruised, but the worst seems to be where my leg hit my Swiss army knife instead of the sidewalk. Some soreness in my ankles, but no cuts, and nothing that hurts when I just sit. Gym tomorrow, I think. (Tomorrow and Wednesday works at least as well as today and Tuesday would have, anyhow.)
For the 20th anniversary, some of the current students and an alum put together an event. They got Dwight Hall (one of Yale's chapels) for the day, and set up chairs and cushions.
The schedule was for a couple of hours of set-up and random conversation and catch-up, followed by three hours of people reading aloud, another break, dinner, and then an evening party. I carried some chairs as part of set-up (may as well use those muscles I'm building at the gym). A number of old friends were there, and lots of fine people I didn't know. I got to talk to
r_ness briefly, but since he knows everybody at Story Reading, only briefly. red_queen was absent; her Evil Twin (also an old friend) said that she was busy working on a show.I'd hoped to read, but I sent my email asking for a spot on the schedule to the wrong person. Ah, well.
cattitude did a fine job with "How the Whale Got His Throat", and many other people read good things, some of which I'd never heard before.The stories were a mixture of children's stories and more adult material, the latter including things that aren't for children but would be fine for a child (Poe's "The Raven" and a piece about taking a two-year-old to various places in the Bay Area come to mind), and "Three Obscene Phone Calls", in which the recipient gets an obscene caller to hang up on her by being more explicit than he was prepared to handle. There was a distinct generational pattern: early people (mid- to late-1980s) and current Yale story readers read children's stories, and people who had been there in the 1990 read both that and adult stuff.
Unfortunately, I started to zone out by the end of the reading, and didn't really pull out of that. Dinner was tasty--clam pizza, mushroom pizza, grilled peppers, orange slices. Other people ate other kinds of pizza, cold cuts, and so on, but clam pizza seems to be a New Haven–only dish, so I took quite a bit of that. I can get cold roast beef here at home. I was sort of half-there mentally, probably feeling more distanced than I appeared. I decided that I wasn't up for partying or even talking (or going to a play, as some people were discussing) through the evening, so we took the 8:00 train back to New York. (I had arranged crash space in New Haven, but I just knew that if we walked up there and I lay down for a "nap", I'd be out for the evening.
I felt better on the train: my mental state was more suited to reading Le Guin than to talking to people. Got off at 125th, as usual (for those of us who live uptown, that's quicker than riding down to Grand Central and then back up). On our way to the bus stop, I fell. No major damage: denim is tough, and while landing on a pile of miscellaneous garbage is yucky, it's also softer than the sidewalk would have been. I wiped my hands on a spare sock (since we'd planned to stay over, I was carrying a change of clothes), and eventually a bus stopped (after three passed us by).
I'm a bit bruised, but the worst seems to be where my leg hit my Swiss army knife instead of the sidewalk. Some soreness in my ankles, but no cuts, and nothing that hurts when I just sit. Gym tomorrow, I think. (Tomorrow and Wednesday works at least as well as today and Tuesday would have, anyhow.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
So anyway, if you have lingering pain or weakness in any odd spots for a while after this, don't be surprised. Krista of Stumptuous (http://www.stumptuous.com) has given me helpful advice in email on how to cope with the injury (I'm doing lots of squats with a Swiss ball against the wall).
From:
no subject
The Story Reading sounds great; sorry about the fall.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Intertwined lives...