By Kiran Singh Sirah

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about listening. The late storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham, one of the matriarchs of the American storytelling movement, liked to say that storytelling teaches us to listen. Stories can’t exist without at least one listener, after all. One of the things I enjoy most about the events such as the National Storytelling Festival and other similar festivals, is the sheer spectacle of an audience sitting in rapt attention as a single storyteller works. The modern world, with its constant demands on our attention, doesn’t offer many such opportunities these days.

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I have learned so much about the art of listening from my friend Daniel Kish. Blind from early childhood, he’s a world expert on echolocation, the process that animals including bats, dolphins, and now humans can use to locate objects by sound. Daniel is famous for developing a technique that uses tongue clicks to produce sounds as a way to “see” and understand an environment. (One expert has described the technique as an “acoustic flashlight.”) Over the years, Daniel has trained both blind and seeing people on his methods.

In a sense, what Daniel is doing is helping people remove their fear of the dark, both literally and metaphorically. He once told me that he likes to begin the training process by “neutralizing fear of the dark unknown.” He wrote, “We essentially remove fear from ourselves and our lives. Life then becomes an intriguing tapestry of puzzles, adventures, and discoveries.”

Many of Daniel’s observations over the years have resonated with me, in part because I know that storytelling contains information that help us navigate and understand the world around us. It’s human nature to fear the unknown, and it can be helpful to have a guide. For blind people, of course, those fears are quite tangible, since the unknown can be present immediate physical danger. Daniel once described echolocation to me as “establishing the knowns within the unknowns, something like navigating by the stars. You chart your way by establishing points of reference, a bit like making it into a story.” Listening can help all of us navigate unfamiliar and even scary situations.

The parallels between Daniel’s work and storytelling have been even more clear to me when he has discussed other methods of navigating unfamiliar environments. Here’s Daniel again, on working with sighted guides during travel:

Blind people typically engage sighted guides to facilitate their safe, effective, and graceful navigation through, interaction with, and understanding of their environment. Insofar as the guiding process necessitates physically guiding the movements of a blind person, it also requires narrative descriptions. Much as a hearing interpreter helps a deaf person interact primarily with the social environment through the interpretation of spoken language, a sighted guide helps a blind person interact primarily with the physical environment by interpreting visual elements through narratives as well as physical guidance.

These narratives aren’t just expository verbiage landing on a blind person’s consciousness like some podcast or radio channel streaming. These narratives are actively captured and processed through what I call a “comprehension matrix,” and ultimately formed into images. In essence, they are coded in the brain as stories, or elements that comprise stories, and rich in substance, character, and information. For a blind person, these narrative stories and story elements help to establish a blind person’s mental construct of the world around them and their relationship to it. For a blind person, physical guidance is typically the key to their interaction with the world, but it’s the narratives and rich exchanges that are the key to a blind person’s understanding.
 
Though Daniel and I initially met a conference where he participated in a workshop I was leading (and I attended one of his talks), we have since become very good friends. He lives across the country, in Long Beach, California, and we occasionally use FaceTime to have long conversations. We were pandemic buddies, which paved the way for his special visit to Appalachia last year. He stayed with me for a week, during which I got to introduce him to our region’s BBQ, my favorite walks and hikes, and my family. Daniel also met with my storytelling colleagues to discuss his work and share his thoughts and ideas.

When he was here, I shared with him the three different routes I take often by car. There’s one that I use when I’m in a hurry, and one that’s good for when I have a bit more time. Finally, there’s the much longer one, my favorite, which winds along country rural roads with no traffic. Daniel encouraged me to try a sort of driving meditation, where I aim to notice something new or surprising on the route. It’s a way to develop focus and pay attention by using sight and sounds. This practice is something I’ve kept up. I know I’m not doing it when my mind is preoccupied or too busy, so the goal is always to get back to paying attention again and remain present in the moment.

Daniel also introduced me to the idea of soundscapes and how they change over time: the sounds of the wind, leaves falling from trees, and noises from humans or animals or cars. We can hear the subtle shifts when we pay close attention. When we went on one of my favorite hikes, along the Appalachian Trail beside Watauga Lake, Daniel helped me notice more of this audio input based on the natural amphitheater that our trail had beside this lake, in the Fall.

Via email, Daniel has shared with me some sound clips of various activities of real-time recordings of chirping birds that he made. I was amazed by how he could describe their movement and the physical location of houses by listening to the sounds that the birds were making.

One time, a bird made its way into his house on accident. He could hear the sound of the bird panicking because it didn’t know how to get out. As it flew back and forth across his living room, he could hear other birds outside, moving in parallel. Daniel said that, as he opened the back door to let the trapped bird out, he noticed a sound from a small flock, like a call and response to help guide the lost bird to the exit.  In another clip, he shared the sounds of some ravens, and described how they moved from tree to tree, how to distinguish between males and females, and the sizes of each. I started making my own recordings of soundscapes, like the bird noise near my dad’s house in England, the sound of coffee percolating, and the sizzle of onions and cumin seeds roasting in my cast iron pan. With thanks to Daniel, I have realized that is actually one of my favorite sounds.

Deep listening is not just a source of information, but also of wonder. Daniel once told me about a time he decided to climb a tree when he was a boy. No one had told him that the sky was far away, so he wanted to try to touch it. As he got further up, it dawned on him that the sky was out of reach. In the branches, listening to the sounds from the ground and across the fields, was when he discovered his love for soundscapes.

I invite you to join me in practicing the art of these many types of listening: to feel informed, to light dark paths, and to inspire wonder and awe.
 

by Kiran Singh Sirah

I recently got married—a small, lovely, do-it-yourself affair. One of the things that was fascinating about planning our own ceremony, vows, and celebration is how we thought about tradition, which is so important to both of us. On the surface, at least, we come from two very different traditions on a cultural, geographical, and spiritual level. Marie is from Appalachia, but her ancestry is from the west of Scotland, where I lived for many years. The more we discussed the details, the more I was struck by how much we have in common.

It was a big question from the beginning: with most of my family in another country, what would be the best way to honor my roots? I think our natural tendency as people is to think of tradition in our families as unchanging and maybe just a little bit separate from our daily lives, like fine china you pull out for a special occasion. We feel reluctant or even afraid to change the way our parents, grandparents, and so on did things, so there can be a sort of rigidity that creeps in. But traditions aren’t fragile or even static. In fact it’s quite amazing how much they’re able to flex over time. Traditions are living things, not empty rituals, and they should serve us, helping us celebrate the past even as they guide us into the future.

As we planned the wedding, we thought about the elements that were most important to us. Nature and especially water were in the forefront, as well as the DIY spirit. When Marie told me she wanted to do something in the backyard, I loved the idea because that’s very much how I grew up. We did everything at home, and made lots of things ourselves. When Marie told me her mother offered to make most of the food, I said, “Is she okay with this?” And Marie said, “100%! She grew up poor, so this is what we did.” That made sense to me, because my family was the same way.

Even as we thought about ways to incorporate traditions from other parts of the world like henna painting, I kept coming back to how both of us are Appalachian, if perhaps in different ways. I’m newer to the area, and grew up in England, not unlike the first migrant Appalachians. My grandfather, like Marie’s, was a carpenter. Both of our grandmothers made quilts. And our families were both involved in revolutions against the British: the American Revolution for hers, and the Indian Revolution for mine.

There’s something about the values of family life, cultivating a connection to the land, and grassroots efforts that feels very core to rural identity. I grew up in England in a semi-urban town close to London, but my family—my parents and my grandparents—didn’t come from there. My mother grew up in East Africa, my grandparents come from villages in India, and their traditions and beliefs and values have always felt very core to who I am. I learned about them through family stories that felt tangible, real, and at the center of my upbringing, rather than some distant fairy tale about the past. Long before I visited the rural village where my mom grew up, I understood it through the power of story, and through the ways in which my parents interacted with the world around us.

When I moved to Appalachia, there was an almost uncanny sense of coming home. I vividly remember the first time I visited the Hicks homestead in Beech Mountain, North Carolina. Our first stop was to see Ted Hicks and Rosa Hicks (who were both in the hospital in Banner Elk at the same time). After listening to Ted tell Jack tales from his hospital bed, we drove up the mountain to see the homestead. I got a phone call as soon as we arrived because Ted had timed how long it would take to get to the home, then called to make sure that we arrived. That was exactly what my grandparents encouraged us to do: always check to make sure that a visitor has arrived. Inside the house, in the living room, there were fabrics and quilts, a familiar aesthetic from my travels in India.

Marie and I were engaged in Hot Springs, North Carolina, which some of you may know as the place where Cecil Sharp, the English folklorist, collected folk ballads and songs from the mountains. In many ways, this place helped him lay the landscape for what would become the Appalachian revival. Hot Springs is a beautiful place because it’s on the Appalachian Trail, and it has the ancient French Broad River that runs right through. The whole area feels very magical. After renting a cabin, we sat down on a rock by the river, and I proposed. I didn’t want to get down on one knee because that didn’t feel right. Instead, we sat as we always have—side by side—on a rock. We watched the sunset and listened to the noise of the rapids.

I opened with a nod to tradition, asking Marie if she remembered what red signifies in India. I told her, “Red has been an important color for centuries. When you buy a house and paint part of it red, or you paint patterns in red henna, it’s a color that represents life, love, blood.” And as she looked out across the river, I took out a little piece of red string that I’d put in my pocket in preparation, and I showed it to her as I said, “I give you my life, my love, and my blood.” And I tied that piece of red string around her finger instead of an engagement ring. Marie is an artist, so I knew she’d want to pick one out for herself.

It was a beautiful moment. Later, as we walked along, I suggested we play Pooh Sticks, which is a game from Winnie the Pooh that we used to play as kids. Basically, you stand on a little bridge, and each drop a stick over one side at the same time. Then you peer over the other side of the bridge to see which stick comes out first. Marie and I dropped our sticks, and mine sped underneath the bridge. When we went across to the other side, we saw that both our sticks had been intertwined to form a cross and emerged together. It felt symbolic of the journey we were going on together,like nature was giving us its affirmation.

With a lot of my family spread out across the UK, and with the ongoing effects of the pandemic, it seemed impossible to have a large family gathering. A backyard celebration felt right. We incorporated traditions in a way that both honored the values we grew up with and also felt authentic and right to us. We realized that, in our own space, we really had the freedom to add the love and flavors that we wanted. And I’d encourage anyone to do the same, whether you’re planning a wedding or a barbeque. The playlist, the color, and the foods are all tools we can use to celebrate who we are.
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I think about the pagan roots of St. Brigid’s cross, a Celtic symbol that has been very much embraced by the Christian tradition. In a similar way, I think we need to not just represent our cultures, but also unpack them. I may be a newer Appalachian, but I’m Appalachian all the same. Marie may have been born here, but she has roots in Scotland. Underpinning these facts of geography are the values we inherited from our families, our heritage, and our upbringing: a respect for things made at home, by hand. Gestures that come from the heart. Our ancestors and revolutionary spirits crafted stories with their heads, their hands, their hearts, and their souls. We heard them, and in turn we’ll craft our own.

By Kiran Singh Sirah
 
Earlier this month, I was a keynote speaker at a Rotary peace conference in Houston. We were a group of about 1,500 people, many of whom are leaders in their communities, and all of whom are interested in peacebuilding. They were from all over the world. And every day, I was asked the question: what led me to become a peacebuilder?

There are so many ways I could answer that question, because I’ve been doing this work in one way or another for my whole adult life. And even before that, I can trace the answer back to the values that were instilled in me by my parents, who were both refugees that were driven from their home by a genocidal dictator. I can and do share my “origin story” as a peacebuilder in terms of my family, or explain the trajectory of my career as I’ve been doing this work—but I don’t think that’s what people are really asking when they say: “Why do you do this?”

I think what they want to know is why I believe that peacebuilding is possible. Almost everyone believes in peace, at least in theory. But I think a lot of folks have lost hope in it as a real, attainable goal, and as something we can strive for together. Too many people see peacebuilding as a huge, daunting, totally unrealistic goal. And so an important part of my message everywhere I go is that peacebuilding isn’t just demonstrations and organized actions; it can also be comprised of unexpected connections, small acts of kindness, and quiet conversations in our day-to-day lives. This is work that all of us can do every day, and I think that the stories we share with one another are the structure on which we can build a better future.
To that end, I wanted to share a few ideas based on stories from my own life about how I think we can go about this work.

1.    Cultivate a can-do attitude.
When I was a little kid on the south coast of England, I’d look out across the sea and imagine the world. I was curious and I wanted to travel, and I loved hearing the stories about the places where my parents had been. When I told my mom I wanted to see the world, she said, “Go on, then.” I packed up a small bag and set out that evening. Of course it started getting dark, and then my socks got wet in a creek a few blocks away from my house. I headed back home, determined to try again a different day.

When we were kids, we had an outsized sense of our ability to do things and our personal impact on the world. We were also less afraid of looking foolish. I remember organizing political protests at my elementary school and writing letters to Ronald Reagan. I think as we get older, the world drums out some of that enthusiasm and earnestness and belief that we can do big things. Part of the work of any type of activism is simply recapturing and nurturing that sense of belief that came so naturally to you as a child.

2.    Seek perspective. 
In high school, one of my teachers, Mr. Ellis, had an interesting and unusual approach to teaching history. Instead of reading about the past, our homework was to watch the evening news. We’d learn about then-current events like the conflict in Northern Ireland and the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and then the next day in school, we’d discuss them. We’d work backwards to learn about what had led to those conflicts, building a deeper, broader sense of understanding. Mr. Ellis encouraged us to explore the different events that started wars, and to research different sides of the story. Essentially, he asked us to work like detectives, to probe and ask questions and to seek the stories behind what we saw, so we could form our own opinions.

3.    Remember that entrenched problems aren’t permanent.
Sometimes it’s helpful to see an old problem with fresh eyes. In Glasgow, Scotland, there’s an old and horribly violent rivalry between two of the country’s soccer teams, Celtic and Rangers. When I first moved there, I was shocked by how sports and religion and politics all intertwined in this rivalry. Watching a game, you could see hundreds of years of religious turmoil between Catholics and Protestants unfold as fans threw potatoes on the field to mock the descendants of Irish immigrants. And across the city, after games, violence would spill out of the pubs and onto the streets, or even start conflicts between neighbors and families.

As a newcomer, this conflict was shocking to me. But in my conversations, people explained that it was just part of the culture that would never go away. There was a feeling of complacency or even acceptance. I started a program to address it, and I think part of the reason I was able to act was simply because I hadn’t grown accustomed to the problem.

4.    Don’t reinvent the wheel.
When I was a young education curator, a very talented photographer called Jenny Matthews came for an exhibit and a series of talks. Over coffee in the museum café, I asked her if she’d be willing to offer me a bit of advice. I told her I had this desire to go and do human rights work in the world, perhaps to start a nonprofit. She said, “Why do you want to start a nonprofit when there’s already so many great ones out there?” She really encouraged me to go find an existing project to support that aligned with my vision.
When we’re getting started in our careers, I think there’s a certain amount of ego we bring to the table. But often we can get so much farther if we build on something that already exists.

5.    Positive outcomes compound over time.
In today’s world, I think we get a little too caught up in the hard facts of metrics. Statistics and measurable outcomes are great, but these tools can’t capture the cumulative and long-term impacts that peacebuilding and storytelling can have. There are questionnaires and other tools we can use but that information can’t reflect the big picture of what people then go on to contribute in families, schools, workplaces, and wider communities. These are returns on investment that unfold over lifetimes.

I’m still learning from the stories that my parents, teachers, and other mentors shared with me when I was very young. I think about them all the time! I think when we share a story, we don’t necessarily know the impact it will have on someone else. There’s a lot about this work that’s unknowable, but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t taking place.
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Stories are living things that shape our understanding and drive us to act. I think of storytelling and peacebuilding as wide and nebulous movements that we can all be part of and contribute to and benefit from. You don’t have to work to end all wars, everywhere. You can just do a little bit every day to make your community a better place to live, and go from there.

Image courtesy of Austin Mann

by Kiran Singh Sirah
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In the West, when a baby is born, we welcome them “into” the world. In China, the turn of phrase is a little more poetic: they say a baby comes “out of” the world. The idea is that, even before we were born, we were already part of this place, deeply interconnected with nature. Scientists take an even broader view. They say the elements of our bodies are made of ancient stardust.

As a folklorist, I’ve always been interested in how individuals and cultures understand themselves and their origins. In comic books, characters often have an origin story – some definitive event that explains how they became who they are. But real people are much more complicated. No single story defines us. We come from multitudes, literally and figuratively.

When I think about who I am, personally…
I am my grandfather, who built a well in the scorching East African sun so workers passing by could drink fresh clean water.
I am my ancestors, who came from the rural villages of Northern India to defy an empire—and won.
I am my parents, who fled persecution in Africa. They arrived in a cold country with nothing but the shirts on their back and taught me about where we came from through their stories.

I’m a Sikh – a learner and a disciple. A core belief in Sikhism is that we must travel around the world to learn about five different religions or belief systems. We’re meant to immerse ourselves in those traditions and communities, and when we’ve finished with the fifth, the journey is considered complete. Becoming a Sikh requires learning about others, and what it means to be part of our collective human family.

In England, where I was born, I was called an Indian. In Scotland, I was English. Here in the U.S., I’m British, or sometimes European. But I’m also Appalachian now. All these identities reflect the truth in a different way. They reflect where I am, and often where I am not. Places – our communities, and geography itself – evolve in a similar way, changing to encompass new truths and contradictions over time.

All of this was on my mind recently during a special convening led by Yo-Yo Ma, the musician, that took place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The cellist brought together around 45 artists, musicians, scientists, scholars, Cherokee elders, and community leaders to dig deeper into our collective history by exploring the interplay of culture, music, storytelling, and nature. I was working as a thinking partner with Yo-Yo Ma and his team in partnership with our friends from The Office of performing arts and film, the National Park Service, the Cherokee Museum, Big Ears Festival, Tremont, Black in Appalachia, and other participants.

We began with dinner under a tent placed at a high elevation overlooking Purchase Knob, an incredible view. We all understand Appalachia as a place of beauty and a place of tradition. But if we dig deeper, it’s also a place of pain and hardship.
We think of the mountains as a fixture. But their name as we know it was conceived by the federal Appalachian Regional Commission. That was relatively recent history, and we know that indigenous people lived here long before that. The Cherokee people, for instance, have been connected to these mountains for over 12,000 years. We often think of the United States as a “young” nation. But it is also a place where people have lived and created meaning for a very long time.

At the convening, Tom Belt, a Cherokee elder, spoke about how people don’t own land. Rather, we belong to it. We belong to the mountains, and help make that environment what it is, and it shapes who we are in return. It’s interesting to consider that Great Smoky Mountains National Park—one of our country’s most beautiful national parks—is in many ways a human construct as much as it is a natural place. It is an idea, and an imposed identity. In the process of shaping the park into the iconic national treasure we understand it as today, many people were displaced and dishonored, and their identities were buried, if not entirely lost.

Many who were at this convening work on different projects that help us understand those mistreated people and their stories better. Our ranks included specialists on Black and Latinx history, Scotch-Irish ancestry, Native American heritage, and more—all there to explore the diverse culture that came from our mountains, in all their beauty and complexity.

I was there to lead our morning workshop, as well as a deep-dive meditation in which I was joined by Yo-Yo Ma and Jarrett Wildcatt, a traditional Cherokee flutist. As we talked about culture and identity, many of us discussed the pressures of assimilation to suppress what makes us different. In folklore studies, we talk about the need to “dig where you stand” – to unearth stories that might not be visible on the surface. There is always more to a place or a person than meets the eye. When we celebrate a region, there is often a romantic, nostalgic spirit in the air. But we also need to make room for the more difficult issues and legacies that people are grappling with. These experiences are just as important to understand and share. They are part of our collective history.

One of the questions we were there to discuss with Yo-Yo Ma was the interplay between culture and the environment. I think this relationship is especially strong in Appalachia, where music and stories have long been inspired by the natural world. How do we see ourselves as separate from, or integral to, our natural surroundings? This is an essential question that can get lost during the busy days of our ultra-modern lives.

My young stepdaughter is learning about Jane Goodall in school. The questions she asks us at home (for example, “What’s the difference between animals and humans?”) are naive yet profound. We often acknowledge the wisdom of our elders, but children are wise in their own way. They aren’t afraid to ask the most essential questions. Yo-Yo Ma encouraged us to each tap into our inner child, to recapture that sense of curiosity, imagination, and possibility that helps us imagine a better world.

The boundaries of a national park are artificially imposed, just like the lines of a state or a nation; the birds and other animals don’t recognize its borders. What can we learn from that way of being? The air, the land, our rivers, and our seas can teach us how to foster a more inclusive, calm, and peaceful world. Most of the attendees at the convening were from North Carolina and Tennessee, yet many of us weren’t previously aware of each other’s work. How can we transcend false boundaries and real barriers? What values do we have in common? What lessons can we learn from each other’s experiences? How can we better appreciate and preserve different kinds of beauty?

The arts offer subtle but satisfying answers to these difficult questions. They help us make sense of terrible world events in a more productive and fruitful way than scrolling the news or social media feeds on our phones.

I left Great Smoky National Park very early in the morning to drive to Richmond, Virginia, where I was giving a talk to the people who help preserve the Main Streets across the nation. I remember hearing about the tragic shooting in Buffalo, New York, as I was driving, and now as I write, there has been an unspeakable massacre of elementary school students and their teachers. In these moments it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness—a feeling that our world is irreparably broken.
My partner is a studio painter. Once, when I was stuck on a painting I was working on, she told me that we have to work through what’s broken to create meaning in art. I’m reminded of the poem “Keeping Things Whole,” by Mark Strand:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
 When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
 We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Looking around today at our nation, and our world, we have the difficult task of continually moving through what’s broken. As we grapple with uncomfortable truths about climate change and human cruelty, we have to work very hard to keep things whole.

When someone asks you for your story, it can mean all sorts of things. You might talk about your family, where you went to school, or your job. You might mention cultural traditions, or the folk tales and wisdom of your people. You might remember grand historical tragedies, or intimate personal loss.

Our lives are composed of all these influences—places, people, and textures. Only in exploring them fully can we gather what we need to build a better world, one story at a time.

At the convening, a colleague quoted a poignant line from Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer:
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Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.

I invite you to pay attention to the world we were born into—or out of—before our bodies and bones are returned to the stars.

By Kiran Singh Sirah
 
Fall is my favorite season. Here in East Tennessee, I love to observe the four distinct seasons from the stillness of my front porch. I particularly love the way the leaves begin to change color around the time of the National Storytelling Festival in October. I’m always reluctant to sweep up the fallen foliage on my lawn because I love the sensation of walking through a blanket of crisp colorful leaves.

Autumn is a season of reflection, a time to start nestling in at home, focus on cooking warm meals, and building up the fire pit in the backyard. The lead-up to the holidays is a natural time to reconnect with family and friends, and also with ourselves. We have the contemplative space to let go of the things that are no longer serving us, and to feel grateful for the things and people and places that nourish our souls.

We all have people in our lives that have influenced us, directly or indirectly: teachers, parents, friends and colleagues, or even strangers who we just admire. I’m talking about the people who have influenced our thinking and our passions and our work. I have written about some of my most important influences, including  my parents and an especially beloved teacher for this blog. Another person who has influenced my work very much, but who I haven’t really had the chance to write about, is my predecessor, Jimmy Neil Smith. So let’s fix that.

Jimmy Neil retired as president of ISC in 2013, after 40 years of service. I came to Jonesborough with big shoes to fill. In addition to founding the institution, Jimmy Neil was the brain behind the National Storytelling Festival. I truly believe he was a visionary.

I still remember our first meeting, which was within a week of my arrival in Tennessee. Jimmy Neil invited me to breakfast, which naturally turned into a three-hour conversation. We’ve had many more meals and meetings in the years since. Jimmy Neil has the mind of a folklorist—always asking questions, and being very present as he listens to the answers. He has often asked about my family, and the places and experiences that were formative to me in childhood. He is as interested in the events that shaped me and my opinions on world affairs as the business of storytelling. He’s interested in hearing everyone’s stories.

At the Center, Jimmy Neil continues to have a certain presence even when he isn’t here. I’m sure it’s often that way with founders who have poured so much heart into developing an institution. I often spend my lunch breaks in the park behind the Center. It’s a beautiful spot, and as it happens the park was named for Jimmy Neil. The space is small and intimate, not huge or flashy, and it’s rarely very busy.

There have only ever been two presidents of ISC: Jimmy Neil Smith and me. It’s amusing how much we have in common. Many of our staff who have worked with us both noted that we share many characteristics and quirks. We’re both early birds who thrive first thing in the morning. We both love bacon. We both chew our pens as we think up new ideas to put into action. And one time I showed Jimmy Neil the large sketch book where I note my ideas—and he had the exact same notebook that he uses for the exact same purpose.

There have been other small but fascinating coincidences as well. I once met Bill Strickland, a creative genius who was an advisor for the Bush and Obama administrations. Strickland has a belief that if you create a beautiful place, beautiful things will happen. When I returned to Jonesborough and told Jimmy Neil about this meeting and Strickland’s sentiment, Jimmy Neil told me that he had heard Strickland give a talk many years ago that expounded on the same philosophy. In fact, Jimmy Neil said that talk was what inspired him to create the International Storytelling Center: a beautiful place where beautiful things could happen.

Many people don’t realize that during the 1950s and 1960s, Jonesborough, the oldest town in Tennessee, was in a state of decline. The town’s sidewalks were cracking, its streets were crumbling, and many of its 19th-century homes and storefronts were deteriorating and empty. ISC and the National Storytelling Festival have brought international acclaim to Jonesborough and the region. In the early 1970s, when Jimmy Neil came up with the idea of celebrating the folk art of storytelling, he gave the first humble gathering the bold name of the National Storytelling Festival. But it grew into its name over time. I think that’s the cornerstone of his philosophy: envisioning a grand idea, and then working to make it happen. He talked about a storytelling revolution, and cultivated that big idea until it became real and tangible.

So much of ISC’s current work has been built on research and projects that Jimmy Neil started years ago. Our Project Zero initiative with the Harvard School of Education, for instance, helped us put storytelling theory into practice. Our partnerships with NASA, the United Way, and the Smithsonian Institute all began under his tenure—as did much of ISC’s work in education, health care, literacy, conflict-resolution, and international collaboration. So much of ISC’s mission comes down to Jimmy Neil’s ability to craft a dream that many of us could come together to realize and build upon.

Of course there were times when Jimmy Neil made controversial decisions. Any project that grows so fast isn’t going to please everyone, and will inevitably encounter some mishaps along the way. But when I think of Jimmy Neil’s legacy, I believe he will be remembered for developing this art form in service to the world, as a vehicle to bring people together. Storytelling champions causes, fosters dialogue, empowers people, and builds communities. And it turned Jonesborough into an exemplar model for Main Street towns around the country that needed to revive themselves from an economic slump to once again become something great.

With Jimmy Neil now in an honorary position as ISC’s president emeritus, he still serves the organization and the town. Together, we have attended community events as two faces of ISC’s work. In many of these places, I have been the newcomer, and he has graciously introduced me to people he knows. (In return, I have tried to teach him how to cook, but I’m not sure that we’ve made much progress on that front.) When I travel for work, colleagues still ask after Jimmy Neil. And we still get visitors at the center who became involved with storytelling in their own communities (some as far away as India) because they were so influenced by Jimmy Neil’s work.

As we move into 2022 and the 50th anniversary of the National Storytelling Festival, I’m thinking deeply about our vision for the future. That includes reflecting on our roots, and thinking about how we can expand our work over the next 50 years. From our first days, I think Jimmy Neil has very much tapped into the raw potential of storytelling to help his community, his region, his nation, and his world. He cultivated cultural assets that are still providing a return on investment to this day. His values were embedded in the organization from the very beginning. He knew how important it would be to preserve our archives from the early years of the National Storytelling Festival. And he was a champion of diversity and inclusion long before those became corporate buzzwords—all foundational beliefs that have served us well as ISC has grown and changed.

I think about storytelling a lot (obviously), and what I have come to believe is that we hear the greatest stories off-stage, around dinner tables and in cafes and on front porches and the like. Every day, we share our stories with one another. The conversations we have with friends and family and mentors over a lifetime develop and deepen in such an interesting way. Each conversation is like a little vignette of our lives.

Over the last eight years, I’ve had many early-morning conversations over breakfast with Jimmy Neil. When the Courthouse Diner closed, we moved to the Pancake House. You’ll find it right on the corner of Boone Street as you enter downtown Jonesborough. I recall that one day, as we were eating, Jimmy Neil looked out the window and described how much Jonesborough had changed over the years. In his early career, there was no traffic, much less traffic lights. Jonesborough has thrived, in large part due to his vision and care.
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I imagine that we still have many meetings to come. I still have a few questions I’d like Jimmy Neil to answer. (Why does he always wear black? Why does he prefer a bolo tie?) And he has promised to make me dinner someday, though we’ll have to see how that goes. As I reflect on all the people who have made me who I am, I feel very grateful for everything Jimmy Neil has given us at ISC. Jimmy Neil has been a wonderful colleague. But more than anything, I treasure being his friend.
 

By Kiran Singh Sirah

The news coming out of Afghanistan has been painful to witness. So many of these images of suffering—the cargo plane filled with refugees, and especially the image of the baby being passed over barbed wire to a solider—reminded me of my own family’s experience as refugees. Forty-nine years ago, they were forced to flee their home in Uganda along with 50,000 others, when a murderous dictator threatened them with genocide.

My parents didn’t have much notice. With their visas, my mom and dad and brother (who was just six months old) were given 48 hours to pack up and leave. There was no time to say goodbyes or get properly organized. Worse, my parents were robbed of the few belongings they carried on their way to the airport. The thieves took everything except for the clothes on their backs and my mother’s wedding jewelry, which she had hidden in my brother’s diaper. She later used it to open her first bank account in England.

I’ve heard many stories about my parents’ experience, as well as the many other countries where they had roots, over the years. My parents were actually British citizens because they had grown up in former British colonies; their parents had been brought to East Africa as laborers from India to help build the railroads across the desert. My late mother told me stories about her life growing up in a small town on the border between Kenya and Uganda. Even now, my father sometimes speaks of the experience with a sense of nostalgia, describing that time in their lives as a kind of adventure. He recently told me about when their plane landed in Ethiopia to refuel. He recalls not being able to disembark from the plane, but can’t quite remember why. I think that speaks to the chaos and confusion of evacuation, even the ones that go relatively well.

An interesting and poignant coda is that when I first moved to this region, eight years ago, I met Scott Niswonger, a local businessman and philanthropist. When he asked about my background over coffee, I told him about my parents’ story. In response, he shared that at the time my parents fled, he was a cargo plane pilot who delivered food and supplies to refugees at the Ugandan border. I was stunned. Here I was, the new guy in town, shaking the hand of a man who had helped my people many years ago, thousands of miles away, before I was born.

It really is a small world! And acts of kindness, however large or small, reverberate through our lives in amazing, unexpected ways. I try to bear this in mind when I see people on the news who are in great distress. Among the stories of turmoil and chaos and fear, there are also stories of love and compassion and resilience.

It’s vital to ask how we, as individuals and as organizations, can help others in these moments of crisis. In graduate school, I studied shelters that housed people who needed a place to stay. Everyone who was there—veterans, former professionals, artists, and more—had never expected to find themselves in that situation. (Anything can happen. That’s perhaps the primary lesson I learned.) My thesis, “A Stone in the Brook,” took its title from an interview with one of the shelter’s clients, who described the shelter as a kind of stepping stone: “It’s just what you need to step on to get safely to the other side.” As caring members of society, we can help build such transitional tools and spaces to lend a hand to people who need safe passage from one stage of their lives to the next.

I’m not necessarily talking about grand gestures (though of course those are needed, too) so much as small actions we can take on an everyday basis. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I hope it’s a helpful start for anyone who’s looking for ideas about how to help.
 
Check in with Folks 
One lesson that I think all of us have learned during the pandemic is to check in with your people. This is of course true in our personal lives, but it’s also relevant at the institutional level. In times of crisis, it’s all too easy for work to become siloed as we scramble in isolation. By staying aware of one another’s projects, efforts, and ideas, we can lend a hand when it’s needed, avoid redundancy, find inspiration, and promote one another’s work. With the simple act of a check-in, we constantly cultivate our networks, which helps them stay as healthy, vibrant, and useful as possible. Before you start your own initiative, consider if your resources would be better spent by contributing to someone else’s.

An organization where I serve as a Senior Fellow, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, has been compiling visa information and leads for the refugees of Afghanistan. I recently shared this resource with a friend of mine, a poet and arts administrator based in New York City, who had herself fled Afghanistan as a young girl. She has been trying to secure passage for artists and members of her extended family in Afghanistan. Pooling resources, especially in the face of a rapidly changing crisis, can help save time.
 
Offer Multiple Forms of Support
We often think of emotional support as lending an ear when someone needs to talk, but it can take many other forms. Think outside the box with regard to the forms of support you are in a position to offer, including financial and material efforts. If you feel unsure about the best way to provide assistance, a good first step is to simply ask someone what they need.

As I have watched the crisis unfold in Afghanistan, I found myself thinking back to my dad’s experience as a refugee in England. His new employers let him use work resources and office time to contact the family in Uganda who he had been forced to leave behind, including his parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews, so he could help arrange their visas. I often think about that act of empathy and how that small gesture meant so much in my dad’s life. In the small English town where my parents settled, many other people were welcoming, too, offering them everything from food to record albums. They taught my family about Christmas and Easter, Sunday roasts, and fish and chips. These were small but powerful acts of kindness, swift actions and welcoming spirits that helped my parents overcome their grief and the challenges they faced as they settled in a new place.

Recently, with my dad’s bosses’ example in mind, I touched base with a member of my staff who formerly served in the military in Afghanistan. (Refugees are not the only people who are affected by these crises; with Afghanistan, for instance, it’s a difficult time for anyone who has a connection to that part of the world.) I encouraged him to use office time if he needed to connect with some of his former colleagues—fellow veterans or active servicepeople. Sometimes the best way to support someone is to facilitate other connections and conversations.
 
Preserve and Share Stories 
As we welcome displaced people into our communities, it’s important to hold space for their stories and their traditions. (I always remember how my parents used masala spices on our fish and chips.) Diversity and multiculturalism are not just important values, but also cultural treasure troves. In the United States, the cross-pollination of traditions and ideas continue to be one of our greatest cultural assets.

But there are communities whose stories are suppressed. Domestically, we’ve seen this dynamic challenged by movements like Black Lives Matter, which has brought unheard (or under-heard) stories into mainstream media. Abroad, there are journalists and citizens working hard to challenge government regimes that suppress marginalized people’s stories. The opportunity to share and hear these stories is a sacred human right. It’s also a tool that helps us build connections and better understand the world and our place in it.

In 2015, I received an email from the storyteller Noa Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Israel who has made America her home. After she had shared a story from her tradition, Baum was approached by an older woman who was a Holocaust survivor who said, “Isn’t it great that we don’t have to hide our stories anymore?” I believe, it is our duty and our privilege to protect people’s stories from around the world—a responsibility that we can all carry into our daily lives, as we meet new people and learn about where they’ve been.
 
Strengthen Your Community
Times of crisis can be incredible opportunities not just to help other people, but also to strengthen our existing communities. As we come together to help political refugees, victims of natural disasters, those who have been harmed by the pandemic, and people who have been displaced by the housing crisis, we enrich our own lives, our shared culture, and our personal and professional networks.

I had one such experience a number of years ago, when I worked with a friend of mine to coordinate an online platform to help people who were fleeing Hurricane Irma. (We recently reactivated this group to help the Hurricane Ida evacuees.) At the time, evacuees were streaming from Florida into our region, often without their belongings or a place to stay. More than 150 people offered their homes, campgrounds, RVs, food, supplies, and financial aid to help thousands of displaced and traumatized people. But their generosity wasn’t just a one-way street; it became the basis for new relationships, including friendships that remain in place to this day. My arts organization offered complimentary tickets to newcomers to attend events, make connections, and find relief and comfort in a welcoming community (and other arts and cultural organizations across the region did the same). One evacuee, a musician, found a gig in Johnson City. The job helped him survive, but it also expanded and enriched our local arts scene—a win-win situation.
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Serving a stranger can have a positive ripple effect through generations to come, and change your life as an individual in ways you can’t predict or expect. I want to challenge you to think of other ways that you can serve as a stone in the brook. Even the smallest act of kindness may be the one that helps someone who’s struggling make it to the other side.

By Kiran Singh Sirah
 

Traveling will take you almost anywhere, whether it’s by car, or plane, or bus. But I’ve always had the notion that you haven’t truly arrived until your soul walks the distance, and that process can take more time.

A former U.S. Army officer who had been based in Afghanistan once told me that you have to spend at least 10 years in a new place before you can really understand it. You can learn a lot in less time, of course, and you can make all sorts of observations during even a short visit. But to truly sense the poetry of everyday life in a place, to really feel like part of it, 10 years is a good rule of thumb.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because it’s been almost exactly 10 years since I first got my visa approved at the U.S. embassy in London for what was initially a two-year course of study at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Duke. (Now, of course, I’m a permanent resident.) There’s no question that I’ve had a great time, and have enjoyed incredible experiences with wonderful people. But lately I’ve been thinking about the question: what have I come to learn about the U.S. in this time that I’ve been here? And do I feel like I’ve truly come to understand it?

As a graduate student, I arrived in the U.S. on August 8, my late mother’s birthday. My dad, brother, and nephew and niece had seen me off at Heathrow airport. Fifteen years earlier, Heathrow was the last place I saw my mother alive, as she waved me off for a long trip to the states. My family had won a green card lottery, and I was exploring the idea of an overseas move. But just a few weeks later, after her sudden death, I returned to look after my family and gave up on the idea of building a life abroad. I was 19 years old.

It took some time, but eventually, I made my way back. And so in 2011, I found myself sitting outside with a cup of tea, looking up at the big North Carolina pine trees in wonder and awe. As a graduate student studying peace and folklore, the pace of study was faster than I was used to. At first I felt like a fish out of water. Like I didn’t belong. But I picked up a very American skill: I learned to adapt. I vividly remember sitting in a class where we had been asked to read a book relating to a place. I had lived and worked there, so I could contribute from direct experience, which brought another dimension to the discussion.

Folklore studies encourages real-life interactions, not just discussions and theories. Often we were asked to write ethnographies, or anthropological descriptions, of our experiences observing different kinds of people, traditions, and cultural expressions. I remember one professor saying to me that American folklorists so often study the “other” by traveling to other countries or studying minority cultures and ethnic groups. She pointed out that as a person of color with a British accent, I had an unusual perspective—and an opportunity to observe (and perhaps help) a country that was grappling with its own history. She described my role as helping a nation to speak to itself, promoting dialogue in the places where that needed to happen. This mandate naturally led me to the International Storytelling Center, where we celebrate different cultures, encourage dialogues on topics that need to be discussed, explore historical disparities, work with youth, and support community workers in their roles.

My role has required a lot of travel, delivering keynotes and working with communities all across the country. The U.S. is much bigger than my home country, Britain, where a road trip is generally two or three hours. In about five hours, you can cross the entire country! Now that I live in Tennessee, a drive that long wouldn’t even take me halfway across the state. It’s a huge place, which is part of what makes it so diverse and interesting. I’ve had the opportunity to visit many states across this nation to give talks and workshops and lead roundtable discussions. I’ve been to the nation’s capital; to New York City and San Diego; to West Virginia, South Carolina; the Midwest, and Arizona, and more. I’ve spoken in all kinds of settings, including the U.S. Senate, the State Department, and the United Nations—even the White House. On some level, I approach all of these places with my folklorist’s brain, treating them as opportunities to observe and learn as much as to impart my own knowledge and expertise.

I was invited to Charleston, South Carolina, following the massacre at Mother Emanuel Church that took nine lives. I did a workshop at an inner-city high school to help the kids make sense of their own stories, and how they relate to what’s going on in the world. It was impossible to ignore how close we were to the port that was the point of entry for nearly half of the enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States. There was a palpable legacy between the history of that port and the shooting. Still, all around these difficult and unspeakable things from the past and the present, a vibrant culture was thriving in Charleston. In the neighborhoods, I felt a sense of welcome, connection, and belonging. It felt like the heartbeat of America.

Over these past 10 years, I’ve had the chance to set foot in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the Mississippi River. I walked for three days and nights on the Appalachian Trail. I learned to make authentic Southern buttermilk biscuits that would make your grandma proud. I sat in a café lit by candlelight after Hurricane Sandy, and then the next day walked to Manhattan to share a poem at the United Nations on the International Day of Peace, hosted by Jane Goodall and Yo-Yo Ma. I’ve worked with the team of Her Majesty the Queen of America, Dolly Parton, and presented stories at the Library of Congress.

What I have observed is this: as a diverse nation, the United States is very much a story in progress. It’s a vibrant, multifaceted tale, but it also has deep flaws that are holding us back from being all that we can be. I’ve had the opportunity to witness this dynamic firsthand many times. I happened to be in Baton Rouge when Alton Sterling was killed. And I’ve been here for the reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, watching peaceful candlelight vigils in the face of the violent rise of white supremacy. It’s very clear that across the country, we’re still grappling with the legacies of slavery and the Civil War. These events weren’t really so long ago, and we all need safe spaces for reflection and dialogue as we contemplate them.
Even as we try to come to terms with the past, the present inflicts new challenges. During the pandemic, I’ve led trainings to help nurse practitioners and other frontline workers navigate the tough emotional terrain of the American health care system. I’ve worked with people and communities to show how stories and storytelling can help us feel connected in this lonely era of social distancing.

I’ve always felt that some of the best storytelling happens off the stage, coming from people who simply feel moved to promote positive change. We all have stories to offer, and it’s incumbent upon us to harness their power as a community resource. The act of sharing our stories plays a critical role in challenging dangerous extremist ideologies. More subtly, it challenges our own perspective on society, and of history. We have to crowdsource our understanding of who we are and how we got here. A single perspective doesn’t function on its own; it requires context and community. Collectively, we can meet any challenge head on.

This is the context for the collaborative work with many partners in the arts, and with peacebuilders and world changers and policy makers. So much of this work as storytellers and story keepers is about advancing the vision of a more peaceful and just world, and pushing through complexity to a form of enlightened simplicity. On this front, there’s obviously still much work we need to do.

I often think of the famous quote from the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I think that sentiment applies when we’re nurturing an art form that belongs to everyone. I truly believe that storytelling has and will change the world. Our culture and our understanding of culture is always growing and expanding. There’s always room for more stories, more perspectives. There’s so much to gain, and nothing to lose.
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As a folklorist, I no longer feel like an outsider who’s here to help Americans understand themselves. I’m not observing from a distance anymore, because I recognize that I’m integral to this nation as well in my roles as an immigrant and a new Appalachian. After 10 years of living and working in the United States, I guess my soul has had time to walk the distance. Finally, it feels like home.