{"id":5043,"date":"2003-11-12T06:20:45","date_gmt":"2003-11-12T13:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2003-11-12T06:20:45","modified_gmt":"2003-11-12T13:20:45","slug":"the_storyteller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/12\/the_storyteller.html","title":{"rendered":"The Storytellers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fascinating article on the myth and folklore of homeless children<\/a> in Miami.<\/p>\n

It’s horrible, in many ways, yet fascinating to see how the mythic elements of our own culture blend with those of these children.<\/p>\n

On Christmas night a year ago, God fled Heaven to escape an audacious demon attack — a celestial Tet Offensive. The demons smashed to dust his palace of beautiful blue-moon marble. TV news kept it secret, but homeless children in shelters across the country report being awakened from troubled sleep and alerted by dead relatives. No one knows why God has never reappeared, leaving his stunned angels to defend his earthly estate against assaults from Hell. “Demons found doors to our world,” adds eight-year-old Miguel, who sits before Andre with the other children at the Salvation Army shelter. The demons’ gateways from Hell include abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, Ghost Town (the nickname shelter children have for a cemetery somewhere in Dade County), and Jeep Cherokees with “black windows.” The demons are nourished by dark human emotions: jealousy, hate, fear.
\n[…] Folktales are usually an inheritance from family or homeland. But what if you are a child enduring a continual, grueling, dangerous journey? No adult can steel such a child against the outcast’s fate: the endless slurs and snubs, the threats, the fear. What these determined children do is snatch dark and bright fragments of Halloween fables, TV news, and candy-colored Bible-story leaflets from street-corner preachers, and like birds building a nest from scraps, weave their own myths. The “secret stories” are carefully guarded knowledge, never shared with older siblings or parents for fear of being ridiculed — or spanked for blasphemy. But their accounts of an exiled God who cannot or will not respond to human pleas as his angels wage war with Hell is, to shelter children, a plausible explanation for having no safe home, and one that engages them in an epic clash.<\/p>\n

There’s some amazing writing ideas in this syncretic mythos, as well as gaming ideas. Not to mention a call for help that’s difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fascinating article on the myth and folklore of homeless children in Miami. It’s horrible, in many ways, yet fascinating to see how the mythic elements of our own…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7314,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/31\/make_believe.html","url_meta":{"origin":5043,"position":0},"title":"Make believe","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 31-Mar-05 2:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Fascinating article on kids, make-believe, imaginary friends, fantasy, self-hypnosis, myth -- and, tangentially, fiction writing. (via Mind Hacks)...","rel":"","context":"In "Parenting"","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9630,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/22\/quickie_book_re.html","url_meta":{"origin":5043,"position":1},"title":"Quickie book reviews","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 22-May-06 6:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently read books. 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All visitors are shown their host's model kennels, where he...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1860,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/18\/the_massacre.html","url_meta":{"origin":5043,"position":4},"title":"The Massacre","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 18-Apr-02 10:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"In and amidst European and UN handwringing about what went down in the Jenin Refugee Camp, here's a truly fascinating interview in Al Ahram, an Egyptian newspaper, with a Palestinian...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132645,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/25\/the-apparent-myth-of-promiscuous-males-and-virtuous-females.html","url_meta":{"origin":5043,"position":5},"title":"The apparent myth of Promiscuous Males and Virtuous Females","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 25-Jan-17 4:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A fascinating look at some of the modern theories, experiments, and observations breaking the biological and \"evolutionary psychology\" myths that males mate freely and females don't -- or, as the anonymous[1] doggerel has it:Hogamous, Higamous,Man is polygamous,Higamous, Hogamous,Woman is monogamous.Turns out that when you go back and look at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}