Author Archives: Annie Campbell

The other night, I turned on one of the more conservative 24-hour news channels. A well-known commentator stood at a blackboard and drew a picture of the Washington Monument with a piece of white chalk.  While he drew, he spoke … Continue reading →

Gourmet magazine is folding and I think it may be my fault. My grandmother told me to never let my subscription lapse; I always kept it going, no matter what.  My husband renewed my subscription to Gourmet every year as … Continue reading →

We walked across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bright light of the  November sun brought the yellow leaves that fell around us into brilliant focus.  My sister in law, two cousins, and I entered the park’s … Continue reading →

Last year I saw Winslow Homer’s Country School at an art gallery in St. Louis; now a poster of the painting hangs in Room 204.  That teacher in the one room schoolhouse and I are in the same business.  We … Continue reading →

Is a storyteller a meaning maker or a truth teller?  Simple facts were not enough for the mammoth hunter who recorded the hunt in broad strokes on the dimly lit walls of  an ancient cave; or the buffalo hunter on the … Continue reading →

Last week, metaphors tiptoed into Room 204.  They snuck into our third grade last Tuesday with Emily Dickinson, honored guest.  We were reading one of her poems.  Emily Dickinson wrote,  “The morns are meeker than they were; the nuts are … Continue reading →

Do you see what I see?  If we were reading the same book, we probably wouldn’t see the same thing.  Our imagination as we read is anchored in all that we’ve read and seen and experienced. Our experience informs our … Continue reading →

People ask me how I became a storyteller.  The question hangs in a split second of expectation:  perhaps I know of a book… some little-known home-grown tome of tried and true tips.  There are good books on storytelling, I’ve  read lots … Continue reading →

I remember the way classic cartoons used to show time passing: the days were crossed off and the months were torn away. Time zoomed by in the flickering light of the full-speed full-screen flipping of calendar pages. The month of … Continue reading →

John D. Rockefeller gave the money for the University of Chicago to be built.  Suddenly, there towered an extraordinarily beautiful university in a field. It looked, with its spires, towers, and cloisters, as though it had stood through time with … Continue reading →