By McAvoy Layne…I’m excited to be collaborating with celebrated author Michael Archer on a pictorial essay we’re calling, Now Let’s Get Your Story Out! 

Michael wrote the book on Bill Raggio, and is in possession of a very sharp, sardonic, but kind. sense of humor that can cast mirth upon most any subject.

The first part of our essay is to encourage the performance art of Chautauqua as an alternative to screen time. Chautauqua is destined to diminish the adverse effects of our modern-day smartphones in this age of AI. Our people are craving eye contact, subtle signals of body language, and the warm sound of a live human voice…

So we would ask you to start thinking about who you might like to be. History is so much more interesting when presented firsthand, and you can put some muscle and blood into the telling of the story. You might be thinking, “I could never do that,” but you could, if you found it to be an interesting challenge, which is exactly what will happen… 

And then, let’s get your story out! We all have a good one to tell, and you only need to do two things.  One, read good books. “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” So whenever you have a choice of two things to read, let’s say between social media and a good book, try to remember that quote from our old friend Mark Twain. Just this morning, I stopped for coffee, and while looking around, saw this headline on the cover of a tabloid, “Woman Pigs Out on Five Gallons of Häagen-Dazs and Freezes to Death!”

Reading social media is like eating cotton candy for breakfast; you have nothing to build on, but when you read a good book, you have ideals and ideas, and that good book can bring out your best instincts, and good things can happen to you when you read good books.

Now, the other thing you need to do is to provide yourself with some solitude, that is to say, a place where you cannot be interrupted by a person or a text. Only then can you engage the critical thinking and the creative thinking necessary to unleash your imagination and let it work its magic. 

If you do those two things, read good books and provide yourself with some solitude, your story will jump out just like that Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It might not come out in book form, it might emerge as a screenplay or a song or a poem, but it will jump out, and people will be glad to see it…

We shall leave the last word here to Mark Twain: “There is only time for love, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”

So now you have a sneak preview of Michael and my pictorial essay coming soon to a Thrift Shop near you…

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”