Dan Yashinsky

Dan Yashinsky is the father of a very close friend of mine from the past. A friend who gifted me with a beautiful book, a collection of Canadian stories collected by Dan Yashinsky, “Next Teller”. At the time, I was young and even unaware of the importance of this possession. But, as I’ve learned to explore art, I’ve realized how special it is to have a great book, signed by a great author, a Toronto-based storyteller, a CBC radio host, and a community organizer. “To Sabah, good luck on your life’s journey!”.

Dan Yashinsky has an M.A. in Sociology in Education from the University of Toronto, and a B.A. in Literature. His published books include: The Storyteller at Fault, Tales for an Unknown City, Next Teller – A Book of Canadian Storytelling, Ghostwise – A Book of Midnight Stories (Ragweed), and At The Edge – A Book of Risky Stories. His love for literature developed over campfire gatherings of story-telling. He has performed at story-telling festivals across Canada and around the world, including Israel, Wales, England, Germany, Brazil, Austria, France, the U.S., Singapore, and Ireland. He’s also a volunteer involved in story-telling at The Hospital for Sick Children and at many different schools in Ontario.  

One of Dan Yashinsky’s sayings:
“Stories show you that other people have traveled before you. They show you that no matter what is happening in your life, someone else has gone there before you. Someone else has been there, come back, and at least has a good story to show for it.”

Field trip

Can you see a relationship between the content of the text and the shape?
I believe that there was a relationship between the content of the text and the shape. Some of the art pieces had stronger relationships to the text and some did not. However, most of the ones that I came across appeared to contain text with some sort of relevance to the shape.

Record the name of a band from Craig Leonard’s DNA project
“The Toy Killers” is one of the names of a band from Craig Leonard’s DNA project.

How is the framing of these pieces in a gallery inviting you to see them differently?
I saw many interesting pieces at the art gallery that were simply taken from the streets. Some of them were incredibly funny, such as, the dog’s missing head wanted. Most of us would ignore these simple posts if they were just attached to a pole on the sidewalk. This art gallery offers these pieces of art a home. It frames these simple things in such a way as to allow viewers to have a different view of them. The gallery acts to support such simple art that’d normally be ignored out on the streets. Viewers get a better look at it and it provides an interesting basis for investigations.     

Record an idea or art movement or artist or writer or writing idea you would like to investigate.
I think it’d be interesting to investigate, more thoroughly, the relationships between the text and the shapes that they were put in. Perhaps there is much more significance to such style.

Here are some interesting picture I took at the Art Gallery:

Between Our Legs

5 emotional responses:

1) At the end of the beginning of the story (Before section 1): I felt extremely confused. “How did it happen? …How did what happen?”

2) Section 1: I felt a little amazed at the creativity (“commas and punctuations”). “We had our hair tied back. Thick shiny twists that hing like commas”. I would’ve never thought of the brilliant idea of comparing the shape of tied hair to commas. Just amazing!

3) Section 1 (2nd paragraph): I felt very angry because I was once again confused. The reading frustrated me. “Logic is for the birds. We never did like birds”. Now, THAT is a little random for me. I tried to understand it. But, no.

4) End of section 2: I started feeling interested, mainly because of the great use of words and how they were put together. I loved how “shrugging” was described as the yawning of the bones. “Our bones yawned under our skin. This is what they call a shrug”. Interesting!

5) Once again I’m enjoying the use of words in this reading. I really like the adjectives and the movements described in such interesting detail. “We wrapped our arms around the cages of our ribs and cupped our breasts with our hands”.

Extra: By the end of “Between Our Legs”, I went back and skimmed through the story once again to understand it more thoroughly. I finally understand the story and I think it’s amazing how the perspective of “wanting” what’s already possessed is expressed in this reading. What I understand from it is that there is obviously something negative going on and the girls have learned to pretend quite effectively that everything is in order and the way they want it to be. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading and discussing this story. Moreover, analyzing it after being confused in the beginning helped me learn that there’s more to a story then what appears to be at first sight.

Response to Chilly Girl

The “girl” in this story was always cold. This was quite unusual especially considering her “chilliness” in the summertime. However, as I read on, I felt a connection between the girl’s coldness and the sense of her being isolated as described right at the beginning of the story, “No one liked to hold her hand”. Finally, I started to recall some experiences of feeling nervous and feeling cold as a result. Well, I decided to investigate the relationship between feeling cold and experiencing “negative” types of feelings such as isolation and nervousness.
I found an article called “Social Isolation Makes People Cold, Literally”. This health article had the answer I was looking for. It talked about an experiment conducted to confirm the relationship between feeling cold and feeling isolated. Basically, some people were told to recall situations where they felt socially isolated and other people were told to recall more positive situations. Then, those people were asked to estimate the temperature in the room they were in. People recalling isolation guessed a colder temperature versus the people who recalled the positive experiences.
“The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies. For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth. When you’re a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness.” I found this piece of information to be very interesting and reasonable. It definitely connects to “Chilly Girl” because this girl appeared to be isolated and was always cold. When she was with the man whom she met at the “cold” summer party, the story starts to describe feelings of warmth and even mentions a drop of sweat.
Try recalling an experience where you felt nervous or isolated and started getting cold shivers. Sometimes, my hands feel really cold even when I’m indoors. Now that I look back at such times, I realize that there were some feelings of nervousness and isolation.