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In the tale, The Elves and the Shoemaker, elves take pity on a struggling shoemaker and create shoes from leather left in his workshop. In the stories: Life Savers; Rescue; and From Scratch; assistance comes in unexpected ways.
Life Savers Rescue From Scratch Elves and Shoemaker
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 I had just come from a contentious meeting. Outraged. Angry. Driving fast. All I wanted was to go home, get into bed, hide under a blanket, and shut out the world.
I heard the siren before I saw the flashing lights. In the rearview mirror I saw a police car behind me. Cursing, I motioned to the cop I would turn right into a side street and stop. He nodded, indicating this was acceptable.  The costumes for my new play, Silent Song, were complicated. A creature had to grow from small, to big, to bigger, to huge. The cast of eight played many roles. Four actors had to be children, townspeople, rock people, and river people. Costume changes had to be carefully choreographed to avoid lulls in action and dialogue. I had designed the costumes to fit the action. Before they could be made, the customer left. The new person, hired to fill the sudden vacancy, was not pleased when she learned she had to make the costumes with help from undergraduates. She considered herself a designer, not a seamstress. She was so aggravated she asked for a meeting with me and the Chair of the Theatre Department. “Why is the director designing costumes?” she asked. “That’s my job.”
 I was one of four graduate students who drove to Kona, Hawaii, after our PhD seminar in Hilo, ready to relax after a challenging weeklong seminar. The inn was set among lush vegetation—coffee bushes, various fruit trees, herbs, flowers—a visual and aural feast. I luxuriated in my private room, welcomed with fresh mango and pineapple juice by the innkeeper, A. a woman in her late 40’s like me. We talked about how she’d come to Hawaii, the two of us easily sharing stories of our lives.
 Once upon a time there lived a shoemaker and his wife who worked hard yet had barely enough money to live on. One day, the shoemaker looked around his shop and found only one small piece of leather. He began making a pair of shoes but it grew late and he stopped before the shoes were finished.
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October 2024
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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