Once Upon a Time, time out of mine, there lived an oral tradition and this was how the people who lived at the time passed important information one to another. Especially stories. Then writing came to be developed and popular, and though wise people like Socrates feared it would be the destruction of face-to-face social contact (as his descendents in wisdom would later fear of television and computers), it caught on and information began to be recorded and saved in books.

The End of Storytelling?
Not so. Socrates told stories, Jesus taught in parables, and today people throng to hear everything from urban slasher legends around Halloween to the stories from Genesis and Exodus. And this is the tradition to which I now subscribe, and they are revered ranks to join.

A Real Myth.
If I hear one more person assume that storytelling is enjoyable only to toddlers, my first inclination will be to throw a book at him or her and cry. My second, and the one on which I will act, will be to tell a story.

The Practical.
Where I began was in telling folktales I knew from when I was a child, and I still feel the most comfortable doing that. Folktales lend themselves best to telling because they as a rule are not copyrighted in the way an original "literary" tale (one written by a known author) is. This does not mean I an't tell such a tale, but I need to memorize it instead of simply telling and without fail acknowledge the author. In the most complicated scenario, I might have to write for permission to tell. My present list of stories is a mixture...