posted
Well I do not know if Mr Card will ever read this thread (I hope he does) but I was wondering if anybody else had a similar tale as mine.
As a child growing up in an LDS household, my parents purchased the video set "Living Scriptures" for me, and I became a huge fan; (oddly enough I have not found anybody outside my family who shares the sentiment.) That was probably the first time I heard the name Orson Scott Card. Incidentally it always seems as though the videos that Mr Card wrote for had the most serious tones to them. I found/find them to be VERY enjoyable to watch.
Later in my life my mother bought some tapes of dramatized church history and dramatized american history. I was never much into audio tapes but I tried listening to them before going to bed, I was quickly engrossed in them. I do not know if Mr. Card was involved in the american history tapes, but I know he work on the church history ones. I saw his name on the tapes. If Mr. Card did indeed write for the american history tapes I must thank him here for making sure I passed american history in High School, (going to private school in China doesn foster an interest in america but your tapes did)I recognized that this Orson Scott Card was most likely the same one from my living scriptures. I listened to them EVERY night before going to bed, even relistening to them time after time. I have not kept up on that tradition today as I do not know where they are anymore (leave for taiwan on a mission and watch your posessions disappear).
All this time I vaguely remember hearing the title of a book "Enders Game" by a certain Orson Scott Card. I doubted that it was the same man and never got around to reading it. I have always been a fan of books but I had never dabbled into Mr. Cards literary contributions. So post mission when I picked it up and read it I still believed this was a different Orson Scott Card. As odd as that is to conceive, Orson being as mormon a name as Brigham or Heber, nevertheless I kept my Orson Scott Cards seperate. After reading the ender series, the shadow series, songmaster, and commencing the Alvin Maker series I began to doubt that they could be two different people. So I loaded up the wonder that is the google search engine and sure enough my twin Orsons conglomerated into one person.
Today I LOVE reading Mr. Cards books, and I hope to finally obtain a copy of Red Prophet so that I might continue the journey.
To Mr. Card I would like to say thanks for being almost a mentor throughout my entire life, it is only now that I am 23 years old that I realize you were making my life so endurable, even enjoyable.
Its rare to find somebody that you hope you can always hear. Someone who speaks and you enjoy listening. Not that I am suggesting that Mr. Card is God and I want to emulate his ideas in everything I do, but I cannot deny that when I see something he has written/created I feel compelled to give it my attention for at best it will illuminate my understanding and at worst I will have learned nothing but enjoyed the time spent.
So again Mr. Card I thank you for spending so much of your life creating for many mediums. Your videos, tapes, and books have meant so much to me, and I am pleased that I know just how much they have.
posted
Thread titles like this one are often ambiguous. Good thing you went in a good direction with it though.
Posts: 102 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I was worried about the same thing; you get these threads that say "I was inspired by your works and thought the moon of you...UNTIL I realized you advocated (insert contested OSC opinion here)."
For genuine expressions like this one, it reveals why literature can be such a powerful medium. We yearn to connect with others in a meaningful way and sometimes that happens through creative expression.
You never know what your influence can be until you see it in the lives of complete strangers.
Posts: 325 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
lol after thinking about the subject title I had to concur that that could be a valid interpretation hope I dont much like the edited version, but I couldnt come up with a good subject.
posted
I'm so glad to hear of your experience with the Living Scriptures audiotapes. Writing those tapes was the career that my family actually lived on prior to my becoming a TOR author and earning enough money to live on from books alone <grin>. I did indeed write the American History series as well as the New Testament and LDS Church History audiotape series. (I also wrote six of the animated New Testament videos they produced, and five of the Book of Mormon animated videos.) I loved doing those tapes and working with the terrific team that produced them - LaMar died in the midst of production, but Gary Jackson continued them in good form; and Jared Brown, who made it all possible and was the guiding force behind them, continues to be a creative powerhouse in the field of family productions.
I hoped that those audiotapes would have exactly the effect you described: instill an interest and even a love for American history in younger listeners. Since the teaching of American history today is such a wasteland, I hoped that telling the STORIES of our history would help counter the dry, neutral, soulless version of history/ignorance that is systematically taught in our schools today. Thanks for the passing grade! <grin>
Your experience of thinking that I was two separate people reminds me of my niece Sarah. Her dad is the webwright who makes Hatrack and all our other sites so wonderfully clear and accessible and vistuall interesting. Sarah knew that Daddy went off to work every day, where he worked for "Uncle Orson." But she had never met me in that context. She had only seen me at family gatherings, where I was the "Uncle Orson" who teased her by saying outrageous things, which she believed, and absolutely truthful things, which she doubted. So when she mentioned the Uncle Orson that her dad worked for, and I told her I was the same person, she absolutely would not believe it. There were TWO Uncle Orsons (and, as the conversation developed, potentially three), and I was the silly one.
Which is not far from the truth.
(I'm "Uncle Orson" to nieces and nephews on my wife's side of the family because she has a brother named Scott - the very webwright who is Sarah's father - and so they needed to have a different name for ONE of us so the kids didn't get confused when they were little. Obviously, to Sarah and her brother, Scott-Kristine's-brother is called "Dad," but since all their cousins called me Uncle Orson, it was easier to teach them to use the same name.
(However, I was calling MYSELF "Uncle Orson," as in "Uncle Orson's Writing Class," as a term of mild self-mockery YEARS before I had any nieces or nephews who actually used the term. That's why I volunteered to be the one who wasn't "Uncle Scott."
(To the nieces and nephews on my own side of the family, I'm "Uncle Scott," mostly because there was no ambiguity and therefore no need to change, but also because my sibs don't think of me as "Orson." I suspect the name Orson is annoying to them sometimes, as people pester them by saying, "Are you any relation to ...," which they sometimes admit.)
This is far more than you wanted to know. But if we can't digress, why bother conversing at all?
Back to your post: Thank you for letting my storytelling into your life. You COULD have just fallen asleep while those tapes were running. Instead you listened. Thank you!
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
WOW you responded! Thanks truely isnt thanks until it is received.
Incidentally only 2 days ago in another Orson Scott Card incident, I was at the household of The Calls. I noticed they had a whole bunch of your books which I had recently ordered on amazon.com I asked Sister Call if she was the owner of the books and she admitted as much. She also threw in that she used to baby sit you when you were little. I laughed my head off half that I could have read her copies for free and half that she follows your career as sort of a motherly experience. I suppose even you were a kid once.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:I hoped that those audiotapes would have exactly the effect you described: instill an interest and even a love for American history in younger listeners. Since the teaching of American history today is such a wasteland, I hoped that telling the STORIES of our history would help counter the dry, neutral, soulless version of history/ignorance that is systematically taught in our schools today. Thanks for the passing grade! <grin>
You know, I had a great History teacher once who I would say tought his lessons almost all in story. Sure, we had tons of dates and notes we had to take as well. But he somehow managed to make the history he was teaching into one big story, and still help us learn the subject much more effectively then the stupid history books we usually use. Awesome teacher. He really was the guy that made me so interested in history...
Posts: 290 | Registered: Sep 2002
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hope I dont much like the edited version, but I couldnt come up with a good subject.
