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| Jerry Campbell photo -- Larry and Marilyn Kinsella show off some of their visual aids from the program they created, "From Little Egypt to Big Egypt." Larry is holding a reproduction of a stone ax found during a recent excavation at Shiloh. Marilyn is wearing a traditional Egyptian galabeya and holding a blue faience hippo. |
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Art and science converge in Stories n' Stones
series
New program debuts at Fairview Heights Library
Marilyn and Larry Kinsella unveiled their latest creation Tuesday night at
the Fairview Heights Library, mixing art and science in the latest chapter
of their "Stories n' Stones" series.
The newest presentation from the Kinsellas is called "From Little Egypt to
Big Egypt."
The one-hour program features the storytelling talents of Marilyn, along
with Larry's archeological expertise. The presentation also uses a wide
variety of illustrations and visual aids.
The Kinsellas recently toured Egypt, a trip that inspired their newest
project. The new program uses the similarities between Southern Illinois and
Egypt for its theme.
"The difference between Southern Illinois and Egypt are gigantic, but there
are some similarities, too," said Larry, a retired carpenter turned
archaeologist. "Southern Illinois, like Egypt, is one of the world's
(richest) archaeology areas."
Southern Illinois became widely known as "Little Egypt" because of its
remarkable ability to produce crops. When crop failures struck the rest of
the state during the early 1830s, Southern Illinois continued to bring in
successful harvests.
The incident reminded people of the biblical story of Joseph. After being
sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph rose to a position of power in
Egypt and was instrumental in making his adopted land a regional source of
food during a great famine.
Both Southern Illinois and Egypt are also sites of impressive ancient
societies whose fates were closely tied to great rivers.
Sandwiched between two stories by Marilyn was a short presentation about
pictographs and petroglyphs in Southern Illinois and Egypt. One of the
visual aids used by Larry was a replica of a massive stone ax found at an
excavation in Shiloh. Known as "Big Momma," the real ax, along with dozens
of other stone axes found in the same excavation, are scheduled to go on
display at the Cahokia Mounds Museum later this year.
Marilyn's contribution to the program was her version of the Piasa Bird myth
and a story about a blue faience hippo. Small statutes of hippos glazed with
faience -- a blue-tinted, quartz-based material -- have frequently been
found in ancient Egyptian burial chambers. Although they were obviously
highly prized possessions, their exact significance isn't fully understood.
"In 1981, I heard my first storyteller," Marilyn said. "It was like a beam
of light that came down and told me to pay attention. At the time, I was a
teacher, so I became a teacher-storyteller. Then I went to the Edwardsville
Public Library, where I was the librarian and storyteller for 17 years."
Marilyn said the multifaceted nature of storytelling is what attracts her to
the art.
"Storytelling has everything," she explained. "It has writing. It has
narrative. It has dialogue -- so you can be the actor or actress.
"I can be as animated as I want up there on the stage, or I can just sit and
look out at the audience. It depends on my audience. I'm much more animated
with kids. It's just fun."
Marilyn credits Jack Stokes, a former American literature instructor at
Southwestern Illinois College (then at Belleville Area College), for helping
her hone her storytelling talents.
"Besides teaching American literature, he also did something called drama
choir," Marilyn said. "That was the thing that I claim that brought me out
of my shell. I found my voice in that drama choir."
In 2002, Marilyn and Larry came up with the idea for Stories n' Stones.
"Larry and I have been doing them ever since," Marilyn said. "I would say,
'You know, you should go see Larry because he has all of this stuff.' And
Larry would be showing his artifacts and he would say 'You should go see
Marilyn because she has some good stories about that.'
"Now, we go to libraries and schools and adult groups and have a lot of fun
with our programs. Officially, Larry and I are both retired, but we're
busier than ever."
All told, there are seven programs in the "Story n' Stones" series.
Both Larry and Marilyn are Fairview Heights natives.
Larry's parents owned the land that later became Pleasant Ridge Park.
"I was raised in that log cabin and my dad used to farm that land," Larry
said. "We used to find arrowheads on land and I would go around picking them
up. One thing led to another, and in 1972, I went to a field school up on
the Illinois River in Kampsville. That's when I learned that archaeology was
it for me. At the time, carpenters didn't get any vacation pay, so when I
went up there I had to save up money so the wife and kids could take care of
themselves when I was gone. That was a big deal for me to leave, but after
that, I went almost every year."
Both Larry and Marilyn raved about their January trip to Egypt.
"It was the trip of a lifetime," Marilyn said. "I would recommend it to
anyone. We felt safe. The food, the accommodations and the antiquities were
more than we could imagine.
"We went with in a bunch of college kids. We were by far the oldest two in
the group, but they kept us going. If they got up, we got up. That was good,
because we went to four or five sites a day. We could have stayed another
year and still not seen everything."
"For an archaeology buff like me, Egypt was heaven," Larry said. "It was 20
times better than I ever imagined. Even though I had this idea in my mind of
what it was like, it so much better being there. My mouth was agape. I
couldn't believe the gigantic things I saw and the quality of the
workmanship."
Larry said the grandeur of Egypt has done nothing to curb his enthusiasm for
Midwest archaeology.
"I think my experiences in Egypt make this exciting, too," he said. "You
realize what people could do in that time period -- and we're almost in the
same time periods around here. We find some pretty amazing stuff around
here. Nothing on the scale of what has been found in Egypt, but it kind of
gives you hope that there are other things out there that are kind of cool.
As an archaeologist, when you find something really cool, it just raises the
hackles on your back."
Both Larry and Marilyn have Web sites that provide additional details about
their activities. Larry's site is flintknapper.com, while Marilyn's site is
marilynkinsella.org.
E-mail: jcampbell@yourjournal.com
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