KELLY J MASSEY

"We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories." - Jonathan Gottschall This quote alone is what convinced me to pick up Gottschall's book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. As a storyteller myself, I was intrigued that this need to to tell stories, to discover bits of ourselves and humanity that would otherwise elude us was, something that seemed inherently ingrained in all of u

Last night I had the opportunity to see the new award-winning documentary, The Ancient Woods, shot over four-years by biologist turned filmmaker, Mindaugas Survila. What first caught my attention was that the film focused on an old-growth forest in Lithuania. As a Nemophilist, I simply couldn't help myself and recruited the family to attend the film with me. The Ancient Woods is a rare documentary in that there is no narration, simply the sounds and sights of the forest to at

I attended my first opera this last Friday night. I have always felt skeptical of a performance that I wasn't sure I would entirely understand, (I guess I had the misconception that all operas were performed in Italian.) Yet when I found out that Intermountain Opera of Bozeman, Montana, was set to perform Camelot I couldn't stay away. The tales of Camelot and Avalon have always swept me away. The glamor of Excalibur, the legendary beauty of Guinevere and the epic heart of Kin

My seven-year-old took a three hour nap on Tuesday and didn't get up until 6:00 in the evening. So what was I to do? We went to late showing of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Yes, I'm that parent. I'm also that same parent that has taken him to see Willie Nelson, Sir Elton John, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters. (We're going to Michael Franti and Spearhead in August.) I've also introduced him to the Star Trek and Harry Potter fandoms, so the it was inevitable that I would introdu

My fourth grade year was a difficult one for me, but the one bright light through it all was the novel A Wrinkle in Time. I identified with Meg wholeheartedly, clumsy, suspicious, lack of self-confidence, and yet she found it within her to love, to believe in others and the good in the world. Ten-year-old me needed Meg to show me that I wasn't the only one who found growing up to be difficult and that others would love me in spite of my faults; that my faults might actually p

Normally I don't review books or movies on my blog, but maybe I should change that. Anyway, I feel as though I have to review the new BFG movie because Roald Dahl's book was one of my favorites as a child and is now a favorite of my five-year-old son. We also made it to the movie theater the day it premiered, which is unusual for my family. Let's start with the obvious CGI used to create the giants. It was so well done that their skin had pores and the detail of the teeth on