In this Story... with Joanne Greene cover art

In this Story... with Joanne Greene

In this Story... with Joanne Greene

By: Joanne Greene
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 Joanne Greene shares her flash nonfiction, each essay with custom music, showcasing tales and observations from her animated life. Her book, "By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" is now available as a paperback, e-book, and audiobook from Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent book seller.GreeneCreative Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Sleep Interruptus

    Sleep Interruptus
    May 16 2025
    In this story, sleep interruptus. I’m Joanne Greene.
    When I opened my eyes, I noticed that I was in a very comfortable bed, my son’s bed, that is my son and his wife’s bed, the fourth bed I’d slept in that night. This nighttime bed hopping is part of my role as grandma. Yoyo, they call me. It’s a moniker first shared by my great nephew, now 25 years old.
    The night began with a reading of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, a classic story that teaches acceptance of differences, kindness, tolerance, and flexibility, with a healthy dose of humor. Axel was a very tired four-year old, after a day at the STEAM festival, operating a flight simulator, drilling with safety goggles, building a small wiggle bott, assembling a light switch, reading books at the library, and completing a transportation puzzle. I lied next to him in his bed until his steady breathing let me know that he was, in fact, asleep. Then I snuck out of the room for a break until I would be inevitably called to do the same with his older sister, Lisette, once her aunt said goodnight after listening to her read Shel Silverstein poems. Predictably, she requested that Yoyo come up and stay with her for a while.
    After watching the final quarter in which the Warriors won their playoff game, I got into bed to read. Ten minutes later, I was fast asleep. And it’s a good thing because, an hour later, Axel arrived to join me in bed. He fell back to sleep; I did not. When Fred arrived, he was shocked to see a sleeping child and kindly agreed to carry him back up to his own bed. Finally, sleep returned for me. But not for long. When Lisette arrived and shook my arm, I startled.
    “Why do you always jump when I wake you up?” she asked. Apparently, her parents are so accustomed to being awakened this way that they just open their eyes. She crawled into bed between us but then reported that she felt squished. And so, I walked her back upstairs and, in hopes of returning to sleep as quickly as possible, I got into her bed. But she was coughing intermittently, and squirming around, and it was both too light in her room due to the projected stars on the walls and ceiling, and too warm for me. And so, when she calmed down enough for me to escape, I did.
    Returning to my original bed felt great, until Fred started snoring, and then cracked his knuckles. I hate the sound of cracking knuckles. And then I felt sorry for myself, wanting only some peace and quiet. I tapped him on the arm and said that I was going up to our son’s room and hoped to sleep in. And, by that I meant that I’d like not to be disturbed, at least for the first morning shift.
    About an hour later, I heard the pitter pat of little feet. The door to my son’s bedroom, my temporary sanctuary, was opened and closed. Loudly. Axel then went downstairs to sleep with Grandpa, after hearing why Yoyo wasn’t in the bed.
    I awoke at 6:58am, which may sound early but, in fact, was a relatively civilized time to arise when in charge of the littles. I stumbled downstairs in search of coffee, a veritable lifeline, and began making their breakfasts. How is it that I love everything about this so much. I can sleep next week when we’re home. Or maybe even here tonight, when their parents will be the first line of defense. Sleep, for the most part, is overrated.

    Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!
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    4 mins
  • There's More Than One Boston Accent

    There's More Than One Boston Accent
    May 2 2025
    In this story, there’s more than one Boston accent. I’m Joanne Greene.
    For many, if not most of you, the words “merry”, “marry” and “Mary” are all pronounced the same way. Merry, merry, merry. But for me, born and raised just outside of Boston, they are three distinct words…Listen closely.
    “Merry” is generally associated with Christmas, as in MERRY Christmas.
    “Marry” is what happens at a wedding. She will MARRY her partner.
    And “Mary” is a name. Mary J Blige…Mary Oliver…Mary Quite Contrary.
    There’s nothing that gives me the heeby jeebies more than someone trying and failing to deliver an authentic Boston accent. And people do it all the time, in person and – worse – in movies.
    Insert example of bad Boston accent
    It’s a litmus test. Actors can master a British accent, a southern drawl, or Brooklyn speak with minimal effort but the real sound of any number of Boston accents must be and rarely is right on the money. Either the person is from Boston, has at least lived in Boston, or they haven’t. Case closed. Mark Wahlberg , Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, …..these actors can pull it off, precisely because they were, at one pivotal, formative time in their lives, proper Bostonians.
    Boston accents can be funny…or erudite…They can make one sound as dumb as rocks or as smaaaht as a very smaaat Hahvad educated cah.
    Insert excerpt of Smaht Cah commercial
    The subtleties are worth noting.
    Take the word horse, for example, HORSE.
    It’s “HAHSS”, if you come from, say, most of Boston proper
    In Southie, South Boston to the uninitiated, it might sound more like “HAWSS”
    Where I grew up, in Brookline, the mounted police (mounties, of course) rode a “HOOAS”.
    One common thread in all Boston accents is the dropping of the “r” sound…but don’t get too carried away with this rule as Bostonians also add an “r” sound, when it’s not there, to separate two vowels. For instance, “Rayna and Bob” in a standard American accent becomes “RayneranBob” in the mouth of a Bostonian. The nuances abound, which is why the accent is so tough to get right.
    When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and applied for an on-air job in radio, I was told that I had to lose the regionalism. What regionalism I questioned? Californians often mistook me for a New Yorker, but I assured them that what they were picking up was East Coast, possibly Jewish, energy and speech patterns. I went to a voice coach and worked on it, which is why I eventually did get hired to speak on the radio and why, today, only the most sophisticated accent detectors can pin me down as a gal from Brookline.
    I share all of this in the hopes of saving you the trouble, and avoiding the inevitable humiliation, of trying & failing to imitate a Boston accent. Maybe, just maybe, you can say “pahk the cah in Hahvad yad” but that’s it. Promise?

    Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!
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    4 mins
  • My Relationship With Words

    My Relationship With Words
    Apr 4 2025
    In this story, my relationship with words. I’m Joanne Greene.
    When I was 2 years old, they couldn’t shut me up. I babbled with unintelligible sounds until I landed a few words and, from then on, it was Chatty Cathy. Continuous communication. By the way, Chatty Cathy was a doll in the late 50s early 60s who spoke when you pulled her string, a doll my parents would not let me have, for obvious reasons. They didn’t need more words. To save their sanity, they sent me to preschool at age 2 which, in 1956, was damn near revolutionary.
    Words have always been my jam. Numbers were taken by my math majoring siblings and bookkeeping mother. I, on the other hand, was excited to discover that bookkeeping has three double letters in a row (two o’s, two k’s, two e’s.) And that’s where my fascination with bookkeeping ended. I passed notes to my friends to get through long afternoons at Hebrew School, sent letters all summer to anyone whose address I’d snagged, and kept diaries from the time I could hold a pen. Words have always served me. I could turn them inside out, make them rhyme, and express my deep inner thoughts even when alone in my room. I fancied myself a writer, which was why, in high school, when I was NOT accepted into theAdvanced Placement Creative Writing class, I thought my future was shattered.
    The hopefuls were gathered into a classroom, after school, and given 20 minutes to write an essay, a poem, or whatever else based on a one-word prompt: CRYSTAL. That’s it? I gulped. Crystal? And then I got to work.
    Somehow, the lined notebook paper on which I wrote has survived all these years. At the very top, under my name, is the date: March 26, 1969. At the risk of hopelessly embarrassing myself and in the hope of giving the rest of you a good laugh, here goes:
    My Crystal.
    My crystal: a multitude of purpose
    A many-sided reflection
    A king of schizophrenic hypocracy (misspelled) of a cut up being
    An ice cube melts to droplets and, like my crystal, reveals transparency.
    I see the reverberating pierces of ambiguity (did I mean pierces or pieces?) and vision….through reality unto my dreams.
    Me as a whole is many times duplicated, and I begin to interpret…a bit.
    But then I re-look…re-see…and reconsider. (re-look is not a thing)
    Ah, it isn’t solely me who is cut up…and reappearingly formulated (also, incorrect)
    It is also my eyes.
    And since my tools of vision are reflected also, then I can’t see through to the end.
    My crystal is useless, for there is no meaning.

    You can see why I was rejected. Undaunted, I kept writing…and also correcting people who made glaring verbal grammatical errors. What’s worse, nails on a chalkboard, or having to grit your teeth when someone says “her and I went to the movies”? EEEEEE There’s a difference between your sandwich and you’re like a sandwich. A lot is not one four letter word. Than and then are not one and the same. You get the point. My nieces and nephew called me a grammar nazi. Thankfully, I was able to make the point with my two sons that incorrect grammar can lead to (obviously incorrect) assumptions about your intelligence, your education, your knowledge base. Their grammar, I breathe a sigh of relief, is not a problem.
    The thing about words…as wonderful as they are for expressing our thoughts, creating beauty and meaning, addressing societal needs, helping people to cope and move through challenging times, is that they, words, can heal and they can hurt. I’ve learned, over the decades, that sometimes…every now and then…it’s best if I just listen and keep my words to myself.


    Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!
    Show More Show Less
    5 mins

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