San Luis Obispo County's Connection to Arts and Culture
Scheherazade, fabled storyteller of Arabian Nights,
under sentence of death, told stories with no endings.
Endless new beginnings, night after night,
kept her alive.
But stories, for all of us, are as essential
to living as breathing. Our lives unfold
like narratives, with beginnings, middles, ends.
Like Scheherazade, we are all under sentence of death,
but in telling our stories, we live.
Juliane McAdam is a California native who grew up in the stark beauty of the Mojave Desert. After a 40-year teaching career that began in South Los Angeles in a bilingual program and ended with 27 years teaching English and Spanish to middle school students in Los Angeles, she retired to Los Osos. She enjoys volunteering with nonprofits, walks, kayaking, playing piano, and writing poems to record observations and memories.