Look and Listen

Biography

Eve Baumohl Neuhaus was born in Philadelphia in 1950, the much-loved only child of older parents who fled from Vienna when Hitler invaded in 1938. She grew up with stories about her parents leaving their home forever with only one suitcase each, not once but twice, first from Vienna and then from France. Each time, they made the best of their circumstances and started over. To the day he died, her father’s favorite song was Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I have no regrets.”)

Resettled by the Quaker community, Neuhaus’s mother went back to school to become a social worker, filling her daughter’s early years with tales of children displaced by the war finding homes in America. Her father opened an appliance store, which kept him busy all day. Every evening, however, he found marvelous stories up his sleeve. Neuhaus thought all fathers had stories up their sleeves.

A shy and imaginative child who never quite fit in with her all-American neighbors, Neuhaus came of age in the sixties, loved the Beatles with all her heart, and easily found her place in the hippie world. Her passion for stories led her to major in English at Temple University, and then to spend a few years exploring both the inner and outer worlds.

In time, she married and moved to the country to raise children and goats. It was during this period that she was fortunate enough to have a classic experience of the guru coming to her door. He came after she’d given up the search for a teacher, of course, and the experience brought equal amounts of pain and growth. Neuhaus gratefully acknowledges the deep influence of Shri Mahant Swami Ganeshananda on Journey to Mythaca.

At her guru’s suggestion, Neuhaus went back to school for a teaching certificate and spent the next two decades in the classroom, working with gifted children for majority of those years, but also running enrichment programs, working as a story-teller, teaching special needs populations, and facilitating learning in wonderfully diverse multi-age classrooms.

Her last class, a group of 6th, 7th and 8th graders in California, where she now lives, played a significant role in the genesis of Journey to Mythaca: the first 108 pages of the book were written collaboratively with the class. Neuhaus read new sections aloud daily for the students’ critiques and suggestions, many of which were incorporated into the story.

After her years of teaching, Neuhaus completed a second Master’s degree, this one in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and then finished writing Journey to Mythaca, which was published in October, 2006.

She currently runs workshops exploring the creative potential of myth in art and is working on a second Mythaca book, in which the magical creatures visit the children’s world.

Inspiration

At 2:30 in the morning, in early March, 2001, I woke up abruptly with a new thought: I don't have to teach for the rest of my life! No more California standards! No more school politics! No more getting-ready-for-the-next-grade! The idea was so appealing that I got up and wrote a letter of resignation immediately, effective at the end of the school year.

From March to June, then, I was free. I decided to make those months the best they could be for my students and for me. The rest of the year would be devoted to art and stories. The students chose to make imaginary creatures out of papier mache and write stories about them. (Really, who needs math?)

That fall I began the MA/PhD program in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. For two years I wrote papers, and papers, and more papers. Had I completed my dissertation, it would probably have been on the Greek titans, Prometheus and his little-known brother, Epimetheus.

At the end, though, it was Mythaca that called. It took me another year and a half to finish the book. When it was done, I didn't look for a conventional publisher. Through a series of serendipitous events, I came into a small windfall which allowed me to self-publish the book. I found WingSpan, hired a Pasadena Art Center artist, Kristopher Doe, to do the cover, and friends Kate Johnston and Josephine Laing to do the editing and the illustrations. The published version of Journey to Mythaca came out at the end of October, 2006.