June 14 - the last Stories at Fern for the summer of 2010 - was hosted by Lee Porteous whom we have to thank for connecting us to the Speech Arts Festival and for bringing two young winners from that event to start the evening with delightful, humorous stories. Jaya Scott told us "Eureka and the Oni", her sister Meghan recounted a Stewart McLean 'Dave and Morley' story about their tricky dog, Arthur, whose idea of heaven was to share their bed !!
The persona of Little Tree was enchantingly brought to life in Diane's telling of Forrest Carter's "The Education of Little Tree". The rattlesnake bite that so nearly took his Grandpa's life, his Granny's wisdom in saving her husband kept us totally involved in a masterfully told story.
Rose Tubman-Roeren (yes Dorothy Tubman's granddaughter), long involved with the Speech Arts Festival, told us of the difficulties that face a would-be registrant in a Bridal Registry when there is no intent whatever to become a bride. Tired of giving, giving, giving through such registries to friends, the 'non-bride' registers for the sole purpose of letting her friends know what SHE would like to receive for a change!! " Non-Bridaled Passion" was the story's title by Kate Shein.
Through Susan Charter's story, Victoria taught us the value of looking through "The Wolf's Eyelashes" to see people as they REALLY are.
Anne Beatty, made her own fashion statement by wearing an elegant scarf herself as she told her own version of "The Scarf", adapted from a Carol Shields short stories so titled. Anne says of her story that: " it included some of my own words which would not behave and stay inside" and ended with a personal reflection on "not knowing how to ask for what we don't even know we want."
In an adapted version of a story she had heard Anne Forrrester tell, Sylvia Olsen presented Honey, the thoroughly spoiled daughter of King Ralph who should have known better than to give his child everything she asked for, and told how Honey's virtual slave John, outsmarted them both.
In Norman Lockett's story "Soap, Soap, Soap," Shoshana took all of us on a lively and noisy errand to the store with a usually forgetful boy, sent by his mother to buy that very item. We slipped in the mud with him on his adventurous and circuitous journey and had fun, fun, fun in the process.
As part of our 2009 Conference concert by local tellers, Jennifer told the true and amazing story of heroine Minnie Patterson in the rescue of the crew of the doomed barque "Coloma" in 1906. This evening, the same story, but cleverly re-told from the point of view of Tom, Minnie's husband, Keeper of the Light at Cape Beale, located on our Island's West Coast. To any reader of this blog who was not at Fern on June 14, a story well worth a "Google"!
A gentle end to the evening, Frances Murphy sang us a conversation between a lilac tree and an apple tree on an abandoned farm. Welcome to Frances, another singer/teller at Fern.
Janna
