Pat hosted the evening suggesting a "looseknit theme of Remembrance". As a prelude to Pat's telling of "Dunkirk - a Ballad " by Robert Nathan, Janna set the scene by recalling wartime happenings on the Home Front in Southern England experienced as a 17 year-old at the time of Dunkirk - May 1940 - in the form of 4 memory snapshots. Pat's poem told the story of the 'little ships' that went to the rescue of thousands of British and Allied troops stranded on the French beaches. Both stories well balanced by Lavana's personal childhood story of the effects of war on civilian populations in Europe.
Jennifer's story titled: "High Flier" told, so sensitively, about her sister, Sue, who was born during the Blitz (bombing) of London. A short story of a life influenced by Gran's story of a little girl's night flights of adventure on the back of an owl and Jennifer's certainty that Sue bid her last good-bye perched on the shoulder of a bald eagle on a roadside tree as Jennifer made her way to the airport to say farewell to her dying sister.
A change of pace then with newcomer Charles' hilarious telling of the story of Melisande - a cousin of the Sleeping Beauty - and what fearful things may happen if you cross the fairies! Fun for the child in all of us.
Gerald kept us stitches too with his story of "Big Gray", not only an outsized mule but one with an extraordinary capacity to confound his caregivers. He was followed by another newcomer:
Shirley, who told us about the interaction of Bubbles the therapeutic Clown on a cancer ward with a despondent cancer patient, and how bubble rainbows restored the patient's sense of the beauty and mystery of life to be enjoyed in every moment.
Sylvia Olsen - a published author - see the VSG blog - held us entranced with a true family story of her amazing grandmother Eva MacPherson Snobelen who crossed the Atlantic from England without escort as a 17-year old to meet her beau in New York. The beau failed to show then, found her years later, and vowed to his dying day that she was 'his girl'.
To bring the evening to a close, Lee told the enchanting story of a Prime Minister at the Imperial Court of a Chinese Emperor who sought solace from political wrangling at Court by spending time in a flower meadow. Magically the embroidered butterflies on his robes took flight around him, a sight so beautiful that, renewed in spirit and able to recapture that vision at will, he was able to return to the Court to serve his Emperor.
Submitted by Janna
