Raving at the Raven

I've been home for barely an hour, and I simply must qvell about my trip to the Golden Raven Storytelling Circle in Union, Maine.  Just as I did last year, I took a bus up from South Station to charming little Waldoboro, where Roland was waiting with fresh-picked corn for our dinner.  We greeted each other like old friends (which we are), the intervening year since I'd last seen him vanishing as fast as that corn did at the dinner table a couple hours later.

On the way to his home, he showed me the blue-flecked hill where the local blueberries reside, and a desperately beautiful view at the top of a winding hillside road of the St. George River valley and Sennebec Pond (here's where I got the photo just above) in which the Golden Raven Storytelling Circle resides.  Those blueberries, by the way, ended up in Carol's freshly baked muffins, which I devoured hot out of the oven this morning!

When we got to 715 Sennebec Road, there were Carol Watier (Librarian, Food Pantry Director, Matriarch) and Debra Ballou (Professional Storyteller, Environmental Educator, Musician) and Windsor (Full-Time Dog), busily preparing for an evening of storytelling.  Telling stories is hungry work, so Carol made sure we were all well fortified with plenty of Maine home cooking. Topped off with homemade cookies and raspberries fresh off the bush behind the house, Debra and I felt that the time had come to pay for our supper, so out we went to the Circle.  

                                                

It was still light out when Roland led us in a brief opening ceremony and lit the fire chamber. We settled ourselves on the comfy chairs he had purchased recently to augment the Circle's tree stump, and Debra took us into Story-Land.  Her cedar flute and Native American drum were right at home amidst the river stones and the sparks from the fire, and pretty soon we were all making frog sounds as we helped her tell Margaret Read MacDonald's "Frog Talk".

We were relaxed and at ease, chatting between stories, sharing ideas, experiences, revelations. There's a kind of magic at the Golden Raven; the combination of a real fire, real stories, and real people creates a kind of alchemy in which ideas are born and words come easily.  This simple act of sharing stories under the stars by fire light is something which most of us experience rarely (or never) in our lives, even though our ancestors probably considered such evenings commonplace.

When it was my turn to tell, I found myself turning to a tale which I had been keeping hidden away in a notebook, too nervous or awkward or lacking in courage to it aloud until last night. Standing before that fire, it suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world to tell the story of Arrowhead Finger, a Penobscot tale which I have privately studied and venerated for months, but which I had hitherto shied away from telling for a number of reasons.  It was one of those "difficult" tales: challenging to tell both for its length and complexity, and also for the content, which includes scenes of torture and redemption, sacrifice and love.  Not an easy tale to tell, or so I thought.  Yet last night it spilled out of me, scene following scene, unhurriedly moving like the St. George River as it flows from one lake to the next.  

Arrowhead Finger is a girl who undergoes a literal trial by fire, and in so doing discovers that her character becomes her salvation.  But I didn't really understand this until I had the courage to tell her story - including the scenes of horror and pain, along with the scenes of healing and love.  We tend, these days, to shy away from stories that have violent content.  Yet it seems to me that it is precisely in these times - when war, torture, and terror surround and threaten us - that we need to explore them, learn from them, and tell them.  At the end of her story, Arrowhead Finger becomes a leader and a teacher among her people; her story can continue to lead and teach, but only if we tellers take heart from her courageous example and tell her story, and stories like it.

Thank you to Roland, Carol, Debra, and the Golden Raven Storytelling Circle for making this telling possible.  And thank you to Arrowhead Finger.

Doria Hughes features at Blues , July 22 2008

This is a Penobscot story about the hero-trickster Glooscap, which I told at Brother Blue's on July 22, 2008.

Featured Teller at Brother Blue's

I am gearing up for my Featured Teller spot this Tuesday, July 22nd at Brother Blue's regular Storytelling evening at the Episcopal Divinity School (click here for a campus map).  If you are in the area, please come!  At 7pm, there is an Open Mic, followed by a break, and then me.  Wish me luck!

Tuesday's at Blue's are special; for me and many other storytellers, they constitute a kind of sacred space, where we can try out stories at various phases in their development for a supportive and welcoming adult audience.  There is very little critique or criticism, other than from Blue himself, who invariably offers us his unique variety of love and praise from his unstinting and inexhaustible inner source.

                                                                    

Of course, I cannot mention Blue without Ruth, his wife, who is responsible for keeping the Tuesdays going, arranging for the Features.  Everybody loves Ruth, most especially Blue!  He says of her, "She's the TRUTH!  She IS the Story!"  We are all so lucky to be blessed by the presence of this wonderful couple, the King and Queen of Storytelling, as far as I am concerned.                                                                    

Gone is Gone

I've been delving into Alison Lurie's book "Clever Gretchen and other forgotten folktales" and enjoying it immensely.  My favorite story is from the Norse tradition (those who know me are aware that I have a weakness for all things Scandinavian), and starts with a husband and wife who decide to switch places for a day.  She heads off to the fields with his scythe, and he stays home to do her chores.  In short order he screws things up so badly that when his wife gets home in the evening, she finds him with his head in the porridge, dangling at the end of a rope from inside the chimney.  (You'll never guess who is at the other end of the rope.) 

The story's message is clear: men and women should stay within their proper spheres and do the work alloted to them, to which they are well-suited.  Absolute chaos will ensue if a man so much as attempts to cook.  Step away from the stove, Wolfgang Puck!!

Interestingly, the story does not describe how the wife fared, except to note that she "had been cutting hay all morning".  We are given to understand that while men are incapable of anything other than straightforward manual labor, the story implies that women are able to perform a man's job competently.  Moreover, with no lunch!

So I have found myself another quandry.  Can I, in good conscience, tell a story whose moral asserts that men and women must remain in separate work spheres?  Is there a way to tell this lovely little tale without doing violence to the socio-cultural ethos from whence it derives?  Must I return the George Forman grill that I just bought for my husband?  

In Lurie's telling, the wife has the last word: she tells her husband to do his work while she does hers, and not talk about it.  I wonder what might have happened if she had given him another chance?  

Obviously she's never tried my husband's waffles.