Spring Meeting!

It is time for our Spring Storytellers Guild meeting!

Put this on your calendar:

Friday, April 20, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

At the Unitarian Universalist Church on Fee Lane, in the Library (second floor).  Easy access from rear door.

Stories, snacks, some summer planning...see you there!

Stories have changed...

“Stories have changed, my dear boy, " the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad.  “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue.  Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.  There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings.  The quests lack clarity of goal or path.  The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are.  

And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise.  Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.  Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl.

 And is not the dragon the hero of his own story?  Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act?  Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

From : The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 

"Stories are important"

"...stories are important.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. the weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling...stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.

And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountain-side. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.

This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.

This is why history keeps on repeating all the time."

Terry Pratchett, 1991

The Festival of Ghost Stories

As the leaves flew off the trees on the last Friday in October, storytellers and audience gathered in Bryan Park for the annual Festival of Ghost Stories.

Temperatures dropped rapidly as night fell, but the audience was enthusiastic for chilling stories.

We heard from some new voices this year and some new stories from familiar tellers.

Cats (Community Access Television) of the Monroe County Public Library did film the event and as I understand it you can call and request a copy of the program (349-3111).

It was quickly too dark to take many pictures of the tellers, and the audience were just shadows huddled on the hillside.





You'll find a review at http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=83793&search=festival. Thanks, Jessica Williams, for taking the time to write about us!

And many thanks to this year's coordinator, Stephanie!

Hope to see all of you next year for another evening of spooky and supernatural tales!

Annual Festival of Ghost Stories

Are you ready? The Annual Festival of Ghost Stories

Friday, October 28

7:00 to 8:30 pm

Outdoors at Bryan Park

This concert of scary and supernatural tales is performed by members of the Bloomington Storytellers Guild and sponsored by:

The Monroe County Public Library (also the rain site)

and

Bloomington Parks and Recreation.

Wear warm clothes! Bring a chair or blanket to sit on!

NO young children, please!

Festival of Ghost Stories coming up

The time approaches for the annual Festival of Ghost Stories.

Do you have a scary story to tell?

Something eerie and unusual?

Auditions are coming up on Monday October 17th at the Monroe County Public Library (one of our co-sponsors for the event).
Email the Guild for more information!

Your audience is waiting....

Are you missing emails?

Sometimes our coordinator can't read your handwriting.

Sometimes our coordinator can't read her own handwriting.

Sometimes she even loses the little scrap of paper with your email address on it.

If you want to stay connected to the Guild and you are NOT getting emails, please please please email the BSG at btownstorytellers@gmail.com.

And forgive the rapidly aging coordinator for losing your email the first time.