West Side Storytellers Stories from the Heart of Arizona

August 2016 Volume 20, Issue 8

August’s birthstone is the peridot, a type of olivine, and comes in various shades of green, from a light green to a brilliant olive green. The Egyptians called it the gem of the sun and thought it

cured diseases of the heart. It was searched for at night because of a belief that moonlight made it eas-ier to see. Gem quality peridot comes from Arizona, Burma, Norway, islands in the Red Sea, Hawaii, and

is sometimes found in meteorites. It has been mined as a gem-stone for thousands of years, and is mentioned in the Bible under the name of Chrysolite. Legend says that peridot was one of the favorite gemstones of Cleopatra and that some of the “emeralds” worn by her were actually peridot. It is thought to bring the wearer good luck, peace and suc-cess. Powers attributed to peridot include: protection from nega-tivity, a health aid for the entire body, a stress reducer, a relaxant, a fever reducer, and promoter of sleep. Powdered peridot is said to cure asthma. Peridot is said to attract love and calm anger while also soothing nerves and dispelling negative emotions.

See “Gemstones and Fairytales” on page 2

Having a fairytale life isn’t easy; it means getting lost, getting help, fighting monsters, being cursed, being cured, and ending better for having made the journey. Brian Walsh

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I live in the foothills of South Mountain, and at this time of year, the rains come down the mountain washes and fill the basin be-hind my house. When we first moved into this house, the rains were very heavy and it actually overflowed into the canal on the other side of it. I’m very happy to be living on the uphill side of this arrangement, and always give thanks for the engineering company that created the perfect contours that keep our little houses from being flooded. The water drainage ditch is called “the jogging path” in our neighborhood because it is normally dry. It is landscaped with grass and trees, and has a sidewalk down the middle that provides a walking path around the com-munity. One day when I had just gotten into my car to leave, I turned the key, and glanced over at the jogging path. There, to my surprise was a coyote, making a leisurely stroll along the path. Since I am very close to the mountain preserve, this should have come as no surprise, but the realization that this was a coy-ote’s territory was jarring. I had seen hawks sitting on the top of the wooden fence surrounding my back yard, and that is the big-gest reason I have indoor cats. The coyote was further evidence that our city doesn’t insulate us from the wild things in the area where we live. Suddenly, the signs on the mailboxes showing lost pets made more sense. The six foot fence wouldn’t be a de-terrent to a coyote who really wanted to get in the yard. I also have a Gila woodpecker that lives in the mesquite trees just out-side the back fence. He comes out and makes a racket looking for a meal sometimes, and I keep a small pair of binoculars near the table so I can grab them and watch him. The Sonoran desert is such a beautiful place, and I especially appreciate it after a rain when the creosote smells so sweet and fresh. Living near the mountain is like having the folds of your mother’s skirts around you, and the seasons are amplified by watching the changes on the mountainside. I guess the wildlife is a blessing too, a re-minder that we are only recent visitors here and we need to be respectful of the place we live. This month’s newsletter is full of monsoon stories, pirates, Native American tales, and more. The birthstone for August is peridot, and there is some wild lore surrounding the peridot stones, so it made sense to include some mention of the gem-stones in fairy tales. The Storyteller’s Kitchen is expanded to include tales of harvest bounty. I hope you’ll take the time to watch the PBS special referenced in the blurb about Kevin Kling (see page 6). In September we begin our monthly meetings again and we can start in earnest to do the planning for our Tellabration cele-bration planned for November. The fall is really coming! I look forward to seeing everyone again, and hearing all the summer stories. Enjoy the newsletter—see you in September! Andy

Peridot

Newsworthy Storytellers Project wins top honors at INMA World Congress May 25, 2016

On Tuesday, Megan Finnerty walked across a stage at London's Victoria & Albert Museum to pick up an award for the storytelling program she helped found at the Arizona Republic four years ago. The Arizona Storytellers Project won the first place award for "Best Use of an Event to Build a News Brand" at the International News Media Association World Congress. Finnerty, now director of the USA

TODAY NETWORK's Storytellers Brand Studio, was on hand to pick up the award on behalf of the Republic program that has built significant connections for the Phoenix-based newsroom, allowed the brand to reach new audiences and surfaced hundreds of stories that now make up an oral history of the Arizona city. "The winner tonight are the Arizonans of all colors and creeds who share their stories with our community, and we're all grateful for their insight, intimacy and humor," said Finnerty. "Storytellers is a project built on everyday stories that teach us something extraordinary about each other and ourselves, and we welcome our friends to the storytelling nights we have yet to imagine." The Phoenix-based newsroom has been running live nights of community based, journalist-curated live storytelling for four years. In late 2015, the program was expanded to eight additional USA TODAY NETWORK markets, including Cincinnati, Nash-ville, Louisville, Palm Springs and Cincinnati and Finnerty moved to a role on the corporate team to grow the Storytellers Brand Studio into a thriving business vertical and source of high-definition, in-real-life journalism.

(Photo: Courtesy INMA)

Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors. Charles De Lint

Gemstones are mentioned in many old fables and fairy stories. It is not surprising then that we associate gem-stones with myths and magical stories. In most fairy tales gemstones will signify that the reader has entered a special place, maybe magical, certainly mythical with gemstone covered landscapes, gemstone encrusted mirrors, robes and goblets. The Brothers Grimm (1785-1863) are known throughout the world for their collection of old fairy tales. Later Disney would take on these very same sto-ries and make them more famous. These included Cinderella

(Aschenputtel), The Frog Prince (Der Froschkönig), Hansel and Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin (Rumpelstilzchen), Sleeping Beauty (Dornröschen), and Snow White (Schneewittchen). Disney changed the stories to make them appealing. You may be surprised to hear that in the original Sleeping Beauty (Basile 1575-1632) she was not awoken by a kiss but something far more sinister happened! The Brothers Grimm and Basile simply

collected the tales from local peasants, village people and some-times from aristocrats who had been told the stories by their ser-vants. A similar way of gathering fairy stories was used by a Rus-sian writer called Pavel Bazhov who spent years recording the stories of Ural Mountain miners. His famous collection was called 'The Malachite Casket', and was published in 1939. One of the fairy tales is known as "Silver Hoof" in Russia. It involves a mysterious goat (or in some tales a deer) who had a silver hoof on his right front leg. Whenever the goat stomps with this hoof, sparks fly and a gemstone is made, two stomps produce 2 gem-stones, if Silver Hoof paws the ground a multitude of sparks fly and produce a cascade of many different colored gemstones. Blue sparks make sapphires, red sparks make rubies and white sparks make diamonds. The fairy tale involves a poor young orphan girl called Dary-onka and her cat called Muryonka, who are adopted by an old hunter named Kokovanya. Kokovanya has been searching for Silver Hoof every winter for years. One night when the old man is away and Daryonka is alone with Muryonka, Silver Hoof arrives, talks secretly with Muryonka and then plays around excitedly, running and stomping, and so covering the old hunter's lodge with so many gemstones that the lodge cannot be seen. Kokovanya returns in time to see Silver Hoof and starts picking up the gems in his hat. Then, Silver Hoof runs off with Muryonka riding on his back. The price to pay for all the riches is that Silver Hoof takes away Daryonka's beloved cat. All that remained the next day, to show that Silver Hoof had been there, were green gemstones. Both the old hunter and the orphan girl were now rich but Dary-onka missed her cat terribly. They never saw Muryonka or Silver Hoof ever again. It is significant that the Ural miners see the gems in the fable as a huge gift or reward, but at a cost. Life for these story tellers was very difficult.

Countess D'Aulnoy (1650-1705) was a French fairy tale writer. One of her best known stories was "The White Cat." In the story, a young prince is on a quest for his father, the king, but he gets lost in a rain storm and seeks refuge. He sees bright lights in the distance and comes upon a huge gate to a magnificent castle. The gate is covered in red garnets, the light from which had led him to the castle. The castle has walls made of crystal and doors made from coral. The prince enters the castle and walks through hallways with walls made of lapis lazuli and covered in pearls,

searching for the owner. His clothes are wet from the storm and so he finds dry clothes that are encrusted with emeralds. In the castle the prince meets a mysterious and beautiful white cat with many servants and they become friends. When they dine together the plates are adorned with gemstones. The white cat wears strands of pearls and holds a gem encrusted goblet. The prince falls in love with the white cat and visits her in the castle three times. The white cat is really a princess cast under a wicked spell by fairies. But the prince doesn't know this until the cat asks him to chop her head off! Reluctantly, he agrees and this breaks the spell, and he asks the beautiful princess to marry him. They travel back to the king's castle on a royal carriage drawn by horses with shoes made of rubies and diamonds. The gems in this fairy tale symbolize royalty and great wealth and let us know that the characters, even the mysterious cat, are very special. Certainly, at the time the fairy tale was written (in the 1700s), only the rich could afford gems. Early fairy stories were often sad and violent. Indeed many of the Brothers Grimm tales had to be re-written before they were deemed suitable for children. The violence in the original stories was meant to scare children so they would be wary, e.g. the wolf hidden in sheep's clothing and the evil witch offering a poisoned red apple. The Ural tales by Bazhov often had warnings or hidden mean-ings and were meant to teach children about life. Fairy tales often tell of deceit, jealousy, wickedness and ambition. In India, a violent ancient fable tells us how gemstones were created. A Hindu demon called Vala had overthrown Indra, the god of thunder, and subdued all the other demi-gods. But he was tricked into playing the part of a sacrifice in a mock ritual. Once

Vala was helpless, the other gods killed him and chopped his body into pieces. Since Vala had originally agreed to partici-pate in the sacrifice, his body was now pure, and so when his body parts fell to Earth they became gemstones. Drops of his blood became rubies, his skin turned into yellow sapphires, his eyes became blue sapphires and his bones shattered into diamonds. Vala's teeth fell into the oceans and landed on oysters where they became pearls. His intestines were also thrown into the sea and turned into coral. Vala's bright green bile became emeralds and his fat turned into jade or quartz. Finally even Vala's last war cry that echoed around the heav-ens as he was killed was transformed into cat's eyes. The significance of the story is sometimes given a medici-nal explanation. Gemstones are often used for healing in tradi-

tional Hindu belief systems. Since the gemstones were said to be from parts of a god they are believed by some to possess special powers. Rubies, Vala's blood, are thought to cure blood diseases, yellow sapphires are used for skin afflictions, and so on.

The Tales of The Arabian Nights, (said to have been invented by a princess on her wedding night to

stop her new husband from killing her!) also include a few stories with gemstone references.

Gemstones and Fairy Tales (from gemselect.com)

Sleeping Beauty (1845)

Silver Hoof, Daryonka & Muryonka

Continued next column

The White Cat 1890s

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The Storyteller’s Kitchen

August 2016

Page 3

Paul Bunyan's Harvest (An American Tall Tale) As told by Amy Friedman and Meredith Johnson

Now most of you've heard of Paul Bunyan, the famous lumber-jack whose blue ox, Babe, was seven ax handles wide between the eyes -- or maybe 42 handles, 'cause that's what others say -- but however big Babe was, he pulled a plow across the land and dug out the Grand Canyon. I know you know that. And I know you've heard Paul's kitchen was big enough to cover 10 country miles, and his stove was taller than a giant pine, and when he lighted that stove, the snow for 20 miles around melted away. I know you've heard how Paul's cook, Sourdough Sam, had to send four of the lumberjacks with a side of bacon strapped to their snowshoes to skate around on the griddle to grease it for those famous Paul Bunyan flapjacks. Lots of people know Paul logged in North and South Dakota, and in Oregon and Michigan and Maine, and lots of other places, and most folks don't know where he came from or who his par-ents were. Most don't care. Lots of folks know about the fellas in Paul's lumber camp -- like Johnny Inkslinger, Paul's bookkeeper, who sometimes got upset because Babe cost so much to feed -- why, just for a snack between meals, Babe ate 50 bales of hay, with the wire, too, so no wonder. But you knew that. And you probably also knew that Babe liked to sneak off and drink all the water out of the river, just for fun and to quench his thirst. When he wandered, his tracks were so far apart, no one could follow him, and anyone who did risked falling into one of those tracks. All the Great Lakes were formed from Babe's foot-steps. You probably know about Paul's dogs too -- like Sport, the reversible dog who was part-wolf and part-elephant hound and lived on bear milk. One night when Sport was just a pup, he was playing around in Paul's barn, and Paul accidentally threw an ax at him that cut him right in half. Paul, seeing his mistake, stuck the two halves together and nursed Sport back to health, but later he discovered he accidentally twisted the two halves, so the hind legs pointed straight up. And you know how Sport learned to run first on one pair of legs, and then he'd flop over and run on the other, so he never was tired. But you might not know about Paul's harvest the year he grew corn and pumpkins. This was in Michigan, and they say it's the reason there was a big drought out there that year. See, the day after Paul planted his pumpkin seeds, those stalks were nearly half a mile long, and the corn? Why, Paul planted just one corn-stalk, but that stalk grew 6 feet every day, and it came out of the ground so fast and grew so thick and tall that no one could pull it out -- not even Paul. Not even Babe. It just climbed up and up and up. People had to keep their windows closed that fall because if they didn't, those pumpkin vines just crept right inside, and once inside the pumpkins grew so big, people couldn't get them out of the house without chopping them up in pieces, and everyone was getting tired of pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup. Those vegetables were soaking up all the water out of the ground with their gigantic roots and stalks. Pretty soon all the farms around were drying up. The big Huron River started to dry up, and people panicked because they could just imagine all those fish just hanging out there in the air if that river dried up alto-gether.

"You've got to harvest, Paul!" his fellas cried, "your crops are destroying this place!" So Paul started with the pumpkin vines. He finally caught one end and hitched Babe to it and sent him run-ning across the land. "Faster, Babe, faster," Paul called after him, and Babe tore across the land like he was a forest fire out of con-trol and raced all the way to Lake Ontario before he got those vines tight enough to yank them right out of the ground. So the first part of Paul's harvest was finished, but that left the cornstalk. It was now so tall, nobody could see the top. All the fellas stood around trying to figure out what to do, and then Paul had an idea. He strode down to some abandoned railroad tracks and pulled the tracks out of the ground. Then he twisted the steel around the cornstalk, pulling harder and harder, and finally chok-ing that cornstalk. It tumbled down, and ears of corn went flying everywhere. For miles and miles around, every county had plenty of corn all that winter -- and that night, people say, you could hear the

sound of popcorn popping everywhere in Michigan and Ohio and Indiana, even up in Ontario. Yep, that was some harvest.

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients: 3 ½ cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 teaspoons all spice 2 teaspoons nutmeg 3 cups sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 2/3 cups water 4 eggs 16 oz pumpkin puree

So easy, huh? I love that you don’t even need to break out the mixer. Just a wooden spoon and a little elbow grease. If you’re feeling naughty, add a slab of cream cheese or mascar-pone on a slice when it’s still warm…heaven…. Enjoy! Courtesy of Amy Winchester

Continued next column

Popcorn Balls 1 ⁄2 cup sugar 1 ⁄8 cup white corn syrup 1 ⁄4 cup margarine (half a stick) 1 ⁄8 teaspoon salt 1 ⁄4 teaspoon vanilla extract (or almond) 2 quarts popped corn (1 microwave will do)

Bring to a soft boil in a medium sauce pan over medium heat the sugar, white corn syrup, margarine, and salt. Remove from heat and add vanilla or almond extract. Mix sauce with popcorn in a large bowl. When cool enough, but still warm, form into balls.

Preparation Instructions: Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9x5” loaf pans. Sift your dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the cen-ter and add your wet ingredients. Mix until combined. Pour into pans. Bake for about 1 hour, or until no longer jiggly.

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie. Jim Davis

According to the Arizona Farm Bureau’s web site, this produce is in season in August: Apples, Basil, Black-eyed Peas, Chiles, Corn, Cucumber, Figs, Grapes, Green beans, Herbs, Mel-ons, Okra, Peaches, Pears, Plums & pluots, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Shelling beans, Summer & Winter Squash, Sweet peppers, Toma-toes, Zucchini, Zucchini blossoms. Their amazing web site has links to help you find a Farmer’s Market, recipes, nutrition infor-mation and more. Check it out at fillyourplate.org.

The most delicious squash blossoms I have ever eaten were at the Turquoise Room at La Posada in Winslow. It is worth the trip just to see this amazing place and learn about Mary Coulter, the architect who designed it to look like the residence of an old Spanish Don. She worked for the railroad and designed the building to have wide, expansive lawns that faced the tracks where the trains brought guests. The verandas invite you to sit and relax. She was so meticulous about her vision that she even designed the dishes. It was lovingly restored, and when we vis-ited, the gentleman who had headed up the restoration gave us a little talk about it. He showed us a board on which he had created a display of every key he found on the property and in the build-ing during the restoration! There is a cookbook containing Tur-quoise Room recipes (La Posada’s Turquoise Room Cookbook), but you can get a good idea of how to handle and prepare squash blossoms in this article by Kate McClendon:

by Kate McClendon (from McClendon’s Select fresh blog)

We have two squash blossom seasons around here. The first is in June and then they appear once again in late September. They are funny little flowers. They grow hidden beneath the leaves of squash plants and only open early in the morning. If you don’t catch them at sunrise, they close back up and go to sleep. We handle them as delicately as possible, so as to not crush their delicate petals. Once picked they need to be refrigerated immediately, but not too cold, and they would prefer a wet paper towel nestled in with them. And, after all of that, if you don’t do something with them soon, they will wilt and break your heart. Squash blossoms are the subject of a lot of curiosity. They are seductive and confusing all at the same time. Pretty and edi-ble? In Mexico they are called flor de calabaza and are used in soups or quesadillas. In Italy they are fiori di zucca and are stuffed with ricotta, served with pasta or made into fritters. We work with a number of chefs who have come up with their own interpretation of what to do with them. I have tried many and have found them all enjoyable. But my favorite way to eat squash blossoms is in Marsha’s kitchen. She showed me what to do a few years ago, and after a lot of practice, mine still pale in comparison, but I am no longer intimidated. Here’s the deal, you can really stuff them with just about any-thing. I have filled them with all sorts of things, mozzarella with lemon zest and basil, spinach dip with artichoke hearts, sautéed squash with parmesan and pine nuts. The female blossoms come with a little baby squash attached that I like to sauté along with the flower. Really, you can’t mess them up, or I am sure that I would have by now. So… what should you do with a squash blossom?

Well, first gently rinse and pat dry. I make a small cut along the side and then remove the stamen from the middle. I then put about a spoonful of whatever I am using. In these I had a spinach dip with some parmesan and fresh basil. The ends of the petals are then twisted closed and the flowers are rolled in flour, then an egg wash and some panko crumbs. Pan fry with a little olive oil over me-dium heat for about 2-3 minutes per side. Just long enough for them to turn golden. They are so good… and will soon be so gone! Their season feels as delicate and fleeting as they are, but it is so worth it. If you really want a treat and want to go the distance for a squash blossom, next summer plan to take a trip to Winslow. John Sharpe at The Turquoise Room in the La Posada makes a squash blossom tamale that is well worth the drive! The Turquoise Room 303 East Second Street Winslow, Arizona

_________________ Here is a recipe from the Farm Bureau’s web site for Tomato and Cucumber Salad—yum!

Armenian Cucumber -- Tomato Salad

2 Small Armenian Cucumbers 1 Pint Cherry Tomatoes cut in quarters

1 Teaspoon Pasilla Chile Pepper, seeded and Minced 1 Tablespoon Chopped Basil 1 Teaspoon Lime juice Pinch of Sugar 1/2 Teaspoon Rice Wine Vinegar 2 Green Onions, Sliced Thin Salt and Freshly ground White Pepper

Directions Peel and slice Armenian cucumbers. Place in a bowl and salt slightly, draining purged juices after resting for 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and pasilla pepper. In a

separate bowl, combine basil, limejuice, sugar, vinegar and green onions. Season with salt and white pepper. Combine with cucum-bers and tomatoes. Chill and serve.

Counrtesy of: Kelly Saxer of Desert Roots Farm ________________

Here’s another of Kelly’s recipes for August produce:

Cantaloupe Basil Salsa

2 Cups diced (1/4 inch) Cantaloupe 1/4 Cup Finely chopped sweet onion 2 Tablespoons Finely chopped Fresh Basil 1 (2-inch long) Fresh hot red or green chile, serrano or Thai, minced (including some seeds) 1 Tablespoon Fresh Lime Juice 1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Directions Toss together all ingredients in a bowl and let stand, covered and chilled, 10 minutes.

Courtesy of Kelly Saxer of Desert Roots Farm

The Storyteller’s Kitchen

August Bounty

Continued next column Page 4

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Monsoon Stories The Sacred Mantras of Mumbai Monsoon (from Vikas Khanna at vkhanna.com) If anyone has lived in Mumbai during Monsoons, there is no place like this. The rains come without any warning and it just pours and pours. The city has such a strong momentum that it never stops, but it surely slows down during the rain. I have al-ways loved vada-paos and recently I have started cherishing them more as I live my life in the West. During the rain, the mumbai-ites line up for a cup of chai (recipe at right) and vada paos (recipe below). I am surely one of the people who likes the simplicity of street foods, but there is nothing like eating on the streets of Mumbai. Watching the energy and the natives and the tourists and smelling the divine aroma of dry earth absorbing the rain. The sight across the sea and the greenery are awesome . I just love to go out for a long drive while it’s raining. The clean smell of rain-washed air and the washed trees is my favourite sight during monsoon. Hope I can visit Mumbai soon, hope it will pour while I am there and hope vada-paos taste as great as they are in my memory.

Vada Pao

4 to 5 Idaho potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed 2 cloves garlic, minced 2-inch fresh ginger root, peeled and minced 3 green chiles, preferably Serrano, finely minced Freshly ground black pepper 6 to 8 fresh curry leaves 1teaspoon black mustard seeds 2 cups graham flour Vegetable oil for frying 6 Pav buns (square buns that look like burger buns, but are smaller, so you can substitute) 1 cup mint-cilantro chutney

Mix the graham flour with enough water (about 1 cup) and salt to taste, to make a thick, smooth paste. Keep aside. Mix the minced ginger and garlic and add the green chiles to them. Grind into a smooth paste in the food processor. Mix this paste with the mashed potatoes. Season with salt. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a pan on a medium flame and add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and turmeric powder (editor’s note: Mr. Khanna did not include an amount for the turmeric in the ingredients list. Other recipes suggest 1/4 tsp) Fry till the seeds stop spluttering. Add this to the potato and mix well. Divide the potato mix into portions slighter smaller than a tennis ball. Smooth by roll-ing between slightly greased palms. Heat the oil for deep frying on a medium flame. When the oil is hot, dip one potato ball at a time into the graham flour batter to coat well and then deep fry till golden. Drain on paper towels. Take one Pav bun, slit in half (not completely - leave one edge joined) and put a spoonful each of Mint-Coriander Chutney. Place a potato ball on the bun and fold over, pressing down gen-tly. Serve while the potato ball is still hot.

Roadside Chai

3 cups water One 1-inch piece of ginger root, lightly pounded 3 to 4 cardamom pods, lightly cracked open 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 4 good quality tea bags, preferably black tea 1 ½ cup whole milk Sugar to taste

Bring water, ginger, cardamom, and fennel seeds to a boil. Add the tea bags to it and let it boil for another minute. Lower the heat and let the tea steep. Add the milk and continue to heat for another 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture becomes very fragrant and darker in color. Strain and serve hot.

Another good read: Behind The Beautiful Forevers—life, death and hope in a Mumbai undercity by Katherine Boo

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dra-matic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of An-nawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formi-dable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader head-long into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.

A paperback version of this book is available from Amazon for $9.87.

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.” ― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

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Horror Story In the category of “you can’t make this up” I stumbled across this story while searching for stories about summer storms. ah

________________

The following is a horror story made up entirely of front-page headlines that have been used to tease stories on Weather.com, the homepage of the Weather Channel. (from fusion.net)

I. They gathered at the beach by the thousands for a chance to see it. It was spotted dozens of miles from the storm. They hadn’t seen anything like it; it hadn’t happened like this in the last 1,000 years. It’s floating off the coast and it could be toxic or explo-sive. The military is worried about it, and you should be, too. A map confirmed what scientists feared: The strange sight isn’t all it seems. It is growing bigger and more toxic; it only takes seconds for it to explode. Officials are worried about the potential for catastrophe. And you thought you only had to fear sharks at the beach.

II. He was squeezing limes in the sun; little did he know what could happen. It was just another trip to the beach; it was supposed to be a summer paradise. He looked down, and then he saw it. He thought he was alone. He was wrong. It’s powerful and swam to the surface. An incredible 8 inches in 30 seconds. He thought he could outrun it—a recipe for disaster. Who wins: man, or nature? He didn’t make it. What goes up, must come down.

III. It’s up to you now. What happened to him? What secret is he hiding? Will he get his dying wish? Are you infected and un-aware? It could get ugly in the coming days. They left it all be-hind…and it’s disgusting. Abandoned and left to rot. Disaster waiting to happen. You think it’s bad now? Just wait. The worst is yet to come. No one wants to return here. Up to 300 people die on this road every year; you might not be found. Don’t let this happen to you. It just made landfall tonight; it’s headed north. It could hap-pen soon, and it hasn’t happened in years. Everyone will talk about it. When will it reach you? This will change how you see the world. Could this be an omen? It will last for days. It’s al-most here. It will only get bigger this weekend. You can swim in the devil’s pool…if you dare.

The Storyteller By Oonagh Prettejohn · From 500 Words: Shaped by childhood.

Real stories made by real people from all around Australia.

Her name was Ruth. She came wrapped in a white sari with recommenda-tions from a Catholic mission in Madras. Ruth was my ayah, or nursemaid, and until the age of nine one of the most important people in my life. My mother schooled me. Ruth nurtured me as a mother would. When I cried, it was Ruth who came to my side with a whisper of sari and scuff of bare feet. Cross-legged on the bare floor she’d draw me into her lap, stroking my tears away, hushing my childhood anxieties. Our bungalow stood alone with a nearby scattering of colo-nial ruins and distant villages veiled in the wood smoke of cook-ing fires. Playmates were a rarity, a void that Ruth filled as best she could. Most afternoons Ruth would take me walking to the paddy fields, or the river bank where we would sit and watch the fisher-man take their catamarans out beyond the pound of waves, into the Bay of Bengal, where the sharks were hungry. At the end of the walk there was always a picnic and a story from Ruth. A favourite was the tale of the Festival of Holi. Ruth would begin with the sing of her voice… ‘The name Holi is for Holika, missy baba. She was the sister of the terrible King of Demons, Hiranyakashipu.’ I would hide my face in the soft white cotton of her sari as a pantheon of Hindu gods played in my imagination. They were all seeing and ever present. The story told of treachery, passion, redemption and the magic of the great god Vishnu who could take myriad forms. The message was to never desire power over others because the gods will always see. The dyes that we all liberally doused each other with during Holi were for new life, free of evil, so the fields would grow more rice and more buffalo calves would be born. I would hold her hand tight as we walked home again in the rosy glow of evening. Ruth would urge me homeward. ‘Kikly, kikly missy we must bath now. See, your mummy look for you.’ Sometimes, when it rained and the air filled with silver cur-tains of monsoon light, we would sit on the verandah to watch the river flow just beyond the casuarinas. With fat drops of rain drumming on the roof and pitting the earth around us another story would unfold; perhaps of a young bride given to her father’s enemy to settle a debt, or a Sadhu who brought the rains when all was near lost. When the black of night fell and the hurricane lamps roared I would lie in bed and smell the incense of the gods, the jasmine garlands of the child bride and the musk of wet earth when the Sadhu brought the rains. It was from Ruth that I learnt the wonder of storytelling and the magic it can weave.

Check this out! My friend, Sue Harris, shared this link this past month, and I am passing it along so that you can have your cup filled as I did. It will take you to a PBS special on Kevin Kling, a storyteller, who is described as “part humorist, part poet, part philoso-pher and part sacred fool.” Having overcome a

birth defect, and then a motorcycle accident that left him further disabled, his story is inspiring and motivational. It is an incredi-ble revelation, and a thoughtful discussion about who we are, what we are doing here, and how to make peace with your uniqueness and your special “powers,” that is, the thing that makes you different from everyone else. His ability to cut to the kernel of truth about how to overcome adversity is truly inspir-ing, and could change your life (Sue’s words, but I’m not kid-ding). It is an hour-long show, and well worth watching. The insight into humanness and the role of storytelling is a gift: http://www.pbs.org/program/kevin-kling-lost-found/

Sitting in a Dublin pub nursing a pint of Guinness, I got talking to a fella who told me what seemed to be an amazing and improbable story. It was about a woman from County Mayo who was a pirate and a scourge of Ireland's west coast, in the way that Black Beard had been the scourge of the Spanish Main. The time was 16th-century Ireland, when education was rare and women spent most of their life rearing children and looking after household affairs. But that was not the life of Grace O'Malley, sailor, captain, plunderer, mer-cenary, rebel, pirate – as well as wife and mother. A picture gradually emerged of her charismatic personality, her wild life and disregard for social mores. A little research quickly showed that this was not just Guinness-fuelled pub ramblings, but a fascinating story that belies everything we generally take for granted about the Elizabethan era, when women rarely had a life beyond their home. I wanted to see where O'Malley lived, and hear more stories about her exploits. I was soon trundling west from Dublin on a slow train across lush and rich pasture. Ninety minutes into the journey we rattled across the river Shannon at the town of Athlone, Ireland’s geographical heart, into the province of Connaught. The landscape changed from fertile fields to wild and bleak – yet beautiful – peat bogs. Clew Bay is scattered with hundreds of drowned drumlins Another 90 minutes later, I arrived in the County Mayo town of Westport, staring down at the stunningly beautiful Clew Bay and the Atlantic beyond. The bay is scattered with hundreds of drowned drumlins (small low lying islands that are made of glacial debris left from the last Ice Age). The most famous of the mostly uninhabited islands is Dorninish, bought by John Lennon as a hide-away at the height of Beatlemania. My B&B was a few steps from Matt Molloy’s, the famous pub owned by the world-renowned musician with the Chieftains. In here, all the locals knew stories about Grace O'Malley, or Granuaile (pronounced Gran ya Wale) in Gaelic. The land around Clew Bay was once controlled by the powerful O'Malley family; and although Westport did not exist back then, she was born on Clare Island, a few miles west at the mouth of the bay, and her legend lives on in the area.

The tales came thick and fast. Not everyone agreed on the facts, but a picture gradually emerged of her charis-matic personality, her wild life and disregard for social mores. I was told that she was the leader of 200 fighting men on a small fleet of ships and would fight

alongside them. Others said she would waylay passing merchant ships and demand a tax for safe passage – if they did not pay she plundered them. I was eager to know more, and someone gave me the number of a sailor named Aaron O'Grady who was also born on Clare Island and is something of a local expert on O’Malley. “He's your man,” was the general consensus.

O'Grady runs fishing and diving charters in Ireland's western waters and was setting off down the coast to Kerry the next morn-ing, calling in at his home on Clare Island on the way. I arranged to meet him at the quay at dawn.It was a blustery, wet morning, but as we set sail, the wind dropped, the rain eased and the sun eventually appeared as we cautiously manoeuvred around the multitude of small islands and sand bars. "It's dangerous sailing for the unwary", O'Grady said, as the 54ft yacht The Explorer yawed 40 degrees. "That's why the bay was a safe haven for Grace; she was born in that tower house we're approaching and grew up on these waters." Pointing north across the bay, he added, "If you weave your way between a dozen drumlins and avoid the sandbars and rip tides, you'll come to Carrickahowley Castle, a grand hideaway that her enemies found hard to reach. She was an elusive character and had other castle hideaways on Achill Island and Lake Corrib near Galway. The O’Malley family were hereditary lords of the Mayo coast, and more than 500 years on, the tower house where she was born is still the tallest building on Clare Island. The gate to the historic monument was swinging wide open when I arrived, so I strolled in to what seemed a bleak home – but was probably considered luxu-rious when O'Malley was born in 1530. The upper floors have col-lapsed, leaving the house a hollow shell. There was a haunting presence in its ancient fabric. As a child, O'Malley probably learned to handle a currach (a slim hide-covered rowing boat), which children were still learning to row in Clew Bay. I’d been told that she was always wayward: as a young girl, having been refused permission to join her father on a sailing expedition, she cut off her hair, dressed as a boy and snuck on board his ship. O'Malley married local chieftain Donal O'Flaherty at 15 and bore three children. After her husband’s early death, she took many of his followers (he had ships and sailors for trading up and down the west coast) and returned to her ancestral home on Clare Island. Here she began sailing the seas, trading fish, fur and hides, and robbing the English when trade was slow. Nearby Galway was a major trading city and ships from England and Scotland had to pass Clew Bay en route. It was from this that the legend of Granuaile: Pirate Queen of Connacht began. I strolled west across the modest 15-sq-mile island made of hills, bogs and patches of woodland, heading for the 12th-century Cistercian Abbey where O’Malley was buried in 1603. The Abbey was much larger in its heyday, but the single remaining building is the size of an ordinary village church. Inside was an elaborate O’Malley crest depicting the family’s hunting, sailing and fighting prowess, but O'Malley’s burial chamber was nowhere to be seen. Legend has it that she may be buried in a vault behind the large family crest, but no one knows for sure. The building had the ambience of a medieval barn – rough stone, huge beams and gravel floor – but contained some remark-able, although badly damaged, wall and ceiling frescos. The fres-cos would once have covered the entire ceiling in a kaleidoscope of colourful human and animal figures, including dragons, cockerels, stags, a harper, birds and trees. The faded images seemed distant, like peering through a veil into the past.

Grace O'Malley was born in this tower house on Clare Island (Credit: Peter Lynch)

Who doesn’t need a good pirate story in the middle of the summer? This one’s true! The Amazing tale of Grace O'Malley: sailor, captain, plunderer, mercenary, rebel, pirate – as well as wife and mother By Peter Lynch 20 June 2016 (from BBC.com/travel)

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Back on the mainland, I made my way to Carrickahowley Castle at Rockfleet, an inlet on the north side of Clew Bay, which O’Grady had pointed out to me. After marrying, her second husband, Rich-ard Bourke in 1566, this became O'Malley’s main home, and its big attraction was its inaccessibility and stout defences. Stories say that after just one year of marriage she evoked an ancient Celtic law by putting her husband’s prop-erty outside and greeting him on his return home by shout-ing from the ramparts, "Richard Bourke I dismiss you!" They later reconciled and remained together until his death 17 years later. When Bourke died in 1583, O'Malley’s clashes with the Eng-lish intensified, and her son Tibbot was captured. That September, she sailed to England, up the River Thames to Greenwich Palace, and met Queen Elizabeth I, where she negotiated Tibbot's release and her own pardon by agreeing to fight the Queen's enemies. In the 1603 battle of Kinsale, Tibbot and other Mayo chiefs fought with the Queen of England's forces, helping to defeat the Spanish and their Irish rebel allies. This was probably one of the reasons O'Malley was disowned by Irish historians; the other was her unladylike behaviour of flouting every conceivable law, tradi-tion and social custom of the times. Since O'Malley was written out of official Irish history, very little written information exists. Irish historians were usually reli-gious monks, and being a woman, she was ignored. But there’s always an alternative history to accepted traditional texts, and sto-ries and legends about her exploits are widespread in Mayo. Just goes to show: never pass up the chance for a pint of Guinness and some pub banter. You never know what you might learn.

A view of Carrickahowley Castle (Credit: Brian Ireland/Alamy)

Eight Real-Life Pirates Who Roved the High Seas By Jesse Greenspan From Elizabeth I's "Sea Dog" to the best-known pirate of the buccaneering era, here’s a look at eight of the most notorious swashbucklers to find their sea legs.

1. The Barbarossa Brothers Sailing from North Africa’s Barbary Coast, the Barbarossa (which means “red beard” in Italian) brothers Aruj and Hizir be-came rich by capturing European vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Though their most lucrative early victims included two papal galleys and a Sardinian warship, they began targeting the Spanish around the time Aruj lost an arm to them in battle. By 1516 the Ottoman sultan had essentially put Aruj in charge of the entire Barbary Coast, a position that Hizir took over two years later following his brother’s death. Hizir, otherwise known as Khair-ed-Din, then spent the rest of his days fighting various Christian enemies, including a “Holy League” fleet specifically formed by the pope to destroy him.

2. Sir Francis Drake Francis Drake, nicknamed “my pirate” by Queen Elizabeth I, was among the so-called “Sea Dog” privateers licensed by the English government to attack Spanish shipping. Drake sailed on his most famous voyage from 1577 to 1580, becoming the first English captain to circumnavigate the globe. On that same trip he lost four of his five boats, executed a subordinate for allegedly plot-ting a mutiny, raided various Spanish ports and captured a Span-ish vessel loaded with treasure. A delighted Queen Elizabeth im-mediately knighted him upon his return. Eight years later, Drake helped defeat the Spanish Armada.

3. L’Olonnais L’Olonnais was one of many buccaneers—a cross between state-sponsored privateers and outright outlaws—who plied the Carib-bean Sea in the mid- to late 1600s. Also known as Jean-David Nau, L’Olonnais is believed to have begun raiding Spanish ships and coastal settlements—and cultivating a reputation for exces-sive cruelty—soon after arriving in the Caribbean as an inden-tured servant. Seventeenth-century pirate historian Alexander Exquemelin wrote that L’Olonnais would hack his victims to pieces bit by bit or squeeze a cord around their necks until their eyes popped out. Suspecting he had been betrayed, L’Olonnais supposedly once even cut out a man’s heart and took a bite. Karma came back to haunt him in 1668, however, when, accord-ing to Exquemelin, he was captured and eaten by cannibals.

4. Henry Morgan Perhaps the best-known pirate of the buccaneering era, Henry Morgan once purportedly ordered his men to lock the inhabitants of Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, inside a church so that they could plun-der the town unhindered. He then moved on to capture Porto Bello, Panama, in part by creating a human shield out of priests, women and the mayor. Over the next few years, other brutal raids followed against two towns in Venezuela and Panama City. Though Morgan was briefly arrested in 1672, he ended up serv-ing as acting governor of Jamaica in 1678 and again from 1680 to 1682. Ironically, the Jamaican legislature passed an anti-piracy law during his administration, and Morgan even assisted in pirate prosecution.

5. Captain Kidd Once a respected privateer, Captain William Kidd set sail in 1696 with the assignment of hunting down pirates in the Indian Ocean.

But he soon turned pirate himself, capturing vessels such as the Quedagh Merchant and killing a subordinate with a wooden bucket. A massive defection left him with a skeleton crew for the journey home, which included a stop at New York’s Gardiners Island to bury treasure. Having run afoul of the powerful British East India Company, Kidd was arrested before making it back to England. He was then tried and executed, and his decaying body was displayed from the banks of the River Thames as a warning to other pirates.

6. Blackbeard Born Edward Teach, Blackbeard intimi-dated enemies by coiling smoking fuses into his long, braided facial hair and by slinging multiple pistols and daggers across his chest. In November 1717 he captured a French slave ship, later re-named the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and refitted it with 40 guns. With that extra firepower he then blockaded the port of Charleston, South Caro-lina, until the town’s residents met his demands for a large chest of medicine. After laying low for a few months in North Caro-lina, Blackbeard was killed in battle with the British Navy. Leg-end holds that he received 20 stab wounds and five gunshot wounds before finally succumbing. The so-called Golden Age of

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Biography: Spirituality Is A Way Of Life Hoskie Benally is a Diné (Navajo) spiritual leader, who resides in the town of Shiprock, New Mexico. Hoskie spent much of his childhood with his grandparents, liv-ing in the traditional ways practiced for thousands of years by the Diné. His grandfather was a sheepherder, and his grandmother a weaver of rugs. His biological father was a medicine man who worked in a Uranium mine, and although he died when Hoskie was only three, Hoskie has contin-ued the healing traditions of his lineage. But this path came unex-pectedly to Hoskie, when at the age of 22, he went blind within a matter of weeks from Retinitis Pigmentosa. Initially, Hoskie turned to alcohol, as depression from losing his eyesight overwhelmed him. But it was this loss of sight that would help him find his true direction. “A medicine man told me when I was going through depression, through some alcoholism, ‘you have a purpose here on Mother Earth, and through this vis-ual impairment either you can find your purpose in life and ac-cept your visual impairment, or you may continue to fight it and let alcohol destroy you.’ That made a lot of sense to me. I believe this is the path I’ve been chosen to walk, so I no longer question my visual impairment, but I look at it more as a blessing in find-ing my purpose in life.” One year later, Hoskie was offered a job at a youth treatment center, and today he directs Our Youth, Our Future, an intensive outpatient treatment center for Native American youth with chemical dependencies and related mental disorders. Hoskie led the transformation of this program from a Western-based Alco-holics Anonymous curriculum to a bi-cultural program, with Na-tive American teachings and philosophies at its core. He is com-mitted to helping Native youth from all areas of the country, and believes that a strong sense of identity and a cultural foundation is vital for true healing. “Spirituality to us is a way of life. Spirituality to us says that every day is a ceremony from the time you get up to the time you go to bed. And as we look at the rising of the sun, you know it’s a new day. As we move throughout the day it’s a ceremony.”

Tribe: The Navajo (Diné) A Sacred Relationship A Navajo’s relationship to the land begins at birth when his or her umbilical cord is buried in the ground. In this way, the new-born makes a symbolic transition from being nourished by their natural mother to a life of nurturing by Mother Earth, the spiritual mother. In addition, the child’s afterbirth is offered to a young piñon or juniper tree, creating a sacred bond the two will share throughout their lives. Thus begins the sacred relationship be-tween a Navajo and the land. The Navajo refer to themselves as the Diné, or The People. According to their own history, the Diné have always lived be-tween the four sacred mountains which reside in the four sacred directions: To the east Blanca Peak in Colorado, to the south Mount Taylor in New Mexico, to the west the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, and to the north Hesperus Peak in Colorado. Each of these mountains represent the spiritual and social laws of the people, and the Diné adorn themselves just as the mountains do, with the white shell to the east, turquoise to the south, abalone shell to the west, and black jet to the north. These mountains, and the homelands within them, were given to the Diné by the Crea-tor, and they believe they have a responsibility to remain upon and care for the land and its occupants.

This story of creation is recounted in the Blessingway Ceremony, which is the corner-stone of the Diné way of life. In the Bless-ingway, the major deity of the Diné, Chang-ing Woman, created the four original Diné clans from her body. (Today, it is estimated there are over 140 clans among the Diné.)

She then gave detailed instructions about history and religious practices, such as the consecration of a family’s hogan, the tradi-tional Diné dwelling.

Lands and Language The Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the U.S., with approximately 225,000 members and a land mass of 25,000 square miles (16.2 million acres). Navajoland, or “Diné Be Keyah”, is located in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and while the Diné live on part of their ancestral lands, the tribe still faces constant environmental contamination from nuclear waste companies, and alleged land-stealing and forced relocation by the U.S. Government and Peabody Coal. The Navajo language belongs to the Athabascan group of languages, which includes the Eskimo (Inuit) and Apache. While the language has a smaller vocabulary than English does, it uses its unique descriptive qualities to portray elaborate images. For instance, “ké” is Navajo for “shoes,” and tires for a car are called “chidi’bi’ké”, or “the shoes belonging to the car.” Most of the elders today understand and speak only Navajo, while most of the generation under 30 speaks only English. Even though Navajo is being taught at schools on the reservation as a second language, it is rapidly disappearing as the tribe’s native language. Many Navajo feel that language preservation and revi-talization is one of the most important issues the tribe faces to-day.

Introduction My name’s Hoskie Benally Jr, and I’m the Chief Executive Offi-cer of Our Youth, Our Future, Incorporated. Our program primar-ily provides chemical dependency treatment to Native American youth between the age of 12 to 19 years of age. Our program’s based on a bi-cultural philosophy, which means that we integrate Western therapy with Native American philosophy, teachings, practices and belief systems. Because we believe that these young people that come into our treatment center need to go back to having self pride in being Native American Indians. We feel that with the bi-cultural philosophy, we’re able to help them begin to have self pride in their heritage, in their identity, and go back to their spiritual roots. And as Indian people, we know that our spirituality is something that’s very important in our life.

The Story of the Five Sacred Medicines Mother Earth and Father Sky had their differences at one time. And Mother Earth was saying ‘Everything here on the ground and every living thing that walks on the ground belongs to me and are under my control’ and Father Sky said ‘If that’s the way it’s going to be, then everything from the air on up is under my control’. So they had their differences and they decided that they weren’t going to interact for four years. And during that time the air began to change. It got real thin, there was no rain. A lot of Creation began to disappear, the vege-tation, some of the two-leggeds, four-leggeds and some of the creepy crawlers and eventually there was not very many left and these others all began to vanish.

Storyteller Hoskie Benally His life, his culture, and his story ( from the Circle of Stories on PBS.org)

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And so they said there were four plants, there were four plants and a bird left. And they withstood all this dryness, lack of moisture, thin air. And so they went to Mother Earth and told Mother Earth, they said ‘You know because of the difference with Father Sky we’re the ones who are suffering.’ So Mother Earth said ‘We need to give message to Father Sky that we need to make amends and we need to bring things back to the way they were and make corrections on our own selfishness.’ And so they decided that’s what they would do. And so they sent this bird up to Father Sky. He flew way up, kept flying until he disappeared. And then about four days later, they say from the south direction, they saw a rain cloud and they heard thunder. And the second thunder got closer, third thunder came up almost above them and then fourth thunder right above them. And when they heard that thunder and saw that lightning, out of that light-ning came this bird, flew back down to Mother Earth and brought rain, brought them moisture, brought the change in the air, in the atmosphere. And everything began to get moist again, everything began to breathe easy again, and all the creation that had been lost and had vanished began to reappear. And so they said the ones that had survived was a cedar plant, a tobacco plant, a yucca plant and a sage plant. And then this bird they said was the eagle. And they said, so from that day on, the Creator and Mother Earth and Father Sky told these survivors that because of your ability to survive, because of your courage, your stamina, and your resilience you are going to be in the ceremonies of all the Indian people across all Indian land. And they said that’s why today we use the tobacco, ce-dar, yucca, sage and we use the eagle feather. And a lot of our young people, when we, you know, they come in, we burn cedar for them, they want to know why. Why do we use tobacco? So when we teach them that we teach them the story. So the next time they use cedar, you know, you breathe in that, you breathe in that, you breathe in that smell of cedar, what you’re saying and thinking to yourself is I’m going to be a survivor, I’m gonna have resilience, I’m gonna have courage, I’m gonna have stamina. Same way when we smoke tobacco, the same thing, when we take a pipe or we take corn husk and fix

tobacco like that and we smoke it, that’s what we think to our-selves. And when we use those eagle feathers, the same way. We bless ourselves and take the energy off of it and we take that that spirit off of there and we think about these things.

August 11 – 12, 2016 22nd Annual Native American Heritage Days Grand Canyon North Rim 22nd Annual Native American Heritage Days – North Rim, the cultural diversity of the Colo-rado Plateau and the Arizona Strip, highlighting Native American tribes with cultural ties to Grand Canyon, demonstrations of Na-tive American arts and crafts such as silversmithing, pottery, basket weaving, painting, carving, flute making and preparation of tra-ditional foods, members and non-tribal members will offer special programs, activities, and demonstrations on a variety of subjects, ranging from ethno-botany to Native American flute playing and dance, 928-638-7739

August 16 – 17, 2016 Annual Hon-Dah Pow Wow in the Pines Whiteriver – Tribes will get together to compete in fancy dance, grass dance, arts & crafts, food, Apache Sunrise dance included. Address : Hon-Dah Resort, Casino & Conference Center Whiteriver Arizona Phone : 520-369-0299 (Always call and confirm events.) Admission Fee : Admission

Native American Legends Symbolism of the Eagle Feather (a Lumbee Legend)

In the beginning, the Great Spirit gave to the animals and birds wisdom and knowledge and the power to talk to men. He sent these creatures to tell man that he showed himself through them. They would teach a chosen man sacred songs and dance, as well as much ritual and lore. The creature most beloved by the Great Spirit was the eagle, for he tells the story of life. The eagle, as you know, has only two eggs, and all living things in the world are divided into two. Here is man and woman, male and female and this is true with animals, birds, trees, flowers, and so on. All things have children of two kinds so that life may continue. Man has two eyes, two hands and two feet and he has a body and soul, substance and shadow. Through his eyes, he sees pleasant and unpleasant scenes, through his nostrils he smells good and bad odors, with his ears he hears joyful news and words that make him sad. His mind is divided between good and evil. His right hand he may often use

for evil, such as war or striking a person in anger. But his left hand, which is near his heart, is always full of kind-ness. His right foot may lead him in the wrong path, but

the left always leads him the right way, and so it goes; he has daylight and darkness, summer and winter, peace and war,

and life and death. In order to remember this lesson of life, look to the great ea-gle, the favorite bird of the Great Spirit. The eagle feather is divided into two parts, part light, and part dark. This represents daylight and darkness, summer and winter, peace and war, and life and death. So that you may remember what I have told you, look well upon the eagle, for his feathers, too, tell the story of life. Look at the feathers I wear upon my hand, the one on the right is large and perfect and decorated; this represents man. The one on my left is small and plain; this represents woman. The eagle feather is divided into two parts, dark and white. This represents daylight and darkness, summer and winter. For the white tells of summer when all is bright, and the dark represents the dark days of winter. My children, remember what I tell you. For it is YOU who will choose the path in life you will follow - the good way, or the wrong way. From firstpeople.us

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Arizona Pow Wows

Storytelling Events

Guild Meetings and more on the Back Page!

Contact Andy to list your events here at ahurlbut@cox.net

ODYSSEY STORYTELLING Tucson Thursday, August 4th 7:00pm - 9:30pm

True stories from community members about themselves and their lives, based on the "theme of the month." ADMISSION: $8

The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress Street, Tucson Contact: Adam Hostetter Email: Adam@Odysseystorytelling.com

More Info: http://www.storyartsgroup.org/odyssey/Odyssey/Welcome.html

Yarnball Storytelling Open Mic Every Wednesday at 8:00 pm.

Lawn Gnome Publishing 905 N. 5th St., Phoenix

Free if you sign up to tell. Stories about 5 to 6 minutes. Themes are suggested, but any story is ok. Store closes at 10:00 pm.

Lawn Gnome sells new and used books and is located in the newly renovated Roosevelt area. They have an extensive events calendar that features music, poetry, writing, and storytelling.

Out of the Box Women's Storytelling Saturday, August 27th 10:00am - 12:00pm (doors open at 9:30)

Dobson's Restaurant at Dobson Ranch Golf Course 2155 S. Dobson Road Mesa AZ 85202

Fee: $20 - includes brunch

Join us and be part of an exciting new way to hear six 8-10 minute per-sonal, uplifting, faith-promoting stories about the wonders of God and enjoy a delicious brunch! We offer fun, laughter, and a chance to win door prizes! Please call Anne one week in advance of event@ 480-275-9931 if interested in telling a story. Register online at www.changepointinc.org

Contact: Anne McDowell Email: annemcd17@q.com Phone: 480-275-9931 More Info: http://outoftheboxstorytelling.com/

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Let's Get Political — Election Storytelling

6 p.m. check-in, stories at 6:30. Monday, Aug. 8. Valley Bar, in basement at 130 N. Central Ave., Phoenix.

$10. 200 tickets available (visit azcentral.com to click link to ticket purchase).

This is the second of three live storytelling nights dedicated to illuminating how your vote matters and why the political process can be so maddening, exhilarating and con-

fusing. The night's theme is "It seemed like a good idea at the time." We'll hear from Republic reporters, politicians, commu-nity members impacted by laws and voters like you about the awkward, awful and sometimes funny things that happen when we see government in action. Republic political reporters will be on hand to answer ballot questions and to demonstrate how to use AZ Fact Check. Voter registration will also take place.

We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We can-not stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives. Gary Zukav

Coconino County Fair in Flagstaff

Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5, 2016

Fort Tuthill County Park 2446 Fort Tuthill Loop Flagstaff 86005 928.679.8000

Regular Admission: Adult - $8.00 Youth (6 - 12) - $5.00 Senior (65 and older) - $5.00 Child (5 and younger) - Free

Parking There is a $5.00 Parking Fee during the Coconino County Fair. Free shuttle available - visit Coconino.az.gov for info

Arizona Storytellers Project 2016 (from azcentral.com)

We're launching our fifth year of live storytelling in the Valley with more nights and bigger venues than ever. And we want you to be a part of it — whether on stage or in the audience. The Arizona Storytellers Project has coordinated more than 70 evenings of true stories from more than 500 people — artists, community leaders and everyday Phoenix residents. They've prepared a brief, first-person story on a theme, address-ing it literally or metaphorically.

ABOUT US: In partnership with South Mountain Community College's Story-telling Institute, we've helped people like you develop and share meaningful and entertaining first-person experiences. In 2012, the series won a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award and a National Headliner Award for first place in Journalistic Innovation. The project is dedicated to the idea that oral storytelling and jour-nalism have the same goals: serving and reflecting a community while fostering empathy among those people. These nights blend the authenticity and hype-free discipline of storytelling as an art form, with the truthfulness, community-building and empower-ment that's at the heart of great journalism.

To be considered as a storyteller, visit storytellers.azcentral.com and click on "Get Involved."

To ask about hosting, contact organizer Megan Finnerty at megan.finnerty@arizonarepublic.com.

To ask about supporting partnerships, contact KFaw-cett@republicmedia.com.

West Side Storytellers Membership Application $10 annual Membership entitles you to receive a monthly e-newsletter

For information contact westsidestorytellers@yahoo.com

Name (s) ______________________________________________________________________ Contact info: E-mail__________________________________________________ Phone: _________________________

West Side Storytellers Officers President - Mark Compton (Mark.compton@usa.net)

Secretary & Newsletter - Andy Hurlbut (ahurlbut@cox.net) Treasurer - Susan Sander (sksander@cox.net)

Web Guru - Donna Martin (dmartinstoryteller@gmail.com)

The West Side Storytellers meet the first Saturday of the month (except July and August) at 10:00 am

at the St. John’s Lutheran Church 7205 N. 51st Ave., Glendale, AZ 85301

WSST is on vacation in August - no meeting Please e-mail westsidestorytellers@yahoo.com so you can be

included in the reservation if you plan on attending!

Our mission statement: West Side Storytellers (WSST) is a storytelling guild dedicated to the developing and advancing the art of storytelling by giving group performances, workshops and other storytelling events for public enjoyment and education.

Newsletter - Contact Andy Hurlbut at ahurlbut@cox.net or call 602.437.0811 with feedback, questions and comments, or with

articles and information for events, etc. Articles or stories are lim-ited to 1000 - 1500 words or less.

The Back Page - more events!

East Valley Tellers of Tales Meet the second Saturday of the month (except July and August)

to hear great stories and celebrate Storytelling Successes. All tellers and listeners are welcome.

EVTOT is on vacation in August - no meeting

Meeting is from 10:00 am to noon at the Scottsdale Civic Center Library, 3839 N. Drinkwater Blvd., Scottsdale

(downstairs in the Gold Room)

East Valley Tellers of Tales is a group that provides a safe place to hear and tell stories, to learn about stories and storytelling, and enjoy fellowship with others. We support the personal and professional development of members, preserve and promote storytelling, and provide information about storytelling opportu-nities and events.

info at evtot.com

Tucson Tellers of Tales Guild Meeting Tucson Tellers of Tales is on vacation in August - no meeting

Tellers of Tales was formed in 1979 to preserve and promote the art of storytelling. If you're looking to tell stories, learn to tell

stories or listen to stories, this is the group for you. Tellers of all skill levels are welcome OR if you just think it might be some-thing you'd like to learn we offer workshops and feedback on

ways to find, develop and present stories.

We meet the first Saturday of every month 9:30 am - 12:00 am (except July and August)

The Unscrewed Theatre 3244 E. Speedway Blvd. Tucson, Arizona 85716

The Moth Radio Hour

KJZZ is broadcasting the storytelling program The Moth from 3:00 to 4:00 pm on Saturday afternoons on local Public Radio Station 91.5 FM.

This is the program that inspired the Arizona Storytellers Project—a live broadcast of true stories.

Check out their web site at themoth.org/radio.

Pirate quote: The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem. Jack Sparrow

8 Pirates continued from page 8

Piracy, of which Blackbeard was a major part, would only last a few more years. But countless books, plays and movies—from “Treasure Island” to “Pirates of the Caribbean”—would later bring a romanticized version of that era squarely into the public eye.

7. Calico Jack John Rackam, better known as Calico Jack, received a pardon for previous piracy acts in 1719. Nonetheless, he headed back out to sea the following year after seizing a 12-gun sloop from Nassau harbor in the Bahamas. Among Rackam’s dozen or so followers were two of the only women pirates ever to ply Caribbean wa-ters. One, Anne Bonny, had left her husband to be with Rackam, while the other, Mary Read, had purportedly been sailing for quite some time disguised in men’s clothing. In October 1720 a pirate hunting boat overtook Rackam’s drunken band. Only Bonny, Read and perhaps one man are believed to have offered any resistance. Though Rackam was executed the following month, his female crewmates escaped the hangman’s noose be-cause both were found to be pregnant. Read died in prison soon after, and no one knows what became of Bonny.

8. Madame Cheng In 1805 Madame Cheng’s husband, Cheng Yih, formed what quickly became the largest pirate confederation in history. Upon his death two years later, Madame Cheng took over the business and expanded it even further, commanding an estimated 1,800 ships and 70,000 men at the height of her powers. With the help of Cheung Po Tsai—the adopted son of her husband and also her lover—she demanded protection money from coastal communi-ties, attacked ships in the South China Sea and once even kid-napped seven British sailors. Madame Cheng then took a pardon in 1810 when Chinese authorities began cracking down on pi-racy. A prostitute in her youth, she lived out her golden years running a large opium smuggling operation.