Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/a-manner-of-speaking/5021004/
It’s time I wrote about Sister Dorothy. When I was six or maybe seven we lived in a neighborhood where houses backed each other with an alley in between. So behind our house and down two, we kids would trek to hear stories. I can’t remember how we knew it was story time or even how often this happened, but I can clearly see the children of our neighborhood hunkering down on the grass at Sister Dorothy’s feet. She told wonderful stories with high drama and skilled rendering. We could feel the pain of the injured lion, the terror of the imprisoned soldier, the danger and the peace. Only much later, as I replayed images in my head, did I realize that her stories were from the Bible and Aesop’s fables. The Sister in her name meant nothing to my child self; to me she was the teller of stories, the entertainer.Much later, through my father, our family met a Native American storyteller, Floating Eaglefeather, who traveled with his stories, accepting the kindness of strangers to meet daily needs and passing along any possessions no longer needed. As fans and friends, we learned about the story-telling community around us, and ...