Saturday, April 05, 2008

Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival

It's sunny today! Yesterday was gray and cold, yet the first day of the first-ever Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival was well attended. About 700 kids were brought in from area schools during the day, so they joined quite a few other attendees. We're hoping for good crowds today and tomorrow.

The organizers have been working on the festival for about two years, after getting inspired by the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. They decided to start with a big splash, so they have a wonderful lineup of four headliners (Donald Davis, Sheila Kay Adams, Willy Claflin and Dan Keding), and five regional tellers (Joyce Slater, Jim Two Crows Wallen, Marilyn Kinsella, Doug Mishler and me). Blake Travis was scheduled but was very ill, so he's not here.

I'd never been to this pretty Mississippi river town. There's a long mural of river history down by the the banks, on the walls that protect the town from flooding. They've had incredible rain this year (one day a few weeks ago, they had 13 inches, I heard!), so the river is high. Today in one of the breaks I'll go down to have a look.

Time to go. I'll try to write more about this later.

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