My Mother's Mind

We’ve got stories today from Illinois storyteller Beth Horner, from Los Angeles Storyteler Antonio Sacre, from Mary Gay Ducey(who we got to know when she was on the team that brought the Bay Area Storytelling Festival to life for so many years), and from Mitch Capel (who sometimes goes by the name Grandaddy Junebug when he’s on stage). The stories are about all sorts of things,but at the bottom of it, they’re about parents and children. And we’ll whet your appetitefor stories with a tune by Michael Reno Harrell, who grew up in Tennessee and lives now in the hills of North Carolina where he writes songs and prepares stories based on his own life experiences and the experiences of the people around him. Sometimes those stories and songs come from people he’s only just met –but Michael is well-enough attuned to listening for and honoring the stories in every life that even someone he’s just met has a story worth singing about. And so it is with the song you’ll hear today –a song, he says, based on a story told to him by the old guy behind the counter at a tiny grocery store where Michael stopped one time to fill up his motorcyclewith gas.