Buffalo Commons storytelling festival next week

McCOOK, Nebraska -- If you would like to hear the music of your past and make memories for your future, don't miss the 15th annual Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival in McCook Friday and Saturday, June 10-11.

The event not only attracts the nation's top storytellers and musicians to entertain and inspire, but it provides a means to learn, practice and preserve the unique culture of every individual, family and community.

Story and song fill the park where decades before exuberant crowds gathered to learn about rural electrification from Senator George Norris and soak up the Big Band rhythms of the '30s and '40s.

The best yarn-spinners, poets and musicians grace the stage of the elegant Fox Theatre. Sacred stories comfort and inspire in the glow of the majestic Methodist church's stained glass windows that have softened tragedies and warmed joys for generations.

Terrifying stories of the '35 flood, proud recollections of minor league baseball, and four state governors, and of a pretty blonde braid slyly dipped in an inkwell of a country school desk, wiggle and wind through the artifacts at the High Plains Museum. Nebraska's first community college urges lifelong learning through story and song workshops and gatherings with guest artists.

Spontaneous laughter and conversation linger over coffee at the local bakery where grandpas and grandsons, neighbors and newcomers taste delicious oral histories along with sweet pastries.

The festival's roots stem to 1987 when Frank Popper, chairman of the urban studies department at Rutgers University, and his geographer wife, Deborah, concluded that the arid Great Plains will lose almost all of their people within the coming quarter-century. By 1990 these land-use experts had refined their theory. Using measurements that included population loss, scant population to begin with, poverty, and a paucity of economic activity, they identified 109 at-risk counties in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. These counties make up about one fourth of the Great Plains, cover 139,000 square miles, and contain 413,000 people. This area, said the New Jersey professors, should become a massive ecological reserve, which they would call "Buffalo Commons."

McCook and its neighbors took it personally when the Poppers implied that this part of the country should never have been settled. The Southwest Nebraska tale deserved to be told, it was agreed. What better way to do it than through a storytelling festival? And, as a final rebuttal to the Poppers, why not call this event the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival? Thus, the first festival took place in 1997 with the conviction that a community's greatest gift is the evolving history of its people, their stories, their symbols, their enduring sagas. Its major sponsors were the Nebraska Tourism Office, the Nebraska Humanities Council, and the McCook Arts Council. The featured storyteller was Roger Welsch. The Festival was named the Nebraska Department of Tourism and Travel Industry's Outstanding Event of the Year.

In 1998 the headliner was Nancy Duncan of Omaha, founder of the Storytelling Festival of Nebraska. The program paid tribute to the prairie peoples who "have been imprinted by the land's horizons, its deep roots, rivers, canyons, and loess hills. It is a place where ordinary men and women live extraordinary lives."

This year's festival kicks off Friday morning with a Wild West Bus Ride tracing the historic cattle trails that meander through the rugged Southwest Nebraska hills. Margaret and Gary Kraisinger, Halstead, Kansas historians and authors of "The Western: The Greatest Texas Cattle Trail 1874-1886," will share tales of conflicts between the drovers and homesteaders, Indian encounters and the lives of the tenacious cowboys who shepherded the thousands of cattle to market. Adding to the tales will be Nebraska cattlemen and storytellers Jack Maddux, Wauneta, and Jim Applegate, Sutherland. Cowboy poet R.P. Smith from Broken Bow will make sure the lighter side of "Tales and Trails" is not overlooked by adding some side-splitting humor from his ranching perspective.

Meanwhile, back at McCook's newly renovated Keystone Hotel, preparations will be under way for the Chuckwagon Jamboree featuring good eatin' and all the headliners. Award winning and internationally known storyteller, recording artist and educator Awele Makeba from Oakland, California, will treat the audience to her own tale of western trails. The Diamond W Wranglers from Wichita, Kansas will perform classic Western Music of the silver-screen cowboy era, such as "Cool Water," "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," and "Ghost Riders In The Sky," as well as classic cowboy trails songs and Wranglers' originals. R.P. Smith will be back in the saddle with more good ranch humor set to rhythm and rhyme.

Saturday is alive with activities beginning with music and stories at the High Plains Museum. Across the street at the beautiful Memorial United Methodist Church the Southwest Nebraska Ministerial Association will host spiritual stories with R.P. Smith. At noon Sehnert's Bakery and Bieroc Cafe will serve up some lunch and an open microphone for story swapping. Emcees Mary Ellen Goodenberger, cattle woman, storyteller, educator and one of the founders of the Buffalo Commons Festival will recount her own sometimes humorous, often times poignant experiences, and Walt Sehnert, historian, columnist, author and entertainer will taunt everyone to remember the events of their lives. Anyone wishing for a personal Norman Rockwell moment is invited to visit with George Norris at his home on Heritage Square and to bring the family to the Kids Fest at Norris Park.

Many more opportunities to learn, to share and to bask in the pleasures of storytelling will be available during the festival, which will conclude with the big show at McCook's Historic Fox Theatre Saturday night with all of the headliners. This spectacular event, emceed by McCook's own tale spinner Cal Siegfried, will leave audiences with a song in their hearts and a story ready to be told.

For information and tickets, visit buffalocommonsstorytellingfestival.com or contact the McCook Chamber of Commerce.

This year's Festival is co-sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council, the Nebraska Arts Council, and the McCook Arts Council, with support from the Nebraska Visitor's Bureau and the Nebraska Reading Council.

The Festival motto is "Next to God and family, our stories are our most important treasure."