Minnesota Rural Partners: Rural Summit

The Long Arm of the Small Town is an essay by Nobel Prize-winning novelist and Minnesota native, Sinclair Lewis. It was commissioned in 1931 for the Sauk Centre High School yearbook. (Read the essay.)

June 15 - Waseca Regional Event

Storytelling got off to a great start in Southern Minnesota at Farmamerica on Wednesday evening, June 15th. We had six people pre-register and two more registered the night of the event for a total of eight. Our storytellers ranged from beginner to professional. They all did a great job and made it difficult for the judges to select a winner. The judges included a professional storyteller, Michael Cotter, Austin and a high school speech teacher and former storyteller judge, Karen Pfarr from Waseca. The contest was won by Scott Roemhildt, Janesville, with a story entitled, “Lessons from the Farm”. The runner up was Deb Bently, New Richland with a story entitled, “The Haunted Hired Hand”.

Thanks to all our volunteers for making the contest run smoothly.

June 14 - Morris Regional Event

The second of the "Long Arm of the Small Town" regional events was held last night in Morris at the Black Box Theatre at UMM. This was fun! The setting was very intimate with one comfortable chair, a small table and a candle for the storytellers with the audience in movable chairs on the floor or staging to keep a narrow visual field. The lighting and blowing out of the candle symbolically represents the start and end of the story. There were four pre-registered contestants with one of them not able to come. The unanimous winner was Mary Schmidt from Pierz . . . you're going to appreciate the telling of her story about "the cows" at the Summit!

Three women from Morris put together a 1/2 hour workshop prior to the contest. About 15 people attended and appreciated the shared insights and examples on storytelling and the tips for how to judge stories. The trio wanted to have the experience of a workshop in Morris before entertaining the idea of a repeat at the Summit. They now agree that they would be glad to do this.

June 13 - Roseville Regional Event

The first story telling contest started with a bang of thunder and included deafening hail and a tornado siren, which actually was perfect for hearing stories from 5 Minnesotans: Noel LaBine of Andover, Joyce Hoelting of Minneapolis, Harlan Stoehr of Shoreview, Gene VanMassenhove of Arden Hills, and Nora Murphy of St. Paul

The audience was entertained with stories of small towns, big cities, bees, bears, car accidents and religion. It was a great night.

Harlan Stoehr was the winner of the Twin Cities story telling contest, he will be joining us in St Cloud for the finals. We will be posting the all of the stories in the next few days.

The contest's goal is to celebrate, through storytelling, the connections between rural and urban people and communities. Many urban residents have strong ties to rural places. Some of those ties remain strong while others have been neglected or forgotten. If we are going to have healthy, vibrant rural communities, then we must find meaningful ways to connect urban and rural resources. Celebrating our rural roots through story is a great way to begin to reconnect and make new connections, too.

Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but we're pretty sure that a good number of Minnesotans have left their hearts in places like Sleepy Eye, Halstad, Buckman or Ostrander and we'd like to hear their stories.

Story ideas could include, but are not limited to, the following:

The Long Arm of the Small Town Storytelling Contest