On Friday, June 14, The Waldo Theatre hosted its second annual Community Storytellers event. A group of locals spent months workshopping narrative stories based on their dreams. Brave souls shared their metaphorical dreams, aspirations and hopes and prayers, on stage no less.
The stories were well curated, switching back and forth between dreams realized and dreams dashed. There was joy and laughter as Julie Sells climbed her mountain (literally) and John Hayden walked across Ireland.
Poignant moments ruled the evening. The final moments of a mother’s life, a surprise breast cancer diagnosis, the moment a writer was pushed to literally throw away her manuscript after 40 years of labor. Thank you Susan Hodder, Kathleen Capetta, and Chris Essler for sharing your dreams and how they met reality.
Heather Leslie shared “A River Story,” Deirdre Haren revisited the tale that provided her name, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” and Michael Amico laid bare the life that led him to Waldoboro in “Ever New World (Enter Stage Right).”
Elaine McKee Bragan shined a light on some of her darkness moments and shared how she built her own dreams into reality from ashes. Her lilac and butterfly sanctuary is open for all who need a moment of beauty and respite. As Oren Robertson said that evening, “our reality is a lucid dream with more rules.” It is up to the dreamer to create their real world, one they want to wake to.
On Saturday, June 15, Oshima Brothers played a low-key concert at the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor. Sean and Jamie told stories about growing up in Whitefield, the history of the dozen old guitars they collected for the show, and the stories of the songs. They played new arrangements of some old songs, including an Elton John hit that has traveled with them from childhood.
Sean played a recording of 10-year- old Jamie singing “Tiny Dancer,” one of the first songs Jamie laid down with the looping machine his father had given him.
Jamie introduced “The Hole in Your Sweater” with the backstory of a friend at her wit’s end and the way he made one thing in her life better with a little needle felting.
For “Love is Tall,” the brothers created paper theater together. Jamie drew illustrations to accompany the lyrics on a scroll. Sean taught the audience the chorus, then wound the scroll to tell the story while we sang. It was precious and intimate and beautiful.
Oshima Brothers will bring their more bombastic show to Maine in August. Go to oshimabrothers.com for dates and details.
On Sunday, June 16, East Forty Farm in Waldoboro hosted its first “cowside supper” of the year. Allison Lakin and Neal Foley have invited diners to their farm to hear their story, the story of the land and the animals and Lakin’s Gorges Cheese.
We met calves and saw furrowing pigs and heard about their ancestors, most of whom are still on the farm. Stories of clearing brambles and making the land their own.
The tale of the cow that would not get pregnant on time and the exciting recounting of her going into labor and delivering a calf that very morning.
Boothbay Harbor’s Cherie Scott told her story through the meal, serving us six courses each just like her mother made. Cherie hails from Goa, whose cuisine is very “coconut forward.” Once a week, Cherie’s mother cut and scraped and pressed coconuts three times to make cream, milk, and “light milk.”
Cherie also told us the tales of her Caldine sauce and Punjabi saag. When she started her life in Boothbay Harbor, Cherie could not find the flavors she knew from her childhood, the spices and smells and the comfort of making something her mother made. She launched her line of sauces, Mumbai to Maine, which are available in local specialty stores or her website, mumbaitomaine. com.
For dessert, Cherie imported Alphonso mangos to serve us Shrikand, a dish close to lassi but deeper and spicier. Dinner was finished with the Indian staple chai, a spiced tea served with every meal, between meals, to sick children, to healthy children.
Cherie said every train in India has a window with a low bar; at stops, chai wallahs (tea vendors) approach the train to offer hot tea in clay cups that fit through that small gap. The chai wallahs have to move quickly or they might be hit by the train when it starts again. When drinkers are done with their tea, they push the cups out of the windows of the moving train.
Allison quickly jumped in to remind diners we were not to do that with her cups. She went on to let us know that the cowside suppers are sold out for the year. She recommended we sign up for her mailing list and watch out inboxes on Memorial Day 2025 for the next calendar.
Lakin’s Gorges Cheeses and East Forty Farm beef and pork are available all year, at local stores and their farm stand. For more information, go to lakinsgorgescheese.com.
Neal Foley feeds the calves at East Forty Farm from a bucket and trough while while dinners used china and cutely in the barn at a “cowside supper” on Sunday, June 16 in Waldoboro. Boothbay Harbor’s Cherie Scott cooked the meal for 20 diners and told flavorful stories of the foods she ate while growing up in Mumbai. (Sarah Masters photo)
