Bearing Fruit

Jo Radner

We have the great good luck to welcome folklorist Jo Radner to our Bhutanese Nepali-English book project.  On the right is Jo in Portsmouth where we met.  She is holding plums (newly harvested from my tree), the fruit of hope, I read, and good luck.  Yes! And on the left is Pujan whose mom is writing a tale in a Connections program led by the poet Rodger Martin in Concord.  Pujan has a pear. (His mom says pears in Nepal are far bigger than this one.)

I am very excited to work with Jo.  One of the workshops Jo will lead is with Bhutanese newcomers in an ESOL class.  She'll work with an interpreter. First they will talk about occasions when people tell stories, then try to remember fragments of stories, then ask around about who remembers one story or other.  These are stepping stones to a story-gathering project.  Jo also recommends recording the whole session which is an added dimension to me.  She recommends that if we are to modernize Bhutanese wisdom and make it meaningful to Bhutanese youth,  we'd better make this a multimedia project.  So---podcasts are coming to this blog.  Next week I will record Pujan's mom's story-in-progress.