Second annual Black Dirt Storytelling Festival set for Sept. 28
Florida. The Theft of Thor’s Hammer and other Norse tales are part of the Florida Public Library's 61st anniversary.
| 23 Sep 2019 | 01:23
Florida Public Library Director - and Black Dirt Storytelling Guild member - Madelyn Folino (
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Eileen Stelljes, who with Madelyn Folino, is a founding mother of the Black Dirt Storytelling Guild.
Ken Karnas will be telling the tale of the mighty Thor and his magical hammer.
Members of the Black Dirt Storytelling Guild will entertain listeners with an assortment of Norse Tales on Saturday, Sept. 28, beginning at 1 p.m. at Florida Public Library.
This is an anniversary program to celebrate FPL’s 61st birthday. At 2:30 p.m., there will be a brief intermission in the storytelling for birthday cake for all.
Stories will resume following the celebration.
Attentive listeners of all ages, kindergarten and up, are invited to listen and thrill to the magical, heroic and humorous adventures of the Norse gods, goddesses, frost giants, dwarfs, dragons and humans who populate these traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales.
Learn about the nine ancient worlds of the Norse people connected by Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and how their gods and beliefs appear in our modern world, including the names we use for days of the week, popular literature, films and video games.
Storytellers include Guild founding mothers Eileen Stelljes and Madelyn Folino and Ken Karnas of Wantage, N.J.
Stelljes, a lifelong resident of Orange Lake, tells tales of all kinds, but her favorites are historical tales of the Hudson Valley, including those of her ancestors who kept the Newburgh-Beacon ferry running back and forth across the river. As an American Revolution re-enactor, she has set up camp up and down the east coast as both a patriot and a Hessian.
Folino has been the director of the library since 1998 and a storyteller for more than 30 years. She grew up in Cornwall, sat down next to a guy from Warwick in graduate school, but that’s another story. The Norse tales are among her favorites, having heard them since childhood as part of her German and British heritage. She encourages all readers to enjoy the tales and check out the book display on Vikings and the Norse.
Karnas, a native of Bloomfield, N.J., is retired from a 42-year teaching career in Sussex County in which he found storytelling to be his most potent teaching tool. He will be telling the tale of the mighty Thor and his magical hammer.
Karnes loves history tales, stories that affirm values we want our children to live and any story in which he can burst into song.
He can be seen bicycling on both sides of the NY-NJ border in his annual 2,000+ mile odyssey.
To register for this program, visit www.floridapubliclibrary.org and click on Calendar or call the library at (845) 258-4693.
The library is located at 4 Cohen Circle, Florida, behind Village Hall.