'Forest Tales' full of food, stories

The daily lives of those who live in the Amazon basin are being explored by the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, located at 416 N. Indiana Ave. "Forest Farmers of the Amazon Estuary," a temporary exhibit, was installed recently in the museum. It will be at IU for at least another three years, giving everybody ample time to see the new exhibit, which celebrates the daily lives of the farmers who live in this exotic locale.\nIn conjunction with the exhibit, many gathered June 12 in the Virgil T. Devault Gallery of the Mathers Museum to celebrate "Forest Tales, Forest Feast," an event put on by the museum and the Bloomington Storyteller's Guild. This was an event of Amazon storytelling and sampling exotic foods from Brazil. \nThe evening began with a story of the "Creation of Night." Abbie Anderson greeted guests and began telling her story to the crowd gathered around. \nAnderson is the Curator of Education at the Mathers Museum and is also part of the Bloomington Storyteller's Guild. She began telling stories with the guild last fall. \n"I love being able to share stories as well as do the research and learn along the way," she said. \nThe stories continued with "The Master and the Crocodile." This story belongs to a Malaysian Indian Tribe and was told with great animation and a sense of humor, keeping the crowd entertained. Another story, "Secret Footprints," was told by Brandie Hartman, who is a member of the guild as well as a School of Library and Information Science student at IU. \nHartman said she has been telling stories as long as she can remember. \n"I think tonight went really well; there was a great turnout and I loved how the younger children gathered in the front of the room on the carpets," Hartman said. \nContinuing with not only a great story but frog puppets and fabulous interaction with the crowd, the "Story of a Frog" was told as the audience was asked to make frog sounds in Spanish. Through the entire story, the storyteller spoke in both Spanish and English, making the story educational and fun for the audience. \nMoments later, another storyteller stepped up to tell her story, "The Wings of a Butterfly," originated by the Ticuna Tribe of Brazil, Peru and Columbia. The story was about a young girl who one day followed a beautiful blue butterfly into the forest and lost her way. After asking for the help of many forest creatures who resented her for her human status, she finally came upon yet another beautiful blue butterfly who turned her into a butterfly in order to fly across the river and return home. \nThe story of "The Crafty Chameleon" was animated and told as the conclusion of the storytelling part of the program. \nAfter the tales were finished, the audience migrated from the room out into the museum to look at the brilliant pictures and artifacts from Brazil and sample the Brazilian foods that had been prepared. Some of these foods included hearts of palm, feijoada (a vegan dish), biscoitos de maizenas (Spanish for cornstarch cookies), and acai fruit pulp and smoothies. The recipes for the dishes were all researched and prepared by the staff of the Mathers Museum. \nJudy Kirk, assistant director of the Mathers Museum, spoke of the importance of many of the foods that were available that evening.\n"Some of these foods are very rare to come by in this area, but we wanted to make them available because they are very important to the economy of the Amazon estuary," she said. \nFor more information on the events hosted by the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, call 855-6873 or visit www.indiana.edu/~mathers/new/programs/index.html.