Old Joe and the Carpenter

Published: March 19, 2017, 9:10 p.m.

Old Joe and the Carpenter is a moralistic little yarn about two neighbors who are initially friends, but get into a small quarrel that escalates into full-scale estrangement until a wise stranger intervenes. The story is set in the Appalachian region of the U.S., which encompasses parts of more than a dozen states ranging from Alabama and Mississippi to New York. This story stems from the (inaccurate) stereotype of the region's inhabitants as backward, isolated, moonshining feuders.

This tale will be included in our new production opening this June: Hammer, Nail, Tell a Tale. It consists of stories that somehow relate to building, to coincide with the library consortium's summer reading theme, Building a Better World.

We come to you from Anaheim, California, where someone definitely built a better world by constructing Disneyland. We spent a day exploring the park with our son Zephyr (formerly a performer with our troupe), who flew out from the East Coast for a couple of days.

Recently, we also got a "backstage" tour at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, a museum and dig site where millions of prehistoric animals have become trapped in tar pits and their bones preserved. These are nowhere near as old as dinosaurs, going back only about 50,000 years; but they do include some impressive extinct mammals like the mammoth and the saber-toothed cat (please don't call it a tiger -- it will growl at you).

And now, it's back to pounding in these-here nails and splashing this-here paint on our production in progress.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Narrator, Joe) and Kimberly (Wilbur, Carl)

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