From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V14 #25 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Friday, August 23 2013 Volume 14 : Number 025 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Susan at the Thrasher [Chuck Ellingson ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:37:39 -0500 From: Chuck Ellingson Subject: Susan at the Thrasher Hello fellow believers! I hope you enjoy(ed) reading the Broadway-bound "Bull Durham" stage reading blog excerpt I just sent you. It made me really hopeful for a B'way run of the SW-penned basebally musical. Together with longtime friend (and feasible fan from afar of Suzie Chanteussie), Hilary Giffen, I traveled from the urban sprawl of Milwaukee to the quaintly rustic town of Green Lake last Friday to experience the hayseedy side of life with our dear Susan Werner at the Thrasher Opera House. The cutoff-shirt-bedecked Ms. Werner was closer to the audience for this performance than in any other that I recall (and I know I've taken her performances in more than a dozen times ... but how many more than a dozen my feeble recall refuses to ... well, recall). Susan regaled us with tales of every farmer and store proprietor that she had met while at the farmer's market in Green Lake earlier that day, all the while pulling goodies she had acquired there out from her onstage bushel basket. Her conversation sparkled with the stories of unearthed produce and sugary treats procured at the farmer's market and the lovely people that grew them and/or sold them to her. The reminiscing reached a crescendo when she brought out a kohlrabi as big as a toddler's head, daring the audience to tell her what the cabbage-sized orb was. Once we all were assured of the veggie's kohlrabiness, Susan entreated of an audience member (who was either one of the singer's brethren or seated amongst the Werner clan) his pocket knife. Thus armed, she proceeded to carve up the green globe with shoots protruding from it, giving pieces of the vegetable to those who were not familiar with it's taste or texture. Assisting her in getting back to the music at hand, the rescuing retinue known simply as "Jane" to many of us appeared from the back of the house in time to procure the kohlrabi from Susan and continue cutting it up and doling out pieces to the audience, thus allowing Susan to fill us in on the miseries of modern-day snowmobilers and the results of ingesting herbicides. The music was, of course, indescribably Wernerful, with stories ranging from an organic agriculturer's revenge on the "city kids" with whom he'd grown up to a farmer's wife's revenge on her beloved for daring to touch "the egg money." For those of you familiar with Susan's latest CD, you know that the urban children end up far better off than the latter-mentioned pastoralist, who ends up a lot further beneath the earth than the seeds he's planted religiously spring in and spring out. Speaking of religion ... with the first half's introduction to Ms. Werner's Hayseed project set momentarily aside, Susan ventured into some of her agnostic gospel songs for the second half of her program, along with the title tracks from several of her releases ("Time Between Trains, "I Can't Be New, "Kicking the Beehive"). Then, the most unexpected thing I have ever seen at a SW show was accompanied by her chanteussieness singing "I Will Have My Portion," after having plucked a little girl from the audience and asking her to do a live, improvisational dance to the guitar strums and gleeful strains of Ms. Werner's voice. My friend, Susan, looked beamingly happy as she watched this little lady interpret her song, giving it new life with a joyful jig and some well-timed gesturing. And ... well, my friends, it just doesn't get any better than that. Chuck in Milwaukee "Life is an occasion. Rise to it!" Edward Magorium "We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal... We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V14 #25 ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message