Recording Coeur d'Alene

COEUR d'ALENE - When Coeur d'Alene Public Library visitors walk into the Lodge of the Storyteller, they enter a small room painted in floor-to-ceiling murals. Against the deep blues and greens of wilderness settings, guests see the wolf, eagle, salmon and other creatures that have earned their places in the mythology of Native American storytelling.

The Lodge is a space for library users to study and will serve as the home base and recording studio for the Library Foundation's new "StoryCatcher" project, which will work toward collecting and preserving the stories of individuals in the community.

"The 'StoryCatcher' project comes out of the concept of capturing the oral history of our town," said artist and project coordinator Barbara Pleason Mueller of Coeur d'Alene.

"StoryCatcher" will be an ongoing program where trained volunteers will conduct interviews with local residents. The interviews will be videotaped and edited into seven-minute clips, which will be preserved and placed on the Internet for public access.

The project is an extension of Mueller's "Portrait of a Town" creation, where people reflect on their experiences of living in The City by the Lake. Those interviews can be viewed at www.portraitofatown.com and the portraits can be seen on the east wall of Sherman Square Park downtown.

"It's a reflection of our community to be having the interest and putting the effort behind capturing the history of the community," Mueller said. "It says something about the vitality of our community."

The first segment of "StoryCatcher" will focus on the lives of those who experienced World War II and the Korean War.

"This is a really important part of our culture because those people are leaving, they're dying," Mueller said. "When they came back after the war, a lot of them didn't talk about their experiences."

She said 35 people have been chosen to participate in the preliminary interviews, which will take place within the next week.

"One of the things we'd really like to do is connect with some people who were here during the war(s), either as adults or older children, that have memories of their parents being gone, what that was like, or memories of the rationing or the gardening," Mueller said.

Library Foundation executive director Ruth Pratt of Coeur d'Alene said the project will focus on personal accounts rather than the linear histories of events.

"It's really to focus on a particular experience, and then the story behind that," she said. "How did you feel? How did it affect your family? That kind of thing."

The murals were painted by local artist Mary Dee Dodge and her husband, Allen, embellished the exterior to give the effect of entering a lodge. The Lodge was dedicated to the memory of late spiritual leader and Coeur d'Alene tribal elder Cliff SiJohn.

"He was the person who called the library 'the lodge of the storyteller' at the blessing of the ground before we opened," Pratt said.

Money for "StoryCatcher" has been generated from private funds and grants. A wide range of topics will be covered as the program progresses, from Farragut prisoners of war to holiday traditions and growing up in today's technological era. The Library Foundation will also accept suggestions from the public. Pratt said the Library Foundation will present some of the material collected once the first segment is complete, which she and Mueller estimated may take about two months.

"It's not one person's experiences," Mueller said. "One person's experience is unique, but if you have a whole bunch of experiences put together that people can listen to, that would give them an understanding of the fabric of that time."

Segment suggestions can be sent to libfdn@gmail.com.

Info: www.cdalibrary.org