Cousin Agam Fhein

The story is the story.
Is it true? As true as it needs to be, or wants to be.

Raisin’ the jar and raisin’ hell
There’s plenty of stories that they will tell
Some are born of true detail
And some are purely fiction

Well, I won’t post pure fiction, though I don’t rule out tall tales. And I won’t post lies. Otherwise, what you see is what the storyteller told. They’re about real people and real places.

The storyteller tells the story.

For now, you have to send the story in. I won’t “fix it up” unless asked, and even then I’ll just check spelling and things like that. I might leave out things that weren’t really part of the store — a comment made to me, in the middle of the story — but nothing that takes away.

When you see that a story’s by someone, that means what it says: the person is the storyteller.

If you see that a story’s by someone as told to someone else, the second person recorded the story somehow. That’s what I did with How the Fergusons Came to Detroit: I talked to my parents by phone, and taped the story. It’s by them, in their words. It’s as told to me, since I typed it up.

If you capture someone else’s story, like on tape, be honest and respectful. Let them say what they said. Don’t tidy it up. The storyteller tells the story.

If you’re retelling a story you heard, then you’re the storyteller. Recreate the way you heard it, if you want, but it’s your story.

“What’s your father’s name?”

On this site, I’ve decided to list people by the name most of their family would recognize, and women by their maiden names. That’s why in the Character list, my mother’s father appears as Jack D Macdonald rather than as John David. And that’s why Julene Summerfield is listed as Julene Coady.

We’ll find a way to include nicknames as well. For one thing, there’ll be a hell of a lot of Macdonalds to keep straight. (In the 1901 census of Canada, 10% of all the names in Nova Scotia were “MacDonald,” and 10% of the men in that group were named John.)