Blog: Tales by the Sea

0
350
Burt Ross

Ann Buxie moved to Malibu West in 1983 with her husband Rick and their daughter Jill, and ever since then, she has served our community. When Larry Peacock, then Pastor of the United Methodist Church, asked Ann back in 1995 to start a story telling vehicle as an outreach of the church, little did he know she would make it into a major source of entertainment for Malibu and its environs.

What started as an occasional story telling by a single teller has morphed into a four times a year function, where as many as nine tellers entertain crowds often in excess of a hundred people. The events have outgrown the church and Ann’s home and now take place at the Malibu West Beach Club.

Ann handles every detail from selecting the tellers (She scours the area looking for top-notch tellers to invite.) to providing the audience with delicious light fare. She even arranges the order of the tellers with a fine sense of mixing the funny with the poignant. 

A recent event included a woman talking about how her childhood idol, Mickey Mantel, tried to bed her, and another teller recalled how the Northern army freed her great grandmother and the other slaves on a Virginia plantation.

Ann grew up in Arizona where she loved listening to her father, a newspaper publisher, tell stories. For Ann, telling stories is far more than a form of entertainment.

“We all have stories to tell and a primal need for community,” Ann explained. “The telling of tales brings us together, face to face, not like watching something on a screen.”

If you like a good story¾and who doesn’t¾then email Ann at ann.buxie1@verizon.net and make a reservation for the next story telling on Sunday, June 22. Fresh cherries and berries and sourdough baked with wild yeast will be served. I am so confident you will have a great time that if you are not satisfied, I will personally reimburse you the cost of admission (There is no charge whatsoever, so I don’t think I will go broke making this guarantee.).

And if it weren’t enough for Ann to produce story telling events four times yearly, Ann also co-hosts with Ellen Reich and Ellen Cohen “Poetry by the Sea.” For further information, contact Ann and ask to be placed on her mailing list, and also look for announcements in this newspaper.   

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Ann and to the City of Malibu, which generously helps defray some of the costs of what has become a very popular activity.