life rattle show no. 1249

Presented on THURSDAY, march 28, 2013

Hosted by laurie kallis

featuring

"Jasmine Tea"
and
"The Visit"

by Virginia Ashberry

tonight's Show

Life Rattle Number 1249 continues the showcase of Life Rattle Classics, written and read by of Virginia Ashberry, that we began last week.

Virginia Ashberry was born in Toronto in 1952, the youngest of three children. She left home at seventeen, married on her nineteenth birthday and had three children. She left her husband, took the kids when they were eight, six and three years old and went to live in Peterborough on mothers’ allowance. There, Ashberry put herself through university.

In 1985, Ashberry sold everything she had and drove the three kids across Canada to Victoria, B.C. She returned six weeks later to face the issues she realized she had run away from. “Things were difficult until I was forty,” Ashberry says, “but now they’re better.”

This year, Virginia Ashberry moved to Hamilton, Ontario. Early every morning, she commutes to Toronto, where she has worked in social services since 1991.

Watch for a collection of stories by Ashberry to be published later this year.

Virginia Ashberry’s voice will sound familiar to Life Rattle listeners. Ashberry’s loyalty, determination and energy kept Life Rattle on the air when she took over the helm of Life Rattle Radio after co-founder Arnie Achtman died in 2005. In this showcase you will have the pleasure of listening to her stories.

Arnie Achtman said Ashberry “writes in direct, accessible language. Her stories show a shrewd observation of human behaviour and a fine balance of toughness and tenderness.”

Ashberry’s beautifully crafted writing doesn’t pull any punches. Her honest observations, presented without fanfare, cut like a knife. In the stories we present tonight, our narrator, smart and strong willed, has made it through the horrors of childhood only to find that the cruelty has escalated.

In our first story, "Jasmine Tea," we find a teenager, struggling to survive, and to escape an intolerable reality.

The hopefulness of our narrator, makes “The Visit,” tonight’s second story more heartbreaking than the first.

Please note: tonight’s stories contain intense and disturbing subject matter. Parental discretion is strongly advised.