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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Operation #OneMoreVote

Most Americans don’t think their Internet Service Providers should be able to censor content, slow down certain websites, or shake us down for extra fees. That's why most Americans—including more than 75 percent of Republicans—support net neutrality. ( Fortune, "Americans Of All Stripes Strongly Want the FCC To Maintain Net Neutrality," December 13, 2017)

Small businesses and libraries are particularly vulnerable and, as an individual, you are, too.

It's time to mobilize public support like never before. Even though FCC Chair Ajit Pai pushed through the repeal of net neutrality rules, it hasn't begun yet and a simple majority in Congress can restore the safeguards—and, if they do, the pro-Big Cable leadership can’t stop them.  We're running out of time: Now that Pai's order is published in the Federal Register, Congress has just 60 legislative days to act.

We have a huge head start in the Senate, where Maine Republican Susan Collins has joined all 49 Democrats to oppose the FCC's order. We need just one more senator to get to 51.  Michigan's senators support net neutrality.  (My Representative, Mike Bishop, does not, but the Senate will decide this first.)  If you are in a state where your Senator might be "sitting on the fence" on this issue, please let them know you support net neutrality!  Want to know more?  Here's one of many  Net Neutrality articles that gives a good summary of how Net Neutrality may be saved.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Beston - The Marvelous Dog and the Wonderful Cat (part 2 of 3) - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

The first part of our story ended last week with the old wizard bidding goodbye to his wonderful pets who want to see the world.  You may remember he taught at an academy much like Hogwarts until quarreling with the school's Lord High Chancellor, the wizard Zadoc.  The old enchanter gave his pets a year's rent to give to the Fairy Jocapa and said it would take them over all the kingdoms of the whole wide world.

There are no further illustrations than the story's title illustration, but the book's illustrator, Maurice E. Day, gave the book endpapers showing an adventure representing the stories in Henry B. Beston's The Twilight Fairy Book. 

I'll insert one photo to illustrate something in the story, but now let's journey on with the dog and cat.

Our dog and cat are walking into a trap and it's with the very wizard who ruined their master.  Our final episode in this story includes a Wizard's Duel, so be sure to catch next week's conclusion.  In the meantime, this coming Monday, February 26, is Tell a Fairy Tale Day, so go to 6 Ways to Celebrate Tell a Fairy Tale Day  for some festive ideas as it's good to enjoy fairy tales then or any day. 
***************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  




At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Beston - The Marvelous Dog and the Wonderful Cat - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This past week began the Year of the Dog for Chinese New Year.  A whole year deserves a story, but what cat will permit a dog getting more attention?  They are both here.  This is a fairly long story, so I will split it into three weeks. (Phew!  That gets me past the insanity of Sister Act the Musical, but I still would love for you to catch the show.)

While the use of fairies in 1919, when the book was published, may be less popular today, the sorcerers in this story are very important, in addition to the animals.  I think lovers of Harry Potter books, by the final segment, will find it includes magic enough to satisfy the faculty of Hogwarts.  (Yes, that's a hint to pay attention to the wizards.)  Also this comes in time for Tell a Fairy Tale Day 2018 on Monday, February 26. 

Back in 2013, when I started the Keeping the Public in Public Domain segments, I included that first year a story from Henry Beston's The Firelight Fairy Book.  Because the blog format puts the most recent post first, I want to post again this link to Theodore Roosevelt Junior.  The son of President Roosevelt (who was famous in his own life) wrote a Foreword worth reading and reminding us of the child inside every "grown-up"and how this book has been favorably received and "universally acclaimed" by his own and other people's children.  (Also nowadays I don't try to do two pages at a time, which I hope makes it easier to read.  Because the book is old, any slight movements of the pages is not pushed down to avoid damage to the original book.)




The adventure has begun!  The Year of the Dog has begun, too.  Come back to see more next week in preparation for Tell a Fairy Tale Day.
****************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!


Saturday, February 10, 2018

The Coming Week!

Be sure to look all the way to the end of this post for a video I hope doesn't match me by week's end.  I can't believe all that is happening next week!  For one thing I'm in a great musical version of the movie, Sister Act.  (I start out in one scene as a Hooker under arrest.  The rest of show I'm a nun -- just can't kick the habit of an annual musical!  This show is a lot of fun and the cast and all involved have been Outstanding!  Hope to see you there -- I'll be wearing my glasses.)
(By the way if you buy tickets, please "take my name in vain."  I don't give people a big sales job, so I never expect to be the top ticket seller, but I know this show is blessed whether the pope shows up at the end or not!)

O.k. that's one thing with the coming week of final rehearsals earning it the name of "Hell Week" among theatre friends.  Although one cast member, who also is a fine director -- had her a few years back in Aye Do! -- directs many youth theatre productions calling it "Heck Week"!!! WHATEVER!

Monday February 12 is Lincoln's Birthday, celebrated as a holiday in some states, while the whole U.S. tends to lump it together on this coming February 19 as Presidents Day to give an annual three day holiday on the third Monday in February to include our first president, Washington, born February 22, and Lincoln, and beyond.  I'll celebrate the twelfth doing one of my current six school residencies, but then on to rehearsal that night for He** Week.

Tuesday is known as either Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday with Detroit metro area tending to turn Polish for a day buying up Pączki that Wikipedia link will tell you more, but I find it's pronunciation around here is Poonch-key with a "punch" to it just like I find this deep-fried jelly-filled seems to give me a punch to the stomach.  In New Orleans it's Mardi Gras time.  The idea is a last minute blow-out before Lent begins and that quick Mardi Gras link gives an international view of the day

Wednesday is both Valentines Day, which I've covered before in talking about Queen Victoria, and  Ash Wednesday.  While the religious aspect is certainly appropriate for me in Sister Act, I don't know if I'll be able to make it before any rehearsal since we must be at Central United Methodist Church -- that's the CUMC on the show flier -- by 5:30!  According to Wikipedia "Ash Wednesday is observed by many Western Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics,[note 1] and some Baptists.[1]" Maybe they should have a service for our cast?  As for my own Valentine of a husband, I guess we'll take a day all our own.
I'm looking angelic in the front row, not counting our Deloris wondering what has she gotten into!

Thursday is that Lenten time I mentioned, but Friday is also the start of Chinese New Year!  A favorite mystery author, Anne R. Tan, the author of the Raina Sun mystery series, gives a view of the Chinese American life in her books and blog.  She says in her blog this week titled "Who Stole My Tangerines":
Most people associate red envelopes and dragons with Chinese New Year. The adults give their blessings to the children in the family in the form of a red envelope filled with money. You’re not traditionally considered “an adult” until you got married. I got red envelopes during Chinese New Year until I was 30.
In my childhood, a home isn’t ready for the holiday unless it’s filled with tangerines and small chocolate gold ingots. And not just any old tangerines, they must always have the stems attached to represent good fortune and abundance.
And after praying to the ancestors, my parents would stick a diamond shape red paper on the rice tub (the paper from last year would be discarded the night before). The tub holds 50 pounds of rice, so you can guess how big that red paper is. They would also stick diamond shape red paper on all the doors, and above every entryway, so we cannot walk through the house without our ancestor’s blessings. And last, the children get to play with firecrackers in the front yard to chase away all the bad luck from the previous year.
As I write this, I realized the only tradition my husband and I kept was the red envelopes. This is pretty sad…okay, I’m off to Amazon to see if I can get red paper and firecrackers delivered in the next day or two.
This will be the start of the Year of the Dog.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe next Friday I'll be able to post a story about a dog...or a president...or a Polish story...or Lent...but try not to be like this video of a little five year-old girl who reminds me so much of my own daughters.  I can't seem to get it to be easily clicked on here, so go to YouTube and, if that link doesn't take you there, put in When you're emotionally exhausted but the show must go on,  (It's there currently four times, but all have the same little girl.) 

It's worth seeing.  We've all been there, with or without HE** Week.  Next week I'll post a story as I presume I'll survive after I sub at White Lake Library on Saturday.  What a week!

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Blaisdell - The Clothes-Line Telegraph

Black History month tends to bring my programs about the local Lerich family to audiences.  Liberetta Lerich Green and her family were abolitionists and had an Underground Railroad Station in Utica.  Here's the event presented by the  Novi Historical Commission at the Novi Public Library on February 8.  Learn about Michigan's role in abolition, the Underground Railroad, and the Civil War as told by a woman who grew up with it.

There are so many stories, including claims some historians doubt about the use of the laundry line for signals to the Underground Railroad.  This story from Albert F. Blaisdell's Stories of the Civil War takes a different view showing the clothes line's value for military intelligence.

The story follows a picture of a simple craft I made several years ago at Greenfield Village's Civil War Days.  It's the rosette or cockade worn by a Union sympathizer, which the Lerichs certainly were.  I let the safety pin show as it's simply red, white, and blue ribbon pulled into a circle and stitched onto a pin.  Yes, that Wikipedia link says safety pins were patented in 1849.  Campaign buttons are a form of communication, as is storytelling.  If you go to Creative Cockades you will find they are a centuries old way of showing support for a cause, the political lapel pins of yesteryear.  There are pages about cockades for the Union, Confederate, Mourning, Revolutionary War, Suffragette, and Copperhead (opponents of the Civil War and the Union) opinions.  Today's story shows Dabney figured out yet another useful form of communication easily overlooked.
As Albert Blaisdell explained in putting his book together, "These stories are designed to interest as well as to instruct young people, and to excite in their minds a keen desire to know more of the noble deeds of their fathers and grandfathers, who sacrificed so much during this momentous period of our country's history."  Even now that desire and knowledge is needed.
*******************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  



At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
  • There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
  • You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.

    Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            
         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 
     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!
    Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!