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Saturday, April 27, 2019

The 19th Amendment

Today, April 27, I'm once again telling the story of World War I's "Hello Girls" as if I was Marine City's Oleda Joure Christides.  The story is as much a story of women's history as it is that of World War I because it took 60 years for those women to finally gain their veteran's status promised to them when they initially took their oaths as soldiers.

When the Victory Parade was held in New York, the Navy recognized its Yeomanettes and let them march, but the Army refused, claiming the bilingual telephone operators were "contract employees", thus lacking veteran's status.  The Army insisted only males had been in the Army.

Part of the delay in recognition, beyond the Army's refusal to recognize the women after the war ended, included the many things taking priority in the United States.  Returning soldiers also sought their promised compensation which led to Bonus Marches or the Bonus Army during the Great Depression.

Why does this involve the League of Women Voters?

One of those matters, definitely a major issue in women's history, was giving women the vote.  This was more than just an issue in the United States.  Wikipedia's article on Women's Suffrage shows the changes internationally.  I was stunned when only recently I learned about Great Britain, "From 1918–1928, women could vote at 30 with property qualifications or as graduates of UK universities, while men could vote at 21 with no qualification. From 1928 women had equal suffrage with men."  In both the U.S. and around the world the movement, which had been growing since the 19th century, was strengthened by the role women took in World War I.

I'm particularly fond of the historic photo addressed to President Woodrow Wilson as "Kaiser Wilson" talking about how his post-war concerns for Germany's self-government (which did give all Germans the vote in 1918) ignored the twenty million women in the U.S. without the vote.

I have two books of newspaper front pages showing major events.  Neither Great Pages of Michigan History from the Detroit Free Press nor The New York Times Page One; Major Events 1900-1998 as Presented in The New York Times show the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.  Somehow a constitutional amendment would seem like front page news.  Certainly the eighteenth amendment banning alcohol and the later 21st amendment repealing it received plenty of attention. 

On a personal level, many years ago I remember an elderly woman telling of the disparaging looks and comments made when, as a young woman, she proudly marched up to vote when it first became possible. 

Fortunately local newspapers recorded when Brigadier General Arthur Wolfe was finally sent to Marine City in 1978 to present Oleda with her long-promised official honorable discharge papers and Victory Medal.  At the time she was one of only 15 alive who served abroad.
It may not have made front page news, but like the 19th amendment, we need to recognize these important events in women's history and the contribution of women who went before us. 



Saturday, April 20, 2019

Oglevee - An Easter Surprise - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Photo by Nick Reynolds on Unsplash
Today's story starts with weather matching my own area now.  I love tulips and, while cities or villages near me may have tulips popping out, I've yet to see any on our more rural hilltop.  To my mind, while lilies are linked to Easter,  tulips also belong with Easter.  If you look at the Western (Gregorian) calendar, Easter can come as early as March 22 or as late as April 25, which makes a difference on what flowers might be growing or must come from a greenhouse.  At my house and on woodland walks here it's clearly very early into just the start of spring.

"Easter Surprise" ends with a warm spring breeze.  I'll hold my own "hot air" until the story is over before saying a bit about the author, where the story can be found, and an opinion or two.


Before saying any more, take a breath or two and enjoy the joy of that elderly couple.

If you were sharp eyed, you may have noticed my copy came from A Very Little Child's Book of Stories.  It was collected by the sisters, Ada M. and Eleanor L. Skinner, who put together many delightful books, including some original writing, often publishing as a team.  Besides this book they created, among other anthologies, three related books, A Child's Book of Stories, A Little Child's Book of Stories, and A Child's Book of Stories from Many Lands with the always wonderful illustrator, Jessie Willcox Smith.  I may disagree with their thinking today's story was for "A Very Little Child", but this book cover certainly fits the story. 

Frankly the story seems today as if it would be best appreciated by an adult.  Back when the story was first written it might have been intended as character education for children.

On a personal level, I can't help but wonder what three year-old Paul's mother thought when she found her own "large bed of beautiful tulips" dug up?  The author dwells instead on how it helped the elderly couple who greatly needed them.

The story appeared earlier in The Elson Readers, volume 3 in the Holidays section of the early 20th century readers our American ancestors grew up with in school.  But the author of today's story might have slipped into obscurity except for her poetry, writing lyrics for her husband William's hymns, and her own book, The Child's First Songs In Religious Education.  A blog by the North Wellington Christian Home Educators wrote an article on "The Delight of Memorizing Poetry" with this poem:
My Beautiful Palace.
A beautiful palace my King gave to me,
And all through my lifetime my home it will be.
I call it my body, to use as I will,
But this I remember; that God owns it still.
From things that would harm it, I'll keep it away,
And carefully guard it by night and by day.
Its windows and doors are my lips, ears, and eyes.
Dear King, help me use them in ways that are wise.
-Louise M. Oglevee
The author of that article calls it "A delightful poem that we heard for many years was called My Beautiful Palace.  The truths it contained had a way of speaking even to grown up hearts."  I'd say the same about today's story.

I thought I'd never run across Mrs. Ogilvee's work before until I found her lyric to "Holy Ground" which Rynna Ollivier's blog, For Times of Trouble , credits
the words of a song I sang as a child in Primary ran through my mind.
“This is God’s House, and He is here today, He hears each song of praise and listens when we pray” (lyrics: Louise M. Oglevee, music: William G. Oglevee).
These simple yet profound words sank deep into my heart, as did the unmistakable message that the ward building was holy ground!
The Ogilvees wrote for the Church of Latter Day Saints, commonly called the Mormons.  I've never gone to a Mormon church, but that song has traveled to other churches and I know I recognize it.  On this Easter and beyond I hope you remember that God "is here today, He hears each song of praise and listens when we pray."
********************
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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
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!

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Lindsay - - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Today, April 11, is National Pet Day.  That coupled with something happening this Saturday leads me to an earlier than usual publishing for this week.

Go to this link for 10 ideas to celebrate national pet day (good for pets any time). My other reason is this Saturday in Mount Clemens I will be part of, and would love to see you at, this celebration.
The Detroit Puppeteers Guild alternate their annual Day of Puppetry between adults and, this year, children.  Friend and colleague, Rob Papineau, always gives delightful shows, so his "Bunny Business" is guaranteed to be fun for the audience.

That show and the coming of Easter made me prowl my collection of books for today's Public Domain tale.  I found it in the ever reliable work by Kindergarten pioneer, Maud Lindsay, from her Story Garden for Little Children. 

Many of her books can be found online.  The Story Garden for Little Children can be found at Archive.org , complete with charming black and white illustrations by Florence Liley Young.  My own copy misses the illustration on the right, which was probably the book cover.  I also disagree a bit with the publisher's placement of the story's main illustration.  Publishers have to decide based on many things, but I want the illustration to occur as close to when it happens in the story and moved it slightly.

It tells well, complete with a child "detective."

 

Realistically rabbits eating your garden may not be what you want, but that story certainly tells well for spring or Easter.  I hope you enjoy making it your own, while remembering the storytellers who are part of our heritage, just as the Public Domain tries to keep our literary heritage alive.
********************
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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
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, April 6, 2019

Aesop - The Actor and the Pig (Jacobs - The Buffoon and the Countryman) - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Here's a bit of a visual update:
Note the foot under that blanket...Mrs.Kirby doesn't!
and then


As mentioned last week the theatre has had my attention this week performing in the delightful comedy, You Can't Take It With You, with Pontiac Theatre IV.  (I have greatly enjoyed being the drunken actress, Gay Wellington, and made Mock Rumballs for the AfterGlow for our opening night.)  Because of that I went hunting for a theatre-related story and found it right away as an Aesop fable.

Aesop has been retold by many people over the centuries and people often think fables are always about animals.  There's an animal in this story, but the people take the center stage.  Those re-tellings use different names for the Actor: Buffoon, Mimic, Clown, Mountebank, but clearly it's an entertainer taking the stage.  (As Gay Wellington likes to claim, "I've played everything!")  Similarly the challenger in this story is sometimes a Countryman or a Peasant, but through it all the Pig remains a Pig.

Then comes the question of stating the moral or not.  Most of the time, as a storyteller, I prefer to let the audience draw its own conclusions.  In this case while looking at various versions, I saw some strange ways of putting it BUT really liked the way Joseph Jacobs put it in his compact book of The Fables of Aesop.  While some of the versions do a good job of setting up the location of the story, he keeps it simple.  Similarly his version kept to the basics.

My only change to the book's presentation is saving the illustration by Richard Heighway until the end. (It precedes the story in the book.) That link is to an article on The Victorian Web by Simon Cooke which points out Heighway "was one of the lesser known illustrators of the nineteenth century."  While only three books are verified as being his work, even the binding designed by Heighway is described as "a small masterpiece."  I love the little book and, while this particular story omits the decorative title head and tailpiece used for many of the stories, I agree with Doctor Cooke's statement that it is "a faithful treatment of the original text, preserving and extending the sense of fun as the moral lessons are contemplated."

So however you choose to tell the many fables of Aesop, it will be your way and that's "the real thing."
***********************
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/ 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.
     
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!