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Friday, October 30, 2020

Harper - The Gunniwolf - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Normally I'd have posted a scary story every week in October.  This year I just didn't feel like it.  (I've noticed, ever since 9/11, a similar unpredictability in bookings for a time that used to be so guaranteed it was known among storytellers as "the storyteller's Christmas", providing the money to buy presents.)  

Today I want to give a humorous story that a generation of children in Mount Clemens grew up screaming over and laughing at the "Gooney Wolf," as one child called it.  I've never recorded it and if I did, it would only be with a live audience of children.  It is safest to use from Kindergarten on.  There are a very few Preschoolers unable to handle the tense threats of the Gunniwolf.  My Gunniwolf puppet stayed hidden in a large colorful roomy bag until he popped out.  He returned to the bag (with a bit of movements and grumbling while hidden) once the girl was out of the woods.  The song melody is unimportant as long as it's fairly monotonous.  (One storyteller I know uses the ABC song.)

While I never made a video of the story, there are some pictures from a workshop I gave.  If you want to see the other pictures, go to A to Z, Puppets are EASY!  The workshop included my telling the story as an  example of how puppets can be used to tell stories.  I considered inserting the pictures, but think you should get the story first.  The photos are at the end.

The Gunniwolf has caught me!

He's a lover of lullabies

(He's falling asleep)

Those great photos were taken by Kathy Calhoun at the program I did for the Birmingham Storytellers Guild.  THANKS, KATHY!!!  I'm awful when it comes to taking photos and so I'm immensely grateful to Kathy.

When the story ended and I talked with my young audiences, I pointed out how the little girl used her head to escape.  We also talked about if they would return to get the forgotten flowers.  Usually the response was "NO WAY!"  There were a few who advocated being prepared to attack the wolf.  That led into more talk about using your brains being better than violence.  It also is why I learned not to let the children near the puppet, in or out of the bag, afterwards as a few wanted to hit him.  Aside from the need to avoid violence, I hated replacing his styrofoam teeth!

The story first appeared in the 1918 book, Story-Hour Favorites; Selected for Library, School, and Home Use, compiled by Wilhelmina Harper.  It proves last week's comment about "when a teacher or a librarian or anyone else who does a lot of storytelling puts together an anthology of stories, they are more likely to be Ready-to-Tell."  After Harper's name we are told she was "Children's Librarian, Queensboro Public Library."  It was the first of her anthologies.  She died in 1973 and published throughout the first half of the 20th century.  She was an excellent example of those who created storytelling in libraries and schools in the early 20th century.  She also, unlike some publishing at the time, gave fairly thorough explanations of sources.  In the case of The Gunniwolf, she notes it is "Adapted from a Southern Nonsense Tale."  

I always thought the William Wiesner illustrations for the original picture book version missed the Gunniwolf's character.

That book is now out of print and considered a classic.  This review by Karen O'Hanlon, however, does an excellent appraisal of the value of this story.  

The good news is the book was again brought back for a time in print, so a copy is a bit easier to find.  The newer editions had all new illustrations, some of which capture both the Gunniwolf's menace and humor.  That's a neat trick and I think the children who have seen my wolf puppet will agree it's the secret to this story working.

***************** 

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 the late 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!

Friday, October 23, 2020

Bailey - The Goose Who Tried to Keep the Summer - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Last week's story was a literary tale and would require revising to tell it well.  BUT when a teacher or a librarian or anyone else who does a lot of storytelling puts together an anthology of stories, they are more likely to be Ready-to-Tell.  I've posted other stories here by one such anthologer deserving to be in the Public Domain and continue to have her work told: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey.

Here's her tale of a goose who typifies the term "silly goose."  May it cross your mind as you see birds migrating.

photo by Ian Cumming on Unsplash.com





Photo by Christopher Rodgers at Unsplash.com




I'm told some of our local geese actually stay the winter because they are fed by people locally.  Sounds like a silly goose of an idea interfering with what should happen at this time of year.

**********************

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 the late 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!

Friday, October 16, 2020

Channell - The Maple Leaf For Ever! - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash

One of the great things about having a dog needing regular exercise is it gets you out and on the trails.  At this time there still are colorful leaves in our area, with splashes of the red leaves on maple trees.  The wind and rain are doing their best to turn them into "leaf confetti" on the ground.  

Frances Jenkins Olcott's book, The Wonder Garden, is a book of "Nature Myths and Tales from All the World Over for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud And for the Children's Own Reading."  I looked there for something offering a nature story to fit the beauty of autumn before we lose the colorful leaves.

Here in Oakland County many of the brown leaves of oaks will stay until next spring.  I always try unsuccessfully to see how the spring buds knock them off.  Guess I need to talk with a park naturalist.  I confess I'm always impressed by the riot of colors hidden all along by chlorophyll!  It's hard to believe the colors are there all along.

If I was telling this story, now, as opposed to in the winter, I would omit the opening and closing paragraph's where the Maple tells the story called a "Canadian Tale."  There's a tiny bit more to say, but it will keep until after the story.

I could find no information about Grace Channell, nor her original source of the "Canadian Tale", but The Canadian Magazine had more than a 40 year run as "the premiere monthly literary journal of Anglophone Canada."  This story seems to take that "literary" idea a bit far, but the idea of the creation of a "bright sister" tree and the beauty and purpose of the maple is worth telling as a nature myth.

Of course it also fits that popular Canadian song about "The Maple Leaf Forever."

*****************

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 the late 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!

Friday, October 9, 2020

Ozaki - How an Old Man Lost His Wen - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Have you ever thought about Velcro and how it was invented?  

Today's story and a personal experience sent me thinking about this.


My "Roadie", my husband, has been in the hospital, so one night I had to walk our "Malamutt" (Husky/Malamute now a breed being called an Alaskan Husky) with a flash light.  Days are getting shorter and we'll surely do more, but hopefully without the "natural Velcro" of burs.  (The word is also burr.)  That Wikipedia link tells, among other things, how Velcro "was the inspiration for hook and loop fastener, also known as Velcro."  I tried to stay on an actual path, although I knew my dog would visit the edges of all trails and possibly have burs.  My fleece cape, however, became so fastened with tiny burs that my thoughts went to Velcro.  (The dog actually only had a few on his plume of a malamute tail!)  

This article about "Plants with Burrs" says "Some burrs are so small as to be nearly unnoticeable, while others are large enough to result in a flat tire."  Mine were tiny and a nearby nature trail pointed out what type of bur they might be.  The photo shows a flower that's prettier than what now remains on trails & it has many common  names boiling down to Tick Trefoil (Hylodesmum glutinosum for those wanting the scientific name).  In daylight I can watch out for it, although it's fairly unassuming unlike larger burs. 

This got me thinking about stories where something acts like a bur.  The closest to actual folklore on burs that I found was in James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee.


 
I certainly don't have the memory of a bur, nor would I want to risk any problems.  That sent me further to Asian stories.  I recalled Elizabeth Scofield's title story from Hold Tight, Stick Tight: A Collection of Japanese Folk Tales where a voice calls "Hold tight or stick tight." An old man answers "Whatever you like" and gold pieces fly and stick to him.  When his greedy neighbor tries it, he winds up covered in tar.  To make matters even worse, the neighbor's wife drops a candle setting him on fire.  The book is still in copyright, but I decided to look at my various Japanese anthologies in Public Domain.  I didn't find that story, but one that again has many of the same elements.  The greedy neighbor trying to get the same "reward" and instead being punished is very common in Asian tales and I'll briefly give a Chinese version I love to tell after today's story.  

Before starting I should probably explain what a "wen" is.  It's defined as "A harmless cyst, especially on the scalp or face, containing the fatty secretion of a sebaceous gland."  (A variety of online dictionaries say essentially the same thing.)

 

  






That's from Yei Theodora Ozaki, a surprisingly modern woman for a woman of the late 19th and early 20th century.  Her childhood was in Japan, but her life was both in Europe and Japan, she earned her own living, and an interesting postal confusion over her name resulted in her marrying the Japanese politician, Yukio Ozaki.  The book where this originated has two names, but Project Gutenberg's copy of Japanese Fairy Tales is the 1908 version and says it is "Profusely Illustrated by Japanese Artists", while my 1903 Japanese Fairy Book in the Preface says "The pictures were drawn by Mr. Kakuzo Fujiyama, a Tokio artist."

I mentioned this story has many similar stories in Japan and beyond in Asia.  While I have enjoyed telling this, I also love telling a Chinese variant called "Candy Man" where a brother carrying syrup falls, is coated with the syrup and at the mercy of goblins.  He escapes with their magic drum which produces food.  His brother tries for similar fortune only to have the goblins give a nose so long the greedy brother must carry it over his arm to avoid tripping.  The greedy brother's wife asks for help from her brother-in-law, who learns the drum can also shrink the nose.  The wife's impatience results in her husband's nose disappearing into his face, the drum breaks and he was left without a nose.  Aside from various humorous moments in the story, it once again is a tale of the greedy getting what they deserve.

I believe there's a prayer asking God's mercy and not what we deserve.  May it be true at this time when we all could use a bit of humor and mercy instead of what we deserve.

*****************

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 the late 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!

Friday, October 2, 2020

Powers - Why Leaves Turn Red and Yellow - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Last week I said even though I saw autumn leaves change along the roadside and lakes, deep in the woods it was all green here in southeastern Michigan.  Temperatures have dropped considerably and now the woods have a bit of color sprinkled around with a rare tree in the distance flaming up against that "green screen."

I'm not a hunter, but our state's recreation areas are open to hunting so I stay on official horse trails with my "Alaskan Husky" combination of husky and malamute.  I hope they don't see him in the distance and, like some who have asked, wonder if he's a wolf.  (He's not scruffy enough, I hope, to be mistaken for a coyote.)  I can wear hunter orange, but he's unhappy wearing safety vests.  Today's story includes hunters.  It's an Iroquois tale retold by Mabel Powers.  Her telling was endorsed by the Iroquois Confederation.  The Seneca adopted her and named her Yehsennohwehs which means She Who Carries and Tells the Stories. The hotlink for her name takes you to two other stories by her here.

Here in Michigan saying "the chase is on" goes back to the Anishinaabe tale of a race that explains how temperatures fluctuate at this time until finally the cold wins, but that's yet another story.

I just learned September 30 to October 6 is Fat Bear Week.  Go to that link and you may still have time to vote for your choice.  It includes a bit of learning more about how bears fatten up for the winter.  It's a fun and safe way to see some Alaskan bears.  Also they probably already have lost their leaves up there by now!

Here in my state, Michigan's Department of Natural Resources has a site with Fall Color Tours letting you discover where to "Leaf Peep", breaking it down by the Upper Peninsula, "Tip of the Mitt", Northern Lower, Mid-Michigan, Southern Lower areas.  We're a colorful state, especially now, so even with "social distancing" you can see it from your car or hiking on the trail

***************** 

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 the late 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!