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

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

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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

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - 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.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - 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!