Miller - The Boy and the Moonlight - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 "ART FOR ALL!"  That's the rallying cry of Michigan Arts Access throughout last weekend's annual Teacher and Artist Retreat at Higgins Lake.  I was the only one officially bringing storytelling as a literary art, but often was teamed up in my original field of training, theatre.  Michigan Arts Access puts its mission up front and throughout its work:

 Michigan Arts Access is a non-profit organization promoting creativity, education and accessibility to the arts for people with disabilities by creating an inclusive society where they may participate in, learn through, excel in and enjoy the arts.

Or to put it more clearly - All means All!

Whether that means children in Special Education or adults living with disabilities it may seem to have been achieved, but Michigan has about 200,000 Special Education students, yet less than 10% have any access to the arts.  Without MIAA it would be closer to 1%.  For disabled adults, once they reach age 26, eligibility for public school programs end and almost no social, creative, or intellectual opportunities exist.  MIAA now offers Club Create in 7 areas for adults: Copper Country (Hancock), Genesee County (Flint), Ingham County (Lansing), Mid-Michigan (Mount Pleasant), North Oakland County (Lake Orion), Upper Peninsula (Marquette) and Wayne County (Detroit). 

I've had years of residency in Special Education classes in Genesse, Oakland, and Wayne Counties, but starting last autumn and this past year I've had the opportunity to bring storytelling and crafts to the adults in Club Create.  Challenges and delight in all these settings convince me of their value and the need for even more opportunities.

Storytelling, as I said, is a literary art.  Often I try to find a story that fits a theme or a curriculum need. I confess too rarely I think of poetry, especially the Japanese form of Haiku, yet today's story convinces me I'm missing something.  Olive Beaupre Miller is the editor of Little Pictures of Japan and says "Anyone may write verses in Japan, -- that is, anyone who listens with all his heart to the song of the nightingale among the flowers, to the voice of the frogs in a star-lit pool, and the music of the wind, singing in the trees."  She goes on to point out how it is practiced by all ages and written everywhere ..."embroidered screens, on cups and plates, on painted fans, on towels, on handkerchiefs, -- in fact, they write verses anywhere!"  I confess in the past I've skipped through three-fourths of the book as it's filled with those verses, skipping past the merry pages of haiku to the back where stories of the poets, mainly Basho, appear.  Maybe it was all the associating with the other arts, visual, music, dance, and, yes, theatre that led me to this story of the boyhood of the poet, Yone Noguchi, and what influenced him.

Miller has many poems about the moon, although I didn't find any by Noguchi.  This poem however seems to fit today's story.

Tree Shadows

All hushed the trees are waiting

On tiptoe for the sight

Of moonrise shedding splendor

Across the dusk of night.

Ah, now the moon is risen, 

And lo, without a sound

The trees all write their welcome

Far along the ground!

The rhyme in that poem makes me wonder about the accuracy of its translation, but it does seem to catch what the young poet, Yone Noguchi, might have felt.

While prowling through the book I found another that seems to match the way so much of this summer has been for so many.

A Hot Night

O summer moon, we pray,

Open the wind-bag of the gods,

And let the breezes play.

 

May the moon and arts brighten your life and the lives of all.

 

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

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

Miller - The Little Man in the Dog Cart - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Olive Beaupre Miller established the publishing company of The Book House for Children and produced the classic My Book House set and more.  Among those "and more" books was a three book set called My Travelship with books focused on Japan, Holland, and France.  Tales Told in Holland was published in 1926 and is now in Public Domain.   

The Netherlands is informally called Holland even though that is only the name of two (North Holland and South Holland) of the twelve regions.  At the time of publishing both North and South were all one district.

Tales Told in Holland covers all of the Netherlands, which the Foreword says attempts "to reveal all sides of Dutch life, -- Dutch history, Dutch art, Dutch literature, Dutch geography, Dutch customs, and withal, the Dutchman' sense of humor, his love of cleanliness and thrift, his sturdy independence and the character of his fancies."  That's a large job for a country with a complicated history.  Today's tale is set in the transitional time after both Spain and France were removed in the Dutch Revolt and in the story we meet the Dutch William of Orange or William the Silent (sometimes even called William the Taciturn).  Don't confuse this William of Orange with either his descendants, William II nor the English William III who is the one commonly called "William of Orange", from the reign of "William and Mary" over England, Ireland and Scotland.

Portrait by Adriaen Thomasz. Key, c. 1570–84

Yes, it's confusing, and adding in both Spain and France trying to claim Holland adds to more than I want to discuss.  It's enough to know the country had tried for a long time to be left alone to run its own affairs.  The real focus is William the Silent or Taciturn opposite an ordinary man wanting self-government of the land and so proud of his team of dogs that he outruns the King and his fine horses.

Miller retells the folktale from the province of Gelderland and, as for the rest of the Tales Told in Holland, the illustrations are by Maud and Miska Petersham.  Their over 50 year career in illustrating children's books is excellent and in this book they even recreate illustrations by Dutch master artists to celebrate its art.  For this story, however, I quibble with the picture of the "Little Man in the Dog Cart" -- or more precisely there only being one dog pulling the cart.  

Why the quibble?

Because I love sled dogs, huskies, malamutes and more.  The picture makes it look like one dog is pulling.  Right now my own "Malamutt" (husky/malamute commonly called an "Alaskan Husky") is getting on in years.  As a senior dog he's finally trying more indoor life.  Notice I said "trying"?  Too often he's like this picture found ages ago on the internet.

He's now often the only dog on the trail panting, while other dogs and their humans are FREEZING!

Now you can see why I keep coming back to this story.  Obviously sled dogs aren't a Dutch breed, but the nature of this "little man" thumbing his nose at unappreciated rulers by letting dogs show his own superiority reveals "the Dutchman' sense of humor" with a dash of that "sturdy independence."   It also includes a Dutch song or nursery rhyme.

To which I'll add a picture I often use as wallpaper on my computer at this time of year.

Happy travels with or without a dog, but always with a story!

************************ 

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!

Stories and more about the Wind - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

It's commonly said "Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does a thing about it."  There's been plenty to talk about as the weather seems to have rushed the end of autumn and the start of winter.  Winds bringing colder than normal weather began even before Halloween and it promises to stay until at least November 20 and possibly to Thanksgiving.  They're even mentioning the "S" word to accumulate!  Summer is NOT the word anymore.

Thinking about this started me looking for stories about . . .

The WIND! 

Our winter weather comes down out of Canada, so it seems reasonable that today's story should come from there.  The tale comes from southern British Columbia's Thompson River people (as they were called at the time the story was recorded by the American Folklore Society in 1898) now called the Nlaka'pamux. The simplest form -- and most re-tellable form -- of it comes in Caroline Cunningham's The Talking Stone.

Like I said it's re-tellable and we all probably are wishing the Wind was so easily controlled.  (Well maybe not people wanting wind turbines to produce power.)

A later book by the same title was edited and the story retold by Dorothy deWit.  She called her story "The-Boy-Who-Snared-the-Wind and the Shaman's Daughter."  Her book is still in copyright, but she gave her source as "Traditions of the Thompson River Indians" in the Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 1898.  Of course this made me want to see the original.  I'll give it here, but maybe you don't care to follow that academic route and just wanted an enjoyable tale of the wind.  If so, you may enjoy this bit of nursery verse:

(Found in various editions of My Book House, vol. 1 edited by Olive Beaupre Miller)

***
Now for those wanting the "rest of the story", it includes that mythic folk hero, Coyote, and a bit of explanation about an unusual word, the stsuq, follows after it.

  

***

If you're like me, you probably wondered "What the heck is a stsuq?" This is answered at the back of the book in the Notes section.

The Coyote version I just gave is considerably different from the version deWitt admits she retold.  To justify her version she cites yet another story which she blended with it.  Unfortunately copyright prevents me from giving it here.  Go to a library to borrow a copy if you're that curious.  Personally, knowing what a trickster Coyote traditionally is, I'm sure he would be amused.

Image by ArtTower from Pixabay

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

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 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!

Mitchell - Biting Marion - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Digger at top of our hill

The bigger the boy, the bigger the toy is the saying.  Little boys love earth moving machines and some never grow out of their love of them.  I'm grateful to have found one of them, Tom Purves, who grew up in his father's excavating business (so it still says A. Purves Excavating). He's not big on having a website, too busy digging, but that link includes my unsolicited five star review.  We've had him on an earlier smaller job and now he's replacing our septic field.

My husband's groaning over "my poor torn-up yard!" That was his title for the photos he sent me.

This shows both the digger off to the right and truck down in the valley with gravel and sand just dumped.

Here's where the septic tank sits and the pipe starts down to the field over the hill.

This is just the start of the chaos!  I've seen a neighbor's septic field and know that gravel, sand, and the box of pipes are just the beginning of "my poor torn-up yard!"  It won't be quick, it won't be cheap, but I'm happy the "mole" digging up our yard is the same boy my yoga teacher knows as Tommy and he is the one doing it.  Our whole (the pun of "hole" also fits) neighborhood is starting to need "poor torn-up yards."  It's enough to excite a preschooler.  By the way, if my opening sentence seems a bit sexist, today's story is mentioned as being a favorite of a little girl named Lydia.

On a blog called The Earthling's Handbook, the author, 'Becca, in 2016 wrote about 4 Great Poetry Books for Young Children for her daughter, Lydia, who was then two years old.  Today's story was mentioned as a favorite in the first volume of the My Book House series edited by Olive Beaupre Miller, whose work has been mentioned here before.  A few pages earlier is the tale of "The Big Street in the Big City", also by Lucy Sprague Mitchell, with the comment that the

"city street scene looks dated to me, but Lydia’s not yet familiar with the stylistic changes in vehicles over time, so to her this is a story of everyday life and how that traffic she sees is all humming along and getting things done as 'little feet skip and patter and dance' in their right place."

It's true the series shows its age in the illustrations, but 'Becca continues her review with

Lydia also loves “Biting Marion”, a story about a female digging machine who loves to chomp through asphalt and spit big mouthfuls of dirt into a truck. (Luckily, imitating Biting Marion at the dinner table is a game that has not occurred to Lydia.)

I might correct her as "Marion" is the male name and "Marian" is the female form of the name, but what the heck, the story reminds me of the classic picture book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, first published in 1939 (and definitely not yet in Public Domain).  Mike Mulligan's steam shovel is named Mary Anne and the story was ranked by the National Education Association as one of the "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children."

Today's story may not earn that exalted ranking, but the author, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, was an educational pioneer founding the justifiably famous, Bank Street College of Education.  She started out being home-schooled because of  uncontrollable nervous twitches.  Eventually she was able to move on, including graduating with honors from Radcliffe College.  Her fascination with Dewey's Progressive Education Movement led her from being University of California, Berkeley's first dean of women students to founding BEE and Bank Street.  Today's story originated in the school's early days when it was still called the Bureau of Educational Experiments (BEE).  It's not Mike Mulligan, Burton's story was a Caldecott Medalist, but that medal is for the illustrator of a story that should also be worthwhile.  I think little Lydia shows Mitchell's story matters where it counts, with the young  audience, and, yes, it includes a bit of poetry.

I think you can see why little Lydia loved Biting Marion and how powerful earth movers are like modern day versions of prehistoric creatures delighting the same children who probably also gobble up books about dinosaurs.  

That same age group loves fingerplays and Flint Public Library's wonderful book Ring a Ring o' Roses, has been mentioned here before.  Here's their bit of poetry:

Steam Shovel

The steam shovel scoop opens its mouth so wide

Extend left hand in front, palm up, fingers closed.  Slowly open fingers.

Then  scoops up the dirt and lays it aside.

Lower hand, dig up dirt, move arm to left and dump it out.

Fortunately for our hillside, the equipment isn't steam powered or it really would result in "my poor torn-up yard!"  Our yard again will eventually look like the park my husband tries to make it, but in the meantime lovers of earth-moving vehicles are welcome to look as long as they stay out of the way.
******************** (The fine print)

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 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!

Eells - How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

I've a great story today and I'd like to tie it in to something happening right now, but don't want to get sued!

This is the weekend for one of the oldest U.S. Highland Games in Livonia and I'll be storytelling there BUT this is from the International Trademark Association about not mentioning some other games. 

2. Which Olympic trademarks are protected in the United States?

The Olympic trademarks protected by U.S. statute (36 U.S.C. § 220506(c)) include the name “UNITED STATES OLYMPIC COMMITTEE”; the symbol of the IOC, consisting of five interlocking rings; the words “Olympic,” “Olympiad” and “Citius Altius Fortius,” and also the words “Paralympic,” “Paralympiad,” “Pan-American” and “America Espirito Sport Fraternite,” or any combination of these words; the emblem of the United States Olympic Committee, consisting of an escutcheon having a blue chief and vertically extending red and white bars on the base with five interlocking rings displayed on the chief; and the symbols of the International Paralympic Committee and the Pan-American Sports Organization, consisting of a torch surrounded by concentric rings.

WOOPS!  That was just a quote from your own website, I.T.A., don't sue me!

This week I heard businesses are being sued or threatened with lawsuit if they use certain phrases and that's even beyond the logo and some words not listed in that bit of legalese.    O.k. I'll take my chances, you may have guessed I chose this story because of a two weeks-long group of athletic contests.  Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek since my blog is in print, but am willing to be cautious in naming it or using various words or phrases, including the name of the city where it's happening.  The International Olympics Committee is especially looking at corporate Tweets, but I remember libraries learning that even the phrase "Go for the ___" and naming a chemical element with the symbol Au and the atomic number 79 is apt to get them sued or at least a "Cease and Desist" order.

Now for the story from Brazil.  At first I thought it was going to be a variant of another very well known story, but trust me, this version originally published in 1917 in Fairy Tales from Brazil by Elsie Spicer Eells is much better than that.

I like this much more than other stories in the motif K 10 - Athletic contest won by deception -- which includes the well-known "Tortoise and the Hare."  The conclusion on this story is really great and certainly goes beyond the usual trickster's methods with a message that doesn't get preachy.

I'm not alone in this, fellow storyteller, Fran Stallings, told me, it "was a childhood favorite and one of the first stories I ever told outside the family. My version of it has become almost a 'signature' story, and is included on my CD of Stories & Songs for a Green Earth."   I prefer print, but while mentioning audio, LibriVox has a recording of Fairy tales from Brazil, too.

You may have noticed my copy comes from the wonderful old multi-volume set, My Book House, edited by yet another fine producer of 20th century anthologies, Olive Beaupré Miller.  I was delighted last week to learn from an antiquarian bookseller that My Book House, which went unappreciated for a long time, is once again popular ... this time with homeschoolers.  In addition to the set, I have a parents' volume giving ideas for using it with children, including music.  The tiny footnote on page 173 is a perfect example.  It says: The brilliant color of Brazil has inspired music as well as folk tales.  "Thou Brilliant Bird" from the opera, Pearl of Brazil, by the romantic French composer, Félicien David, has all the flare and brilliant color of the parrot.

(No, the hot-link isn't in the book, but let's not stop with Miller.)

While searching for information on Elsie Spicer Eells, because of this great little story, I discovered Fairytalez along with a mystery!  I've written the site owner, but have yet to hear back.  The site is generally very fine for lovers of public domain stories as it claims 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.  The mystery was information that contradicted itself between talking about Eells describing her as a female in talking about the Brazilian region but as a male, complete with portrait, on the page about Eells.  Since 1917 was pre-transgender popularity, I searched further.

Just in case it was a case of her being overlooked only online, I checked two standard biographical resources for children's authors, since most folklore was noticed by children's literature.  The Junior Book of Authors series began in 1934.  I have the second edition, so I checked the original volume at Hathitrust, but she wasn't there.  Not surprisingly, she was also omitted from Twentieth Century Children's Writers.

I was able to find the Portuguese Wikipedia article on her which gave me enough leads to find minor bits of information on Ancestry.com but she clearly preferred her privacy and letting her work speak for her.  It is interesting that the Wikipedia article notes her travels in the 1920s and 1930s in several countries as a researcher of the Hispanic Society of America of New York was something unusual at the time.  We tend to forget how early folklorists were pioneers, especially when female. The Hispanic Society of America is a free New York museum and reference library for the study of the arts and cultures of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.  Even there, her work seems to be invisible, but fortunately her books can still be found:

• Fairy Tales from Brazil (1917)
• Tales of Giants from Brazil (1918)
• The Islands of Magic Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores (1922)
• The Magic Tooth and Other Tales From the Amazon (1927)
• South America's Story (1931)
• Tales of Enchantment from Spain (1950).

I'm happy to own two of them, but also that it's possible to find her work even if I don't yet own the book where it was originally published.

UPDATE:
I'm not sure you will drop down to the Comments section and click on it -- I find the Comments section here is less obvious than I might like, but Bri Ahearn of Fairytalez.com gave this response to my mystery above.

I saw your Tweet and email, and discovered the mistake! There was a photo of another storyteller incorrectly attributed on another website as Elsie. I went through the Portuguese Wikipedia and discovered the error, as you did. I also found some information on her on a women in history website. The bio has now been corrected - thank you! We originally thought the author was female, but the picture was incorrectly attributed when we found it, so we thought it was a male author but I dug more and made the right corrections so she can get credit for her wonderful stories!

My favorite Eells story is the Carnation Youth.

Lois: While at it, I realized I'd been thinking of the author's name as the same as the water creature.  I believe the label and blog article title have been changed to the double "l" and I went back through the article changing it.  Speaking from personal experience, people with unusual names are used to such things.
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Here's my new closing for days when I have a story in Keeping the Public in Public Domain. 
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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/
             - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
  
   
  This reminds me, 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 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 after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Time 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 gone, but you can still see it.  I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/. 

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!