Ransome - Fool of the World and the Flying Ship - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Because I knew I would be away for several days in a workshop about arts accessibility for individuals with disabilities, I went looking to see if I could find a good story about an individual considered disabled.  Rather than choose a story where a disability is "cured" like the Native American "Cinderella" tale of "Scarface, I specifically wanted a story where the individual remains different.  I say different because today's tale at times seems hard to qualify and yet it does.  The title character is called a fool and the opening describes him as basically being childlike, even though the people in his life describe him as "simple."  How often is someone with Down's Syndrome or even some on the Autism Spectrum possibly perceived and dismissed this way?  His own parents consider him worthless and focus on his brothers.  Added to that, the company the "Fool" keeps are all different from the typical person. Are they disabled or is it just the way they are perceived?  Perhaps the term "differently abled" is appropiate.  The Tsar's servant dismisses them as just "a lot of dirty peasants."

The great thing about storytelling is it leads us into making pictures in our minds.  "The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship" is one of my favorites in a book of favorite tales -- Arthur Ransome's classic Old Peter's Russian Tales.  Three illustrators have enjoyed making their own pictures of this story.  It's great when more than one illustrator's version of a story can be compared, BUT it should come only after the story's audience has made their own pictures in their minds.  The book has illustrations but mine are more recent than the 1916 edition.  I removed them as they are still under copyright.  Don't let that bother you.  Your own images are just as valuable.  I'll show the covers of the three illustrated picture book versions at the end.  The story is long and involved, but every part of it proves important.

All right, when he wore fine clothes, he was judged quite handsome and was liked by everyone.  I can't help wondering if he changed or, more likely, the royals and the court changed their opinions and only then found value in his way of thinking.  It reminds me of yet another story, "Hans Clodhopper" by Hans Christian Andersen.

I also want to recommend you look at the UPDATE I made on my previous post.  It's at the end of the very short article.  It takes you to Autistic Mama's website and an article about "Autism in Adults -- Signs That May Have Been Missed in Children."

As summer winds down I'm not ready for winter, but wouldn't mind a little bit of that straw to cool summer's heat to slightly cooler temperatures whenever it starts to flare up again.

Amazon offers these three illustrated versions (given in order of their publishing).  If you're good at illustrating, maybe there will be yet a fourth, but we all should have illustrations in our minds.

Illustrated by Uri Shulevitz (& Caldecott winner)

Retold & illustrated by Christopher Denise

Illustrated by Valeri Gorbachev

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And now the "fine print" for Keeping the Public in Public Domain.

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/ 

     
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!

VSA Michigan soon to become ...?

Would you like to win $500?

Not everything I do is publicly posted.  My classroom work is a perfect example and, when it's through VSA Michigan. it's even more private as I work with students in special education classrooms or occasionally mainstreamed classes.  Their award-winning organization has been around since 1977 and I recommend them often.  Now I can't even know what name to tell people about this wonderful organization.  Their name is changing, but not their focus.

In 2019, after being an affiliate of the international network of the VSA and Accessibility Department of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, VSA Michigan now faces a new and exciting challenge of being an independent non-profit organization-- and the need to change its current name. 

Whatever their name, my storytelling and theatre work with them is only one of the many arts disciplines they offer to classrooms and community programs for work with  children and adults with disabilities.  For example, I helped young adults with autism put together and perform a puppet show of Snow White and the Dwarves for their school district's early childhood programs.  They may have learned a bit about theatre, but I learned a bunch, too, from them.

Beyond that I worked as a storyteller in residence over a semester at two locations in Genesee County at five classes with students, culminating in a Show and Share.  Additionally Flint's Institute of Arts hosted Project Choice with several of us as teaching artists involving school groups from the Genesee ISD.  That county is part of 10 Affiliate and Partner organizations throughout the state with programs conducted annually reaching more than 25,000 individuals annually.  

When I mention their focus, it's upon ability, not disability, and upon creativity and achievement.  With some students non-verbal and possibly with severe movement impairments, it's been challenging as I worked for audience involvement.  When I say challenging, I'm still learning and seeking to learn even more because I want to bring stories that enrich the student's lives, or as VSA Michigan says:
•Every person deserves access to appropriate learning experiences in the arts.
•The arts promote understanding and communication for everyone.
•The arts are more than a product, they are a process – it’s the journey that counts.
•The arts in their many forms enhance a person’s humanity.

When I tell people about their work, I find myself recommending people get in touch with them to see about bringing their arts education to yet another community.  Their educational work is well known, but community arts and cultural organization also can benefit from their expertise in aiding accessibility.  I still will recommend them, but what will the name be?  

At the same time their training for teaching artists, educators, college students, and community arts education providers continues with their annual Community of Progress Workshop.  It runs from August 19 to 21.  (This is why I'm posting this earlier than my usual Saturday schedule.  It's last minute, but not too late to get involved.  If this sounds like you, too -- go to the organization's link at the beginning of this article).  I'm looking forward to its emphasis on learning strategies for teaching students on the autism spectrum and with  behavioral challenges. This isn't the first of these sessions I've attended and know it will give practical ideas to learn inclusive strategies to create a successful environment in the classroom and for teaching the arts to differentiated learners.  I closed out the past school year craving even more training and will travel to the Workshop knowing there will be tons to absorb.  I'm told it uses the principles of Universal Design for Learning while minimizing behavioral problems.  (Hmmm, sounds like that enhances all work or personal interaction.)  The workshop is up north at Higgins Lake near Roscommon and expect to be offline, so the second half of next week will mean playing "catch up."  

I expect next week's article will be a posting of Keeping the Public in Public Domain prepared this week.

UPDATE:

This is perfect as an update to the VSA Michigan (name soon to change) Conference I just attended. Also go to <https://autisticmama.com/signs-of-autism-in-adults/> which points out how we grew up at a time when this was misunderstood. It's a Spectrum with great variety. Even w/o having autism, there are overlaps to help people understand more.

Have you wondered if you might be autistic?
You've GOT to check out this post!