Deihl - The Three Bells - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Stating something obvious, but unsaid is called "mentioning the elephant in the room."  This New Year's elephant, leaving 2020 for 2021, deserves considering.  Artists have a way of putting things in many ways, including t-shirts and posters.  An artist calling himself MoTasS on Redbubble.com created this poster and it's also on t-shirts there.

Poster & tees on Redbubble.com by MoTasS

I found a New Year's story also related to coping with seeing either the positives or negatives in life.  It's called "The Three Bells" and I found an illustration that led me to more information I'll give later.  The story matches my long-time wondering how people living near churches ringing bells feel about it.

That "The End" is for the entire book, Holiday-Time Stories by Edna Groff Deihl.  While Deihl wrote several books for children, the only online information I could find was her Harrisburg, Pennsylvania grave and she lived from 1881-1935.  She also isn't remembered in print biographical reference works on children's authors. This book never had its 1930 copyright renewed.  It's rather like the bell that stopped ringing as it entered the Thirties, a decade those of us leaving 2020 should remember.  

This past year has had so many leave us forever, it has been hard to remember them all.  I know churches have gotten creative in continuing their services, many can be found online at YouTube and some continue in-person in parking lots.  I don't know if church bells continue to ring at their usual times or possibly extra as a memorial.  The three bells shown at the beginning of today's post came from a Chicago Tribune article on how churches in that area rang a memorial back in April.  Remember April was when the current pandemic was looking its worst while we tried to "flatten the curve."  Now winter has brought both the hope of starting vaccine shots and the despair of far larger spikes in deaths.  May the end of one year and the start of another bring remembrance and reflection in many ways.

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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!

Bailey - The Pie That Grew - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Thanksgiving in 2020 definitely will be different.  Whether you call the current pandemic Coronavirus, Covid-19, just Covid, or even the overly cutsie 'Rona, it has brought changes and a new way of talking.  Personally I disagree with some terms, such as calling it "The New Normal" as it really should be called the "Temporary Normal."  While there may be some truth to saying we are keeping "Socially Distant", I believe, with the need to fight loneliness and depression, it would seem better to keep "Physically Distant."

Here in my area I'm seeing Christmas lights appear on houses already.  Usually that waited until the Thanksgiving weekend.  This may be due partially to a few unexpected but brief warm spells.  My bet is it's also an attempt to brighten what is looking like the start of a dark gloomy winter.  The holidays usually get the darkest time of the year off to a brighter start.  This year the question of how to enjoy them has become a major news item.

While "Physically Distant", families are figuring out ways to avoid truly being "Socially Distant."  Zoom calls, Facebook, Skype, even the good old telephone will be some of the ways to do this.  While I'm not eager to eat in a Zoom call and watch others eat, I do hope to have time for all my family to talk with each other.  I've already been asked to tell a story and maybe some of you will choose to tell a bit of family history.  I plan to tell the following story by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey and then see if we, as a group, can use it to make our own story.  I'll say more about that after her tale.

Some of you may be familiar with the idea of a Cumulative Story.  It means something keeps getting added to the story, while repeating the earlier elements.  That's an easy tale to create.  Whether everybody in the group has to take turns or it's left to members volunteering an answer, the "bones" of the story is easily able to be used to make a whole new story.

First decide the time when the story takes place.  Bailey chose Thanksgiving, but it could be Christmas, a birthday, summer, whatever is volunteered.  Then who is delivering the "goods"?  Who will be getting them?  Start with somebody giving an item to be delivered.  How will the item be delivered?  (Bobby had a bicycle but who knows how your delivery will happen?)  Have that delivery get interrupted by someone else, but they have to add an item.  Keep adding interruptions and items until someone finally gets everything delivered.  (Possibly collapsing while finally delivering it all?)

There's no limit to how this could happen.  It doesn't even have to be delivered by people.  Imagine, for example, a pony is hitched to a cart with the first item and maybe other people or animals keep adding to it until finally the cart is full and reaches its destination.

Don't worry if the story gets silly.  It's not likely to win an award although Bailey did win a Newbery medal in 1947 for the children's novel, Miss Hickory.  She also produced many anthologies and this one is from The Wonderful Tree.  

As a storyteller friend of mine, Loretta Vitek says, "There's always a story; it would be a shame not to tell it."  Whether your stories are true or created from imagination, I hope your Thanksgiving adds only pleasant stories to look back at this very different Thanksgiving and the rest of our holidays.

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

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!

"Nobody gets out alive!"

Back in 2013 I took a sabbatical while managing Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  I'm delighted it's in my rear-view mirror, but at the time I accepted a possibly different end, saying "Nobody gets out alive!"  This weekend seems determined to remind us that death comes to all of us.

This century has seen terrorism with 9/11 starting it.  The pandemic has also taken many away.  (Let's not have a "twindemic" -- get your flu shot.  At the end of today's blog there's a bit of information I'm sometimes asked about the end of the Spanish Influenza which was the pandemic of the 20th century.)  Additional deaths are occurring out west with fires.  Protests are nationwide around the U.S. about deaths caused by police action.  Locally a seemingly "freak accident" started this month with a falling tree killing a man driving a busy road, while his daughter as a passenger was spared.

This sent me looking for a story probably best known as "An Appointment in Samarra."  I was surprised to not find it in folklore indices.  It has been used by a variety of authors.  Most recent attention came when used on the 2017 television show, Sherlock.  There is no reason to "reinvent the wheel" of research.  Feel free to put "An Appointment in Samarra" in your favorite search engine.  The blog by Abdul Fatir does an excellent job of giving three versions and tracing the story's origins.  He gives the paragraph of W. Somerset Maugham's telling.  If you're academically inclined,  Kansas State University instructor, Lyman Baker, has a study guide to it.  To really get academic, "Professor Rau" has an online discussion of if it's a fable, allegory, or parable.

Abdul Fatir's Blog, however, gets us into its origins.  He remembers his mother telling something similar, so he went looking and finds its earliest known version in the Babylonian Talmud tale of King Solomon (or Sulaiman in Arabic).  He further adds a slightly longer Islamic literary version.  Going into the post's comments, Rich Horton gives a three paragraph version from Edith Wharton's autobiography that she said Jean Cocteau told her from "a story he read somewhere."  

Hmmm.  Like Death, the tale does get around.  There are YouTube versions and Alvin Schwartz in Scary Stories 3 gives us a modern version.  If you choose to tell it, clearly it has plenty of meat, like a stew bone, for you to make it your own.  

I promised also to answer the question about how the Spanish Influenza ended.  Yet again it's some copyrighted material, in this case from the Washington Post.  While it may give us hope in the current pandemic, there still is a need to remember death comes to us all as "Nobody gets out alive!"