Beecher - The Anxious Leaf - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Long before the late Leo Buscaglia's classic look at life and death from the viewpoint of a leaf in 1982's The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, today's little story from the viewpoint of "The Anxious Leaf" appeared.  It's in an early 20th century series of textbooks by E.C. Hartwell I find most useful, Story Hour Readings, in this case for the Fourth Year.  There is a bit of suggestions at the end for ways to use it in class added by Doctor Hartwell, but the story originates with Henry Ward Beecher.  The book gives the simplest of author's biography, suitable for a child, but his own life seems right out of today's news and I'll give more after the story.  I'll also add ways to use it.

It's a simple enough story and I like to include the sort of supplementary books a One Room School Teacher might include in her classroom when doing my program on One Room Schools as I did this past week, but it has many uses beyond that.

Of course teachers like to assign leaf identification as it's an easy assignment at this time of year.  I'm a longtime member of the Arbor Day Foundation and believe strongly in their goals of planting trees where they are so needed.  As a result I recommend purchasing their pocket field guides, "What Tree Is That?", which now even has an iPhone app. (I hope they soon do one for Android.)

Also colorful autumn leaves have a multitude of craft uses.  Google "leaf crafts" for more than you could possibly use.  There are crafts all the way from preschoolers to adult.  I like to mention how the One Room School Teachers would give the little ones a simple craft related to what they were studying.  I even show a large early 20th century book of "manual seatwork" with the kind of simple crafts we all should experience in school or in after-school activities.

Of course fallen leaves are useful also to gardeners.  The "Old Farmer's Almanac" urges using them instead of sending them to a landfill.

Beyond the One Room School I will soon be back doing classroom residencies and work with homeschoolers.  This little story is a perfect introduction to getting into the mind of an inanimate object and creating an adventure or even a biography.

Now speaking of biographies, I promised the author would fit right into today's news: People magazine would notice his famous family (his father, Lyman Beecher, was the best-known evangelist of his day, while his brothers and sisters were also prominent, especially his famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin); he was a popular public speaker beyond the pulpit; he was an abolitionist, which today continues in the crusade against human trafficking; supported the suffragists and temperance, which could be called women's issues; then came a scandal worthy of the "Me, Too" movement from which he was officially exonerated.  Take a look at least at Wikipedia, but you should also search for Henry Ward Beecher quotes.  There are well over 300 and many are illustrated in a style worthy of inspirational posters.

Of course my favorite is

I hope you feel the same about keeping alive the many stories that are part of the 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!

The One-Room Schoolteacher Looks at Education

Crack the Whip - by Winslow Homer (public domain, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in U.S.)

Earlier this month my One-Room Schoolteacher program was presented at Reminisce programs in a pair of Capital Area District Libraries.  I also am booked this summer for a one-room school reunion.  All of this had me reviewing the program.  Online the Michigan Arts and Humanities Touring Directory has a video clip from an earlier performance of the program on YouTube.  I have been given continued acceptance in the directories and will be continuing in 2019-2021.  Can't recall when I first went into the directory, it's been so long!, but the Michigan Arts and Humanities Touring Grants are an excellent source for state non-profit financial assistance.  I further commend and support the Michigan Humanities Council for their work on behalf of our state's cultural climate and remember their grant-writing workshops from when I was writing successful mini-grants as a librarian.  They even have an online video to help learn how to write grants!  Our state Humanities Council works hard to help even the most remote location here in Michigan.  I've always found the staff helpful, so contact them by phone, email, or fax with your questions and comments.

While looking at my complete program I noticed an audience question about when the grading system changed to letter grades.  The best answer comes from a site called Classroom which gave the History of Grading Systems.  Colleges wanting to evaluate applicants were the first to seek a standard method.  Online discussions there make me aware that the percentages for an A, B, C, et cetera may differ as well as being controversial, but their paragraph on early K-12 grades shows evaluation shifted when compulsory education began.  Suddenly the number of U.S. public high schools went from 500 to 10,000 in the forty years from 1870 to 1910.  In my program about Liberetta Lerich Green I often mention her daughter Loa, who was a bit of an educational pioneer here in Michigan, including teaching science at Big Rapids when it was one of those few early high schools.  She will be the subject of a future article here.

Teachers have always found grading the least enjoyable part of their duties.  A fellow storyteller, Anthony Burcher, tells the following story and swears it's true.
"True story: during one of my Freshman years in college, this senior, her name was Bernadine, had a professor not turn in her grades on time and they were not going to let her graduate. A lot of us went to the dean's office, sat on his lawn and began chanting, 'Bernadine, Bernadine!' In hindsight, it was not our best chant and did explain why a lot of us got arrested for making threats."

If that doesn't make sense, read it out loud.

Oh, Anthony!

Well back to serious stuff.  Did you realize that McGuffey, yes, the one behind more than a century of Readers, believed in bringing fun into the classroom?   O.k. we may not think of Spelling Bees in that category, but it was revolutionary back in the 19th century from his origins as a "roving" teacher at the age of 14, beginning with 48 students in a one-room school.  His students brought their own books, most frequently the Bible, since few textbooks existed.  Try having a union contract with that class size and conditions!  Wikipedia has the usual articles on him and his Readers, but the same information and more originated with and can be found in the New World Encyclopedia  article about him.  I love his instruction to teachers to read aloud to their classes.  This statue honoring him has an interesting rear.

Frank R. Snyder at Miami U. posted these on Wikimedia Commons

I didn't realize the McGuffey's Readers most used from 1879 on were not by him nor was their content approved by him even though they carried his name.  Those are the readers most people know and use, including my One-Room Schoolteacher persona.  An unnamed newspaper article came in one of my books saying that "Although royalty payments from his famous Readers had ceased long before he arrived in Virginia (LoiS: 1845 according to New World Encyclopedia), McGuffey eventually received some additional funds for later revisions.  And after the Civil War, the grateful publishers also gave him an annuity--a barrel of choice smoked hams every Christmas."

Here in the greater Detroit area Henry Ford's attributed his own education and moral views to the Readers, but they were McGuffey's original series.  The original books were criticized for their anti-minority ethnic and religious views with Native Americans called "savages" and anti-Semitic comments typical of the 1830s.  The attempt of the later edition according to the current publisher, John Wiley & Sons was "to meet the needs of national unity and the dream of an American 'melting pot' for the worlds' oppressed masses."  Today we may object to some of those earlier views the New World Encyclopedia attributes as "Most prominent post-Civil War and turn-of-the-century American figures credited their initial success in learning to the Readers, which provided a guide to what was occurring in the public school movement and in American culture during the nineteenth century."

That same unnamed newspaper tells about Henry Ford's purchase of the McGuffey family home and barn near Youngstown, Ohio and taking the barn timbers to make a one-room school.  (LoiS: it must have been just over the state line as The Henry Ford lists it as being originally in Pennsylvania.)  Ford's Greenfield Village is where you can see those buildings among others at this major tourist attraction here in Dearborn in the shadow of a Ford factory. 

The Henry Ford website had those two items among 42 on their own One-Room Schools collection.  For students about to visit a one-room school or others of us interested in one-room schools, their online digitized collection is worth visiting.

In my talking with attendees to my program I find they regret the loss of religious values -- the revised Readers retain religious views without the "Calvinist values of salvation, righteousness, and piety, so prominent in the early Readers." (I'm not sure if that quote originates with the New World Encyclopedia or the publishers of the Wiley editions.  My own revised editions are reprints predating Wiley.) 

Another major complaint is the loss of cursive writing in today's schools.  It has become a mystery to today's children with adults at the programs complaining children can't read the letters they have sent to them.  One grandparent even talked about sitting down with her grandchild, showing the importance of having a signature, and helping create one.  We're heading back to the days where the illiterate signed by making an X!

Here are the final two lessons, LI and LII (yes, Roman numerals for 51 and 52) in the very earliest book, the Primer, given to children as young as five.  It shows these more secular, but still religious values, and is followed by "slate exercises."  Each lesson opens with new vocabulary.  Some of the earlier lessons include sentences in manuscript or cursive writing as early as lesson five.  Could today's five year old students manage that?  I don't give all of the penmanship exercises here, but, maybe the final page of the script alphabet will be helpful showing the upper and lower case letters. 

 

I was taught to write a few of my own letters differently, but can usually decipher earlier handwriting when reading historical documents.  Will today's children be able to do that if they can't even read messages accompanying their birthday gifts?

If you are interested in bringing my grant-qualifying programs, including the One-Room Schoolteacher, check out my website at http://www.lois-sez.com/ and also contact me. 

Corrections . . . or Nobody's A Nobody

2018 is barely started and, just as New Year's Resolutions are a form of corrections, I'm finding a pair of corrections needed on my blog, yet each of them got me singing.

David Quesal said it's not a biggie that last week I called Truggs "Trugg" even in my article's title.  I can see why he feels that way when you consider how many puppets are part of the Quesal Puppet Troupe after their tenth anniversary last September.  I disagree with David a bit after hearing this great video cover by Truggs and all his puppet friends performing the song "Nobody's a Nobody" with the various members of his puppet troupe.  Love the lyrics of "Nobody's a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me and everybody is weird like you and me!"  I am impressed with how many videos you can find of this wacky puppet vision.  For many more go to the David Quesal channel on YouTube.  There is also a secondary channel.

 

But I did say this was CorrectionS.  I'm already preparing to bring back my One-Room School teacher program and found a correction needed from a much older post.  In all fairness, I never used the part missing so far.  I took it from online posts of the song about the presidents as sung to Yankee Doodle.  Since the next time I will be doing the program, I'm going further into the 20th century, I began to realize President McKinley had been skipped!  Here's the song from August 10, 2014! with my addition of the 25th president -- what a difference one line (and life) makes.  Because I also gave links and talk about the original source I'm including a bit more than just the song between the asterisks.
***
I'm going to insert Wikipedia links for easy access to basic information on each president.  Wherever those links don't explain a historical reference I'll either add that parenthetically or as a link.

George Washington, the choice of all,

By Adams was succeeded.

Then came Thomas Jefferson

Who bought the land we needed.

Madison was called upon

To keep our noble men.     (I presume this is about England impressing U.S. sailors)

And James Monroe ushered in

The Era of Good Feelings.

John Quincy Adams was the next

And then came Andrew Jackson

And after him Van Buren came

And the Panic's wild distraction.

Then Harrison for one month ruled,  (death by pneumonia introduces "The Curse")

And Tyler came in order,

And Polk and War with Mexico,

About a little border.

Then General Taylor was the choice,

But after one year only

Death called the hero to his rest

And left the chair to Fillmore.

Then Pierce and James Buchanan came

And the War closed thickly lower.

And Lincoln was the chosen one,

The statesman for the hour.

Then after Lincoln’s martyrdom,

Johnson of Tennessee.

And Grant a war time here

The Silent Man was he.     (? His throat cancer came after the presidency)

Then R.B. Hayes was counted in, then

Garfield, second martyr,

Whose term was ended peaceably by

Chester Alan Arthur.

Next Cleveland came and Harrison, (grandson of first President Harrison)

Then Cleveland came once more.

McKinley wore a martyr's crown before his term was over,

Then Roosevelt came to serve the state,

The people called him Teddy.

Then William Howard Taft came on,

For duty ever ready.

Then Woodrow Wilson came to fill the

Loftiest of stations.

He steered the Ship of State throughout

The World War of the Nations.

Next Harding ruled a few short months, (half of his term)

And Coolidge then succeeded.

Hoover served his country well

Wherever he is needed.
The text for this song was found in an excellent PioneerSchool Teacher Guide put together for the Fort Worth Log Cabin Village) with the assistance of Heritage Village School, Lincoln Nebraska, Diane Winans, Eagle Mountain Elementary, Shelly Couch, Saginaw Elementary, and the Log Cabin Village Staff.

This song goes to the early 1930s as views of Hoover and the Depression probably would change the final two lines.  It's an interesting challenge to update the song, throwing in an occasional memorable fact which also helps the rhyme.  World War I might need rewording to allow for World War II.  There's certainly more a teacher might want to cover on presidents than the few comments of the song, but it does help make history and presidential names more memorable than mere name recital to Yankee Doodle.  

Music was certainly more than just a memory aid.

***
While we're thinking about the one-room school teacher, here's me on YouTube telling a few stories from the program as used in the current 2015-18 Michigan Humanities Touring Directory.  (If you want to find my listing, go to page 52 -- shared with a listing for Gwendolyn Lewis.)  The current round of grants are again open at Michigan Humanities Council .  If you happen to see this at a time when grants are closed, check back as there are repeated rounds throughout the year and is a great way for non-profits to afford my program and many other fine Michigan performers.

One-Room Schools and Music

The One-Room Schoolteacher program is adaptable because rural one and two-room schools cover a long time in U.S. history.  This coming week I'll do programs related to pioneer times in the "Wild, Wild West."  Here in Michigan our pioneer times were in the first half of the 19th century.  Teachers out west in the second half of that century faced many of the same challenges, but had added materials and ideas of the times.

Music was both an enrichment of classroom time and an educational tool.  We've all probably chanted or rapped the multiplication tables.  Nowadays Multiplication Rock is popular and Mr. R's World of Math and Science gives math songs from Early Learning through a bit of geometry.  The best example of educational use going back in time is in a song using Yankee Doodle to tell of the Presidents and often a brief bit of history. For just the presidents' names still to the tune of Yankee Doodle, this YouTube version goes all the way up to the second Bush in 2007.  YouTube also has many other songs for the topic, a few even "piggyback" existing songs to learn the presidents.

The Mountain Democrat newspaper for Placerville, California on July first, 1893 posted this version of Yankee Doodle as written by J.D. Elder, a teacher from the Burwood School.


George Washington, first President,
By Adams was succeeded.
Tom Jefferson was next the choice;
The people’s cause he pleaded.
Madison was then called forth
To give John Bull a peeling.
James Monroe had all the go
In the “Era of Good Feeling.”
‘Twas J.Q. Adams then came in
And next came Andrew Jackson,
Who’d licked John Bull at New Orleans
With such great satisfaction.
Then Van Buren took the chair;
Then Harrison and Tyler –
The latter made the Whigs so mad
They thought they’d “bust their biler.”
We then elected James K. Polk;
The issue that did vex us
Was, “Shall we ‘do up’ Mexico
And ‘take in’ little Texas?”
Taylor then got in the chair,
But soon had to forsake it.
Millard Filmore filled it more,
Frank Pierce then said, “I’ll take it.”
Old Jim Buchanan next popped in.
Abe Lincoln then was chosen;
He found the current of events
Was anything but frozen.
Andy Johnson had a time;
The Senate would impeach him,
But as it took a two-thirds vote
They lacked one vote to reach him.
And now we come to U.S. Grant,
The man who fought at Shiloh,
And Hayes and Garfield, who was shot –
They both came from Ohio.
Arthur then the scepter held,
To Cleveland turned it over.
Ben Harrison sandwiches in,
And now again it’s Grover.

That's certainly a good song up through 1897 when Grover Cleveland's second term ended.  I prefer one that goes a bit into the 20th century since my programs aren't always just pioneer times.  Another plus is that for this program I can stop at an appropriate point in the song by ending with Chester Alan Arthur changing the words to "Whose term we hope ends peaceably with Chester Alan Arthur."  This also is a song that lets me include a great story about the Curse of Tecumseh  or Tippecanoe.  The Curse of presidents elected every 20 years started with Governor Harrison and ended with President Reagan.  There's a fascinating story behind it!

I'm going to insert Wikipedia links for easy access to basic information on each president.  Wherever those links don't explain a historical reference I'll either add that parenthetically or as a link.

George Washington, the choice of all,

By Adams was succeeded.

Then came Thomas Jefferson

Who bought the land we needed.

Madison was called upon

To keep our noble men.     (I presume this is about England impressing U.S. sailors)

And James Monroe ushered in

The Era of Good Feelings.

John Quincy Adams was the next

And then came Andrew Jackson

And after him Van Buren came

And the Panic's wild distraction.

Then Harrison for one month ruled,  (death by pneumonia introduces "The Curse")

And Tyler came in order,

And Polk and War with Mexico,

About a little border.

Then General Taylor was the choice,

But after one year only

Death called the hero to his rest

And left the chair to Fillmore.

Then Pierce and James Buchanan came

And the War closed thickly lower.

And Lincoln was the chosen one,

The statesman for the hour.

Then after Lincoln’s martyrdom,

Johnson of Tennessee.

And Grant a war time here

The Silent Man was he.     (? His throat cancer came after the presidency)

Then R.B. Hayes was counted in, then

Garfield, second martyr,

Whose term was ended peaceably by

Chester Alan Arthur.

Next Cleveland came and Harrison, (grandson of first President Harrison)

Then Cleveland came once more.

Then Roosevelt came to serve the state,

The people called him Teddy.

Then William Howard Taft came on,

For duty ever ready.

Then Woodrow Wilson came to fill the

Loftiest of stations.

He steered the Ship of State throughout

The World War of the Nations.

Next Harding ruled a few short months, (half of his term)

And Coolidge then succeeded.

Hoover served his country well

Wherever he is needed.

The text for this song was found in an excellent PioneerSchool Teacher Guide put together for the Fort Worth Log Cabin Village) with the assistance of Heritage Village School, Lincoln Nebraska, Diane Winans, Eagle Mountain Elementary, Shelly Couch, Saginaw Elementary, and the Log Cabin Village Staff.

This song goes to the early 1930s as views of Hoover and the Depression probably would change the final two lines.  It's an interesting challenge to update the song, throwing in an occasional memorable fact which also helps the rhyme.  World War I might need rewording to allow for World War II.  There's certainly more a teacher might want to cover on presidents than the few comments of the song, but it does help make history and presidential names more memorable than mere name recital to Yankee Doodle.  

Music was certainly more than just a memory aid.  Next time I'll look at Old Time Music resources for programs.