"World War I and America" series

Today I'm speaking just to people able to attend events in the metro Detroit area BUT before you stop reading, since this is about a program that is grant funded, if you would like to bring my storytelling program your way, it may help to know my storytelling is recognized as grant worthy and is also part of the Michigan Humanities Council's Arts and Humanities Touring Directory.  The 2017 Arts and Humanities Touring Directory Grants are closed, but plan now for grants for 2018.  I value creative thinking and will work with you on funding your program, whether by a grant from the Humanities Council or elsewhere, or a sponsorship, or another way to bring storytelling to your audiences.
 
Storytelling can be included as part of a series offering varied approaches.  Telling about the U.S. World War I Centennial my Hello Girls program has sometimes been scheduled in mixed company.  I don't usually list my programs here, but because it gives an opportunity to discover such a rich assortment of experience by the various leaders, if you can join this series, I hope you will.  For readers able to go, here is further information.  To register, click on the underlined hotlinks given below.  The Orion Township Public Library location and contact information is given at the end.

The Orion Township Public Library has received a World War I and America grant, which marks the 100th anniversary of the nation’s entry into the war in 1917.  World War I and America’s principal objective is to bring veterans and their families together with the general public to explore the American experience of war and its role in shaping the contemporary world by reading, discussing, and sharing insights into the writings of Americans who experienced it firsthand.
To that end, we hope you can attend any or all of the following programs:

World War I and America Book Discussion Series

Wednesdays, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM for Students, Adults, and
Senior Citizens

Join Oakland University's Dr. Karen Miller as she moderates a series of three discussions of readings drawn from the book World War I and America: Told by the Americans Who Lived It. In compiling World War I and America, distinguished scholars were invited to write brief essays related to World War I. The writers - soldiers, airmen, nurses, diplomats, statesmen, political activists, journalists — provide unique insight into how Americans perceived the war and how the conflict transformed American life. This evening the readings and discussion will follow the following themes:

• Why Fight? October 11
• The Experience of War October 18
• Race and World War I  October 25

Register for the whole series or any of the evenings online, and stop by the library to pick up the readings being discussed so that you can read them ahead of time. Discussions will also include other forms of media related to each evening's themes. 

Monday Evening Book Discussion

Monday, October 16,  7:00 PM to 8:30 PM for Adults

Discuss Ernest Hemingway's classic A Farewell to Arms

Copies are available now at the Adult Reference desk.

The rest of the series:

World War I “Hello Girl”, Oleda Joure Christides

Wednesday, November 1 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM for All Ages

World War I was won not only on the battlefield, but also at the phone switchboard. Join local storyteller Lois Keel as she shares the story of how bilingual operators helped General Pershing in France. Oleda was a Michigan teenager, a weekend musician, and a telephone supervisor who saw it all, including a 60 year battle to win veteran’s status.

 PTSD: a discussion for veterans and their families

Tuesday, November 14 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM for All Ages

Dr. Eric BeShears, clinical psychologist, with the John D. Dingell, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, will speak on the topic of PTSD and Moral Injury. The program is especially geared towards veterans and their family members, or anyone whose lives PTSD had affected. Topics discussed will include what PTSD is, what it looks like to loved ones, the toll it takes on family members, and what happens if PTSD is not treated. Also discussed will be the relatively new issue that is being addressed in the mental health field, Moral Injury. Dr. BeShears welcomes questions throughout his discussion, and the program can become as interactive as the audience prefers.

The Makings of Americans: A WWI Home Front Story

Saturday, November 18 from 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM for All Ages

Historian Dennis Skupinski will present an interactive program about WWI and Michigan. Michigan's work force included many European workers who were affected when Michigan's industry was needed for the war effort. How did these workers react to war on their former countries? George Creel and the Committee on Public Information who promoted Nationalism, combating dissent and creating a patriotic "Home Front", will also be discussed. Veterans of any war and their families are invited attend and will have the opportunity to share their stories and/or reactions to the topics discussed.

 

This series is part of World War I and America, a two-year national initiative of The Library of America presented in partnership with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the National World War I Museum and Memorial, and other organizations, with generous support from The National Endowment for the Humanities.

825 Joslyn Road, Lake Orion, MI  48362

For more information contact reference@orionlibrary.org or call 248-693-3001.

Harvest Tales / Bailey - Haying Time - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Autumn is a last gasp of summer's bounty, whether food or festivals.  Many now celebrate Harvest Festivals, so today I want to give a few ideas of how I (and you) do that in story.  Recently this program was around the campfire at a Yogi Bear Jellystone Park, so I'll also show how that camp was featured, although I've told at state parks and other campgrounds.

I like to start out with a bit of audience participation and began with a Jamaican tale found in Philip Sherlock's Anansi the Spider Man.  Unfortunately its copyright won't permit my giving it here, but I get the audience joining me in the chant of all those yams "On one leg, on two legs, on three legs, and four" coming after Tigre chanting the title of  "Ticky-Picky Boom-Boom" three times over, ending with Boof!  Because some little audience members were there, I make Tigre as dumb as possible and have a satisfying end when goat knocks them all into the water and later they make a great yam feast.  Don't want nightmares, although nightmares come from children working out other problems.

The group was young enough I didn't use the Caucasian tale of "Buried Treasure", instead using the Brothers Grimm story of "Cat and Mouse in Partnership" where the cat harvests something they were supposedly going to share and now they are no longer friends.  About this time a stretch was needed and the camp action "song" of "Hi, My name is Joe, and I work at the button factory" was changed to "Hi, my name is Yogi and I live at Jellystone Park.  One day the Ranger came and he said, 'Are you busy Yogi?'  I said 'No', so he said 'Then do this with your right paw'..."  Yogi waves; next the other paw harvests; then his feet stamp grapes; the ranger has him bang his head forward; finally when he asks, 'Are you busy Yogi?'  I said 'YES!'  The audience now was ready for "Tops and Bottoms" a tale told in many parts of the world about a trickster and a dupe (in this case a bear) agreeing to garden together with one getting the tops of what is grown and the other getting the bottoms.  The audience chooses either root crops or something where the top is eaten with our bear losing for two years straight, but finally smart enough to end the partnership.  The familiar song about "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" substituted Yogi for the word "Bear" and he was seeking honey.  I next told the Native American story about "The First Strawberries."  While a picture book of this by Joseph Bruchac identifies it as a Cherokee tale, I know of at least one book of Michigan tales from our Anishinaabe with the story, so, like the initial Anansi tale I said traveled in the minds of slaves from Africa to Jamaica, I believe this story also traveled.  It is told among more than one of our Native American nations and I tell it as an Anishinaabe might.  I also stress that in the beginning Gitchi Manito (usually translated the Great Spirit) made all three of the fruits right then.  I start with blueberries since I was in an area known for blueberries, including U-Pick farms, explaining raspberries now are harvested in autumn, with strawberries in the spring.

Here's where today's Public Domain story appeared.  I definitely re-told it since they needed a quick introduction to Arthur Scott Bailey's Cuffy Bear, who has appeared here in other Public Domain postings.  I also explained how, before tractors, horses mowed hay and I taught the audience to make the sound effect of the blades in Cuffy's adventure.  Here's a wonderful picture of such a team in action.

Photographer (Steve) Sam Jackson's Flickr picture of

Mr John Dodd and his lovely working horses at Silly Wrea farm near Allendale in Northumberland

All rights reserved. but permission graciously given by "Yorkshire Sam"...be sure to check out his Facebook page, too, at

  https://www.facebook.com/YorkshireSamphotography/

This is a two-part adventure and at the division I'll keep the page without cropping to avoid the size difference when the first part ends, but keep reading as Cuffy is Cuffy, and that bear's guaranteed to get into trouble.  Also see how Baked Beans + a Bear = trouble.

 

After that, for those little ones needing a night-night bit of repetition, I told something sometimes called a "French Irritating Tale."  I prefer calling them Unending Stories, but it's about a king who loves stories and promises half his kingdom to anyone telling a story that gets him to call out "STOP!"  This of course happens when "an ant went into the barn and took another grain of wheat..." is the story over and over.

Finally I officially finished by telling in voice and sign language, teaching the signs, to a story with many versions.  A recent version, The Magic Bojabi Tree, adapted by Dianne Hofmeyr attributes it to a 1923 version about the African tree able to provide all the fruits of the world if the animals just call out its unusual name.  I'm sure I have seen an earlier anthology with it, but haven't gone hunting for it.  I use a different name easily finger-spelled and from yet another picture book version of it.

By this time I had a few devoted listeners not wanting to leave, so I told the "Fill the House" story of three children of an old farmer with only the farm to leave to whomever is wisest.  The same money is given to all three and the farm would go to whomever spends it to fill the farmhouse.  The first bought balloons, but that didn't fill it.  The second bought candles which filled much, but not all the house's dark spaces.  The third spent it on inviting friends to fill the house with story and song and it did.  I said we had filled Yogi's campground with story and song and now this "encore" was for them to fill wherever they went with what they had heard and helped tell.

http://www.southhavenjellystone.com/

A great harvest indeed at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park in South Haven and beyond.

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

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/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - 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.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", 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 gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine 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/.  
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!

Talk Like a Pirate / Pyle - "The Pirate Avary" - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Seen last weekend while storytelling in South Haven...Piracy on the Great Lakes?!?

AAARGH!  Facebook's International Talk Like A Pirate Day says Krispy Kreme after 4 years isn't giving out free donuts on September 19, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, BUT Long John Silver's is upping the ante with a "bar of gold"... a Deep Fried Twinkie.  (With pirates you expected health food?!?)

For a great Public Domain book on Pirates, you really must see Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates or as the title page explains: Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main.  (I challenge you to read the first chapter to learn how they came to be known as "buccaneers" and also about the practice of marooning.) Howard Pyle was both illustrator and author.  I value his anthologies and no less than Vincent Van Gogh said Pyle's artwork "struck me dumb with admiration."  The pirate book just comes in under the wire as Public Domain and was compiled by his publisher, Harper, and Merle Johnson, after his death.

To challenge you to hunt up the book brimming with pirate pictures, I won't give more than the book's traditional cover and this brief story about a pirate fun to tell.  Avast, maties!

No picture of the Captain is known, but the Avarians are an ethnic subgroup within the Russian Caucasus known for their warlike origins.  Prior to invading the Caucasus they were in the mix of Eastern Europe known as Pannonia in the late 8th and early to mid-9th century

Source: The forum at Paradox Interactive - specifically https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cultures-in-pannonia-and-its-surroundings-in-769-and-867.959369/

It's the perfect background for an early Pirate.  It's enough to Shiver me timbers!
********* 
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/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - 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.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", 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 gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine 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/.  
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!

D'Aulnoy - The White Cat - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

What about wearing white after Labor Day?  Google "Why no wearing white after Labor Day?" and take your pick of sites for an answer taking you back to Turn of the Twentieth Century fashion snobs  and how the rule taught Baby Boomers and earlier has ended.  (Personally I like Huffington Post's article, tongue firmly in cheek, saying "19 Reasons You Really Shouldn't Wear White After Labor Day", then shows each "reason" being broken.)  I wear white these days because my husky/malamute mix (Malamutt) is shedding to get his old white undercoat out and the new winter layer in. 

The two breeds and their Samoyed cousins are so notorious for this you can find tons of products and online images. It's only one of the reasons I worried when I heard huskies and malamutes are becoming popular with Game of Thrones fans seeking their own "direwolves."  That link gives reasons why this is a mistake.  Shedding is the least of it.  They're pack animals, probably the closest to their wolf ancestors in personality, and notoriously difficult to train for anything but what they consider important.  I always tell people expressing an interest in having one: Don't make this your first dog!  

Those of us who love them, however, will do all we can to take care of them and enjoy them, such as

Lois: This is one brushing.  There's always MORE!

What does this have to do with today's story of The White Cat?  Some take their dog's fur and have it spun into woolen clothing as this undercoat is described as cashmere-like.  (By the way, NEVER shave a husky except in medical emergencies, to avoid permanent damage. ) So let's spin a white furry tail, er tale definitely rivaling the better known Beauty and the Beast.

There are many version of Madame La Comtesse D'Aulnoy's story.  It and "The Blue Bird" are probably her best known fairy tales, but Wikipedia warns "These stories were far from suitable for children and many English adaptations are very dissimilar to the original."  I'm only delving into those Public Domain English versions.

My Book of Favourite Fairy Tales edited by Edric Vredenburg and illustrated by Jennie Harbour has illustrations I will insert into the story, captioned Harbour.  They opened their version with a graphic explanation of the "wooden horse" the White Cat gives the prince.  I found it helpful to see.

The 1915 reference book, Index to Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends lists 27 books with the story.  It's not surprising since this story was first published in French in 1698 and in English in 1892 in  The Fairy Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy, Newly Done Into English edited by Anne Thackeray Ritchie (this tale was translated there by "Miss Lee" and "The moralising verses at the end of each story have been omitted.")  The book was illustrated by Clinton Peters and will be captioned Peters here.  Ritchie's opening comments on Madame d'Aulnoy are far more thorough than Wikipedia including way beyond the "few lines of preface" Ritchie says she was asked to write.

I'm not using Ritchie's version.  I own quite a few of the 27 books with the story and chose the adapted version by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey as the book, In the Animal World, reproduces well and frankly the story's length needs adaptation here.  I'll insert illustrations from both Harbour and Peters.  Bailey omits something I consider vital to the story at the very end.  I will give it there.

I would have liked to use the Rachel Field version, but it's still under copyright from 1928 (see my comments after today's story when I talk about Public Domain).  Not only does it tell well, but the illustrations by Elizabeth MacKinstry are perfect! 

It's possible you may be able to find it at your local library or buy a copy from a used book source.  Another possibility is this link:
The White Cat And Other Old French Fairy Tales arranged by Rachel Field and drawn by E. MacKinstry (MacMillan Company 1928) as it may be found at Hathi Trust Digital Library copied from the University of Michigan.

Now let's see why this classic tale deserves attention.

 

(Harbour)

(Peters)

(Peters)

(Harbour)

There are a few things omitted in that version and the following illustrations also show their importance.  Bailey's version doesn't tell how she became a White Cat.  Vredenburg also omits it and even the beheading/tail removal, having the Prince take a crystal rock with a White Cat inside which shatters before the old King and she appears.  Explaining only she is heir to six kingdoms, she gives one each to the King and other Princes, saving three for herself and her new husband, our Prince.  Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book is closer to retelling Ritchie's version.  It's long and would be best summarized in re-telling, but I believe "the rest of the story" at least needs to be known.

(Peters)

(Peters)

O.k. it's long, but needed in my storyteller's opinion.  This is why some believe in taking at least three versions of a tale and making it your own.  Personally I think the White Cat, besides being less familiar than Beauty and the Beast, is a much better story.  So whether you enjoy the shake of a cat's tail

or a return to my canine analogy

May the magic of joy and love come to you in stories.

*************
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/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - 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.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", 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 gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine 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/.  
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!