This election week has led to some calling us the United States of Anxiety. In looking at how divided the U.S. has been, only two other times seem comparable, when our Colonial ancestors revolted from England and during the election of Abraham Lincoln leading to a war that went by several names. In the North it was the War of Rebellion and in the South it was called the War of Northern Aggression. Obviously it was a matter of viewpoint. Only later did it become called the Civil War.
Because I was thinking about Lincoln and his own election, I went to a book of Lincoln's Own Yarns and Stories. Alexander McClure is only listed as the editor (referring to himself as Colonel A.K. McClure), but he obviously put in a lot of work to preserve Lincoln's "yarns and stories." McClure has a town in Pennsylvania named after him. He was a journalist, adjutant general in the War, lawyer, and, at times a politician. His life had ups, downs (including being wiped out financially in the stock market), and twists and turns, but Lincoln and the war fascinated him enough that he wrote about them several times.
Today's story goes back to Lincoln's second election and brings a touch of humor to the idea of elections.
I trust my Canadian and Irish friends managed to laugh at Lincoln's knitting together that yarn.
While prowling McClure's book I came across a birthday card from a few years back from fellow library staff at White Lake Township Library which I saved and used as a bookmark. It does put the tension of the past week into, if not perspective, at least provides a further bit of humor.
Grab your humor wherever you can. Since my birthday was also this past week, it seems appropriate that I found and again enjoyed that card including all the comments from the staff.
Until next week's blog, stay well and find at least one reason to smile each day.
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- 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!"
- 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!
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