Maybe you will be inspired to write YOUR OWN STORIES this summer and share them at the Gallery. You can find storytelling prompts and ideas at the Activities Padlet, with hundreds of stories ready to re-tell at the Resources Padlet.

Have fun!

#100WordStory #OldJoke

- Heather Kretschmer

#100WordStory #Pedagogy

In 1852 Joshua Norton gambled a large part of his fortune on a shipment of rice from Peru to take advantage of wildly fluctuating prices in San Francisco and lost not only his money, but his sanity as well.

#MeetAFool

#KoanStory #100WordStory

Today's Daily Create showed the cover of a book that had some old-fashioned keys under the title, "Life: A User's Manual." The Daily Create prompt instructed people to "create a poem that might describe a nugget of advice inside" the book. As I'm sure wise fools have plenty of nuggets of advice about keeping track of keys, I wrote a wise fool limerick.

There once was a man called Lee

who recklessly tossed his key.

He looked up and down

all over the town

to find it in his vitamin C.

#Limerick

Nasruddin — sometimes fool, sometimes wise —

At a mirror he stared with closed eyes,

His wife says to him, "Hey,

What can you see that way?"

"How I look when I sleep!" he replies.

I based this limerick on a famous story told about Nasruddin and other fools who stare at a mirror with their eyes closed because they want to see what they look like when they are asleep. Yes, it's foolish, of course, but I think it can also have a hidden message for us about mindfulness and how hard it is to "see" ourselves fully, even if we do have a mirror.

I couldn't find a good picture of a man staring into a mirror with closed eyes that was CC-licensed, but then I found this lovely picture at Flickr that even has a woman laughing in the background... and in many ways, Nasruddin has a child's pure curiosity about the world; it's one of the best features of the wise fools. So that is the picture I chose. :-)

Thanks to Heather for inspiring me with her limerick!

#Limerick

Photo: "Eyes Wide Shut" by Nikky Stephen at Flickr.

#100WordStory #OldJoke

Click on the thumbnail view to access the PDF.

#100WordStory #OldJoke

#OldJoke

retold by Laura :-)

#Optimism

Steamboat Willie is now in the public domain!

https://archive.org/details/steamboat-willie-mickey

#WiseFool

I hope you enjoy this story about Till Eulenspiegel visiting the townspeople of Schilda. This is the first readers theater script I've ever written, and I'm looking forward to people trying it out at one of our MYFest readers theater sessions. Any feedback about the script is very welcome, so feel free to add comments to this post. 😊

#ReadersTheater

#LoveIt #BookBrowsing

(Heather, I think you will like how this story is set up!)

Why Did He Ride on the Donkey Backwards

You Believe the Donkey

Innocent Thief

Do As You Please

Through the town this good Man and his Son

Strove to ride as to please every one:

Self, Son or both tried,

Then the Ass had a ride;

While the world, at their efforts, poked fun.

YOU CANNOT HOPE TO PLEASE ALL: DON'T TRY.