Stories and Books for Liz and Laura by Laura

Jeremy Lent

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-11 18:11:18 UTC

I took a course with Jeremy Lent (website) via the GAIA Institute, and what a great guy! I was such a fan of him as an author, and now I am a fan of him as a person too. My favorite book is the one that does human history, west and east: The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning

Ramakrishna

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-13 03:53:40 UTC

This is a PDF of the collected tales and parables of Ramakrishna; I retold a lot of these as 100-word stories; here are my tiny Ramakrishna parables. More about Ramakrishna at Wikipedia.

Idries Shah Foundation

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-14 00:28:59 UTC

Idries Shah was one of the most important conduits for Sufi stories, especially Nasruddin stories, into the West. The Idries Shah Foundation makes all his books free to read online; see his chapter about Nasruddin in The Sufis for how stories of "foolish wisdom" are vital to the Sufi project (just scroll down to the "read for free" button). Shah published several collections of Nasruddin stories too!

Life as a Cat (Grant Snider)

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-14 17:52:50 UTC

I loved this new cartoon from Grant Snider!

Crazy Wisdom

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-15 15:55:02 UTC

Scoop Nisker passed away just this year... I miss him! He was a Bay Area powerhouse! Crazy Wisdom is a genius book. You can find out more at his website, which is still up and running, thank goodness: here is the Books page.

Hoppipolla

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-18 03:40:57 UTC

I was listening to this tonight when I went walking! There's also a gorgeous live performance here. And here are the lyrics.

East Asian Story Finder

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-18 18:44:37 UTC

So it turns out East Asian covers ONLY China, Japan, and Korea... but it's still super-valuable, with almost 500 story types and tons of bibliography. Plus what a great sign: the first story is... a CHAIN TALE. So my goal is to work on this for the next few weeks, digitizing the bibliography and reading through all the entries. I don't know what your research process is, but I am all about spreadsheets, so as I create spreadsheets corresponding to this book, I will share them with you. I love Elswit's work! Here is here website: SharonElswit.com

About This Padlet

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-18 18:46:11 UTC

I set this to have the posts appear at random (except for this post, which is pinned), but you can see a list of new posts (no images alas, but you can click on the item TITLE and it will take you to the Padlet post showing the image or video or PDF, plus the text; the feed updates every hour or so). Plus there is a Search feature! You should be able to both comment on and add posts too. :-)

Polynesian Motif Index

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-18 23:18:01 UTC

WOW: open access from University of Hawaii! Here is a motif index for Polynesian (including Hawaiian) folktales. See the awesome bibliography also. Motif indexing is more detailed than tale types as you can see, because it is about the individual elements of a story, not the whole story itself (some stories involve LOTS of motifs; some stories might have just one). Anyway, ENJOY! This is a seriously incredible thing. I can't believe I never knew about this one... but when I googled: boom! There it was!

Intro to Philippine Folktales

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-18 23:27:38 UTC

VERY HELPFUL. This article provides an overview of sources... although the most important materials are as yet unpublished. I looked to see if the Finding-list of Philippine Folktales with summaries of thousands of stories had been scanned and made available, but alas, it has not... but for your purposes, the available sources will be enough, no worries.

ScienceIsWeird.com

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-19 16:17:13 UTC

Here is that wonderful online learning site that my friend in Malaysia told me about:

ScienceIsWeird.com

I spent a serious chunk of time poking around here, and I was so impressed. Check out their origin story, and here's what they rely on:

an obsession with how learning really works
trial-and-error experiments
hundreds of great books
untutored wonder

Dan Ashliman Tale Types

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-20 15:47:27 UTC

Here is the very old but incredibly useful website from Dan Ashliman (German folklorist, specialist in Brothers Grimm) which has a large selection of tale types, and each page has examples drawn from different cultures: Folklore and Mythology

Electronic Texts.

TVTropes.com

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-21 17:52:58 UTC

One of the most amazing websites on the Internet! TVTropes is all about what folklorists call motifs and tale types, but in the realm of popular culture. It's fabulous! They even have RANDOM TROPE :-)

Seeing Music

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-23 00:00:23 UTC

Here's the latest video from Stephen Malinowski who makes the amazing visualizations for classical music... there are hundreds of these at his YouTube Channel. Usually they are on black background, but I like this light version! Here's a more typical dark one: Scarlatti.

Sejda PDF tool

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-23 18:08:52 UTC

This is the PDF tool that I use instead of (evil) Adobe: SEJDA.com. It's what I use to create PDF anthologies that I upload to the Internet Archive, like this one that I did last year for new books entering the public domain: Tales of 1928 ... and I will do the same for books in 2025!

Death of the Follower and the Future of Creativity

2024-11-23 20:34:35 UTC

This is the SXSW presentation by Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon about how algorithms are “killing” followers for creators.

Riddles blog

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-25 01:57:25 UTC

I've done 2 days of riddle posts, and I think this blog project is going to be a keeper: Riddles from Around the World. It is fast and easy to do this, and I have heaps of riddles to choose from. I like the fact that I can do more commentary and create more hashtags to interlink the riddles as patterns and repetitions emerge.

Random Riddle

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-25 22:10:28 UTC

I added a random riddle to the blog sidebar. :-)

Make Your Own Riddle

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-26 15:54:03 UTC

Doing the riddle posts for today, I realized that the BEST THING I can do in the comments on each riddle is to suggest ways that this riddle can be the basis for other riddles (because that is the nature of folklore, right? it is inherently reproducing!)... now I need to go back and add a little "improvise" note to each of the 30 earlier riddles I already posted. Now the goal in selecting riddles is not just to pick riddles I like, but to also think about how every one of those riddles can be the basis for ANOTHER riddle. Here's an example: Why is there always a shortage of honey in Brooklyn? (I took a screenshot of that one above)

Grant Faulkner on brevity

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-28 03:34:53 UTC

Since I've been working on NaNoWriMo, that's got me thinking about Grant Faulkner, the master of the 100-word story, and the director of NaNoWriMo for many years... although his stories are very literary. He wrote a whole book about "brief forms" but didn't really do anything much with brief folkloric forms like fables and jokes and proverbs. Go figure! But it's still a really nifty book with lots of great examples! The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story.

Riddle Slideshow

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-28 21:21:32 UTC

I added a riddle slideshow to the sidebar of the Riddle blog! I don't know if I can embed it here or not, but I'll try...

Yep, it looks like it embedded here, although it just loads a preview; the actual slideshow doesn't play. I wonder why they haven't come up with an auto-embed code. It was easy to embed in the blog!

NaNoWriMo DONE

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-30 02:07:19 UTC

So I finished! A day early even! I've done NaNoWriMo every year since I made a book for my dad back when he got sick and I started doing 100-word stories, so that must be back in 2019. But this is the first 100-word project I've done here in Austin (last year I did chain tales, and the year before that I did readers theater)....... so I am super-happy to be back working on 100-word stories, whoo-hoo!!!

Poetry-Comics

laurakgibbs — 2024-11-30 16:24:29 UTC

This beautiful poetry comic by Elizabeth Haidle arrived in Grant Snider's substack newsletter: such a beautiful little poem by Ezra Pound and lovely art to go with it. She has a book out that might interest you: DRAWING IS... Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures (it talks about drawing as being, growing, and becoming inquisitive. It also speaks to the tools and craft involved on the path of being an artist). It's coming out in May. I pre-ordered so it will be a fun surprise when it arrives in May (I'll forget by then ha ha).

Readability tests

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-02 03:18:42 UTC

Readability tests pretend to be objective, but of course they cannot be: reading is a deeply subjective experience, and reader interest/motivation is the single biggest factor. Familiarity with the subject matter and vocabulary is also important. But it's also the case that sentence length and word length are factors, and those are measured in the Flesch-Kincaid: more at Wikipedia.

Krashen on phonics

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-02 21:04:50 UTC

Krashen's approach to language-learning, based on "comprehensible input," is my favorite way to think about readability and easiness of reading. This is an essay he wrote about phonics (20 years ago!), rightly pointing out that some phonics can be helpful but, especially with English, trying to teach a 100% phonics-based approach, as some people are now advocating, is NOT a good idea. But, sad to say, phonics is once again in the ascendancy. More from Krashen here.

Infinite Brian Eno

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-04 02:18:00 UTC

I love how this Brian Eno documentary is DIFFERENT every time it is shown! More about it at NYTimes review via this link.

Here is YouTube trailer.

Krashen on comprehensible input

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-05 04:00:20 UTC

And here is a piece where Stephen Krashen outlines his wonderful perspective on language learning: COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT.

Which is exactly how Latin and Greek are NOT taught, alas. More from Krashen here.

Authors Alliance

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-06 02:11:20 UTC

Heartbreaking news this week about the Internet Archive: they have opted not to bring the publisher lawsuit to the Supreme Court. Sigh...... but I am glad that the Authors Alliance speaks FOR ME in this lawsuit and in other important legal issues. Unlike the (awful) Authors Guild, who support the publishers, Authors Alliance cares about the issues I care about. It's free to join; I highly recommend it! There website is full of great information: Authors Alliance.

Flow (film)

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-07 03:24:41 UTC

A friend of mine just told me about this movie today: I'm going to go see it next week (I got a ticket for Monday). The trailer is GORGEOUS!!! Flow: trailer.

StorySproutz

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-09 03:01:45 UTC

Of course I had to add the StorySproutz landing page to the Padlet!

Riddle Wizard

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-09 21:52:30 UTC

Ideas for a game!!!

RIDDLE WIZARD

Goals

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-10 23:11:47 UTC

I loved Grant Snider's Substack today about goals-as-pinatas!

Readers Theater piece

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-11 23:58:50 UTC

Here's the readers theater piece that I wrote with my friend Heather (English teacher in Germany). We've done some playwriting together too! She's a contributor to this educational magazine online: MindBrainEd.

Aaron Shepard

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-12 22:12:35 UTC

Aaron Shepard is my favorite readers theater person; his website is full of free stuff that he shares. He does BOTH stories AND readers theater, and like some other authors I really like, he sometimes does both a prose story and a readers theater version of the "same" story. He has several readers theater books; they are excellent. I learned a lot from him! I have a recognizably different style than his, but his style is just great. No criticism of it; I just have a different emphasis (more dialogue, less narrator: no surprise, right?).

August House

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-14 14:01:49 UTC

This is one of my favorite publishers; I have so many of their books. They have a strong focus on storytelling and also on folktales! One of my favorite authors who publishes with them is Margaret Read MacDonald; she's fabulous! August House Publishers.

Radiohead’s Creep meets Indian Raags!

eilawan — 2024-12-14 15:57:56 UTC

I love this mashup! Her voice is so amazing! Thought you’d like it too!

Chaiyya / Don't Stop

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-14 18:11:12 UTC

I learned about this because I really like Shankar Tucker the clarinet player, and Vidya has also done amazing mash-ups (she is like a YouTube superstar). Chaiyya Chaiyya. Sam Tsui has become a pretty big star too! Here's the original film song.

Vidya and Maati Baani

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-14 18:18:25 UTC

Here is a mashup of Vidya and my favorite Indian musicians of all time, Maati Baani. Summer Love. (Vidya's in LA, Maati Baani in Mumbai.)

Maati Baani: The Farmer Song

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-16 21:30:57 UTC

I mentioned Maati Baani is my favorite musical group from India (I love ALL their videos), but I wanted to share this one because of the CREATIVE way they use the sounds of farming itself to help make the music, along with the gorgeous cinematography: Saccha Mitr (True Friend).

Banjara

laurakgibbs — 2024-12-16 21:38:02 UTC

And of course now I have to include this video of Maati Baani performing a spiritual folksong with words by Kabir (one of the great holy men of India of all time, revered by Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims); Maati Baani are singing here with Mooralala Marwada (who is in the other video), a folksinger from Gujarat. See the YouTube page for lyrics.

American Indians in Children's Lit

laurakgibbs — 2025-01-15 02:32:19 UTC

This is Deb Reese's incredibly useful website:

American Indians in Children's Lit