Stephen Jay Gould felt ridiculous. He had twelve apple brown bettys in a shopping bag. He was heading toward lower Manhattan to distribute those desserts and other more practical contributions to thousands of rescue workers. The apple brown bettys were a gift from a New York restaurant, “our best dessert, still warm.” In the face of disaster and overwhelming grief, what possible difference could twelve apple brown bettys make? Wasn’t it ludicrous to distribute them at all?
No. In an essay on the op-ed page of the New York Times on September 26, 2001, Gould reconsiders his sense of irrelevance:
"Complex Systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority.
We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses." |
As for those desserts:
| "Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach...These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and the soul, from children’s postcards to cheers by the roadside." |
What is it that storytellers find themselves tossing into the breach? What are the stories that spill from our hearts?
Not surprisingly, the hands-down favorite sourcebook for many tellers these days is PEACE TALES by Margaret Read MacDonald (Linnet Books 1992). In it are two stories called “Two Goats on the Bridge” and Audrey Kopp (CA) tells both of them. Two goats meet on a bridge, each traveling in the opposite direction, each trying to cross to the other side. In the Russian version, the two goats refuse to accommodate each other and push each other into the river; in the Eastern European version, the two goats squeeze past each other gently so they both get what they want. Told back to back, as Audrey presents them, the two stories convey a powerful message about the difference between stubbornness and cooperation.
Leslie Perry (CA) tells “Strength,” which can be found not only in PEACE TALES but also in READY-TO-TELL TALES by David Holt and Bill Mooney (August House Rock 1994). This West African tale is one of Margaret Read MacDonald’s most powerful stories, a meditation on the difference between strength and destruction. In a contest to find out which animal is the strongest, the forest animals use their physical prowess to compete; Man uses a gun and kills his competitor. “Since that day the animals will not walk with Man. When Man enters the forest he has to walk by himself...He is the one who cannot tell the difference between strength and death.”
Milbre Burch (NC) names five favorites, all in PEACE TALES: “A Blind Man Catches a Bird,” about righting a wrong; “The Gates of Paradise” and “Heaven and Hell,” about the world of difference between those who help each other and those who don’t; “Old Joe and the Carpenter” about building bridges between feuding neighbors; and the Chinese tale “Holding Up the Sky:” Hummingbird looks ridiculous, flat on its back, feet in the air, but everyone has to help to hold up the sky. “Each must do what he can. And this is what I can do.”
Margaret Read MacDonald (WA) recommends not only PEACE TALES but other books of hers as well. “Grandfather Bear Is Hungry” is in LOOK BACK AND SEE (H.W. Wilson 1991). “Though it appears to be about sharing, I think it is a strong tale to discuss conflict resolution. The bear begins tearing chipmunk’s house apart. Chipmunk dashes up and asks him what is wrong. He learns the problem (Bear is hungry.) and shares his food. Most chipmunks would have just run up and bitten Bear on the nose!”
Margaret also mentions “Kanu Above and Kanu Below” in THE STORYTELLER’S START-UP BOOK (August House 1993). “It is about keeping the wrongdoers in the community, rather than expelling them.” In this West African tale, the wrongdoers are Spider, Rat, Anteater, and Fly. Most of the villagers want to get rid of the offending intruders, but they are allowed to remain and eventually make valuable contributions to the life of the village.
Margaret writes, “There is a Hodja tale which I can’t find yet. (If the creator of THE STORYTELLER’S SOURCEBOOK can’t find a story, what hope is there for the rest of us? -ed.) The Hodja is on the road with a friend and two horsemen rush by and force them off the road. The friend shakes his fist after the horsemen, but the Hodja calls, ‘May all your deepest needs be filled!’ His companion is shocked at this response. The Hodja responds, ‘If all of their deepest needs were filled, do you think they would still act this way?’”
Heather Forest (NY) has a website with condensed versions of stories she finds helpful: www.storyarts.org. She includes a mini-version of “The Lion and the Rabbit,” which can be found in fuller form in JOINING IN by Teresa Miller, editor (Yellow Moon Press 1988). Lion grows furious when Rabbit tells him that there is another lion in the forest. Lion eventually grows so enraged that he attacks the other lion, which is only his own reflection at the bottom of a deep, deep well. This is a fine example of what Heather calls “the self-destructiveness of violence.”
Both Heather Forest and Audrey Kopp mention one of Aesop’s fables as a good way to illustrate how important it is for people to stick together: A peasant asks each of his sons to break a stick, a task they perform effortlessly. Then he asks them to break a bundle of sticks. The sticks are thin, and snap easily when handled one by one, but taken together, they cannot be broken. (If you’re looking in THE STORYTELLER’S SOURCEBOOK this is Motif J1021.)
Angela Lloyd (CA) tells “The First Tear” from A TREASURY OF JEWISH FOLKLORE by Nathan Ausubel (Bantam paperback 1980, first published 1948). God addresses Adam and Eve when they are expelled from Eden: “Now you are about to enter into a world of sorrow and trouble the like of which staggers the imagination.” But God has mercy, and gives Adam and Eve a means of easing their pain: “When grief overtakes you and your heart aches so that you are not able to endure, and great anguish grips your soul, then there will fall from your eyes this tiny tear. Your burden will grow lighter then.” A bittersweet story at any time, this one seems especially poignant now.
A story that comes to many tellers’ minds for dealing with grief is “The Cow-Tail Switch” from the book of the same name by Harold Courlander and George Herzog (Henry Holt 1947) It ends with these words: “...a man is not really dead until he is forgotten.”
One of the most hauntingly beautiful stories about grief is “The Beduin’s Gazelle,” found in Jane Yolen’s FAVORITE FOLKTALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD (Pantheon 1986). Unsure of how to break the news to his wife that their son is dead, a Beduin asks her to find a cooking pot that has never been used to prepare a meal of sorrow. She asks everyone in her village but no such pot exists. Every family has known sorrow. Her husband then shows her the body of their son: “They have all tasted their share of sorrow. Today the turn is ours.” This is one of the few folktales to deal directly with grief. It seems especially ironic that it comes from Saudi Arabia.
To demonstrate the value of community and of joining forces to defeat evil, there is “I’m Tipingee, She’s Tipingee, We’re Tipingee, Too” in Diane Wolkstein’s THE MAGIC ORANGE TREE (Knopf 1978) An old man wants to take the girl who’s dressed in red to be his servant. Tipingee gets all her friends to wear red too, so the man has no way to tell which child is Tipingee. The young women at the University of Michigan who recently put on traditional Islamic headscarves are following the same impulse as Tipingee’s friends. If all the women are wearing headscarves, how can Islamic women be singled out and harassed?
“The Freedom Bird” by David Holt seems to have a fresh new resonance these days. It’s in READY-TO-TELL TALES by David Holt and Bill Mooney (August House 1994). A hunter tries everything—shooting arrows, boiling water, burying, drowning—but cannot silence a bird. “I know who you are now. You’re the Freedom Bird, for you cannot be killed.” Another version of the story can be found in JOINING IN (mentioned above).
This list is just a short glimpse into what a few storytellers have on their minds. What matters most, of course, is that we tell stories at all, that we share what is in our hearts, that we keep the human connections strong. Every story we tell is one more apple brown betty into the breach.
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