Stone Soup, October 2017, Volume 45 #8. Cover photograph: ‘Scrapes of Light’ by Delaney Slote, 10. A note from William Rubel Perhaps it was silly, and I’m sorry if you missed our regular Saturday Newsletter yesterday. But as today is October 1, and our latest issue is published today, I decided this week to make the Saturday Newsletter the Sunday—or Weekend—Newsletter plus new issue alert. Stone Soup’s new life is taking shape. We are producing more frequent issues (this is our second monthly issue) that are each a little shorter and also more focused than were the bi-monthly print editions. I can tell you that I have never been happier with the scale of the issues or the quality of what we are publishing than I am now. I encourage all of you to go to our website and check out the new October issue. Non-subscribers are entitled to several articles per month while our subscribers, of course, have full, unlimited access to everything. I want you to hear from the editor, Emma Wood, to get a flavour of what to expect this month. In her Editor’s Note she talks about the written work: “Fear, anger, anxiety, the elements—in the stories and poems in this issue, the characters and speakers are all confronting something big and frightening. Time seems to slow down, and nearly stop altogether, in both “Game Time” and “Perfection,” as nerves take over. In “Facing the Hurricane,” the speaker faces not only a dangerous storm, but his own (mis)understanding of his father. Meanwhile, Evelyn faces her loneliness at the thought of her best friend Abigail moving to Korea in “Only an Ocean Away”. In the poem, “I Remember the Water and the Wind,” the speaker discovers her own strength while encountering a storm head-on, and in “Candlenut Tree,” the speaker faces down—and overcomes—her anger “like lava ready to explode into the air”. If that isn’t enough to get you clicking on the link to start reading, I’d like to call your attention to the art in the issue as well. This is now the second issue in which art is published for its own sake, rather than as an illustration to a story. It’s been a wonderful process to review submissions of work that both stands in its own right and—as I hope you’ll agree—complements the writing in the magazine, starting with “Scrapes of Light”, the striking and evocative cover image. You will find three other photographs in the issue, including a second but very different photograph taken through a rain-spattered window (“Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada”), that conveys a profound melancholy and stillness. “Girl Asleep”, with its different sense of calm and gorgeous muted colour palette feels almost painterly in its framing, textures and timeless subject, while “The Look” gives us a portrait that stands for itself, popping out of its dark background and, at the same time, inviting a thousand questions abut what that look might mean. I’d also like to mention the exquisite and accomplished watercolor, “Mountain Quail.” Whenever I look at it it makes me feel calm. It is a gentle but powerful work of art. If you are interested in photography—whether you are a Stone Soup aged reader or a grownup—I think you will find the photographs in this issue moving, and I hope they will inspire you to pick up a camera and go out into the world looking for images and ideas that engage you in some way. And if you are someone who loves art in any form, why not send us a review of an artwork or exhibit you have enjoyed recently? Thank you so much to all our wonderful Stone Soup writers and artists. Great work. Updates: Selfie Contest and December Food Issue I just discovered that while I announced our second Selfie Contest last week I had not made the Selfie Contest submission category live on our site. My apologies. The category is now up, so if you had tried and failed to upload your selfie contribution, you can do so today. And, if you haven’t entered the contest yet, please read the post on our website and start taking pictures! The deadline for the December Food Issue is coming up. We have some great submissions—thank you. If you still have ideas for that issue that you haven’t sent to us yet, there is still time—but don’t leave it too long! And of course we welcome submissions any time on any topic that inspires you. Keep on sharing your creations with us! Until next week, William Business Update Well, I’m sure that all of you who have small businesses know that one often finds that everything takes longer to accomplish than you thought it would. It’s been hard work managing our transition to digital by ourselves, and we’re very happy to report that our transfer back to the fulfilment house that handled print subscriptions for Stone Soup when we were sending issues to your homes is now nearly complete. As soon as we have our new, improved, subscription form in place you will be able to renew, subscribe and select from all of our Stone Soup packages, including placing orders for our new print Annual. You will be able to choose between digital only, print Annual only, or (the best deal), a combined digital and print Annual subscription. I am pretty confident that next week I will be able to announce that we are back in business with a more industry standard subscription form. Our Newsletter readers will be the first to know! Thank you, as always, for your support, William From Stone Soup November/December 2005 A Wider World By Christy Joy Frost, 13 Illustrated by Vivien Rubin, 13 Kayla dropped the laundry basket down by the washing machine. This was the last load to bring down. She was hot from running up and down the stairs all morning. She rolled up her sleeves and looked around the basement. The unfinished cement walls looked bare and cold, brightened only by the dabs of paint she had splotched there when she was five. She climbed the wooden stairs to the kitchen where her mother
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Saturday Newsletter: September 23, 2017
“100 Me’s”. Sophia Lee Bartolini, 11 A Stone Soup selfie contest winner, Spring 2017 A note from William Rubel Selfie Contest #2! Last spring we had a very successful selfie contest. Now it’s fall, we thought it was time to bring it back. Our second Selfie Contest has the deadline of Monday, November 6. The top five winners will receive a prize of a $10 Amazon gift certificate, and will be published in a future issue of Stone Soup. As all of you know, a “selfie” is self-portrait. It is you telling a story about yourself through a photograph. There is a long tradition of artists making portraits of themselves in drawing, in photography, and in painting–the wonderful self-portrait below, painted by Goya in around 1785, could be seen as an early version of a full-body selfie. The mirrors Goya needed to pull off his self-portrait are out of sight, while one of the winners of our spring contest, pictured above, used mirrors as an integral part of her composition, but both of them show us the medium they used to make the work: Goya his paints and easel, and Sophia Lee Bartolini her camera phone and bathroom cabinet mirrors. The ability to take a photograph of yourself while holding a camera that at the same time enables you to see what you are doing is entirely new. You are the pioneers. In one or two hundred years people looking back at photography from this period and will see these kinds of selfies as an exciting new art form. There is room for serious portraits in this contest and we definitely want to see a few photographs in which you compose yourself and look into the camera. But there is plenty of room to be playful too, if that’s who you are. There is a long tradition of artists dressing up in costume before making their self-portraits, and costumes are a great way to say something about yourself. Make a portrait of yourself doing something you love, or are good at; your costume could be a uniform or an outfit for a special activity (like Goya’s hat with candles that helped him see what he was doing as the light of the day dimmed). You can also be dramatic. Photograph yourself in profile. Get motion into your picture. Surprise yourself–and surprise us. As with every artistic endeavor I think you will find that taking risks will pay off! You are permitted to up load up to three images. You can make them each completely different from each other or you can send in three images that are linked in some way. Send in your entries here. Please submit in the Artwork category, and include ‘Selfie Contest, Fall 2017’ in your title. Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait Before the Easel (Autorretrato ante el caballete), circa 1785. Oil on canvas, in the collection of Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Forthcoming issues If you haven’t worked on your food stories and recipe submissions for the December Food Issue, please try to spend some time on them this weekend. As I’ve mentioned in previous Saturday Newsletters, a big part of a recipe submission is the headnote–the narrative you write to introduce the recipe. In addition to recipes, we are looking for photographs, drawings, paintings, stories, and poems all about food. If there is a cookbook, food show, food movie or painting you like, then please review it and upload it in the submissions review category. We are beginning to get used to publishing monthly. It is so exciting! It feels as though we have only just published the September issue, and it’s already almost time to launch October. In fact, this week we are proof-reading the PDF of the October issue ready to publish on the 1st of the month, and we have just finalized the writing and art that’s included in the November issue. December is almost complete, giving us everything we need to produce our first print Annual. We hope you are having as much fun this new school year as we are developing your new monthly Stone Soup, and can’t wait to share what you create! Until next week, William From Stone Soup September/October 2000 The Real Mr Vankos By Laura Aberle, 12 Illustrated by Jane Westrick, 12 When Mr. Vankos painted a giant portrait of himself on the side of his house, I heard many mentions of him being totally out of his mind. Everyone in my neighborhood had a house of solid color with shutters of the opposite shade. It seemed to anger them that someone would paint their house more than two colors, like it was a sacred tradition to be dead boring. With so many people against him, I had no reason to disagree with the statement. My natural curiosity got the better of me, though, as usual. For as long as I could remember I had been expected to find things to do, to play by myself if I must. My parents were always working and I was left alone with Anita, who had her hands full with all the housework, and my three younger brothers. When my friends weren’t available, or when no one could drive me somewhere, I would just wander around and try to catch pieces of conversations between the neighbors or see who was putting a new addition on their house next. So I have always been extremely curious—even nosy—and I was no less than captivated by the strange man with the colorful house. “Who would do such an absurd thing?” my nanny Anita muttered early one morning as she was ironing my shirt. “That lunatic was slaving over some portrait for weeks, knowing the only thing he’ll get from it is the whole block thinking he’s nuts. Well, I tell you,” she continued with a littie smirk, “he succeeded in doing that.” She pressed the last crease out of the shirt and handed it over to me, sighing. “That house was so nice before he moved in,” she breathed, putting her hands on her wide hips. “He must have been a very deprived child, wanting all this negative attention. Why doesn’t
Babette’s Feast
Here is a PDF of the short story Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen. See the Stone Soup Saturday Newsletter for September 16, 2017, for some background.
