Turkish Aircraft Bombing Cyprus by Frosoula Papeptrou, age 6. This image was made shortly after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. A note from William Rubel Next week I will be in Israel! Jane Levi, Stone Soup’s Operations Manager and I will be starting a two week adventure testing a theory of David Eitam, an Israeli Archeologist, that the Natufian people (this is the civilization between around 12,500 and 9,500 BCE that started out as hunter gatherers and ended up inventing agriculture) first made bread by processing wild barley in mortars carved into bedrock. One my other Stone Soupcolleagues will write the Newsletter, and I may contribute a little travel section. Stone Soup’s refugee children’s project Last week I mentioned that we would like Stone Soup to become a place where refugee children can find a voice. For me, this week’s featured artwork, by a Greek Cypriot six-year-old, captures the fear and horror of war more powerfully than the news outlets that daily report to us about the brutalities of arial bombardment in cities in Syria and Yemen. If you would like to help us bring powerful works by children caught up in war–and this whether you are a student and might have a teacher that would get involved, along with one of your classes, or an adult reader of Stone Soup–let me know your interest by responding to this newsletter. This week’s art, and experiencing war For many years the Children’s Art Foundation, publisher of Stone Soup, collected children’s art from around the world. We started the collecting in 1977. One of the first gifts we received were a set of linoleum prints from Greek Cypriot children who had been caught up in the 1984 war with Turkey. In June, 1991, I went to visit a friend in Maribor, Yugoslavia. I arrived at the border in a train from Paris. It was the day the war of independence between Slovenia and Yugoslavia began. I had come to see a friend to collect mushrooms. I had called my friend Anton from a phone booth in Paris to confirm my arrival the next day. He had said, “come!” But, when I actually showed up the next day, which turned out to be the second day of the war, he was amazed. It turned out that he had thought I was making a joke! When the first air raid siren went off and everyone in our apartment building went down to the basement to hide I experienced the feeling of helplessness that all civilians must feel in wars. It is the feeling of the girl in the print who is screaming as the bombs drop. What can you do? There is nothing to do but wait to see what is going to happen to you. It is the most horrible feeling. You can’t really hide. You can’t really run. If the bombs drop where you are, they will find you. The basement of our apartment was a half-basement. We were not even fully underground. There were windows high up. We sheltered in a storage room with the bikes and gardening tools. In the half-light of those small high windows, as the sirens wailed, we stood there together, silent, just waiting for the explosions. The apartment was a few blocks away from a big communications center that would be an obvious target in a war. I fully expected to die in that room. What ran through my head in a loop was this sentence: “How stupid to die in someone else’s war.” As it turned out, the Yugoslav air force didn’t bomb us. After only ten days, the Yugoslav government decided to retreat from Slovenia and it became an independent country. The war moved on to what had been other parts of Yugoslavia where it then raged for years. None of us are going to be able to end war. But I do think that if we can give voice to children who have survived wars, that might at least make people think a little longer before they send bombers to destroy our homes with us in them. My daughter is in sixth grade and at her school they practice drills for what to do if there is a shooter in the school. I am sure most of you have heard about the killings at a school in Florida last week. One of the more eloquent statements after the shooting by one of the high school students who survived was this question: “Why do we deserve this?” It is a haunting question. It is one that everyone in a war must have thought at one point or another. And we can ask that on behalf of the frightened girl in the linoleum print by Frosoula. Why did she deserve to be running from jet planes dropping bombs? Writing about injustice A few weeks ago my daughter read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I decided I’d read the book, too, as she had been so engrossed in it. Wow! Is it violent! It is a Young Adult novel so I know that many of you older Stone Soup readers have read it or are going to. I think one of the big themes of the book, perhaps even the theme, is that same question: “Why do I deserve this?” Or, in the case of the The Hunger Games: “I do not deserve this. We do not deserve this.” I don’t want you to write about a war you haven’t been in. But I would like you to try your hand at a story about injustice–a story that explores the feeling that you do not deserve what is happening to you. That feeling can lead to helplessness. It can also lead to action. It can even lead to an awakening that sets you free. I know that this is a hard one. But, if you are inspired and come up with something inspiring, please submit it to Stone Soup so Editor Emma can consider it for publication. Until next time,
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Saturday Newsletter: February 17, 2018
Perfect flying weather, especially for this trip Illustrator Amelia Jiang, 13, for Searching for Atlantis by Sonja Skye Wooley, 12. Published July/August 2016. A note from William Rubel Science Fiction Contest: Deadline April 1 Do you write science fiction? You have a little over five weeks to the April 1st deadline for our Science Fiction Contest. Another name for science fiction is “speculative fiction.” What if meat could be made in a factory so we wouldn’t need to kill chickens, pigs, and cows to eat the meat we like? How might that change the world? In fact, lots of work is being done by scientists to grow meat in factory laboratories. So, it isn’t necessarily a wild science fiction fantasy. What if cars could drive themselves? Then what? What would that world look like? Well, lots of people would be out of a driving job! And as the driverless cars might be operated like a taxi company, or like Uber, most of us might end up just calling for a car when we need one. If we did that, then there wouldn’t be so many (or any) cars parked on streets. There would be too many parking lots so we could do something else with them. What would our lives be like? What kind world—good or bad—might you imagine with driverless cars? Everything you know about science and technology can be brought into the creation of a speculative fiction story. The is your chance to explore, “What if?” Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, just launched a powerful rocket. It is now already possible to imagine affordable rocket transport to the moon and to Mars. Well, what would that mean for us here on Earth? Would it make a difference? On Earth we have lots of trouble living peacefully all together. Could we make our space colonies reflect the best of who we humans are? Or, do you imagine that we’d mess up our space exploration, too? The Star Wars stories imagine a technologically advanced time in which fighting over power and control are still central to the story of advanced cultures, like ours. Is that what you imagine, too? Use what you know of science and technology to explore possible futures. I’ll remind you in a couple of weeks. You have five weeks, starting now. Giving Refugee Children a Voice What are we working on this week? We are beginning work on a project of publishing writing and art by refugee children. The idea is to offer the Stone Soup platform to give refugee children all over the world a voice and a creative outlet. Is this something you’d like to get involved with? If you do think you might be interested in helping with this project, then please read our introduction on our website, and get in touch with us. There is room for kids as well as adults to help with this. Books books books! We are continuing to develop our ideas for a Stone Soup Book Club, working with a major publisher on some of the details. So far, we have been discussing how to get free copies of books to our subscribers and future members of our Book Club; and thinking about how to organise discussion events with some of your favourite authors. There is some work to do on the website to make it all possible, which is getting started next week. We hope this sounds exciting–we think it does!–and we’ll have more news on the Book Club very soon. Until Next WeekWilliam From Stone Soup January/February 2001 Life Without You By Laberije Shala, 12 Art by Florije Bobbi, 12 You were loved, sweet, Always smiling When I needed you, You left. You gave me the name orphan, You gave me a black shadow, Life without you has no sense. Now, in your best years, Black soil covers you. O my Daddy On your grave There are roses It’s me who put them there Your orphan My Daddy A life without you. You can read more about these works by children from western Kosovo at our website; and please consider supporting and getting involved with our project, Giving Refugee Children a Voice.
Saturday Newsletter: February 10, 2018
I ran out on stage. All I could think about was dancing Illustrator Rachel Hellwig, 13, for her story Nutcracker Dreams. Published November/December 2002. A note from William Rubel Last Sunday I went to see the ballet The Sleeping Beauty with my daughter, Stella. I had never watched many ballets until Stella was eighteen months old. One morning, in a café, I thought, well, I have a daughter, what about looking up “ballet prince” in YouTube? What I found was the Prince Variation in the wedding scene in Sleeping Beauty’s last act. The Prince is dancing (showing off) for his now-betrothed, Princess Aurora. In this variation, the Prince dances in a circle with lots of leaps and twirls. It is an athletic tour-de-force and seemed to keep my then very young daughter reasonably engaged. So, I bought the DVD of The Sleeping Beauty and that was a real success—at least the scene in which the evil witch gives Sleep Beauty the spindle that will send her into her long sleep. Stella watched that scene over and over and over and over again. And then, she watched it again. I vividly recall her saying “again” and my re-playing the DVD. Over the years we have watched different version of The Sleeping Beauty which means in ballet terms that we have watched the same story with the same music interpreted with dance moves that are slightly different from each other. Seeing the San Francisco Ballet performance with yet another choreography brought to mind the many different ways that choreographers have handled the spindle scene my daughter loved so much as a young child. To remind you what happens in the story. At the very beginning, the King and Queen’s secretary makes a mistake and fails to invite the fairy Carabosse to their infant daughter’s christening. The secretary invites all of the other important fairies, but not Carabosse. When Carabosse shows up anyway, uninvited, she is in a foul mood. She arrives, dressed in black, with demon assistants. She is angry. Very. In ballet sign language she tells the King and Queen that she has come to give their daughter a present. The present is that on her 16th birthday she will prick herself with a spindle, and die. She will die! What a present to bring to a christening! In the ballet story there were twelve fairies invited to the party, and all but one of them had already given her gift before Carabosse gave hers. The one who hadn’t was the very powerful Lilac fairy. So, the Lilac fairy comes forward and tells the King and Queen that while she cannot completely undo the evil witch’s gift of death, she could change death to sleeping until a prince finds her and kisses her, at which point Aurora will wake up. Nolween Daniel as Carabosse with the Paris Opera Ballet. Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Image. Well, you know what happens. However hard her parents tried to shield her from spindles, on her 16th birthday, at a grand dance, the evil witch appears, hands Aurora a spindle, she pricks herself, and collapses. She manages to rise again, but she is in a bad way. She continues dancing, but this time, her dance steps are erratic. In one of the most beautiful and moving scenes in all the ballet repertoire Aurora dances backwards with great speed, but as the poison spreads her backward movement becomes uneven, jerky, and then she collapses unconscious.The way most choreographers handle this scene is to have Aurora dancing erratically and the rest of the court looking on as passive observers. But there is one version in particular, the Sleeping Beauty that is danced by the Paris Opera Ballet, that is different. In their version, when Aurora is dancing strangely, all the people who are watching the dance sway back and forth in sympathy with her staggering back and forth. It is as if the whole world feels for her. I would urge you to watch this video of that particular dance. This weekend’s writing project Reflecting on Princess Aurora, here is this Saturday’s project. I want you to tell a story in which something bad happens to a main character. The character can be a person, a fairy, a sportsperson, a member of royalty, a farmer, a pet, even an object that you might care about—like a stuffed animal. I want you to decide whether the world at large feels your character’s pain, or not. Some years ago I had a friend, who died. He was a kind, brilliant, creative man: a musician, an artist, a poet, and a mathematician. His name was Gene Lewis. The night he died there was a terrific storm. On that night, I was driving back to Santa Cruz from San Francisco. The last twenty miles of that drive is over a winding mountain road. When I got to the base of the mountain, the storm was so bad that rather than drive over the mountains in the storm, I stayed at a motel waiting for the morning. It was during the height of this storm, when the earth went wild, that my friend died. If this were a story about a fictional character who was brilliant and beloved by all his or her friends, then writing the death scene with the world itself howling in protest—the world flailing its arms in the form of thrashing tree branches, and crying in the form of a deluge, you would be reinforcing the emotional sense of your character’s death. On the other hand, the turbulence might all be internal. You could describe a calm world: the cars still driving on the freeways, the night calm, apparently no different from so many other nights. Your character dies. The world doesn’t seem to blink. As always, if you really like what you’ve done, then please send it Emma via the Stone Soup Submissions page. Until Next WeekWilliam Thank you! I just want, briefly, to thank the 215 of you who subscribed to Stone Soup in January. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I like to keep
