The Box That Waits: A Modern Twist on an Ancient Fairy Tale
A story of desire and the patience of forgotten things.
Stories
The Woman Who Could Taste Everything: A Modern Fairy Tale
All the best stories begin with an ordinary moment that turns out not to be ordinary at all. This one begins with an orange.
A Fairy Tale: The Listening Tree
A story of when the distance between a told thing and an untold thing was believed to matter enormously.
The Fullness of Stone: A Fairy Tale of What is Needed
A story older than its telling...
Maria do Espirito Santo Ferreira Rezendes (1895–1963)
An Azorean Life Remembered
A Folktale of the Dolomites and the Origin of Edelweiss
This story explains the origins of the edelweiss flower and why the Dolomite peaks are so hauntingly bare.
Emalyn Smith Burney: An Endling
can’t go on. I’ll go on. — Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air Emalyn first came to my attention in a sensational newspaper article from the Berlin News Records, April 26, 1913 (now Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): He Died Again but Shock Killed his Grandmother Butte, California, April 26, 1913
Doll and Ruby Easson: Twin Sisters and Endlings
A Tap on the Shoulder Damnatio Memoriae According to some authorities of history and population studies, about 117 billion people have been born on this earth. How many are forgotten? I would guess almost every single one; yet in my imagination, a few still stand and some still walk. In
Tanna, Queen of the Crodères: A Neolithic Folktale
Several years ago my son and I went hiking through the Lavaredo Pass, high in the Dolomites. It was warm down in the valley, but as we went higher, the temperature dropped considerably despite the sunny weather. As we climbed, we came upon the remnants of trenches, fortifications and tunnels
Consensual Hair Cutting and Money Sharing: Two Modern Fairy Tales
Recently the trial of the World Junior Hockey League men was concluded. It got me to thinking… Consensual Hair Cutting In a far or not so far way land, a woman’s hair was not just her “crowning glory”… it was a measure of her worth. In this land, hair
Sanguanél, Salvanèl, Mazariol, and Mazaròl
Continuing recent essays about quirky northern Italian stories, here are some intertwined creatures that roam through their folklore. These particular stories, not very well known in English sources, touch upon memory loss, losing one’s way, and environmental concerns. Sanguanél and Salvanèl The first little creature has two slightly different
Camalò: Centre of the World or Portal to the Underworld
Lately, I find myself recalling places and stories from Italy. Here is a recollection from the Province of Treviso, in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The village is called Camalò. It’s not particularly remarkable to look at or to pass through. Back in the 1970s, when driving to
Fireflies, Mermaids and Skeins of Thread
Folktales from the Euganean Hills Years ago I lived near the area of the Colli Euganei (the Euganean Hills). They only rise to between 300-600 metres in height, but with everything else around them being completely flat, they do stand out. The area is named after an ancient pre-Roman
John Collier: Florida Pioneer, Cracker and Polygamist
John Collier Sr. was certainly a fascinating man. A true Florida pioneer, he was the personification of a “cracker” — but in the positive historical sense (more on the “cracker” origin story follows). As we shall see, his personal relationships are legion and deeply tangled. Let’s call him “John” from
Biographies of "Ordinary" People
As some of you know, I write biographies and memoirs. Often they are focused on someone's ancestor; other times they are my ghostwriting of an individual’s recollections. Here is why I write this sort of thing and why I truly love memorializing stories of others. And, by
Sophia Holness: An Intrepid Woman, from a British Workhouse to Canada (1850–1922)
Here is another fascinating story of a real person whose story had been lost until now. Sophia is unrelated to me; she is the ancestor of a client. Born on June 2, 1850, in Blean, a village in Canterbury, Kent, England, Sophia Holness lived a long, eventful life. The civil
Marozia: A Medieval Lesbian Ghost
Look what happens when you don't confess to "wanton lust"! The stories are there, but you sometimes need to seek them out. Marozia is less than a mere footnote in history, but at least she is noted. She lived and she had a story, and thanks
Wolf Pelt: A Fairy Tale Retold
All the best stories come from long ago, and this is one such story. This is my retelling and re-imagining of it: There once was — or there once was not — a story, in the oldest days and ages, in a land so far away it was beyond seven mountains, beyond
The Little People of the Credit River
Who knows if they are still among us? The Anishinaabeg of Mississauga believed the Credit River was home to a group of tiny people — we night think of them as elves, sprites, spirits, little people — that they called the Mamagwasewug. Part of the folklore of many tribes, the Mamagwasewug were
The Orcolat: Pink Floyd, the Ogre, and the Real Voice of the Quake
The earthquake in Northern Italy happened on May 6, 1976, at exactly 9 PM. Later major aftershocks occurred on the 11th and 15th of September. I was there and will always remember. Not at the epicenter, but certainly well within the range where the earthquake was felt. But first a