a story by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1906, made into a film in 1970 and performed during the summer of 2008 in a specially constructed theatre at the NRM. The highlight of the production is the scene where the children stop the train following a landslide across the line. As a real-life steam engine - Stirling Single, a 39 tonne locomotive built in 1878 and designed by the Great Northern Railway's engineer Patrick Stirling, built at Doncaster. The loco boasts a single pair of driving wheels measuring a huge 2.5 metres (8 feet 1 inches ) in diameter - enters, stage right (or left depending on which side of the railway line you were sat), the audience erupts into ecstatic applause. Applauding an inanimate object, how novel is that? What would you clap your hands to? Answers in an Email, Subject line, Clap Hands.
Struwwelpeter
by Heinrich Hoffmann
See Slovenly Peter! Here he stands, With his dirty hair and hands. See! his nails are never cut; They are grim'd as black as soot; No water for many weeks, Has been near his cheeks; And the sloven, I declare, Not once this year has combed his hair! Anything to me is sweeter Than to see shock-headed Peter.
Little Black Sambo is the story of a little boy intimidated by tigers into handing over his beautiful new clothes. The tigers' greed and arrogance leads them into an argument over "who is the grandest" when dressed in Sambo's clothes. They get so angry with each other they forget why they are fighting, getting more angry till finally they grab each other's tail and begin running around a palm tree, faster and faster until they melt into a big pool of butter. The big jar of melted butter (ex-tiger) that Sambo's dad collects from under the palm tree allows Sambo’s mum to cook a big pile of pancakes for all the family.
We see avarice, leading to pride, aggression, and ultimately self-destruction. A profound lesson for us all.
The only criticism levelled at this story is the blatant "tigerism".
He was a journeyman carpenter, a good workman and a steady fellow, twenty-seven years old, but, although the eldest son, Jacques Randel had been forced to live on his family for two months, owing to the general lack of work. He had walked about seeking work for over a month and had left his native town, Ville-Avary, in La Manche, because he could find nothing to do and would no longer deprive his family of the bread they needed themselves, when he was the strongest of them all. His two sisters earned but little as charwomen. He went and inquired at the town hall, and the mayor's secretary told him that he would find work at the Labor Agency, and so he started, well provided with papers and certificates, and carrying another pair of shoes, a pair of trousers and a shirt in a blue handkerchief at the end of his stick. And he had walked almost without stopping, day and night, along interminable roads, in sun and rain, without ever reaching that mysterious country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work as a carpenter, but at every carpenter's shop where he applied he was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and, finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stonecutter; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up fagots, tended goats on a mountain, and all for a few pence, for he only obtained two or three days' work occasionally by offering himself at a shamefully low price, in order to tempt the avarice of employers and peasants.
The moral of this tale of woe is never sell yourself short.
The Kultur World
Welcome to a world where all things are dreams, but nothing is for real.
He used to tell a story that summed up his attitude to life. An old man was walking on the beach at dawn when he noticed a young man picking up starfish stranded by the retreating tide, and throwing them back into the sea one by one. He went up to him and asked him why he was doing this.
The young man replied that the starfish would die if left exposed to the morning sun. "But the beach goes on for miles and there are thousands of starfish. You will not be able to save them all. How can your effort make a difference?" The young man looked at the starfish in his hand then threw it back to the safety of the waves. "To this one", he said, "it makes a difference."
He loved that story because he knew that we do not have to redeem the world altogether in one go. We do it one day at a time, one person at a time, one act at a time. A single life, said the sages, is like the universe. Save a life and you save a world. Change a life and you begin to change the world.
