Susurration

BEING GREEDY CHOKES ANANSI From Favorite Folktales around the world by Jane Yolen. One time, Anansi lived in a country that had a queen who was also a witch. And she decreed that whoever used the word five would fall down dead, because that was her secret name, and she didn’t want anyone using it. Now, Buh Anansi was a clever fellow, and a hungry one too. Things were especially bad because there was a famine, so Anansi made a little house for himself by the side of the river near where everyone came to get water. And when anybody came to get water, he would call out to them, “I beg you to tell me how many yam hills I have here. I can’t count very well.” So, one by one he thought they would come up and say, “One, two, three, four, five,” and they would fall down dead. Then Anansi would take them and corn them in his barrel and eat them, and that way he would have lots of food in hungry times and in times of plenty.

Plantain, Plantago major, was considered to be one of the nine sacred herbs by the ancient Saxon people, and has been celebrated in Anglo-Saxon poetry as the "mother of herbs." In Russian this plant is called Подорожник - meaning near the roads. Native Americans called it "white man's foot" as it is often found growing along well-trodden foot paths and it was brought to the Americas from Europe. The Latin generic name means "sole of the foot." When I was a kid, we would use the leaves of this plant for small hurts and scratches. We would spit on the leaves and stick it onto our scratches. https://www.instagram.com/p/CSE9jT9LqUY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Many beginnings. Beginning 1. Kitten was very very lazy. She used to hunt slugs but now she only hunted carrots. She was such a good carrot hunter! * Starting is easy, it's the middle that is often a muddle. And I won't even mention the endings. Here are some beginnings for children stories that flitter through my head.