It’s time to kick-off another week of fabulous story-telling in Voice, brought to Second Life by the staff of the Seanchai Library SL. As always, all times SLT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.
Sunday 2nd June, 13:30: Tea Time in Sherwood Forest
June arrives in the evergreen woods of Sherwood Forest, and with it comes a month of tales from Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, brought to us by Caledonia Skytower and Corwyn Allen, complete with original songs by Corwyn!
An American illustrator and writer, Pyle published The Merry Adeventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire (to give the book its original full title) in 1883. With it, he helped solidify the heroic / romantic image of Robin Hood witnessed in works such as Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819). The stories Pyle built for the book were drawn from various ballads, which he drew together to form a cohesive tale, rewriting the songs to suit a younger audience and further establishing the role of Robin Hood as a heroic outlaw who robs the rich to feed the poor – a role in sharp contrast to the way in which the ballads actually portrayed him (which was principally as a through-and-through villain). So popular was Pyle’s work that it led to several more children’s books about Robin Hood over the next three decades, firmly establishing the legend as a respectable subject for children’s literature.
This week, Caledonia and Corwyn bring us How Robin Hood Became an Outlaw and Robin Hood and the Tinker.
Monday 3rd June, 19:00 – The Twenty-one Balloons (Part 1)
Caledonia Skytower starts a reading from William Pène du Bois’ 1947 children’s classic, The Twenty-one Balloons.
A steamship en route across the North Atlantic comes across the strange wreckage of twenty deflated gas balloons and rescue, much to their surprise, a lone man – one Professor William Waterman Sherman.
The professor had last been seen some three weeks previously, departing San Francisco aboard a giant balloon, determined to spend a year aloft and drifting on his own. Now, as word spreads that the professor has been found alive and well – and in completely the wrong ocean to the one he had last been seen flying towards – the world awaits the story of how he came to circumnavigate the globe in record time, only to be fished from the wreckage of twenty balloons when he had started with just the one.
And when he has sufficiently rested and recovered – and received a hero’s welcome on his homecoming – the good professor tells a tale most fantastic…
Tuesday 4th June, 19:00: Original Science-fiction
Join Jackson Arthur as he presents original works of science-fiction.
Wednesday 5th June, 19:00: Selections from Ermengarde the Expansive
Freda Frostbite reads selection from her new book Ermingarde the Expansive – a fairy tale for the rest of us.
“A fire-breathing dragon has entered your realm? No problem! A star falls from the sky? Catch it! Don’t like the prince you are obligated to marry? Dump him! Your daddy’s the king and he thinks you aren’t worth his attention much less capable of ruling the realm? Prove him wrong!
“Ermengarde the Expansive had a lot to overcome in spite if being born royal. Through strength and perseverance, she grew in power, stature, and, most importantly, self-esteem. Ermengarde is the princess our daughters could and should aspire to emulate.”
Thursday 6th June, 19:00: Poe’s Lighthouse
“The Light-House” is the unofficial title of Edgar Allen Poe’s last work, written some time between May and August 1849, shortly before his death in October of that year. Tale set within the confines of an isolated lighthouse and told, as were many of Poe’s tales, in the first-person.
The story opens on New Year’s Day in 1746. A storm is underway and the new custodian of the lighthouse writes a diary entry describing his arrival at this lonely outpost. In it, he entry expresses a mixture of annoyance, anticipation and a measure of paranoia / concern as to the safety of the buiulding itself, which grows somewhat in the two entries which follow. And while there is a heading for the 4th entry, no account of the day is actually given; the page is blank.
Much has been written and discussed about “The Light-House” over the years. Was it the start of a novel to which Poe never returned prior to his death? Was it actually a short story, the last entry intentionally blank to signify the narrator’s death, thus leaving the tale already complete when Poe died?
However, Christopher Conlon wasn’t interested in dry discourse about what “The Light-House” might or might not be when he established his challenge of Poe’s Lighthouse. Instead, he set some two dozen authors, including Mike Resnick, John Shirley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Carole Nelson Douglas, the task of continuing Poe’s work and turn it into a complete story. His only stipulation: that they use Poe’s language, his images, his ideas; that they truly work together with the master.
Join Shandon Loring as he delves into this anthology of tales, all commencing with the same subject, but each one unique to itself.
Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and additions to the week’s schedule.
In May, library guests are invited to support Seanchai Library’s featured real world charity Heifer International. Have questions? IM or notecard Caledonia Skytower.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 