Little Egypt Heritage Articles Stories of Southern Illinois (c) Bill Oliver 5 October 2003 Vol 2 Issue: #35 ISBN: pending Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, I have a respect for the late Sidney Harris, the Chicago Tribune Columnist. I often use a statement of his which I rather like ... "Things I Learned While Looking Up Something Else." While surfing last week I came across a website which thought that "he [Mr Harris] was a really ignorant individual ....." Well, to each his own; however, I often get side-tracked because, like Mr Harris, I have an insatiable appetite for leaning new things. Why, just this week, from a cousin, I learned that one of my ancestors [a female line] possibly had eleven children. At least there were thirteen people living under one roof in 1820 Gallatan County. Well, since writing these few words I came across this: <http://www.rowanstudio.com/greymatter/archives/00001590.htm> which further illustrates these side trips to looking up other things. I went and fixed a cup of tea and read a delightful article. Sidney J. Harris also said, "The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers." Everytime I wonder where I will find something to write about, my varied reading tastes get me a tidbit or more. One of the things that I learned this week while researching other things was found in a technology periodical which illustrated that what goes around comes back around. My Nebraska ancestors, good American utilizers that they were, epitomized "waste not, want not", as I'm sure that yours did. They would go out and collect buffalo "chips" and use them for fuel. A by product of fermented animal dung or corn produces methanol gas. Toshiba has been perfecting a fuel cell to be used to supply power to lap-top/portable computers. These direct methanol fuel cells [DMFC] run on a mixture of methanol and water, generating an average of 12 and a maximum of 20 watts of power. What next?? One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. [-A.A. Milne] This week's article started with a memory of what we did on Saturday night for family entertainment. The druggist and the hardware owner would get out the white sheet and string it between their stores on a side street in their little Michigan town. Others would get out the folding chairs and set them up. The popcorn wagon would be wheeled out onto the corner and someone would begin making popped corn. When it was dark enough we would have a movie which was fit for the whole family. Before movies and popular reading folks had to have stories. Admittedly, before reading, say in the East, the professional story-teller went about from village to village carrying a carpet, which would be spread, sat upon and tales would be told. In merry ole England, the minstrel traveled from community to community singing his tales. Literature and fiction are two kinds of apples. And, literature is a luxury. However, fiction is a necessity. A piece of literature can not be too short because its climax is its merit. A story, on the other hand, can never be too long, for its conclusion leaves an emptiness. Thus, there was no end to Tales of the Arabian Nights, or the Tales of Robin Hood, or tales of the exploits of Daniel Boone. A century and more ago there was a storypaper called Saturday Night. James Elverson published it in 1865. Storypapers were also known as "six-cent weeklies", which was less than "Dime Novels", but much the same thing. These storypapers were designed for the whole family, featuring serialized stories and including poems, humor, sports, current events and fashion. The novels were the first love romances and designed to please the female audiences with the stories devoted to female subjects. These papers were eight pages in size and contained elaborate large front page illustrations. There were smaller pictures inside. Dime Novels gained popularity due to mechanization of printing, railroads which could carry fresh copies long distances, and the fact that literacy was increasing. Today we have the grocery line variety of picture storypapers. Yesteryear dime novels were aimed at young workers and distributed at newsstands and dry good stores everywhere. Dime Novels differentiated themselves from storypapers in that they did not put illustrations on the inside pages; only the front page. And where the storypapers contained material and themes to appeal to the entire family, Dime Novels tended to be more sensational and covered the proverbial Wild West, detective stories, urban outlaws, virtuous narratives centering on the young working woman, and romances. These papers had circulations of 100 to 400 thousand and more. In England storypapers were called penny bloods or penny dreadfuls. I guess because they were dreadful "literature" during the Victorian era, filling the necessity of printed fiction to the ever increasing literacy rate. e-la-di-e-das-di ha-wi nv-wa-do-hi-ya nv-wa-to-hi-ya-da. (May you walk in peace and harmony) Wado, Bill -=- Other sites worth visiting: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/SOIL http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/ILMASSAC http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/state/BillsArticles/LittleEgypt/intro.html