Storytelling for Week 12: Quarrel of the Quails

Quarrel of the Quails

There was once a camp of girls that was built by a gorgeous lake.  One day construction began on the opposite side.  The next summer there was a new boys' camp built there.  It was a very nice construction, but the girls did not want to have to deal with more people.  In their minds, the lake and everything near it was meant to be part of the girls' area.  It wasn't supposed to be invaded by boys!  About a week after the boys' camp opened, the leaders of the two camps met and decided to have a game day so the groups of children could get to know one another.  To foster competitive spirit, they grouped them so it would be the boys versus the girls.  They put the oldest of the camp residents in charge, leaving it up to them to come up with a valid game plan to win the day.  The first game that the children decided to play was capture the flag.  In their version the kids decided that the two groups were able to take prisoners, though they would have to post guards in order to ensure that the prisoners did not escape and make their way further into the enemy territory.  The leader of the girls was smart, telling the girls working for her that they should work in squads of three so that they could help one another escape if they came across any of the boys.  The boys, on the other hand, began to get frustrated when their prisoners kept escaping.  Things changed, however, once some of the girls got in a fight after one of them tripped and blamed the other.  The one who accidentally tripped the other apologized, but it was too late.  Now that there was contention within the group, the plans for unity and beating the boy's camp fell apart.  The other girls all took sides, leading to them refusing to help their friends escape from the "prison".  This fall out led to the boys winning the camp tournament, as well as forcing the girls to apologize for their behavior prior to the defeat.  In the end, this turned out to be a good thing, as the boys and girls came to be friendly rivals and made friends with one another.  The competition became a yearly occurrence, strengthening the ties between the camps and leading to lifelong friendships.  While the struggles within the group led to it falling apart, it eventually led to them growing closer together.

Author's Note

This story is a retelling of the Quarrel of the Quails, which focuses on how working together can be beneficial, while fighting within the group can lead to everything falling apart.

Story source: Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt, illustrated by Ellsworth Young (1912).

(Image of a quail, photo source: Wikimedia)

Week 12: Reading Diary B

 Jataka Tales: Babbitt

Jataka Tales: The Monkey and the Crocodile
-  Mother Crocodile wants her son to catch her a monkey, so that she can eat the heart.  The son manages to trick a greedy monkey onto his back, but is foolish and tells him that he plans to kill the monkey and give his heart to his mother.  The monkey got the crocodile to take it back to its tree by saying it didn't have its heart with it.  The crocodile found the monkey again, now living in a different tree.  The monkey tricked the crocodile again, earning the crocodile's respect and promise to leave him alone.

The Quarrel of the Quails
-  The quails had a good leader who helped them discover how to save themselves from the hunter.  The hunter would bring a net, mimicking the call of the leader.  Many quail were captured.  The leader found out how this happened and figured out how to save his followers.  When the net was thrown on them, they all flew to a thorn bush, saving themselves and catching the net on the thorns.  This continued successfully until they got in an argument that divided the group.  They could not agree to all fly, leading to the hunter capturing them and selling them.

The Foolish, Timid Rabbit
-  A rabbit was asleep under a tree until he woke to the thought that the world might fall apart.  His thought was, to him, proven correct when a coconut fell next to him. He started to run and other creatures came to see why.  When he told them the earth was falling apart, they began to run with him.  This continued until the Lion stopped them, questioning why they were all running.  He stopped their running and proved that the rabbit made a mistake.  This saved the animals from continuing to try to flee from this fate.

Week 11: Famous Last Words

This week has been pretty crazy.  I am working to complete my graduate school applications, thankfully that are still being accepted for the Spring semester.  I am also working towards graduation, which means that I am stressing out about keeping grades up and making sure my GPA doesn't drop.  I will be really glad when December rolls around.  That means that all I will have to worry about are finals, as well as making sure everything goes well with convocation.  I am planning on coming back to OU for graduate school.  Hopefully I will find out in the next month if I have been accepted into the Human Relations program.  It sounds like it will be a really interesting program to focus on, particularly when looking for a job in a few years.  I am really hoping to get in, both to continue my education and to further put off figuring out what I want to do with my life for the next few years, at least regarding employment.  Right now I am working at Payless, which is fun even though it can be tiring at times.  One of my coworkers walked out a few days ago so we are hiring again.  Even with the stress at times though, I really like my coworkers, which makes working there better. The fact that I get an employee discount on shoes is a major benefit as well.  I am working on my final papers for a few of my classes, which have had us working on these papers as our midterms.  It is nice to be able to work towards these papers early, though it is not comforting to know that the teachers expect a lot more from all of the students as a result of the extra time given to it.  This week is finally over! I hope everyone has a great Halloween!!

(Pumpkins for sale: Image source Wikipedia)

Week 11: Essay on Diagramming Sentences

 (Cartoon by Scott Hillburn)

This cartoon is hilarious, both because that is how Yoda talks and because grammatical structure was one of the main things teachers stressed in elementary school.  The funny thing is that after elementary school, it wasn't really talked about at all.  Once middle school hit, it was expected that you would be able to create proper sentences.  The parts of the sentence were no longer discussed.  When I saw this cartoon I started to remember the different English classes that I would have to sit through and hope that I was able to correctly diagram the sentence.  It is ironic that I hated having to do that in elementary school, yet I have ended up getting a minor in English Literature.  Even though I do not enjoy having to diagram sentences, I love reading and writing, so my love for that overcame my dislike for correctly structuring a sentence.  Even though I do love writing, I am still not able to easily diagram a sentence.  I can set the sentence up correctly, yet I will not really be able to tell you the role that each word in the sentence is playing.  That is mainly due to the fact that it was not really talked about at all in high school.  I am hoping that I will continue to be able to love English for the years to come.  This cartoon was able to display the fear that I faced along with a lot of my classmates.  Thankfully I was able to overcome this as time passed, as I hope others are able to do.  Without those classes, I do not know if I would have developed my love for English, even though I hated them at the time.  Either way, I enjoyed the way that the comic captured the fear of being called upon by the professor, as well as using Yoda, who is one of my favorite characters from Star Wars, to showcase that.

Storytelling for Week 11: Who Shall She Marry?

There was once a beautiful girl, known throughout the land for her stunning looks and her amazing voice.  Her family was very proud of her, protecting her from those who sought to marry her and use her for her beauty alone.  They wanted someone that would take care of her.  She also wanted someone who was willing to prove that they would do what was necessary to provide for her and protect her from danger.  In order to do this, she told her family that she would marry someone who embodied the characteristics of bravery, wisdom, or cunning.  One day, each family member met someone who fulfilled her demand.  Without consulting one another, or even talking to the girl about it, they agreed that in one week the man they met could come to the palace and meet the princes in order to marry her.  The princess was stunned when she found out.  She never expected for something like that to happen, especially as she did not think she would find even one man to truly fit the characteristics that she required in order to meet them.  To discover that her family had found someone who embodied each characteristic separately meant that it was an extreme shock to her.  On the day that she was meant to meet the three men, she was kidnapped by an evil man who sought to keep her for his own.  Though she struggled, she could not get away.  In order to rescue her, the three suitors had to work together and build a chariot to follow her in.  The wise man knew how to find the evil man, instructing the others as to where he was.  The clever man built the chariot to follow the princess in.  The brave man, however, went above and beyond, risking his life to defeat the evildoer and save the princess.  When they group returned home, they argued their cases to the king.  He ended up giving the choice to his daughter, as it would be her who was getting married.  She said that while the clever man and the wise man aided in her rescue, it was the brave man who truly was at risk, placing himself in danger of death so that he could help her to escape and regain her freedom.  Without his contribution, she would have been forced to marry her captor, as the other two men were afraid of what might happen to them.  The brave man and the princess were wed and they lived happily ever after.

(Damsel in Distress; Image source Wikipedia)

Brave, Wise, Clever is the tale being retold in this story.