Words of the Month - Competence Porn

         Some people love to watch dumpster fires or train wrecks, relishing the dysfunctional dramas in reality shows or the disastrous crashes in car races.  I can’t stand that; I prefer to watch people doing things well.  At the Olympics I want every athlete to perform to the best of their abilities, and in fiction I want to see characters do amazing things.  I like competence porn.  I was reminded of this term recently when it was raised at a panel I attended at Boskone about the lure of heist stories.  One of the reasons people enjoy heists is for the pleasure of seeing all the members of the team perform their amazing special feats to pull off the seemingly impossible task: mastermind, hacker, con artist, safe cracker, thief…  When they do their jobs well it’s competence porn.

        Since this is a Words of the Month post, let’s look at the derivation of the term.  Competence comes from Latin roots meaning “meeting together, agreement, symmetry,” which feels particularly appropriate for those heist teams, but the word actually has a somewhat tangled back story.  In the sixteenth century the word competence had two definitions, both now obsolete.  One was “rivalry,” deriving from compete, which feels particularly appropriate for the Olympics.  In other words, that root of “working together” could be taken to mean either striving together on the same side of an issue, or striving together on opposite sides.  But at the same time the other definition was “adequate supply,” as in competency, pulling on the idea of things coming together in a fitting way.  In the early eighteenth century we got the legal definition of “capability or fitness to testify in court,” and by the end of the 18th century that sense had broadened to the definition I’m talking about today: “adequate ability, sufficient skill” for whatever task.  By this definition competence is more like a minimum threshold, however.  In today’s term competence porn we’re referring to things done not just adequately but done masterfully well.

        Porn, of course, is short for pornography, the abbreviation not appearing in print until around 1960.  (However, who knows how long people had been using the term in the sorts of conversations that didn’t get published!)  Interestingly, the first pornography - to be called by that name, anyway - was obscene paintings in the ancient temples of Bacchus.  This was around 1840, and English got the word from French which had borrowed it from the Greek word meaning “depicting prostitutes.”  You can see the -graphy root that shows up in so many other words for writing, recording, carving, or describing things.  It wasn’t long before the word  pornography was applied to certain French novels, but apparently not until the early 20th century was it applied to pictures other than those original murals.  In 1964 we got the famous Supreme Court opinion in which Justice Potter Stewart said that he couldn’t define “hard-core” pornography, “But I know it when I see it.”

        Recently, however, the word porn seems to be acquiring a broader and generally more benign sense, starting with the term food porn.  In 1977 Alexander Cockburn wrote “True gastro-porn heightens the excitement and also the sense of the unattainable by proffering colored photographs of various completed recipes,” in which statement the parallel is drawn between alluring food photography and provocative sexual photography.  In this instance it’s less about any specific connection between food and sex and more about the ways the presentation of each can be made to appeal to the sensual and even to the voyeuristic allure of potentially “illicit” unhealthy foods.  By the early 2000s, however, the sense of the “porn” in food porn was ameliorated still further to mean simply “material presenting something desirable in an especially aesthetically appealing or sensational manner.”

        The term property porn appeared in 2005 to describe the luscious and alluring photos of desirable luxury properties in glossy magazines, and various other “porns” have been used, although I certainly have no intention of searching for porn on the internet in order to find you more examples.  (I do hope the writing of this post won’t get me attacked by the wrong sorts of algorithms!)  And finally we get to today’s term competence porn, which was coined in 2009 by John Rogers about the television show “Leverage,” which he created.  So yes, heists are in fact the quintessential example of competence porn.

        I don’t love this term or this usage of the word porn because in general I dislike the linguistic mushing together of positive and negative, healthy and unhealthy, such as “sick” or “wicked” meaning “good” or “ kill” or “slay” meaning “to do a good job.”  (On the other hand, you can read about some other examples of linguistic amelioration in my prior post Scary Good.)  But I do absolutely enjoy seeing advanced skills performed with exceptional proficiency, so while I might wish for a better name for it, I still say “Bring it on.”

[Pictures: Okuda Sadaemon Yukitaka, woodblock print by Ogata Gekkō, 1902 (Image from The British Museum);

Detail from Ninja, woodcut by Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1814 (Image from Artsy).]

Year of the Horse

         Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year!  Here’s a pleasing little relief block print (I’m guessing linoleum) depicting fireworks being set off in a Chinatown Street in 1936 or so.  It’s by Julio de Diego (Spain/USA, 1900-1979).  I particularly like how the texture of the gouges makes a pattern on the white facade of the building, and on the sidewalk.  This piece does a great job capturing the gleam of all the lights at night: the firework, the traffic light, and the restaurant signs.

        We are now entering the year of the horse, so here are a few horses to set the tone.  First, here’s one by Urushibara Mokuchū (Japan, 1888-1953).  It’s of the style that reproduces the look of brush painting, with tapered and feathered lines and shades of lighter ink as well as black.  The background, too, has been printed with a transparent wash so that the wood grain

shows.  This is one of a series of horses all similar but in different poses.

        And I also have for you two “H is for Horse” illustrations from alphabets I’ve featured before.  Mary Azarian’s horses are standing in the barn doorway, possibly being geared up to get to work pulling a cart.  This seems like a fine sentiment for the start of a new year: get ready to get to work!  The other horse here is by Enid Marx.  I’m not sure I trust the expression in its eye, but I do like its spots, as well as all the elements of the background, from clouds to trees, to ground.

        This is specifically the year of the fire horse, which allegedly will be good for the arts, which I appreciate, but not good for the climate or the tensions of strained relationships, which does not bode well for the world.  Luckily my children are horses, so this should be good for them, and my husband and I are dogs, which are supposedly also going to have stability and financial rewards this year.

        I happen to look at all of this purely as fantasy (and an excuse for relief block prints), but you know I do like fantasy, so we’ll see where the plot takes us!

[Pictures: New Year in China Town, relief print by Julio de Diego, 1936 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Horse (D), woodblock print by Urushibara Mokuchū, 1960 (Image from Minneapolis Institute of Art);

Horse, wood block print by Mary Azarian, from A Farmer's Alphabet, 1981;

H, wood block print by Enid Marx from Marco’s Animal Alphabet, 1979 (Image from the Saleroom).]

Signpost: of Alchemists and Illustrations

         This weekend I’ll be at Boskone, so here’s the usual roundup of posts that I think people attending my various panels may wish to refer to.  In addition, since one of the panels is on illustration and we don’t have a big screen to show visual aids, I thought I’d post some examples of various illustration techniques I’ve used, so that the curious can have a look.

Block Printing Demo and Mini Workshop - You can always find my handout here.  Plus here are a few posts with some basic printmaking instructions and projects you could try.  (Or if you want more options, try the Step-By-Step label.)

        First Experiments

        Everyday Printmaking Supplies

        One Inch Stamp Project

        Block Prints: Ink or No Ink

Using Different Art Mediums for Illustration - Obviously my primary medium is relief block printmaking, but in addition I’ve used “faux block printing” done digitally, and I’ve done collage (a hybrid of physical collage and digital manipulation of scanned pieces).  The first picture above is a rubber block print illustration from Hey, Diddle Diddle! and Other Rhymes.

        Next is a spread from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  I did an entire A to Z series on the book, with lots of illustrations here.

        Then here’s a selection of illustrations from The Extraordinary Book of Doors.  Some are block prints, such as the Autumn Clematis in Springtime, while others are Faux Woodcuts.

        And then I’ve posted one of the block prints for my next book, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, coming in April!  (This book will be the subject of this year’s A to Z Challenge, so I won’t say more about it yet.)

        Here’s a post about another book I illustrated with block prints: This Holy Day

        And here’s one with a real and a faux print from another project: Periodic Table of Aliens

        Moving on to other mediums I’ve used for illustration, A is for Arches shows a collagraph/gelli print/collage that appears in Bittersweetness & Light.

       The next picture here today includes two of my page spreads for the picture book Approved!, which I illustrated with a collage process that involved both actual collage and digitally manipulating collage elements that I scanned.  You can read just a little bit about it here.

        And finally, there’s a picture of some quilts I’ve made.  They aren’t illustrations in a book, but it’s a technique that certainly could be used for illustration.  And another quilt “illustration” posted here.

All About Alchemy and Alchemists - Here’s a collection of posts that are at least alchemy-adjacent

        The Philosopher’s Stone - the history, background, and how to make it

        Mystery Manuscript - the Voynich Manuscript

        The Prague Golem

        G is for Gnome - just a mention of alchemist Paracelsus

        Elizabeth I - contains a brief excerpt from the dedication of an alchemy text by Rabbards

        I Give You Athanasius Kircher - my favorite seventeenth century polymath

                plus Kircher’s Dragons!

        In addition, as always, there will be the readings with Broad Universe and lots of work (72 pieces!) in the Art Show.  I’m so very grateful that I get to do these things I love and share them with others!

[Pictures: Jack Sprat, and His Wife Rosie, rubber block print from Hey, Diddle Diddle! and Other Rhymes by AEGNydam, 2005;

Of the Qilin, rubber block print illustration from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination by AEGNydam, 2019;

A collection of doors, illustrations from The Extraordinary Book of Doors by AEGNydam, 2014;

Incident at Bullion Mill, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com);

Illustrations, collage by AEGNydam from Approved! by Nancy L. Haines, 2016;

Animal Houses on the Water, quilts by AEGNydam, 2004.]

Library Loving

         February is National Library Lovers’ Month, and I certainly count myself in that category.  Books, of course, are magic: stories shared across space and time straight from one human spirit to another, even when their bodies could never meet in real life, and couldn’t understand one another if they did.  Books are magical threads of connection, and libraries are a multiplication of books: the promise of all those stories, all those characters, all those adventures, all those ideas, all that beauty, excitement, creativity, love, discovery, knowledge, connection…  So it’s not a coincidence that over the years I’ve done lots of art and writing involving libraries.  Here are some of the highlights.

        This first piece is entitled “A Glimpse of Paradise,” because paradise is what a library can be.  The only things missing in this particular view are a comfy chair and a spiral staircase.  You can read all about the making of this piece in my blog post about it.

        The next two pieces make the magic of libraries a little more literal.  In “Bookby-upon-Shelf” the books become dwellings for lucky little people who go in and out walking dogs, watering pot plants, hanging out laundry, and greeting the local book dragon.  Of course the books also house a library of their own in two volumes right in the center of the piece.  If you’re curious about all the other books in this town, you can check out my blog post about it, and learn some of the technical challenges of carving and printing a piece this large, as well as an explanation of all the titles.

        “When the Reader’s Away” the books will play, of course.  In this piece I’ve moved from the idea of living in books to the idea that books have a life and spirit of their own.  These books look to be in a personal rather than a public library, but it’s still the case that when books are gathered their power multiplies as they converse with each other, offering their various different perspectives.

Although portraying the idea in a literal way is whimsical and light, it’s absolutely true that we often use language that unconsciously reflects this idea: What this book is trying to say is…  This book really spoke to me…  It showed me how to do this…  It took me on a journey…

        And finally, here’s a piece in which the library is the setting for a very special creature called “The Grand Marhoot.”  If you want to know more about the Grand Marhoot and why she’s shown in a library, you can read my blog post about it.

        As for stories that involve libraries, you could read

     Vision Revealed (Book 4 of the Otherworld Series), which features Nulif, a librarian/archaeologist, and a description of the Great Collection of K’Ten where he works

     The Extraordinary Book of Doors, which has one scene of hiding and chasing in an unnamed library discovered through one of the book's magical doors

     “In Which the Librarian Delves for Living Words in a Time of Drought” (short story in Bittersweetness & Light), in which a librarian spelunks into a book in order to retrieve treasure for people who are starving because of shuttered libraries

        (You can find more information about all these books here.)

        What’s your favorite library - real or fictional?  Who’s your favorite librarian?  What’s your favorite book featuring a library?

[Pictures: A Glimpse of Paradise, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2011 (originals sold out);

Bookby-upon-Shelf, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2016 (originals sold out);

When the Reader's Away, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2023 (originals sold out);

The Grand Marhoot, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2017 (Image from NydamPrints).]

Word of the Month - Sports

         Sports.  This one simple word, which we’ll be hearing an awful lot of as the Superbowl and the Winter Olympics take over conversation next month, actually has a lot of interesting linguistic stuff going on.  The etymology goes back to Middle English, about 1300 when Anglo-French disport meant “pleasure, enjoyment” as a noun, as well as a verb meaning “to take pleasure or amuse oneself.”  The roots here are dis- meaning “away” plus -port meaning “to carry,” as in porter, portage, import, export, deport, and even important (but that’s  a story for another day).  So basically, the roots of disport meant “to carry away.”  Disport was shortened into sport around 1400.  So it’s interesting to note that sports didn’t begin as serious competitions of physical skills and rivalry, but simply as escapist entertainment.

        The second interesting thing about the word sport is that when it was shortened from disport, it was not broken at the etymological boundary, but in the middle of the prefix.  This is a sort of metanalysis, which you can read more about in my post about The Wandering N.

        Next, the more specific verb meaning “amuse oneself with outdoor exercise” arrived in the late 1400s, and the noun meaning “game involving physical exercise” arrived around 1520.  But the broader meanings of general entertainment and pleasure still continued in use for quite a while.  Although the broader meaning is now mostly obsolete you can still see it in the phrase in sport, meaning “just for fun, joking,”  as well as in the nursery rhyme where “The little dog laughed to see such sport.”  The noun meanings “a person exhibiting good or bad sportsmanship” and “a good fellow, amiable person” are later developments from the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

        Another interesting thing is the subtle difference in usage between British and American English.  Both can talk about a single sport, such as “the sport of football,” or “field hockey is my favorite sport,” and both can talk about the plurality of sports as in “Medals will be awarded in 116 sports at the 2026 Winter Olympics.”  But for the general, uncountable category of athletic activity, British English says “I love watching sport,” while American English says “I love watching sports.”  One can make a logical defense of either version, but it’s really got nothing to do with logic.  For some reason at some point the usage pattern diverged, but for this I can find neither explanation nor dates, I’m very sorry to say.

        So, will you be watching sport or sports this February?  Do you have a favorite sport or do you not care about sport(s) at all?  And if what you really care about is block prints depicting sport(s), check out my prior posts Winter Olympics and Winter Games.

[Picture: Halted, woodcut by Lillian Scalzo, ca. 1935 (Image from Armstrong Fine Art);

Hockey Players, color woodcut by Louis Schanker, 1940 (Image from MoMA).]

Color in the Snow

         Snow naturally lends itself to black and white (or possibly grey and white), and yet here are three artists who have used full color to depict their snowy scenes.

        First, last night’s snowstorm as illustrated in 1946 by Kawase Hasui (Japan, 1883-1957).  I’ve featured block prints by Hasui before, including an island (my favorite), some fruit, and another snow scene.  In this one I particularly love the lighted windows in the dusk, something I absolutely never tire of seeing in either real life or art.  As for the snow, one thing that’s interesting is that it’s not just white but a range of greys and blues, some really quite dark.  Even though we tend to think of snow and snowflakes as being white, it’s much more realistic for them to look grey under some circumstances, such as when they’re blocking the light from a lighter area.

        Next I have an urban scene by George G. Adomeit (Lithuania/USA, 1879-1967).  I love that the car places us in 1933, and Adomeit has used browns and warm greys which reinforces that sepia-toned sense of a vintage scene, even though I assume he had no such perspective at the time.  One of the most interesting things about this print is the use of textured paper.  In general textured paper is considered a problem because it prevents the block from printing cleanly, but in this case it works really well with the picture.  I also really like the way the broken fence in the foreground frames the scene both visually and from a storytelling perspective.

        And for a final piece I’ve got the majestic vista of a snowy landscape that dwarfs the human buildings, by Nina Sage (UK).  The buildings are warm browns against the huge cool grey and blue expanse of snow and ice.  I particularly like the way the lake (or fjord?) is depicted.  I previously shared a nuthatch by Sage.

        All three of these look to be multi-block prints with at least four colors, and certainly more for some.  Now, sometimes I feel like extra layers in block prints are unnecessary and gratuitous, complicating something that is remarkable precisely because of its simplicity - but in the case of these three pieces I do really like the subtle layers of detail that the extra colors add.

        And now I’ll soon have to stop admiring snow in art and go out to shovel snow in real life!

[Pictures: Snowstorm at Shiobara, color woodcut by Kawase Hasui, 1946 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Back of Houses in Snow, color woodcut by George G. Adomeit, 1933 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

The Boathouse, linocut by Nina Sage (Image from VK Gallery).]

News Round-Up

         It’s time for updates on a whole slew of recent projects…

        1. Back in December I participated in “Speed-Date a Book” with Strong Women-Strange Worlds, in which I made a fun two-minute pitch for Bittersweetness & Light in the form of a fantastical weather report.  Alas, the recording isn’t perfect: at the end it doesn’t show the whole panel of “contestants,” and even worse, during my pitch it shows only my slides and not me, which is in keeping with technology’s increasingly emphatic attempts to gaslight me.  I assure you I was there in front of the screen during the live event!  (Have I somehow become a ghost or a vampire?)  But at any rate, you can still enjoy my pitch, which you can watch here.

        2. Also back in December I had several art shows and was working on several blocks.  Here’s the progress I’ve reached: one had a test print and is ready for final tweaking and proper printing, one is probably about two thirds of the way finished, and the third is just barely begun.  I’ll need to start two more to use as sample blocks at upcoming workshops in the next month, but I’m certainly hoping to get back to more of my own sweet carving, as well.

        3. More recently I just spent the weekend at the Arisia sci fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA and it was fantastic!  I was on the half-dozen panels listed in my last post,

plus two group readings.  I sold lots of books and a ton of art, and my piece “Symbiote City (Venusian Medusae)” won the Con Chair’s Choice Award!  You can read more about the piece at this prior post (which is also relevant for the panel I was on, about “Designing Things that Don’t Exist”).  And on top of all that, I had a lot of really nice conversations with people about art and writing and sharing the things that give us hope.  Really Good Stuff!

        4. Looking somewhat ahead, I am plunging into work on my next book, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, because it’s high time to get cracking on decisions about what to include, what order to put things in, what additional pieces of artwork I need to fill in gaps, and so on.  I just received marketing postcards in time to give them out at the conventions; I just received the enamel pins that are one of the Kickstarter backer rewards; and I just got a bunch of beta reader feedback that I need to digest and process and use for decision-making.  It’s all very daunting and very exciting!

        5. Meanwhile, there will need to be lots of matting and framing for Boskone in three weeks… not to mention all the other stuff I was complaining about in my Jan. 5 post!  (Also meanwhile, I’ve had to migrate to a new newsletter program and at the moment I cannot even express how intensely I’m hating it.  Ugh!  But there are plenty of other things to worry about, both more positive and more negative, so that’s a problem for another day.)

        6. Another fun tidbit is that I currently have artwork on display in public outdoor art galleries in two towns.  I absolutely love this format, in which the artwork of multiple artists beautifies otherwise boring or ugly fences around town, and the selection rotates to new locations at intervals so that it stays fresh and interesting to everyone going about their daily rounds.  It’s an honor to have my work accepted in these two projects, and between this and my successes at Arisia I’ve been feeling very affirmed in my art recently.

        All of which means that, as always, I do hope you know that if you’ve bought my work, read my books, left reviews, told your friends, or supported me in any one of  many ways either tangible or intangible, it really does make a difference to me and I do appreciate it very much.

[Pictures: Screen shots from my Speed-Date pitch for Bittersweetness & Light, all graphics by AEGNydam, 2025;

Rubber blocks plus test print of Needham cupolas by AEGNydam, 2026;

Photos from Arisia, (photo of me at Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading by Randee Dawn), 2026;

Photos of assorted other projects and art by AEGNydam, 2026.]

Abstracts for the New Year

         Here are a couple of abstract woodcuts that somehow seem suitable for the vibe of a new year stretching ahead.  The artist is Yukio Hasumi (Japan, b. 1927), about whom I can find no information beyond the birth date - not even a death date, which means they’re 99 this year!  Hasumi did a number of pieces with similar marks and color gradations, and I find it interesting that they used variations of the same branching, seaweedy patterns over and over.  I’d be curious to learn whether there was a significance behind the forms, or did the artist just feel like it.  Many of Hasumi’s woodcuts include “Saku” as the title, which may mean “to bloom.”

        In the absence of any further information to give you, I simply share these pieces and invite you to sink in and see whether they speak to you.  Given their dates (1970-71), they probably aim to expand your mind!

        Meanwhile, I’ve been very busy preparing for the Arisia con this weekend, in which I’ll have a very full schedule of art show, readings, panels, and shifts at the Broad Universe book table in the Dealers Room.  My panels include:

    The Moral of the Story Is…  (You all know from the April A to Z Challenge how much I love a moral!)

    Writing Hope (You know from Bittersweetness & Light, not to mention… well, everything, how much I love hopeful stories!)

    Cartography in Sci Fi/Fantasy (You know from the “maps” link over in the sidebar how much I love fantasy cartography!)

    Designing Things that Don’t Exist (You know from the number of times I’ve been on similar panels how much I enjoy this topic!  You can find some related posts here.)

    Songs, Poems, and Stories in Modern Sci Fi/Fantasy (You know from the “poetry” link in the sidebar how much I love fantasy poetry!  You can find a few specific posts to explore here.)

    Faiths of Fantasy and the Future (You know from the fact that I was on this panel last year how interested I am in the topic!  Here’s what I said about the panel then.)

        You can see my whole schedule and full panel descriptions here.  If you’ll be at Arisia don’t hesitate to say hello!

[Pictures: Saku Q-11, color woodcut by Hasumi, 1970;

Saku SZ-6, color woodcut by Hasumi, 1971 (Images from The Cleveland Museum of Art).]

The Sky is Falling!

         In my last post I mentioned the story of Chicken Little - as we call it in the USA.  In England the tale often begins with Henny Penny, who’s the second character in most American versions.  In fact, the names of all the characters involved are highly variable, although they’re usually rhyming or alliterative, such as Chicken Licken, Hen Pen, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, or Ducky Daddles.  But the basic outline of the story is relatively constant: a bird gets hit by some little falling thing (acorn or leaf) and concludes that the sky is falling.  As they run along in a panic, they tell all the other birds they meet, who join the mass hysteria until they all meet a fox.  The wily fox sees that he can manipulate the panicking crowd, and tricks them all into entering his den to be eaten.  The moral of the story is: don’t panic over stupid little things.  The name “Chicken Little” and the cry “The sky is falling” have both become idiomatic in English, signifying people who leap to catastrophic pessimism over nothing and their hysterical, fear-mongering cries.

        Versions of the fable appear in European literature by the early nineteenth century, but were presumably circulating orally long before being seen in print.  Stories with similar patterns and morals also appear many centuries earlier in Buddhist texts.  These fables involve a hare convinced by the sound of a falling fruit that the earth is breaking up.  These versions generally have a happier ending, in which some more benevolent animal (who may even be the Bodhisattva in another form, in some versions) stops the stampede of hysterical animals, finds out the truth about the source of the panic, calms everyone down, and sends them safely home.  Aesop has a fable which doesn’t include the threatened end of the world, but does feature mass hysteria.  In his version panicking hares cause a panic among frogs, which leads another animal to remind the hares that everyone’s life is full of fear and trouble, so you may as well just chill out and bear it.

        The one thing all these stories have in common is that the sky is not, in fact, falling and the world is not breaking up.  The morals point out how foolish it is to leap to overly pessimistic conclusions, how irresponsible it is to incite panic, and how doubly foolish it is to believe the fear-mongering of others without evidence.  The Chicken Little stories also raise the moral of how easily bad actors can manipulate fearful people, so that such foxes can more easily prey on such foolish, helpless fowl.  That’s the moral I think we’re seeing lived out in this time: bad-faith foxes doing their best to keep foolish fowl whipped up into hysterical fear over irrelevances and scapegoats, the better to distract them from real issues, and thus devour them.

        There is another twist to the story that I want to raise up now, though: what about fears that really are justified?  What if the sky really is in danger of falling?  In that case it’s surely reasonable to be afraid, but Chicken Little still gives us a moral about how not to behave.  Even when fear is justified, dashing around in a panic is still not going to help anyone.  Rather than playing right into the greedy hands of the foxes who would manipulate us, instead, how about gathering all the other fowl (and hares, and frogs) and trying to figure out how we can all actually help solve the problem.

        My musings on this traditional story highlight one more point I want to make.  The reason these tales stick around for centuries is that they continue to have relevance to the work of being human.  The reason they have so many variants is that they continue to be adapted to the particular situations in which we find ourselves.  These stories carry universal threads while simultaneously allowing constant tweaking and changing.  That’s their magic and their power, and that’s why storytellers, authors, and artists have continued to revisit them generation after generation.  And that’s why I, too, have been exploring them through art, poetry, and stories for my upcoming book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns!

[Pictures: first and third, anonymous illustrations from Chicken Little by Mara L. Pratt-Chadwick, ca. 1905 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive);

second, wood engraving by William Roberts from The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny, ca. 1855 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive).]