Cause and effect. This web site is a perfect example of the concept of cause and effect. The world we live in is constantly changing and as the world changes so does this web site. Cause and effect. Parchment hosts a sporting event and this web site changes. WMU has a basketball game and this web site changes. Kathy and I attend a concert and this web site changes. Tom takes some pictures of bugs in the back yard, and guess what, this web site changes. And so it is that these Lauren pages have changed significantly in 2009. Lauren made some decisions (cause) that inspired me to change (effect) these pages. Some real circle of life decisions (for you Lion King fans). And as Lauren continues her journey between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” I'm sure that her decisions will prompt many many more changes to this web site because when push comes to shove, I'm just the scribe not the conductor. Such is the road we are all traveling. As you travel keep in mind that none of us will be defined by or remembered for our destination. The relevance for all of us is in the journey.
If you know me then you know that I'm a huge fan of stories with a moral, one of my favorite being the Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper". Well along those lines here's an article from the web site VISION.ORG that I feel is a GREAT read:
Between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” lies a timeless, ever-changing world, where everything is possible and dreams do come true. Countless fairy tales with infinite variations, usually conveying moral, social or political lessons through skillful narrative and interesting characters, have existed throughout history and throughout the world. Consider Aesop’s fables, the basis for so many of our contemporary moral stories. The still-popular tales have lived on for more than two millennia, exemplifying extraordinary power and longevity. Other early influences on our literary tradition abound: Cinderella stories, for example—distressed damsels losing diminutive footwear—are found in ancient Egypt and ninth-century China. The nature of this genre seems to invite evolution. Originally these deceptively simple stories were passed orally from generation to generation. As the printed word became more accessible, the tales became somewhat less mutable for a time. Today the images we see on the movie screen have firmly implanted themselves in our minds and have all but supplanted the originals. More significant than the changes themselves, however, is what the evolution of the fairy tale tells us about ourselves and our changing society.
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With globalization, full-length animated movies have become today’s standard for fairy tales worldwide. Often forgotten are the deeper meanings and lessons of some of the earlier versions, as well as the moralistic revisions of the brothers Grimm. If fairy tales have been a social gauge through the ages, then today’s tales suggest that Western society has shifted even further from supporting biblical values and principles to embracing the concepts of relative morality and self-sufficiency. The dual forces of cause and effect have been consistently at work through the ages. The mutable fairy tale has always been both an unrelenting influence on society and a mirror of society. From oral tradition, through the literary fairy tale, and now to cinema—we can only imagine what new medium will carry fairy tales to the next generations and what influential messages they will instill. One thing is certain, however. The current trend in popular fairy tales toward moral ambivalence suggests that the foreseeable future looks disturbingly amoral.
To read the complete article by ALICE ABLER click on the picture below:
