[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Re: Sayings and Tales

[GVLESS at aol.com]

That is exactly what we want to preserve as what some of you have sent in 
already today.  I started about 3 years ago to collect "stories" of Life in 
Volhynia that told of what it was like over there when our grandparents/parents 
lived there.  This past year some requests came in for the stories out of Poland. 
 Some have already come in.  And now it is to add those short sayings and 
folk tales to the collection.  Keep it up.  They are wonderful to use by SGGEE in 
several ways.  Right now, some will be used in the SGGEE Journal as Bill 
Fife, editor, sees fit.  It has been my hope that eventually we might as an 
organization have a booklet printed of these stories, sayings, folk tales, etc. for 
all who would be interested in securing a copy.  That is still a future dream 
for now.  But hopeful.  My intent in doing this is to be able to reach those 
of us who have no idea what life was about of our ancestors since many of us 
never thought to ask when older family members were around, or never even 
experienced some of what they might have said or did even here in North America.  I, 
for one, was like that. I never even heard the German language spoken as my 
grandparents died when I was young, and my parents wanted to be like the 
"Americans" and speak English.  Fortunately, it was my husband's Volhynian parents 
that began to introduce me to some of their history while they were alive.  So 
all this is exciting for me to hear from you.  Short comments, short stories 
are just as welcome as the longer ones.  

For the record however, whatever you wish to share with SGGEE we do want to 
be able to use them in whatever way is best in publishing them.  So - need your 
permission to allow that to be done.  For those of you who may just "publish" 
your own book some day - go for it.  It was a labor of love when my husband 
and I accomplished that and published in 2001.  He now is gone.  So thankful we 
did this for not only ourselves but the extended family members that we found 
during our research and never knew before we began.  

Keep the "s" in our name of SGGEE to mean "search" and "share".  Thank you.
Virginia Less