Middle Atlantic Folklife Association

The 2009 MAFA Annual Meeting will be held June 4-7, 2009 at the Lodge at Chalk Hill in western Pennsylvania, roughly halfway between Frostburg, MD and Pittsburgh, PA. Please see the attached You'll note that the registration form allows you to indicate whether you're interested in carpooling or sharing rides to/from the Pittsburgh airport. We will, on a limited basis, be able to offer rides for individuals flying into Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT).

The Lodge at Chalk Hill (www.thelodgeatchalkhill.com) is family and pet-friendly, so bring everyone! We've structured the Meeting to allow you and your family plenty of leisure activities. Right at the Lodge, you can enjoy complimentary catch-and-release fishing at Lake Lenore, volleyball, a half-mile lighted jogging trail, and children's area. Free time will be provided so that you can visit local attractions, including Laurel Caverns, Ohiopyle white-water rafting, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob (all within a short drive), or the Flight 93 Memorial (approximately 1 1/2 hours east from the Lodge), and much more! The Great Allegheny Passage (http://www.atatrail.org/) offers great opportunities for hiking and biking.

The Middle Atlantic Folklife Association and the New York State Folk Arts Roundtable will come together this year in Cooperstown, New York to present Collections, Collections, Collections, April 10 - 13, 2008. Our colleagues from throughout the region will join with us in a convening devoted to the topic of collections.

The conference will utilize the exceptional resources of the Cooperstown Graduate Program (CGP), New York State Historical Association and Farmers’ Museum. Our special joint meeting marks the largest gathering of folklorists in Cooperstown since the days of the American Folk Culture Program, and we are greatly excited by the opportunity to connect more closely to our Cooperstown colleagues and the students at CGP.

Conference Overview
On Thursday, early arrivals are encouraged to attend Cooperstown’s annual Bruce Buckley lecture, which will be delivered by Amanda Dargan and Steve Zeitlin of City Lore, a New York City based cultural heritage association.

On Friday, the annual meeting will begin with a workshop where you will learn what you need to know when planning the digitization of your audio and visual collections. It will provide essential information about how to prepare to make materials you’ve collected more enduring and widely accessible through digitization. Later that day there will be a presentation on laws and ethics relating to archives, sessions providing an overview of NYSHA’s major collections of New York State folklore and folklife, and a presentation of how archival collections are being made more widely accessible through the web and other methods.

On Saturday morning, we will discuss readings about Louis Jones and Cooperstown’s contributions to folklife studies, followed by a behind-the-scenes tour of the Farmer’s Museum and a discussion of issues relating to outdoor living museums. In the afternoon, you will have a choice of behind the-scenes tours at various locations.

There will be plenty of fun time for socializing and partying including a spring celebration home-style dinner with live music and liquid refreshments in a local church. The meeting will conclude with a wrap-up session on Sunday morning.

Full Conference Schedule with session details and the registration form with pricing and payment information are attached below and can be downloaded.

The Middle Atlantic Folklife Association and the New York State Folk Arts Roundtable will come together this year in Cooperstown, New York to present Collections, Collections, Collections, April 10 - 13, 2008. Our colleagues from throughout the region will join with us in a convening devoted to the topic of collections.

The conference will utilize the exceptional resources of the Cooperstown Graduate Program (CGP), New York State Historical Association and Farmers’ Museum. Our special joint meeting marks the largest gathering of folklorists in Cooperstown since the days of the American Folk Culture Program, and we are greatly excited by the opportunity to connect more closely to our Cooperstown colleagues and the students at CGP.

Conference Schedule with session details and the registration form with pricing and payment information will be posted here shortly.

2007 Joint Conference of the
Middle Atlantic Folklife Association & Mid-Atlantic Chapter
of the Society for Ethnomusicology
College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia
March 30 - April 1, 2007

Folklorists and ethnomusicologists from the Middle Atlantic Region will join together March 30 – April 1 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, for the first joint meeting of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association (MAFA) and the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology MACSEM). “Engaged Scholarship and Performance: Cultural Research and Practice in the Mid Atlantic Region” is the theme for the meeting. We will explore public and applied practice in folklore and ethnomusicology as well as other disciplines and engage with the complex issues surrounding folklorists and ethnomusicologists who perform the traditions they study; what it means for us to act in multiple roles as scholar, presenter and advocate; and problems and opportunities of collaboration with communities presenting their own traditions.

A Good Dog is Worth Three Men
Home on the Swamp with the Florida Cow Dog

Introduction

Cattle ranching began in Florida when Ponce de Leon, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and other Spaniards introduced Andalusian criolla cattle in the 16th century. Today, Florida ranchers are in the cow calf business. They breed beef cattle, sell the calves when they reach about 400 pounds, and ship them out west, closer to the Corn Belt, where they grow to finished size. For years, Florida was the leading beef cattle producing state east of the Mississippi, and today remains in the top three.
Origins

Thomas Fraser of Shetland
A Transatlantic Wonder
By John Lilly

It would make a swell movie.

Thomas Fraser was born to a poor fishing family on the remote island of Burra in 1927. Burra is one of 100 treeless, windswept isles located 100 miles north of Scotland in the North Sea, comprising Shetland – once a possession of Norway, bequeathed to Scotland as part of a royal dowry in the 17th century. While Shetland is still part of Scotland politically and retains much of its Scandinavian heritage, it is a distinct and independent entity, at least in the minds of those hardy souls who live there.