Middle Atlantic Folklife Association

From the West Virginia Woods

I find myself spending a lot of time in the woods these days.
On weekends, it’s packing into small trout streams to cast for the wily native “brookies.” The mighty Monongahela National Forest, almost one million acres, owned by you and I, is a haven of rest for the weary. It has over 800 miles of hiking trails, contains four wilderness areas—with eleven more proposed, and I’m fortunate enough to own a small piece of land, along Shaver’s Fork, that literally borders it. Hiking from the back door, several miles in an easterly direction takes me into the Otter Creek Wilderness and the headwaters of some highly fishable brooks and streams. In another direction, I’ll end up on Bickles Knob, where an old Civilian Conservation Corp camp provided labor to develop springs and picnic areas, and where there is an observation tower. This along with commonplace stone culverts and abutments to subdue roadside erosion in steep erosion-prone geography leaves the marks of the CCCs on the cultural landscape.

THE BLUE DRESS

The author shares an intimate story of family... and how this history led to a career in public sector folklore.

Distribution Restricted. Please contact author directly (RitaZM.aol.com).

The following is a column I wrote for the New York Folklore Society’s magazine Voices that was published in the Spring-Summer 2001 issue. Even though five years have passed since I developed the piece, I do believe that little has changed in the undergraduate institutions with which I am familiar. Other states may be more fortunate, but New York colleges–which a generation ago had folklore courses offered quite commonly–seem to have eliminated them in favor of who knows what? Of course, I find this sad. What does this mean for the future of folklore studies and for our profession? I offer it as food for thought as a new semester begins.

STORYTELLING: A FOLK TRADITION FIGHTING BACK

The three genres of folktales in the U.S Virgin Islands are the Bru Nansi, The Jumbi Stories and Legends. They may be placed under the taxonomic classification of gnomic-narrative since most of the stories offer a pithy or aphorism that advises or guides.

In the old days, the storytellers announced themselves and the end of the story was declared with opening and closing response formulas respectively. The introductory announcement was sung or spoken as follows:

Teller: “Children! Children! Children! Children!
Audience - “Daylight gone, Pepe Kwab (the storyteller’s name).”

“Living Words: Folklorists and Creative Writers”

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

— Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings (14)

Spring semester’s end brings joy and sadness: joy because classes end and summer roads stretch before me, and sadness because classes end and many treasured students graduate. This semester, those good-byes have been especially hard because one of my best George Mason University classes has just ended—folklore and creative writing—with students like Mary: “Peggy, your class is the BEST class I’ve ever taken for generating new writing. I’ve written several stories, have sketched ideas for a dozen, more, & have solved a major problem in my novel – all directly influenced by the readings for your class. Mary Overton Beall”

Latin American Folk Traditions
Marco Antonio Hernandez

“Folk music belongs to all people and its beauty delights all souls.”

As the world grows increasingly interconnected, one of the brighter consequences is the sharing of musical traditions. Music, the universal language, can overcome barriers of language and fears of difference often felt by people.
It soothes the soul and unites us in a way we've only begun to imagine.

I grew up in a suburb of Mexico City, a town called Nezahualcoyotl. This neighborhood is known for different styles of traditional music: ranchera, cumbia, and ballad. While it is true these popular styles did not initially touch me, traditional music would eventually change my life. It happened when I was a young man after hearing a Calchakis concert, Argentinean musicians who brought a different style and sound of folk music from the Andes of South America to my homeland of Mexico. With all the different rhythms and a great variety of instruments I knew it would be interesting to explore and learn about it.

Our friendly Delaware state folklorist, looking fine in this article...

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060305/LIFE/603050311/1005

http://cas.gmu.edu/connection/current/shutika.html

A provocative and thoughtful essay on folk arts in Philadelphia by our Deborah Kodish:

http://www.folkloreproject.org/technical/state.cfm

An intriguing site that focuses on England. It could work for some folklore projects down the road:

http://www.yourhistoryhere.com/

"Hello, and welcome to YourHistoryHere, the place where you can share your knowledge about those unusual places, buildings or things that make places interesting to live. This site is on limited circulation at the moment, and is only supposed to be a mySociety demo, not a big posh project like PledgeBank. It may not be obvious, but the most important feature of YourHistoryHere is the construction of an underlying system for collecting and sharing geographic annotations in an open syndicated format, so you can use the yummy local data people leave for your own purposes. We're building two sites that show how this can be useful, this one and Placeopedia.com, and we'd love to share the code for other ideas. Anyone want to build WhereIHadMyFirstKiss.com? Tom Steinberg, mySociety Director - 23/08/2005"