Living Heritage Podcast Ep031 A Life in Public Folklore, with Peggy Bulger

Peggy A. Bulger retired in 2011 as the second director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, where she served from 1999. A native of New York State, she holds a B.A. in fine arts from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.A. in folk studies from Western Kentucky University, and a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. A folklorist, consultant, and producer, Bulger has been documenting folklife and developing and managing folklife programs for more than forty years. We talk about her life, her fascinating work, and her thoughts on where public folklore is going today. Recorded on 7 August 2015.

Photo: Dale Jarvis and Peggy Bulger, 2013

What traditions are at risk in your community?

Last week I promised to unveil a new ICH project. Here it is:

Back in 2008 and 2013 we asked community members, organizations and groups interested in NL heritage and culture to share their thoughts on the needs of communities in safeguarding local intangible cultural heritage. Here in Newfoundland and Labrador, this living heritage is everything from the Christmas mummering traditions to, depending on where you're from in the province, flummies, tiffins or toutons!

One of the common threads in these past reports was a concern for the traditions, skills and knowledges that are at risk of being lost. We hear you! So, in the spirit of safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador we came up with a short survey (3-5 minutes) based on what people have identified as at risk. Help us identify the intangible cultural heritage that is at risk in your community! We want to hear from you!

The survey will be open to everyone beginning February 17th until March 24th at 5:00pm. The report will be made available to the public when the project is complete.

To take the survey, please visit the ICH Risk link on the main page of the blog.

If you have any questions contact:

Meghan Mills
meghan@heritagefoundation.ca
1 888 739 1892 ext 5.

Workshop Feb 24th - Using Craft to Tell a Story

An exciting and instructive session for museums, heritage sites and craft makers, this session will offer insight into how craft can tell a cultural story and how makers and visitor destination sites can make use of craft to enhance the visitor’s experience.

Join Keynote speakers Joanne Kaar from Caithness, Scotland and Pam Hall from St. John's at the Manuels River Interpretation Centre on Wednesday, February 24.

Presentations will be followed by panel comprised of local experts in storytelling and the craft industry. The panel will explore ways in which Newfoundland and Labrador craft makers, artists and designers are using craft to tell their stories.

This is a collaborative project between the Craft Council Of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Intangible Cultural Heritage office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. Your fee of $50 + HST includes lunch!

Click here for more information

Click here to register

Tuesday's Folklore Photo: Eggs and mushrooms

In the spirit of darning, here are two darning tools sent to us from Karlie King and Eileen Murphy!

Karlie King's darning mushroom

Eileen Murphy's darning egg

Eileen writes, "This was passed on to me from my mother' s cousin. Many feet continued to be warm and snug because this was used to mend the wear and tear."

Thank you Karlie and Eileen for these great photos!

We are still looking for photos and stories about darning tools! Do not hesitate to e-mail me stephanie@heritagefoundation.ca

By the way, did I mention the traditional darning workshop is tonight? You still have time to register!



Join instructor Christine LeGrow tonight, Tuesday, February 16 between 6:15 pm-8:15 pm, at the A.C. Hunter Children's Library at the Arts & Culture Centre, 125 Allandale Road to learn traditional darning techniques.

Participants will be required to bring:

• Socks that need darning
• Scraps of equivalent yarn
• Darning needle
• Scissors
• Optional: Darning egg

Hope to see you there!

In Memoriam: Heritage Advocate Beve Butler, Grand Falls-Windsor

I was saddened today to learn of the passing of Beve Butler, Past President of the Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society, and a friend of us here at the Intangible Cultural Heritage office. Beve was a great champion of local heritage and oral history, and the key motivator behind the Heritage Foundation of NL's work to digitize the oral history collections of Mr. Hiram Silk.

Catherine Simpson of the Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society wrote today on Facebook:

Beve was a force of nature, and not only in heritage circles---a person with a huge heart and boundless enthusiasm who inspired all of us with her dedication and passion. She was a tireless champion of heritage to the end. 

I will miss Beve and her enthusiasm for local heritage. I am thankful, however, that I had a chance to sit down with Beve at her home last year, and record some of her stories of her early life. We chatted about everything from her childhood years in Grand Falls and Lethbridge, to her Christmas memories, children's games, and her life in education. You can listen to that interview on Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative.

A reception will be held at the Royal Canadian Legion on Queen Street in Grand Falls-Windsor on Wednesday, 17th February, 2016, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, for anyone who would like to come together to share memories of Beve and to express their sympathies to the family.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep032 Heritage, Radio, and Building Community Voice

Join us as we celebrate UNESCO's World Radio Day, Feb 13th - a day to celebrate radio as a medium; to improve international cooperation between broadcasters; and to encourage major networks and community radio alike to promote access to information, freedom of expression, and gender equality over the airwaves.

In this special World Radio Day podcast, we are talking about Heritage, Radio, and Building Community Voice, with Joan Cranston and Anita Best.

Joan Cranston is a physiotherapist who operates her clinic out of the old Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital in Norris Point. She is also the (volunteer) coordinator for the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital Heritage Corporation, and has served on many community development boards. Anita Best is a renowned Newfoundland folk singer, storyteller, and broadcaster. Anita has received several honours for her work in collecting and disseminating Newfoundland folksongs, including the Marius Barbeau award from the Folklore Studies Association of Canada and an Honourary Doctorate from Memorial University, and is the program director for Voice of Bonne Bay Radio. In this episode, they talk with Dale Jarvis about the work of the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital Heritage Corporation, a not-for-profit community corporation which is adaptively re-using the old cottage hospital as a community center, operating on a social enterprise model.

(Another) little introduction:

Hello, folks! My name is Meghan Mills and I will be joining Stephanie and Dale here at the ICH office for the next seven weeks. Pleased to "meet" you! 

Over the next few weeks I'll be working with Dale on a pretty exciting project. It's exciting to me because it will give me the chance to talk to you (yes, you!) about what intangible cultural heritage in your community looks like and what it may look like in the future. Interest piqued? We're launching the project on February 17th right here so be sure to check-in!

In the meantime if you have any questions you may reach me at meghan@heritagefoundation.ca.

Take-care and happy weekend,

Meghan

Counting crows, and poem from Tilting, Fogo Island. #FolkloreThursday

On Monday last, I gave a guest lecture on intangible cultural heritage for Scott Neilsen's Cultural Resource Management (CRM) course at Memorial University. I talked to the class about the five domains of ICH as defined by UNESCO, and gave examples from a Newfoundland and Labrador perspective.

While talking about oral traditions and expressions, I challenged them with a couple traditional riddles, and then two students spoke up with rhymes that they had learned when younger.

First up was Rebekah Nolan, who had a fantastic version of a counting crows rhyme which I'd not heard before. I've written about crow counting rhymes before, but Rebecca's version was new to me. She learned it in San Luis Obispo ("America's happiest city" apparently) circa 2003:

One for sadness

Two for mirth

Three for marriage

Four for birth

Five for laughing

Six for crying

Seven for sickness

Eight for dying

Nine for silver

Ten for gold

Eleven for a secret that will never be told

Twelve for darkness

Thirteen for light

Fifteen for morning

Sixteen for night.

The second was from Jackie Tizzard, who had a rhyme she learned from her mother, who was a Burke from Tilting, Fogo Island.  "She could never tell me where it came from," Jackie told me. This was her rhyme:

"Long has been my cherished hope,

Upon my dying day,

To lie upon some sunny slope

And dream my life away."

Jackie thought it might be a riddle, but didn't know the answer. 

The rhyme is not a riddle at all, and neither does it originate on Fogo Island. It is, rather, a quote from a book, The red cow and her friends, by Peter McArthur, published in 1919, in Toronto, Ontario, by J.M. Dent & Sons. It is a fascinating book on farm life, with stories on sick cows, feeding pigs, racoon hunts, and horse contrariness. How a line of it came to be memorized by a young Miss Burke in Tilting is anyone's guess.

The full quote is as follows:

Although the oak is my particular friend among the trees on the farm, there are others with which I can claim at least an acquaintanceship. There is a maple at the edge of the wood-lot that always makes me feel uncomfortable, because I have a feeling that it has a joke on me. It stands on what would be called rising ground " which means an elevation that does not deserve to be called a hill " and while lying on the grass in its shade I can see over several farms to the south and east. It used to be a favourite of my boyhood, and once I composed a poem while lying in its shade. If you bear in mind the fact that I was seventeen years of age at the time you will understand why the tree has a joke on me. Here is the only stanza I can remember of the little poem I composed to express the "unmannerly sadness" of youth.

It long has been my cherished hope Upon my dying day To lie down on some sunny slope And dream my life away.

At that age I could not have cherished the hope so very long, and the old tree must have chuckled to its last twig at my absurdity. Anyway, I never see the tree without recalling that wretched stanza, and I immediately hurry away to some other part of the woods.

Got a piece of folk poetry stuck in your head, or a counting crow rhyme of your own? Leave a comment below, or send me an email at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

- Dale Jarvis

Living Heritage Podcast Ep030 Safeguarding Traditional Stepdance

Kristin Harris Walsh is a dancer and dance scholar based in St. John's. She holds a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University and a Master’s in Dance from York University and currently is working on a SSHRC funded research project on percussive dance in Newfoundland and Ireland. Kristin has been step dancing for 15 years and has trained and performed in Newfoundland and Ireland. She is Past President of DanceNL, the province’s sectoral dance association, and is the President of the Society for Canadian Dance Studies. In this interview, we talk about step dancing, percussive dance, and the challenges and opportunities for safeguarding traditional dancing in Newfoundland and Labrador. Recorded on 4 August 2015.

Photo of Kristin dancing by Meghan Forsyth.