Top four YouTube resources for oral history and folklore interviews

Over the past couple weeks, I've been doing a number of workshops introducing people to the art and techniques of doing oral history and folklore interviews. Along the way, I've shown a few YouTube videos to illustrate certain points.  For those of you who haven't been able to take in a workshop, I'm presenting my top four favourites below.

1) Why do Oral History?

The first is from the Minnesota Historical Society. Why is oral history important? What is oral history? How is it different than a simple interview? This is the first of a series of video podcasts prepared by the Society that addresses some of these issues.





2) How do you record an oral history interview?

Prepared by the East Midlands Oral History Archive based at the University of Leicester, I've used this video several times. I like how it presents the material in a "Do and Don't" fashion, which is great for a workshop.

3)  How do you get interesting answers?

In this video, Traditional Arts Indiana shares tips and suggestions for folklorists conducting fieldwork. The video discusses how to get complex answers instead of a yes/no response, an important trick for interviewers to know. I love the work that Traditional Arts Indiana is doing, and like the Minnesota Historical Society, they've produced a series of videos for folklore interviews.

4) What can I do with the information I collect?

This is one of my favourite YouTube videos that show what can be done with oral history material. Beautifully shot and edited, Jewish Care's Pearls of Wisdom campaign aims to highlight the value and importance of older people in today's ageing society. According to its YouTube page, it "challenges people, especially younger people, to alter their perceptions of this elder generation, presenting them as wise, funny and worthy of their attention."

In which a folklorist develops a fondness for vinyl siding.

In the heritage community in Newfoundland and Labrador, the general consensus is as follows: Vinyl Bad; Wood Good. We've seen a lot of fabulous heritage buildings in the province covered up with vinyl, resulting in a loss of heritage character and fine wooden detailing. Vinyl, to some architectural historians anyway, is The Enemy.

For every rule, there is an exception.  Today I opened an email from librarian Beverly Warford to find some pictures of vinyl siding that made me squeal with folkloric excitement. Yes. You read that right.

One of the things I love most about intangible cultural heritage is that it is in a constant state of evolution. Culture is not static; it is ever-changing. People adapt to changing times and materials, constantly. This is as true now as it was in the historical period. As a folklorist, it means there is always something new for me to study.

Over the past few months, followers of the ICH blog will know that we've been working on a project to highlight basket making traditions. In a sense, the culture of basket making in Newfoundland and Labrador is one of innovation. Mi'kmaw basket makers in Newfoundland were influenced by mainland Mi'kmaq, who in turn had been influenced by European settlers, as well as Black Loyalist and freed slave basket makers working out of African traditions. Mill workers in Corner Brook, Grand Falls-Windsor and other towns took English and American style baskets and made them their own, utilizing local materials. Inuit grass basket makers in Labrador were possibly influenced by Moravian craft traditions. The list goes on.

Mill lunch baskets were primarily made of woven wood, quite often birch, but Newfoundlanders, being Newfoundlanders, got creative with the materials they used. Once plastic salt-beef buckets were introduced in the later half of the 20th century, craftsmen started to cut strips of plastic for weaving. Others broke down hockey sticks to get the wood they needed.

And in the community of Pleasantview, near Point Leamington, the late Mr. Herbert Brett started using vinyl siding. His son, Rick, also carried on the tradition for a short time.

Mr. Brett's lunch basket is very similar in style to the wooden lunch baskets made by other Central Newfoundland basket makers like Angus Gunn and Alfred Menchenton, with the same curved wooden handles and hinged wooden lid. But instead of the baskets being fully wooden, Brett cut up different coloured vinyl siding into strips to weave the sides of the baskets, making baskets in a variety of styles: lunch baskets, round baskets, picnic baskets, even Easter baskets. We'll be adding all of these to our basket collection on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative. But for now, here are a few samples, with thanks to Bev and the Brett/Stuckless family for sharing! Love it or hate it, you'll never look at vinyl siding the same way again.

Capturing Craft Photo Contest deadline is March 30th. #nlcraft

The Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador invites people across the province to participate in a special craft event as part of their 40th Anniversary celebrations. The Capturing Craft Photo Contest is a province-wide event encouraging the public to take a photo of their favourite craft item, local craft shop or a craft they're making themselves and share it with the Craft Council.

Deadline for entries is 4pm, March 30th, 2012.

Says spokesperson Jennifer Barnable, "Craft is everywhere in Newfoundland and Labrador. Every household has it, whether it's the coffee mug you use in the morning, the scarf you wear on a wintry day, the art on your walls, or the mat you put your boots on. We encourage people across the province to share their love of craft with us as we celebrate craft."

Photos with brief descriptive captions can be e-mailed, Facebooked or Tweeted to the Craft Council until March 30th. Four fine craft prizes will be announced on April 2nd. For full contest details and rules are outlined at http://www.craftcouncil.nl.ca/news/capturing-craft-photo-contest/

Take a peek inside a Newfoundland mill worker's lunch basket.

"You would never go into another man's lunch basket."

It was a refrain we've heard more than a few times over the past few weeks from current and retired mill workers from Corner Brook to Grand Falls-Windsor. Lunch baskets were not something you would poke around inside, certainly not without the owner's permission. Doing so wasn't just considered rude; it could lead to blows if you were not careful.

This afternoon we hosted the second of our Tea 'n' Baskets events, with today's workshop taking place at the Mount Peyton Hotel in Grand Falls-Windsor. It was a great success, with lots of baskets, and lots of public sharing of memories and stories.

On this occasion, we were allowed to take a look inside the baskets, and indeed, people were delighted to let us do so. A couple folks went to the trouble of packing a lunch, wrapped up in what were known as "samples" - the ends of paper that men would take home from the mill.  I was even lucky enough to be given a bottle of moose by Mr Dave Peddle.

So have a peek below at what's inside a mill worker's lunch basket. Some are full, some are empty, but they each tell a story. Keep your hands off the moose, though, unless you are looking for a scrap. That's mine.

Meeting Mr. Menchenton, Norris Arm basket maker

One of the interesting parts of the research we've been doing on baskets and basket makers is getting to know more about the real men and women behind the baskets.  Here in Grand Falls-Windsor, we've learned about basket makers like Angus Gunn and Everett Janes, and this week, we met the daughter of Mr. Alfred Menchenton.

Alfred Menchenton was a name we'd come across before, and we even have one of his baskets already documented on Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative (DAI). He was a jack-of-all trades: a woodsman, a carpenter, a builder of logging camps, model-maker, and a prolific crafter of lunch baskets for workers at the mill in Grand Falls.

In the September/October edition of "The Rounder" for 1981, reporter Glen Fiztpatrick wrote, "Over the past couple of years, Mr. Menchenton has become an expert. He made 250 baskets last year and sold them all and could have sold more if the time was available to make them."

The same reporter had found Mr. Menchenton's baskets in the Grand Falls tourist chalet, and had gone looking for the creator. He tracked him down at his shed in Norris Arm North.

"He was in the process of preparing the long narrow strips of birch and pine which were hung along the walls, in readiness to be made into baskets later this winter," wrote Fitzpatrick. "His equipment included an electric table saw and an electric planer, necessities, he said, to produce the smooth strips used to construct the sides. He assembled the saw himself, building the table in which it was placed, and bought the planer second hand."

Over thirty years later, Mr Menchenton is no longer with us. But his daughter and her husband drove us out to that same shed, and there, untouched, was the scene as the reporter had described it. All his tools were still in place, and pieces cut out, ready to make a new basket. Strips of wood were fixed into a form to provide the curve needed for basket ends and handles.  The table saw he built was still sitting inside the door, and the walls were festooned with tools, jigs, pieces of wood, and the snowshoes he had also apparently been adept at creating. One expected Mr. Menchenton himself to walk in, and pick up his work where he had left off.

Mr. Menchenton won't be about our Tea 'n' Baskets event tomorrow at the Mount Peyton Hotel in Grand Falls-Windsor, where we are inviting owners of baskets to come, show, and tell about their histories. Even though he won't be there, we are hoping some of his baskets will be.

Sun kinks and moose on the tracks! Clayton Tipple remembers Newfoundland train derailments

We went off this morning to interview Mr Clayton Tipple about his lunch basket, and ended up having a great discussion about his life on the Newfoundland railway.  The full interview will be posted on Memorial's Digital Archives Initiative, but for now you can listen to a short clip where Mr Tipple remembers a noteworthy train derailment near Flat Bay, and talks about the various things (like "sun kinks" and moose) which would cause a derailment.






Photo by Nicole Penney.

Cape Breton Mi'kmaw elder Margaret Pelletier on the Spirit of Basket Weaving

"I think with me, there is a spirit within me that makes the basket. I always told my mother that. It's like I can make the basket, I'm just the physical form. You probably feel like that if you are a basket weaver. You are just the physical form that is there, but you have to have that spirit within you that moves your hands and makes the basket, and you're not actually making it yourself. And I think if we had more people that felt like that, I think we'd have so many basket weavers. But I really would like to increase as many basket weavers as we could, because it is really such a fine art, and it is so nice to do."

 - Clip from an interview with Margaret (Margie) Pelletier, a Mi'kmaw elder and basket maker from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Recorded at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada, on 17 March 2012 by Dale Jarvis.

Mr Roy Oke's Baskets, Corner Brook, Newfoundland

A photo of Mr. Roy Oke, retired millwright, Corner Brook, circa 1980s, with his mill lunch basket under his arm, carried the traditional way men would carry their lunch baskets. This was Mr Oke's second basket, which he purchased for $15 from a man from Humbermouth. His previous basket, with a fully woven bottom, had started to wear out, so he bought this second basket, which had a wooden base. More photos below, including folklore co-op student Nicole Penney posing with Mr Oke's daughter, Paula Price.

ICH Roadtrip Day 3 - A Corner Brook Mill Recitation by Terry Penney

Yesterday was the first of our two "Tea 'n' Baskets" events, where we invite owners of traditional mill lunch baskets to come out and share their stories.  One of the participants was Mr Terry Penney, who brought along a vintage mill lunch basket (which he still uses to carry his lunch).  Mr Penney also shared a recitation he wrote, entitled "Continuous Production." Give it a listen!