The New York Folklore Society decided
to blend these traditions at the 2010
conference with a new element: student
presenters. In collaboration with New
York University’s Latino studies and Latin
American studies programs, we invited
graduate students to present their work
on the theme of Latino Folk Culture
and Expressive Traditions on Saturday,
November 20, at NYU.
Feature Article
Growing Community in the Courthouse Community Garden
Currently in its fourth season, the Courthouse Community Garden’s evolution into a community fixture in Salem, New York, started more than four years ago from an idea tossed around for at least a couple of years before the seed of the idea took hold. The mission statement reads in part: The Courthouse Community Garden (CCG) includes an enthusiastic group of individuals that have come together… to plant a garden on a parcel of land adjacent to the Courthouse Community Center campus in Salem…[to] offer opportunities to teach youth of all ages to grow, process, and market food, developing intergenerational community relationships.
Sullivan County’s Diehl Homestead Farm:
The Southern Catskill region of New York State is well known for its dairy farms, often perched on steep, green slopes, overlooking lushly forested mountains, interleaved by the rushing creeks that feed the watershed of the upper Delaware River. A drive up Diehl Road in Western Sullivan County reveals one such landscape, defined by a single family, whose legacy dates back five generations on the same hillside, and overlooking the valley of the Callicoon Creek, where its patriarchal family established its original homestead more than a century and a half ago.
Keeping Watch:
My poetry has quite naturally turned to the natural world and the people of my major folklore fieldwork area—the western mountain and lake region of Maine—where I have been writing about the Richards, a family of loggers and homemakers, woodcarvers, storytellers, and knitters, as well as about others in the community: hunters, river drivers, schoolteachers, and more. The challenges of doing fieldwork in logging country, in a town of twelve hundred souls about 40 miles from hospitals and other services, also claims its space in my writing, both of poetry and ethnography.
Long Ago and Far Away
In February 1901, a group of businessmen representing the recently incorporated Saratoga Floral Association visited New Orleans to observe Mardi Gras and to purchase the floats and costumes from that year’s Rex Pageant…. The floats were to be used for Saratoga’s fete, which was planned as a four-day event starting on September 2 with a ball to be held at Convention Hall and concluding on September 5….
“Local Sustainability in the Battenkill Valley”
“Sustaining Culture: A Regional Conversation” was the topic for the historic Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Folklorists Retreat in Saratoga Springs, May 22–25, 2012, in partnership with Folklorists in New England, the Folk Arts Program of New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Folklore Society. Participants hailed from as far away as Washington, DC, up to northern New York State and east through the New England states.
Low Bridge, Everybody Down!
Canal season may be over, but at The Erie Canal Museum in November 2012, the music of the Canal resounded in “Low Bridge, Everybody Down!: An Erie Canal Music Celebration.” The two-day public celebration, co-organized by The Erie Canal Museum and The New York Folklore Society, was the first-ever event devoted exclusively to an exploration of the rich musical heritage created, developed, and transmitted by means of the Erie Canal. Workshops, concerts, presentations, discussions, and displays provided activities that appealed to a wide variety of audiences.
Our Story Bridge:
On September 6, 2019, internationally acclaimed
author Russell Banks recorded his own true story about a singular afternoon he experienced 25 years ago in Keene, New York….This oral story, with its bullish, charming conclusion, is titled “Refugee Crisis in Keene” and can be heard among the many three-to-five-minute stories being recorded and collected as part of a grassroots oral history project, Adirondack Community: Capturing, Retaining, and Communicating the Stories of Who We Are (http://www.myadirondackstory.org/).
Bob Hockert’s All-New York Whiskey Barrels
I explained that I built the barrel
myself, and he promptly explained I
could not have, as there were no coopers
in New York State. I explained that he
was wrong, that I had built it and dozens
more, sent him to my web page to see the
photos of them being built, etc.
…,His name was Angus
McDonald, and he was the master distiller
at Coppersea Distilling. He had been
looking for years for someone to build
him barrels for his distillery.
K’s Ghost City:
Anyone who has lived in New York for any time
soon becomes aware of “Ghost Sites,” places too soon
relegated to memory. As part of City Lore’s Place
Matters project and the Census of Places that Matter,
we struggle with how to think about and address
vanishing sites, especially during this COVID-19 era.
Our longtime friend, writer Kathryn Adisman has a
unique take on the subject, and we invited her to contribute
to City Lore’s guest blog for us, which we share
here with Voices, focusing, in part, on Bleecker Street
in the West Village.
New York State Council on the Arts Grants
New York Folklore recently announced $225,000 in grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). These funds are the result of 21 successful applications submitted to NYSCA by New York Folklore on behalf of folk and traditional artists in the Capital Region. New York Folklore hosted an awards reception to celebrate this great achievement by folk and traditional artists in the region on February 23 at The Linda, WAMC-Albany’s public radio network’s Performing Arts Studio. The celebration featured food representing the grantees heritages.
Miller’s Mills’ Ice Harvest
As many of us in the Northern parts of the country push
through the winter’s chilly wind, sleet, and snow with the same
determination our ancestors did, looking back at history reminds us that our ancestors had “harvest” on their minds. An ice harvest.
Unadilla Lake in Miller’s Mills, where the ice comes from. For two centuries in the winter, the people of Miller’s Mills have come to Unadilla Lake with long saws, pikes, and tongs to cut pond ice, and then store it for refrigeration needs in warmer months
A History of the Adirondack Pipes and Drums
It is recorded that the founders of the band wanted to pay tribute to the highlanders that fought in the area during the French and Indian War. The band sought permission from the appropriate officials of the British military in Canada to wear the Royal Stuart tartan for pipers and the Black Watch tartan for drummers. A charter was obtained for the organization from a local judge. Instruction in piping and drumming was arranged through members of the Schenectady Pipe Band.
A Visit to City Lore’s Archives
In September 2022, City Lore, located in Lower Manhattan, had a visitor who told us that she believed we might have a photograph of her mother in our archives. The image that she was looking for showed her mother working at their family-owned vegetable stall in New York City’s Chinatown, shortly after her parent’s immigration from Hong Kong in the 1970s. Fortunately, she knew who had taken it.
May Baskets
Come springtime, generations of children in the greater Glens Falls area spent weeks making May Baskets to distribute to friends and neighbors on the first of May….The custom traveled to America, noted in the late 19th century by Lina and Adelia Beard in their 1887 book, The American Girls Handy Book: ‘A May-day custom, and a very pretty one, still survives among the children in our New England States. It is that of hanging upon the door-knobs of friends and neighbors pretty spring-offerings in the shapeof small baskets filled with flowers, wild ones, if they can be obtained; if not, the window-gardens at home are heavily taxed to supply the deficiency.’