At the time that the menstruation ceremony was to begin, we all took our mats and blankets to the unfinished concrete balcony of the house, with 360-degree views. Juana had a small bonfire going. She played the bowls. She put crowns of marigolds on our heads. We drank water out of plastic cups, water that had been purified in the singing bowls.
Feature Article
Portrait of an Artist: Ellen Fjermedal
It was in my fingers!” Ellen Fjermedal explained. Ellen, a demure, but determined and spry elder, started drawing when she was a child in Arendal, on the south coast of Norway. Now living in Victor, New York, she has a studio and display area at home where she paints rosemaling (Norwegian) or kurbits (Swedish) decorations.
Redwork Embroidery and the Suffragist Tea Cozy Project
The focus on suffragists from upstate
New York was a conscious decision that I
made, based on my own research and desire
to highlight lesser known people within the
movement. I was inspired to put faces to
the over 70 names I had uncovered in meeting
notices and articles in Warren County
newspapers by creating embroidered portraits
of suffragists throughout New York
State. So far, I have embroidered six Warren
County women.
A Banjo Story
Everyone listened intently to the words and the lovely trills and his earnest expressive demeanor. There was encouragement mid-song: “Good man, yourself.” “Good man, Paddy.” There was a circle of aunts and uncles and American visitors in attendance. A few others had songs that night. Aunt Peg, from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, offered The Wild Colonial Boy. But Paddy was the real singer, with a seemingly endless store of songs, most of which I had never heard. All the same, I was delighted and moved. We drank and listened and talked. I heard about cousins in Germany and uncles in the Bronx, and I tried to piece it all together and remember who was who. As my grandmother was one of thirteen, there were many people to discuss and to hear about.
AGUDA ACHIM
In January 1909, Max Schwartz, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, brought his family to Livingston Manor. He opened a butcher shop on Main Street,and his family thus became Livingston Manor’s first Jewish residents. In April of that same year, my grandparents, Mottel and Manya Sorkin, along with their infant daughter Leya, also settled in the village and opened a tailor shop. Other families soon followed. Livingston Manor was now on the way to becoming a multiethnic community, but not without some bumps in the road.
Spirit Dolls (Muñequitas) in New York Puerto Rican Homes:
Forms, functions, and meanings of altars in Puerto Rican homes on the island or the US mainland are already well documented in association with Espiritismo and Santería, two forms of Caribbean religious belief and practice. Ethnographic descriptions of the roles that dolls play within these contexts of belief are less common. In the New York Puerto Rican homes in which I was welcomed between 2004 and 2007, as a participant observer in Puerto Rican Espiritismo, altars decorated with flowers, food, water offerings, and statues of the saints co-existed with mesitas and other doll displays. Mesitas are little tables, set with offerings for the dolls who sit beside them.
The Holocaust, the Catskills, and the Creative Loss of Power
The American and immigrant Jews,
who had made the many hotels, bungalow
colonies, and farms of Ulster and Sullivan
counties their summer retreats year after
year, were always looking for family, for
landsmanshaftn (society of immigrants from the same town or region), for a home away
from home. As a second home to generations
of Jews, the Catskill Mountains became
a place where a Jewish family could
bond as a Jewish family—that is, they could practice the culture of Judaism without the
pressure to assimilate.
Hittin’ The Streets With The NYC Tranzformerz
For almost four decades, b-boying,
otherwise known as breaking or
break dancing, has been a staple of New
York City street life. B-boying is an artistic
and improvisational mode of non-verbal
communication and competition between
individuals and groups, usually in relationship
to music. It arose out of the streets of
the South Bronx in the early 1970s and, at
times, became an alternative to gang fighting:
that is, a non-violent resolution to the
problems of the street through the creative
use of the body, mind, and space without
weapons.
YMCA Camp Chingachgook on Lake George Celebrates its Centennial
Established in 1913, YMCA Camp
Chingachgook is one of the oldest
children’s camps in America and is presently
celebrating 100 years of operation.
Over 350,000 children have participated
in Camp Chingachgook programs in the
last century….Today, Chingachgook serves over
10,000 children and adults annually in
year-round programs on Lake George in
the Adirondack Mountains.
The Spy Who Snubbed Me
Lake George? Ian Fleming famously wrote about places he had actually been. My antihero had been to Lake George? How much time Fleming spent here I have not been able to ascertain,but clearly, he was here. He sets The Spy Who Loved Me somewhere between Glens Falls and Lake George, in the Dreamy Pines Motor Court, where our heroine tries to hold off but is unable to escape the thugs until James Bond shows up. The “Spy” is Bond himself, not a Russian woman Bond gets mixed up with, as in the movie.
An Inside View of Contra Dancing in Brooklyn, 2015
Brooklyn Contra is the latest addition
to a contra dance subculture that for over
half a century has been hidden in plain
sight among the glittering distractions of
New York City. The latest contra dance
growth spurt started some 15 years ago at
the Manhattan contra dance series, when
an influx of younger dancers arrived on
the scene and kept coming back every week
for more.
Advocating for Sunday Rock
Sunday Rock, a large boulder on the roadside of New York State Highway 56, just west of the hamlet of South Colton in St. Lawrence County, is an important landmark for locals and travelers alike…. Many places, however, still deserve national recognition and protection for their long-standing —and continuing— value to their communities, as part of the living heritage of life there. Such recognition may contribute to a sense of place not only for visitors but for local residents as well. To recognize that a place can be more than an example of an architectural style or site of a political or economic event really matters.
A Staten Island Education
The author shares a memoir of her days at PS22R in Staten Island, when wearing a peace button was controversial, and how she navigated the political culture in the fifth and sixth grades, learning about civil disobedience.
Reflections & Vision
NYF Presidents Gabrielle M. Hamilton (2010-14) and Tom van Buren (2015-17) share their thoughts about the organization’s infrastructure, its history and role in the state and the vision for the NYF.
The Danzaq of South Peru in New York
This article discusses, from the perspective of transnational cultural studies of performance-based symbolism, the practice of New York-based dancers, who learned the tradition in urban migrantcommunities in Lima and have practiced the dance there, as well as in the rural settings of their origin and now abroad in the US.