Laurie was born and raised in Schenectady,
but she has lived in many
East and West Coast locations. She joined
New York Folklore in 2009, enriching the
organization through her many prior years
of learned experience in the arts, banking,
and finance.
Journal Articles
From the Director
In addition to providing technical assistance
and professional development to folk artists
and folk cultural specialists, NYF supports
a robust schedule of exhibitions, arts workshops,
and concerts. Our “Ancient Arts in
New Contexts” program focused on documenting
and presenting the traditional arts of
India and Guyana.
From the Editor
The year 2023 marked the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Champlain Canal, the “little sister” of the Erie Canal that opened two years later in 1825. At the Folklife Center, we were able to join the celebration by producing a video mini-series called Champlain Canal Stories, funded in part by a grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership.
Crankies — What People Watched before Movies
We were about 200 years late. For us,
it started in 2011, with a concert
featuring the traditional performer Elizabeth
LaPrelle. She sang the Child Ballad “Lord Bateman,” accompanied by a table-top box, which
contained a long scrolling quilt, which as it was
unwound revealed scenes depicting the various
verses. She called it a crankie. Well, my wife
Janet is a quilter. We exchanged looks: How
neat was this? We could make something such
as this for Fine Arts Salon at the next year’s
caving convention. Janet asked me, “What
songs about caving do you have?” We selected
“ The Ballad of Pete Hauer ”— a true story I’d
written about the mysterious death of a close
friend and his involvement with the murder of
a sort of innocent bystander.
Upstate
Countries have anthems, branches of service have marches, lovers share “our song,” and big cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York have million seller pop hits. So why can’t towns and villages celebrate with their own song? This is the story of one upstate hamlet in Essex County and how some elementary students created their very own hometown theme song.
Downstate
Every New Yorker who has ridden the subways for any length of time eventually cracks. The announcements are incomprehensible, the trains get stuck for seemingly no reason. On a particular day in 2003, even the air conditioner didn’t work in the car, and, yes, I cracked. I stormed out of the F train, which was stuck at West 4th Street, ran over to the motorman’s window and was about to give him a piece of my mind. When I saw the motorman and he saw me, we both burst out laughing.
The Sasha Polinoff After-Story:
This is the story of how seemingly disparate communities coalesced around a formerly prominent musician and sustained him in old age. As such, it takes place in comparatively humble or domestic settings and with a smaller audience.
It is very much the story after the story. It begins in the closing decades of the 20th century, when Russians and all things Russian were no longer in vogue—particularly, in the wake of the McCarthy years. It begins when Lower Eastside nightclubs that once featured a variety of ethnic music, were losing patrons, in part, because their first-generation audiences had moved out of the City to the “burbs” and could no longer find a place to park.
From the Field:
As a statewide organization, New York
Folklore is always looking to strengthen
our reach to diverse regions of the state. A
grant from the National Endowment for
t he Arts is helping us do just that! New
York Folklore is prioritizing fieldwork. We
are developing a network of community
scholars who will document traditional
arts throughout the state. These fieldworkers
are supported by New York Folklore
staff, headquartered in the Capital Region.
Our fieldworkers represent diverse
communities and levels of experience. We
are excited to welcome (or welcome back!)
this exceptional group of women to the
field: Divena Ramessar, Akilah Briggs Melvin, Nada Odeh, and Ladan Nikravan.
Folklife Center30th Anniversary
The Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library celebrated its 30th anniversary with a free Festival in City Park, outside the Library, in downtown Glens Falls on Tuesday, July 25, 2023, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Over 60 folk artists filled the park, demonstrating their crafts and sharing their traditions. Up close and personal, festivalgoers were able to witness firsthand the artists’ skills and to talk directly with the experts. Many of the artists offered a handson component to their exhibit.
A Tempest in a Teacup:
Much of the anthropological research on divination attempts to gauge its role in society, but the question remains: why is divination persuasive? An analysis of two tea leaf readings by a single reader shows that the fortunes bear a structural resemblance to folktales, with the client as hero. Like the plot in a folktale, the readings’ predictions focus on the struggle to complete the tasks of the life course, often with the help of donors. Culturally, the readings persuade by reassuring us that life imitates art, while at the psychological level, they encourage us to sift through our thoughts for people and events that fit the storyline. This is the first known study to apply a Proppian structural analysis to divination narratives. It is also a human interest story—40 years in the making—about how a grandmother who lived through hard times in the Hudson Valley of New York State taught her college-educated grandson to read tea leaves.
The Poetry of Everyday Life
When we’re advocating for places we love,
or that embrace meaning in our communities,
we sometimes speak of those places
as harboring “cultural capital,” a kind of
“social currency.” But what if there were
an actual currency of memory and meaning
to prevent places with deep roots in a
community from being sold or displaced?
What if memories, associations, and values
were transformed into units of meaningful
exchange?
Reimagining Washington Irving’sThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow andRip Van Winkle in the ContemporaryDigital Era:
Washington Irving’s works The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are considered some of the most important pieces of New York
Folk Studies and American literature. Their rich and contemplative narratives, as well as settings, have seen a huge readership across generations.
The main intention of this article is to focus on how the contemporary digital era has led to the reimagination and readaptation of Washington
Irving’s works through various digital and virtual means. With the advent of digital materials, such as e-books, Kindle, and audiobooks, we have
gained easy access to the works. Numerous interesting and engaging storytelling platforms have offered immersive experiences and helped to
engage new audiences interestingly and excitingly. Two platforms, among them, are virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. They
have broadened our minds to such an extent as to make us capable of critically analyzing the texts through various dimensions.
The Occupational Folklore of Horticulture in the Greater Rochester Area
I interviewed five horticultural workers in the Greater Rochester, New York area to understand this all too familiar work through a new lens. I conducted five individual interviews at each interviewee’s place of work, which allowed me to take photographs at each garden center and get a feel for what the work environment is like. My hope was to gain a better understanding of occupational folklore…Additionally, I wanted to learn about each person’s individual connection to the field of horticulture and what motivated them to continue working in the field…
A Bedtime Party
Readers may recall a piece of bedtime
lore about Lily White’s Party. Growing
up on Long Island in the 1980s, I learned
about this charming affair when my mother
would tuck me in at bedtime. My grandmother
transmitted the lore to my mother in 1950s
Brooklyn. Its questionable origins notwithstanding,
of interest to me are the shifting
form, function, content, and context of the
text’s retelling.
A Gram of Conversaton
In honor of New York Folklore’s 80th anniversary celebration, I would like to share with you an incredible personal story, which touches upon founder Harold W. Thompson, folksinger Peter Yarrow, my mother Mary Moore Walker, and her grandson, William Walker, who is a current member of the New York Folklore Board. My mother and her grandson had only seven precious months together before her death from cancer at age 64. However, as you will read in the story, the power of folklore and family traditions can make connections through the generations even beyond death.