I was born in 1950 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
I started carving at age twenty-two,
when my father gave me a gift of a
painted wood-carving he had made of me
at the farm where I grew up. This gift from
my father inspired me to begin to make my
own carved and painted pictures. Since then
I’ve made more than one thousand pieces in
thirty-five years. I think of my pictures as a
visual diary that helps me make sense of the
events and feelings of my life.
New York State
From Wild Man to Monster:
When the first European settlers
entered what is now New York
State and its environs, they brought with
them not only their material culture, but also
an array of beliefs in mythical beings. Such
creatures had been part of the European
psyche for centuries. A central character in
this pantheon was the “wild man” thought
to inhabit the darker parts of the European
countryside. Also known as the woodwose,
wooser, or “wild man of the woods,” it
was conspicuous in folklore between the
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and holds a
prominent place in later medieval European
artwork and literature.
Play
Abner Cartwright, Alexander Doubleday. . .
these composite names stand for an exceedingly
odd couple whose identities have been
stolen, accomplishments merged, and stories
intertwined for more than a century now. What
both men share is that their lives were hijacked
after their deaths, and as a result, each was
credited with something he did not do—that
is, invent baseball.
From the Director
Folklorists are uniquely positioned to lend
an important voice to the debates around
immigration and immigration reform. As
globalization brings the world together, folklore
works to draw attention to that which is
local, individual, and expressive. Throughout
the next decade, it will be important for
folklorists to continue to draw attention
to the field of folklore through alliances
with disciplines and organizations outside
of folklore, thus providing a folkloristic
perspective on contemporary life.
From the Editor
This issue of Voices offers readers a cornucopia of food for deep thoughts on New York. We experience the transcendent freedom of Vodou dancing in the city, survey the shape-shifting history of Rip van Winkle stories, and wend our way through the psychological landscape of a post-9/11 urban legend. We also encounter Afro-Colombian music in Queens and Native New York handcrafts.
The Vodou Kase:
Focusing inquiry on the kase, a drum pattern strongly associated with spirit possession, I compare episodes of transcendence that occur in Hall’s class [Pat Hall Dance and Movement Class, Brooklyn] with possessions that occur during the rites of Afro-Haitian Vodou, during acoustically similar if not identical performances. Reflections derive from documentation of classes; interviews with the instructor, lead drummer, and selected students; and my participation in classes. I argue that various experiences of transcendence in the class occupy points on a continuum, that the same may be true in the temple, and that an area of overlap may pertain. These statements challenge the divide between sacred and profane and bring nuance to notions of music and spirituality.
Saint Rip
Patron saint of the Catskills, Rip Van Winkle has belonged to all America, coast to coast, almost from the moment he was born, by passage through Washington Irving’s pen, in 1819. Only seven years later there was a Rip Van Winkle House along the road from Palenville to the nation’s first resort hotel, the Catskill Mountain House; in 1850 there was another Rip Van Winkle House on the corner of Pacific Wharf and Battery Street in San Francisco. Rip’s real-life presence was attested by nonagenarians who claimed to have known him and his hectoring dame.
Downstate
Fundraising
is about individuals and groups with
different resources collaborating around a
vision shared: a good and workable marriage,
like the simple tin cup I imagined picking
up in the forest. Funders are collaborators.
As Bob Dylan put it, “I’ll let you be in my
dreams, if I can be in yours.”
Diego Obregón:
It was another dog day in August 2009 when we joined Diego Obregón for an interview at his Woodhaven, Queens, apartment. Diego kindly agreed to meet us at his home so that he could play a few tunes from his native Colombia, along with his vocalist Johanna Casteñeda. There in the basement, over the hum of the air conditioner, the sounds from his marimba (wood xylophone) were magical—all at once playful and effervescent—and with Johanna singing the traditional tune “Mi Canoita,” the sounds from Colombia’s Pacific coast spilled out over hot pavement.
Song
The upcoming 150th anniversary provides
an incentive for those of us who sing, teach,
or write to conduct some research into Civil
War songs. Because the Civil War years coincide
with the rise of the American song
publishing industry, there is a large vault
through which to sort. Song artifacts relating
to New York are particularly easy to find, in
large part because the national broadside ballad
press was centered close to New York’s
City Hall and was at its zenith between 1861
and 1865.
Still Going Strong
Garrett Oliver, 47, is the brewmaster for the
Brooklyn Brewery, a regional brewery in the
Williamsburg section of Brooklyn that turns
out 310,000 gallons of beer annually. A native
of Queens, Garrett became interested in the
finer points of beer consumption when he
lived in London in the early 1980s. There he
discovered pub-brewed beers that were very
different from the “industrial-style” brews
that he’d known in the United States.
North by Northeast:
The Hudson Valley Quadricentennial
in 2009 spurred all kinds of
special celebrations in cities along the
Hudson River, from flotilla parades and
festivals to art fairs, music performances,
and exhibitions…For its part in the Quadricentennial celebrations,
the New York Folklore Society commemorated these still-thriving cultural
traditions with “North by Northeast: Baskets
and Beadwork from the Akwesasne
Mohawk and Tuscarora.”
Play
Fleischmanns, New York, is an appealingly
forlorn spot thirty minutes from Woodstock
and fifty, if not one hundred years, from the
rest of America. Its old-fashioned Catskills
summers—fresh air, cool mountain nights,
porch sitting, ball playing, swimming, and
dozing off in lawn chairs…
In Praise of Women
Korean-born, New York City–based
educator and performance artist Maria Yoon
has been married forty-four times now, and
she’s only in her mid-thirties. Getting married—
in every state of the union—is her
primary focus at present, but not in the way
her parents might have anticipated….
With a B.F.A. from Cooper Union, Maria
serves as a teaching artist for New York
City museums. Since 2001 she has also been
working on a multimedia performance series
entitled “Maria the Korean Bride” (MTKB).
Books-to-Note
(1) Pauline Adema draws us into her world of
culinary superlatives, localism, and celebrations…By means of a comprehensive case study
of Gilroy, California—the self-proclaimed
garlic capital of the world—the author skillfully
guides the reader to consideration of
competing perspectives: resident/tourist,
exotic/classic, commodification/production,
personal/communal, global/local, dynamic/
stable, self/other, everyday/special,
contemporary/traditional. (2) Although it is well known that Kurt
Schwitters (1887–1948) created collages,
poems, and artistic installations in the 1920s,
1930s, and 1940s, his darkly satirical fairy
tales have been less accessible to scholars
and general readers. Lucky Hans and Other
Merz Fairy Tales not only gives us the tales,
but also provides a wonderful selection of
illustrations and helpful notes. (3) Sightings of large, elusive, hair-covered
bipeds in remote parts of the Northeast go
back to colonial times. Bigfoot: Encounters in
New York and New England is a useful and
well-researched collection of reports, from
both written and oral sources, of those
sightings.