Friday Video: Preview of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot

Earlier this week, on May 1st, International Worker’s Day,  Appashop released the film,  Anne Braden: Southern Patriot.  Produced by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering, Appalshop describes the film as a ”feature length documentary exploring the remarkable legacy of this grassroots organizer, committed journalist, civil rights leader, movement strategist, social chronicler, public intellectual, teacher and mentor to three generations of social justice activists.”

Braden made her home in Kentucky and was branded a communist and seditionist for buying a house in Louisville for an African American family during the Cold War 1954.  Throughout her life she worked toward, as Media Database says, “awakening the consciousness of whites to the legacy of racial injustice, and demonstrated that racism is a social construct that can be deconstructed.”

In this short clip Braden says, “I never knew anybody who really got active because of guilt.  Everybody I know that’s white that’s got involved in this struggle got into it because they glimpsed a different world to live in.  . . Human beings have always been able to envision something better…All through history they’re have been people who have envisioned something better in the most dire situations.  That’s what you want to be a part of.” 

Here’s a three minute sample from the producers.  Follow their facebook page to keep up with all the showings.  If anyone is interested in providing a space to view the film in Little Rock, please contact us! We’ll provide the organizing if you can provide the space! 

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (1924-2006) — 3 minute sample from Anne Lewis on Vimeo.

Orion Magazine Audio Slide Show of the Lexicon of Sustainability

In this beautiful audio slide show, photographer Douglas Gayeton explains the back story regarding the series of images and words now known as the Lexicon of Sustainability. As Gayeton discusses what we talk about when we talk about sustainability, he also elaborates on the relationship between image and quotes in the larger storytelling process and encourages all of us to think more deeply about how we employ language as we conceptualize the future.  As noted on the Lexicon homepage, “Words are the building blocks for new ideas.”   If you’re unfamiliar with Gayeton’s work, check out this great article from the Art of the Rural.  

This slide show is a companion piece to an article, which will appear in the May/June issue of Orion Magazine.

Orion Magazine Audio Slide Show: Lexicon of Sustainability from Orion Magazine on Vimeo.

The Seed and the Story: Paths of Tradition Bearing

Delegates from the Kentucky Remembers! camps. 2007. Photo by author.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

I recently mentioned the online folklife and oral history class I’ve been teaching and that I’m a big believer that learning should always be multi-directional. Teachers come to class with knowledge and years of study, but engaged students come with open minds, questions, and curiosity, a form of wisdom that is truly under-recognized in our society. This willingness to ask questions and to seek out a greater understanding not only helps students think more deeply about the world around them, but it also encourages the teacher to view their work in new ways. Everyone learns together.

I first noticed this when working with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights back in 2007. I was the staff oral historian for the Kentucky Remembers! Camps where I helped students prepare to interview community members about the civil rights movement in Kentucky. Our goal was to document some of the lesser-known figures in the movement, the every day people who fought, and are still fighting, for equality. I was there to helps the student do research, conduct interviews, and formulate in-depth questions. I soon discovered, however, that the students were teaching me. Their willingness to be inquisitive, their desire to understand more about their communities, and their willingness to connect the stories of the past with the realities of today helped me to rethink my role as a teacher. And at the end of the camps when I sat down and listened to their interviews with community elders, I began to realize that there’s nothing quite as powerful as the young and the old speaking together.

This is all to say, I’m deeply appreciative of what my students bring to the table. So I want to share one example from my current class. The students have been reading texts and watching videos about various cultural traditions including Laotian weaving, African American gospel, and Ozark Balladry. I’ve asked them to think about the concept of tradition bearers, of being someone in their community who carries traditions from one generation to the next. In the film A Singing Stream, a film by Tom Davenport about African American gospel singing traditions in a North Carolina family, the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Landis, isn’t one of the main singers. But she sees to it that her sons learn to sing, providing them encouragement, surrounding them with singers, and giving them time and space to soak it all in. As one of my students, Jeffrey noted, “It’s her tradition to maintain the tradition.”

His phrase stuck with me. So often people tell me they have nothing to pass down. They can’t cook; they don’t garden; they can’t sew. They’re not tradition bearers, they conclude. Of course, that’s never true. We all have skills worth passing down. That aside, the important point here is that Mrs. Landis didn’t have to be a singer to be a tradition bearer. She opened up her home and assured her sons access to the tradition. We may not all be excellent quilters or know how to speak the language of our foremothers and fathers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t support those who do, partially by making sure the young people in our society gain exposure. The tradition bearers can only carry it on if we help them and the young people won’t know if we don’t tell them. That’s something we can all do.

Please don’t forget about the garden book we’re working on! More information here and here. 

Folklorists in the South Retreat

I’m honored and excited to be speaking this weekend at the Folklorists in the South retreat in Memphis, Tennessee.  Sponsored by South Arts, this retreat brings together folklorists and other cultural workers from both the academic and public sectors for a weekend of discussions, panels, networking, and more. The event will also include updates from national partners, media presentations, concerts, and field trips.

I’ll be spekaing Sunday morning on a panel about Creative Economies and the Media Arts alongside Folklorist and BBC radio producer Rachel Hopkin and Steve Grauberger, producer of the Alabama Arts Radio series with of the Alabama Folklife Program.  I will discuss my work with media as a participatory action research tool, how media can help build and sustain community, and the role different aspects of media can play in inter-generational outreach and partnerships.  I’ll also touch on my work with the McElroy House and the role interactive media plays as both an organizing tool and an aspect of educational programing.

Other panels will include updates from National Endowment for the Arts, the American Folklife Center, and the NASSA Folk Arts Peer Group.  There will also be sessions detailing research and the creative economies, programing and creative economies, and a visit and tour with Levon Williams, curator with Stax Records.

I’m looking forward to learning from my peers and discovering new ways of working in the south.  I’m also very excited to have this opportunity to discuss the Boiled Down Juice, the McElroy House, and work happening in central Arkansas.  I hope to see you there!

Michael Vinson Williams and Gale Zucker at the Arkansas Literary Festival

The Arkansas Literary Festival is in full swing now, and if you’ve had a chance to look at the schedule you know that’s it jammed packed with options.  We won’t even begin to touch on all the offerings, but make sure you check out the Arkansas Times this week and read, “Arkansas Liteary Festival slate piles it on,” by Leslie Newell Peacock.  She helps break down the dizzying array of options.

We’re super excited about the opportunity to interview two of this years participants whose work touches on many of the themes covered in this blog.  Stay tuned for upcoming posts and radio interviews with these two great authors.  Better yet, check them out in person tomorrow.  Do you have a question you’d like to ask Dr. Williams or Gale Zucker?  Leave a comment below or send an email and I’ll try and include it!

From the Arkansas Literary Festival.

According to the Arkansas Literary Festival, “Michael Vinson Williams earned his PhD in history from the University of Mississippi. His research focuses on sociopolitical resistance movements, black intellectual radicalism, and Civil Rights struggles. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History and African American studies at Mississippi State University and the author of Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr.”  He’ll be speaking at 1:00 at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center at 1:00.

Gale Zucker, a photographer and co-author of the book  Craft Activism: People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How you Can Join In, will be speaking tomorrow at 11:00 in the Main Library, third floor.  After that she’ll be hosting a yarnbombing in downtown Little Rock at noon. Regardless of your skill level, this should be an amazing event!

According the the Festival’s information, “Zucker is also the photographer/co-author of Shear Spirit: Ten Farms, Twenty Projects and a dozen other books, including a series of children’s picture books about manufacturing in America,Made in the USA.”  You can visit the Craft Activism blog here.  

“Crossing Borders: From Mexico to U.S.” on Hearing Voices radio program

I was driving last weekend when I came across this Hearing Voices radio program on KABF.  ”Crossing Borders: From Mexico to U.S,” originally aired in 2008.  A tale of what immigrants face attempting to cross the border, the program is still just as relevant today in 2012.  This program, like all of the productions by Hearing Voices, is a mixture of so-called “driveway moments” gathered from various broadcasts and recordings and then interwoven to tell a somewhat parallel story.  Luis Alberto Urrea’s readings are particularly disarming and vivid, especially the endless repetition of “Vatos,” which becomes hypnotic with rhythm and stories of loss.

From the Hearing Voices synopsis:

In “Sasabe,” a Sonora, Mexico border town, Scott Carrier talks to immigrants on their hazardous, illegal desert crossing, and to the border patrol waiting for them in Sasabe, Arizona.

Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his books Vatos and The Devil’s Highway, about death in the desert.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña imagines “Maquiladoras of the Future,” fantasy border factories.

“And I walked…”, by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler, is a sound-portrait of Mexicans who risk their lives to find better-paying jobs in the United States.

And sounds from the Quiet American’s one-minute vacation.

Click here to visit the page and listen to the piece.  

“The Many Variations of the Arkansas Tattoo” in the Arkansas Times

Tesuansey Link. Photo by Brian Chilson of the Arkansas Times. Read the article to see more photos.

An article about the Us Tattooed Kids:  Arkansas Project came out in the Arkansas Times today.  Below you’ll find the first few paragraphs. Follow the “read more” link to read the entire article via the Arkansas Times site.

The next step in this project will be working toward a radio piece and a hardback book….and possibly more projects.

You can help us move the project forward by submitting your Arkansas tattoo photo and story and joining the conversation at the project’s facebook page here.

For at least a decade now, Arkansans — both native-born and transplants — have been choosing to mark their bodies with representations of the Natural State. Razorback tattoos have long been popular, but these Arkansas tattoos are more topographical, a marker of geography and a symbol of home. They range from simple outlines with a star or heart marking a hometown to ornate designs involving a birdhouse, a cotton plant or an area code.

For Cheyenne Matthews, co-host of the “Shoog Radio” show on 88.3 FM KABF, it’s the state Capitol, surrounded by stylized clouds and the word “Arkansas” inside a ribbon at the building’s base. The design, which graces her forearm, is part of a series of images created by Caleb Pritchett of Electric Heart Tattoos in Little Rock to help raise money for the show. “Everything we play and do is Arkansas-based,” Matthews said. “It’s a grassroots movement towards Arkansas stuff in general, events and music.”

Anthony Buckaloo and artist, Scott Diffee, the Parlor in Rose City. Photo by Brian Chilson.

Continue reading the story at the Arkansas Times here:

Click here to continue reading at the Arkansas Times site.   

Recorded Stories from the Russellville Seed Swap

2010 Seed Swap. Photo by author.

For the last few days we’ve been posting about the organization Conserving Arkansas Agricultural Heritage.  This week’s Seed and the Story column was an overview of the organization, and this week’s Friday Video, features a trailer from the Seed Swap documentary, produced by Zachariah McCannon, about the beginning of the swaps.

Last year I attended the Russellville Seed Swap and brought along my recording equipment.  Here’s a radio essay I produced for the Ozarks at Large program featuring a few voices form the swap including new growers and those who’ve been gardening for decades.

You can listen to the story by going to the KUAF page here. Better yet, listen to the entire Friday Ozarks at Large program here. The seed swap story begins around 23:00. Or you can listen here:

CAAH Seed Swap in Logan County, Arkansas by Boiled Down Juice
Featured music includes “Ship Out On The Sea” from the Be Good Tanyas and “The Farmer is the Man,” from Fiddlin John Carson.

And if you want to see more photos and read more from last year’s swap, here’s our post from last year.  Thanks for listening/reading!

The Seed and the Story: CAAH and Arkansas Seed Swaps

2011 Russellville Seed Swap. Photo by author

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

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Beginning earlier this month the organization CAAH (Conserving Arkansas’ Agricultural Heritage) began their yearly series of Seed Swaps across the state.  With the motto “One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to share and one to grow,” the organization seeks to preserve both the agricultural folkways of Arkansas and the seeds themselves, many of which have been in families for generations.

They operate a Seed Bank on campus at the University of Central Arkansas, studying and preserving the genetic diversity of regional seeds and host twelve statewide swaps, providing a space where community members can trade heirloom seeds and gardening knowledge, sharing the wealth with both fellow community members and the CAAH organization.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting project leader Dr. Brian Campbell and hear him speak about this project and his other work, and I attended the Russellville Swap last year.  Regardless if you’re a master gardener with decades of experience or a person who’s never put a thing in the ground but posses an interest in learning more about growing your own food, CAAH is an excellent resource.

They seek to raise awareness about the problems with crop monoculture, wherein regional heirloom seeds are replaced by hybrids, the seeds patented and owned by major corporations.  As growers shift to these seeds, the regional ones die out, taking with them genetic diversity, regional traditions and a hardiness to local conditions. Just take the example of tomatoes.  There are only few varieties sold in grocery stores but literally hundreds of different heirloom tomatoes you can grow at home, ranging from pink to green to yellow and each with their own unique taste.  Heirloom gardening opens up a whole new world of eating.

Last year when I attended the swap in Russellville there were several people who brought seeds to give away and an even larger group of folks who just wanted to meet other gardeners in the area, many of whom were starting their first plots.  I came home with some okra seed, daffodil bulbs, a hummingbird vine, and French melon seeds, all of which have done well. If you have seeds passed down in your community, donating some to CAAH is an excellent way to make sure they never die out.  But don’t feel like you have to have seeds to swap to attend the event. It’s for everyone, gardener or not.

The event in Russellville will take place on the 25^th of this month at All Saints Episcopal Church from 10:00-1:00.  If you miss the Russellville event, you can make it to the Conway swap on Sunday the 26th 1:30-3:00 at the Faulkner County Library.   You can check out the full list of swaps below.

You can read more about CAAH and learn what’s in their Seed Bank here: www.arkansasagro.wordpress.com.  If you want to read more about last year’s swap and see a few more photos, go here. If you have seeds that have been passed down to you, I’d really love to hear about them!  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for spring.  What are you going to be growing?

“Hand of Man” Video About Mountain Top Removal

Music for the Mountains cd. Released 2011.

The band Magnolia Mountain recently released a video for their song “Hand of Man” about the horrors of Appalachian mountaintop removal.  The song appears on the Music for the Mountains compilation cd, which was released last year (to read about that project go here).

According to the band’s web page, the video took about a year to make. It’s filled with footage detailing the destruction that comes from this form of coal mining, including reference to high cancer rates and polluted waterways.  The video takes its cues from a long history of Appalachian organizing.

From Jeff Bigger’s post in the Huffington Post:

The Hand of Man” takes the listener to White Star Holler in Kentucky, where seven generations of mountain families have struggled to defend their lives and livelihoods from the toxic fallout from coal company destruction:

White Star Holler was my home
Shared the crops that we had grown
Shared the water from our well
Shared the life we loved so well
Coal men brought the mountain down
Leaked their poison underground
Mother, neighbor, friend, and son
Cancer took them, every one  (to read the whole post go here)

The band is asking that this video be shared far and wide to spread the word about mountaintop removal.  Want to know and/or get involved?  Visit I Love Mountains.org and be sure and check out the work of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.