The Seed and the Story: Visiting Decoration Days: A Pilgrimage to Arkansas from California

Photo from Karen Alexander-Stoeckel of her Grandma, Ocie Hance-Alexander (in blue dress) with her brothers and sisters at the gravesites of their parents, Greeny and Dora Hance. Needmore Cemetery, Arkansas.

Beginning this weekend people throughout the area will engage in the decades old tradition of Decoration Days, placing flowers on the graves of their loved ones and transforming the cemeteries into vibrant landscapes of color.  The very first column, which ran in May of last year, was about this tradition and how it can connect families and communities across generations, reminding us that, as long as we keep their stories alive, the dead are always with us.

I asked others to share their stories and a woman here in Arkansas mailed the column to her niece, Karen Alexander-Stoeckel in Cambira, California.  This past week Karen contacted me by email to share her beautiful story, and she said I could share it with you all.

Her father Virgil “Odell” Alexander was born in Casa in 1929 to Robert Alexander and Ocie Hance-Alexander, and as a child he “loved to hunt in the hills with his coonhounds and bring wildlife home to tame as pets.”  At the age of five, he picked cotton to supplement the family’s income, later working in a lumber mill near Petit Jean. In 1953 he moved to California where he began work in the dairy business. He and his wife had five sons and one daughter, Karen.   Here is how she describes her relationship to Decoration Days:

My brothers and I were born and raised in California and Arkansas seemed like a distant planet to us.  The stories my daddy shared with us were rich with lessons he had learned and the love of his Hance and Alexander family.  As children, we only made a few trips back east to visit our grandparents because Daddy’s work schedule was so demanding.  I remember the well on the back porch of Grandma’s house and how cold and sweet the water was.  The fireflies in her front yard were a sight I’ve never seen anywhere else. 

The letters from home were precious to my daddy.  He prized the photos that his mama would send every year that were taken on Decoration Day at the Needmore Cemetery.  Photos of relatives in their Sunday best and women wearing corsages , standing or sitting near grave sites that were splendid with flowers.  As a child I did not understand my daddy’s fondness for these pictures of grave sites and was too young to appreciate the culture they derived from.

Grandma and Grandpa are gone now and so are the letters and photos from home on Decoration Day.  The relatives who gathered in those old pictures are also gone or soon will be and the love of my life, my daddy, passed away last October.  My brothers and I are having a memorial service for him here in California and then I will be bringing his ashes home to Arkansas where he requested they be laid to rest.

When I come to Arkansas, I will be attending my very first Decoration Day at Needmore Cemetery and words cannot express how emotional I feel about being near so many of my family laid to rest there.  Because of the oral history my daddy passed down to his children, I will not merely be reading names on headstones but remembering that my great-great grandfather, John Henry Alexander was remembered as being able to “sit a good horse” and walked every day down to the general store with the aid of his cane to enjoy talking, whittling, chewing tobacco and in general passing the time of day.  I have gathered bouquets of Lavender from my back yard and I have them drying to take with me to Needmore Cemetery to be lain in honor and respect to all those who lived before and are now rejoicing with my daddy.

I’m bringing my camera too.  Like my dear grandmother of years past, I intend to share and cherish these photos with my family in California. My daddy’s legacy of home and family lives on through my nine year old granddaughter who recently stated that if given any place in the world to visit, she chose Arkansas where my Papa is buried.

She signed the email, “Looking forward to visiting your wonderful state and celebrating Decoration Day soon.” What’s your Decoration Day story?  What does the tradition mean to you?  I’d love to hear from you, see your photos, and share your stories with readers.  And I am so honored Karen allowed me share her beautiful story 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!

Persistent Story: Celebrating the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum

Michael Morrow with students from Russellville High School, Russellville, Kentucky.

We’ve been sprucing things up around here and reorganizing files.

You can now watch the film Persistent Story: Celebrating the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum at our Boiled Down Juice Vimeo Page. This film was made in 2008 in the Folk Studies graduate program at Western Kentucky University in partnership with Michael Morrow and the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum in Russellville, Kentucky.  The film is used today by the center for educational and promotional purposes. Disclaimer: The film was made over the course of one semester and was my first film making experience.  Therefore, it’s not without its share of imperfections in audio, editing, and the like.  I’m sharing it here because I hope the message of the film outweighs the technical mistakes.

The Center is an excellent example of  community-based grassroots organizing, the power of oral history to unite a community, and the role of intergenerational research in planning for the future.  Working with Morrow and the center was life-changing for me and informs much of my work today.  If you haven’t been already, I highly recommend you visit the center! It’s an amazing place doing amazing work!  Once we’re finished sprucing up the files we’ll have more photos and information to post.  Thanks to Dr. Kristin Dowell for help in the production of this film.

Here’s a great article about Morrow from the Amplifier. 

Persistent Story from Boiled Down Juice on Vimeo.

Yarnbombing in downtown Little Rock.

Mother and daughter yarn bomb together.

Yesterday as part of the Arkansas Literary Fest in Little Rock several people gathered to yarn bomb the area around the river market library and the youth section of the library itself.  Sometimes called knit graffiti, yarn bombing involves taking knitted objects and decorating typically urban landscapes, an attempt to add beauty and color to the sometimes inorganic city landscape.   (You can read the Art of the Rural post envisioning yarn bombing in rural areas by clicking here).  It’s important to also note that these activities are not wasteful, utalyzing scrap afghans and other knitted objects that were gathering dust somewhere in a back closet.  Because they’re made from natural fibers they’ll dry out and withstand the elements for some time.

We started out with a small group but pretty soon many passersby—both children and adults— joined in on the fun. By the end of the afternoon yarn poms hung from the branches alongside the spring flowers while formerly discarded knits enveloped tree limbs and park benches.

This event was held in conjunction with a talk by Gale Zucker, co-author and photographer for the book Craft Activism: People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How You Can Join In.  Yarn bombing is just one of many craft activist approaches detailed in her research.   She  and co-author Joan Tapper also highlight others who might be familiar to readers including Carolyn Mazloomi and the Women of Color Quilter’s Network, Virginia Fleck and her mandalas made from recycled shopping bags, and the Red Scarf Project, which provides scarves to students who were a part of the foster care system.  The book is a compilation of ideas, crafter profiles, and patterns for those who want to join in on the action.

I had a chance to speak with Gale about her research, as well as several others who either attended the event or simply got drawn into the bombing as passers by.   I’ll be posting a radio story featuring their comments sometime this upcoming week.  Until then, here are a few photos from the day.

Besides the great conversations we had with Gayle, it was wonderful to see how many passersby soon began to join in, picking up scrap knitting squares and sewing them onto the trees, park benches, and shrubs. As intended, a yarn bomb sparks conversation between strangers, leads to discussions about the nature of handmade, and helps us all notice our surroundings.  I even found a home for one of my fingerless glove prototypes, which now graces the trunk of a tree.  And my twin boys got their stroller yarn bombed, for sure one of the highlights of their day!

Were you at the yarn bombing or want to get involved in Little Rock yarn bombing?  Let’s discuss and get together with others who want to do the same.

Poms hanging from the trees

Passersby join in and help.

Partice, one of the main organizers, bombs a tree trunk.

Donated yarn pieces for the bombing.

A truly intergenerational activity.

Bombing the park bench.

The young ladies made this wonderful collection. Gale Zucker in the background.

You know you love granny squares!

The yarn blended in with the flowers for a magical look.

One of the youth library workers joins in to help with the sewing on of the flowers.

Mother and daughter.

The Seed and the Story: ARVAC and VISTA, Folk arts and the War on Poverty in Arkansas.

Click on the photo to connect to ordering info via Amazon.

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.

Alongside researching the history of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, I’ve been reading In Service to America: A History of Vista in Arkansas 1965-1985.  Written by Marvin Schwartz, this 1988 publication traces the VISTA organization throughout the state.   I’ve been particularly interested in the work of this organization in central Arkansas, including the creation of a craft co-op, which served both Yell and Pope Counties.

Created in 1965, VISTA was an outgrowth of President Johnson’s War on Poverty and Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.  This national legislation sought to provide lasting and locally based solutions to struggling communities.  Operating much like a domestic version of the Peace Corp, volunteers in the VISTA program received a subsistence wage and lived in economically poor areas where they worked in partnership with community members to generate economic initiatives and help residents gain access to health care and adequate food.  VISTA volunteers, many of them college age, worked to help create grassroots programs which focused on local needs, thus making each VISTA program unique to its region.

In 1960 approximately 40% of the population in the river valley was living below the poverty line.  Illiteracy, inadequate housing, and unemployment were rampant.  One of the first VISTA programs in the nation was the Yell County Economic Opportunity Program, a pilot recipient of an OEA grant.  The organization was soon absorbed into its larger sister organization, ARVAC (Arkansas River Valley Area Council), which hosted numerous national and local volunteers.   ARVAC formed programs such as the Housing Development Corporation, an organization utilizing the rural tradition of barn raising to help low income families secure homes, and ARVAC Rural Folkcrafts, a network which provided a market for rural quilters, white oak basket makers, seamstresses, and other artisans, allowing them to sell their traditional wares and earn a living for their families. Another organization, Counseling Associates (formerly known as ARVAC Community Mental Health Program), began under the ARVAC VISTA program and operates independently today.

In its early days VISTA brought in volunteers from around the nation, but in later years became more focused on long-term, locally based volunteers, which helped the programs thrive.   From the beginning, the goal of VISTA programs was to become self-sufficient. ARVAC stuck around and quickly became a model of successful VISTA organizing.   ARVAC’s craft co-op, which began in 1975, continued throughout the 1980s, as did housing initiative, which later became known as Universal, INC.

Schwartz’s book features interviews with a few river valley VISTA workers, including the late Myrtle Cress who worked in Ola and Betty Burnett who organized a housing co-op in Dardanelle.  It also highlights the work of Lou Vitale who was instrumental in founding the crafts co-op. I’d love to learn more about the creation of these initiatives, how people felt about the work, the craftspeople who sold at the co-op, and the use of the barn raising tradition in area housing initiatives.   Were you affiliated with VISTA?  Did you or someone in your family sell crafts at the co-op?  Perhaps your house was built utilizing the barn raising tradition?  I’d love to hear more.   An extra special thanks to Mike Luster of the Arkansas Folklife Program for introducing me to this book.

Also please don’t forget we’re still working on compiling stories of plants and seeds for our book on stories and gardening in the area.  We’d love to include your story!  To learn more visit us here.  To read a little bit about the backstory of the garden book read this column.

“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.   

The Seed and the Story: Learning From Students and Folkstreams films

The Landis family. From the film, A Singing Stream. Image from Davenport Films.

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’ve had two exiting developments recently. I recently found out this column will be running every week rather than every other week! Thanks so much for your support.  I’m looking forward to more opportunities to learn from readers about this area’s history and its present day, and I’ll be working toward making this column more interactive, featuring more voices from our diverse and culturally rich community.

Secondly, this past week I began teaching an online class at Arkansas Tech entitled “Folklife and Oral History.”  I’m thoroughly impressed with my students and their level of engagement.  I’m a firm believer that the best part of teaching isn’t sharing your own knowledge but rather learning from the students themselves.  Their questions require me to think more deeply about the readings, and their observations are opening my eyes to new ways of conceptualizing the importance of traditions, music, and the role of tradition bearers (a phrase folklorists use for people who carry on traditions) in a community.  Plus, they’re teaching me about their own family and community traditions, which I find endlessly fascinating.

This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to teach a subject like folklife and oral history—a subject that dwells heavily on the past and its role in the present day—in such a modern, online format. I’ll be the first to say that I deeply appreciate the lines of communication the Internet provides.  It can be a tool for greater democracy and a way to reestablish connections lost over the miles or years.  Yet I feel strongly that younger generations could use more exposure to a life a bit more unplugged.  Funny how online resources can actually introduce students to traditions that are decades, even centuries, old. So last week I had the students watch a few films via Folkstreams, an Internet site housing hundreds of folklife films.

To give them an introduction to traditional singing styles I chose two films: A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle produced by Tom Davenport and Alemda Riddle:  Let’s Talk About Singing produced by George West. The first film explores traditional African American gospel music as it is passed down in the Landis family from rural North Carolina.  The film highlights how music plays a key role in the family’s fight for civil rights and provides an example of how a study of traditional music opens a window into family, political, and community histories.  This musical link to the past provides a source of strength to fight for a more just future.

The second film profiles Ozark ballad singer Alemda Riddle, a woman who lived her entire life near Greers Ferry, Arkansas.  The well-known ballad Hunter, John Quincy Wolfe, met her in 1952, and began recording her songs, some which dated back to the 16^th century.  Riddle became a hero of the folk revival and recorded and traveled extensively.  The songs she was singing may have been hundreds of years old, but her role as a widow traveling the country made her quite a radical figure in her day and age.

Many of the students noted how this traditional music, centuries old, can provide a source of strength for the present day and how the music was a tie linking family members across generations and miles. As I watched the two films together, I began to notice how each individual, in their own unique way, held on to the past with one hand while reaching out for the future with the other. And ultimately that’s what a healthy tradition is about: a link to the past that builds a bridge to a better future.  You can watch these, and countless other folklife films, at www.folkstreams.net.  I love hearing stories and traditions from readers.   Or send me a letter with your stories.  I especially love those.

Arkansas Tattoo Project Update: Visiting the Parlor in Rose City/North Little Rock.

Alinda Bennett at the Parlor gives Anthony Buckaloo his second Arkansas tattoo.

For the past few months we’ve been documenting the prevelance of Arkansas-themed tattoos and the stories behind them. The response has been amazing and generated many conversations about Arkansas as both a place and an idea.

Working in partnership with Shoog Radio on KABF, we’ve set up a Facebook page where people can upload their own photos and stories. To learn more visit the page here: Us Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project.

And I’ve also been visiting with people, taking along my recorder and camera listening to stories about why people choose to mark their bodies with symbols of the place they call home. In the next few weeks a print piece will be coming out in the Arkansas Times and an audio essay for KUAF Public Radio will air later this spring. But I hope this project will keep going and become more community led. So if you’ve got an Arkansas tattoo or know someone who does, please spread the word and upload your photos and stories to the page above or contact me directly. We want to document a wide range of stories and voices, and we’d love to include yours.

Here’s a short audio clip from one of my favorite interviews so far, an interview with Anthony Buckaloo who, during the interview, is getting his second Arkansas tattoo from Alina Bennett at the Parler in Rose City/North Little Rock.

In this clip he’s speaking with Parlor owner Scott Diffee about his first tattoo, an Arkansas outline. During the interview he’s getting the tattoo shown above. He talks about growing up in a low income neighborhood in North Little Rock and how much he loves his home. Here’s a short clip.

[mp3j track="Anthony-B.mp3"]
I’ll be posting more clips this week from other interviews. Help us document the wide diversity of Arkansas tattoos and the stories and people behind them. Visit the facebook page here and tell your Arkansas story.

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!

Friday Video: Seed Swap Documentary

From Seed Swap Documentary

This week’s Seed and the Story column looked at the organization Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage (CAAH) and the annual Seed Swaps currently taking place throughout the state.  This afternoon we will be posting a radio piece which will air on KUAF today  profiling voices from the swap last year in Russellville.

In keeping with this coversage of CAAH, today’s Friday Video is a trailer for the film, Seed Swap Documentary.  Produced by Zachariah McCannon, the film documents the early days of the CAAH organization and the work of anthropologist Dr. Brian Campbell as he organizes the first seed swap in Mountain View, Arkansas.   According to the film’s Facebook page:

This documentary film uses the development of a seed exchange and agricultural biodiversity conservation project in the Ozark Mountains as an ethnographic lens to explore the seed saving subculture of the region. 

To learn more about the film, follow the project on facebook here.

To read more and to keep up with screenings around the state, visit the film’s webpage.  It looks like there will be screenings coming up this March in Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Eureka Springs.

And don’t forget there will be a swap this Saturday in Russellville and one Sunday in Conway.  Go here for a full listing of swap dates and times.