Ozark Plant Master Billy Joe Tatum has Passed Away

From the Arkansas Folklife Program.

We’ve learned from the Arkansas Folklife Program that Ozark plant scholar Billy Joe Tatum passed away earlier this week.  You may recall earlier this week we posted about a workshop on wild foods led by the organization, Elevate Arkansas.  Tatum’s wonderful work on wild plants was mentioned as one of the group leader’s favorite resources.  We referred to her book, Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Food Field Guide and Cookbook: An Illustrated Guide to 70 Wild Plants and 350 Irresistible Recipes for Serving Them Up, often during our walk.

Her work has inspired so many.  Rest in peace.

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.

Friday Video: Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.

From the Arkansas Encyclopedia

This past week I had my students watch a few films from the wonderful resource, Folkstreams, an internet site hosting hundreds of folklife films.  One of the films we watched was Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.  The film was produced by George West in 1985.

It had been a few years since I’d seen the film, and after watching again I discovered how many layers can be found in this story.  There are underlying discussions about the role of music and memory, tradition and future, even tradition and tradition bearer.  In case you are unfamiliar with ballad singer, Almeda Riddle, here’s a short description of the fim from the Folkstreams site:

Almeda Riddle was born in 1898, near Greer’s Ferry, Arkansas and lived her entire life in that area. Her father was a fiddler, a singer, and a teacher of shaped-note singing. The church she attended throughout her life used unaccompanied singing and this practice reinforced her use of traditional unaccompanied style as a ballad singer.

This video tells how and where Almeda Riddle began her 10 year stint of singing old ballads all over the country. In an informal manner, folk musician Starr Mitchell chats with Riddle about her singing tours and her commitment to preserving the past for the future. The video was filmed two years before Almeda’s death in 1986.

Almeda was “discovered” by John Quincy Wolfe, a professor at Arkansas (now Lyon) College who brought her to the attention of Alan Lomax, John Lomax’s son. Alan had, by this time, taken up the work his father had begun and was the best known collector of American traditional music. Usually called Granny Riddle, Almeda traveled to such places as Harvard and the Newport Folk Festival to sing, and she left behind an extensive body of recorded traditional songs.

More than eighty field recordings of Almeda Riddle can be heard, along with scores by other Arkansas singers, on the website “The John Quincy Wolfe Collection: Ozark Folksongs”.

Due to copyright  laws I can not embed the video here.  Click here to stream the video from the Folkstreams site.  

To learn more about Almeda, read her entry at the Arkansas Encyclopedia here. 

The Seed and the Story for February 8, 2012: Origins of the Chickalah Name.

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!

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

Update:  I originally listed the Highway as Highway 28 instead of Highway 27.  A reader from Chickalah corrected me.  Thanks so much!  This is what I get for working in a hurry due to computer problems.  But computer problems are fixed now.  Thanks so much! 

I’m very excited about the continued response from these recent columns on Chickalah.  Please excuse my delay in responding to emails.  Last week my computer, which has long since seen better days, crashed one last and final time.  Thanks to the generosity of some very dear friends, I’ll soon have a new (to me) computer with several nice upgrades!

In the past few weeks I’ve discussed the somewhat recent history of Chickalah (click here to read the first installment and here to read the second), but this week’s column will go back quite a bit further and explore what little we know about the community’s unique name.  I don’t about you, but as soon as I was old enough to read, those white letters on the green background of the sign on Highway 27 always intrigued me.  It’s a Native American name, but where did exactly did it come from?  And why don’t we pronounce it phonetically, I’ve always wondered.   How did it sound on the lips of the early settlers?  I don’t have any answers for these last two questions, but, of course, the word is full of places whose names ring quite differently from the lips of the residents than the sign might suggest.  One of my personal favorites is the Newton County community of Mount Judea, which is pronounced by locals as Mount Judy.

There are more mysteries to Chickalah’s Native American history than there are answers, and the sources we do have are, at best, fragmented and incomplete. Tribe members have long since left the area, forced out of this region, and most of the rest of the United States, by a host of factors, including what amounts to genocidal acts perpetuated by the U.S government to eradicate their presence in the area.  We do know, however, that the community’s name is a variation of Chikileh, the name of a Cherokee chief, who, according to researcher Samuel Dickenson, was “noted for his oratory.” Continue reading »

Clunk is Booking Shows Again!

From Towncraft

If you’ve lived in Arkansas and were/are into the independent music scene, you’ve probably seen shows at Clunk Music Hall or bought records at Clunk Records in Fayetteville.

Great news! Clunk (Chris Selby) has started booking shows again, and here’s a great interview with him about the past and future.

To hear his interview with KUAF’s  Katy Henricksen, click here.

Update: And here’s a great post from the Arkansas Times.

The Seed and the Story for November 2, 2011: Rest in Peace Exhibit on Death and Dying in the Ozarks

From the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History

The Seed and the Story column is published every other week in the Post Dispatch and syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper!

      Rituals to honor the dead are a fundamental part of the human experience.  Here in the Yell County and River Valley, funerals, visitations, and Decoration Days are just a few of the traditions we observe that pay homage to the deceased and acknowledge a family’s loss.  A photo exhibit currently on display at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale examines the history of regional funeral and death rituals in the Ozark Mountains through the lens of a lesser-discussed tradition: mortuary photographs.  Entitled “Rest in Peace,” the exhibit features black and white photos of burials and grave side services, still born infants surrounded by flowers, shots of decorated graves mounded with flowers, and portraits of family members in mourning clothing.  The images are tender and moving in their depictions of human fragility.

      The images might appear unusual to some in this age where our sick often die in hospitals and professionals take care of everything from post mortem care to grave digging.  While our medical advancements have certainly not saved us from the loss of family and friends, we have been able, to some degree, to remove ourselves from much of the physical process surrounding death and dying.  This exhibit features a time when death was less hidden.  The introduction to the exhibit explains it this way: “In some ways, our ancestors were closer to the realities of death a century ago than we are today. Because many of them lived with their extended family in small communities, without access to hospitals and funeral homes, they saw all phases of dying and death. They took care of the ill and prepared the deceased’s body. They made funeral clothes and sat with the corpse before burial. They built the coffin and dug the grave. They grieved with family and friends and memorialized their loved ones.”  While many of us sit with the dying, seldom do we help dig the grave or dress the body of a loved one or friend. 

One of the most striking photos shows a group of family members in Kingston, Arkansas lovingly placing the lid on the coffin of their loved one after the visitation had ended.  Abby Burnett, a historian who helped with research for the exhibit, believes that in an age where few people had cameras it’s telling that they were often used to photograph the dead.  Mourning was, to a large degree, a communal activity, she explains, not something to be hidden.  “What I learned as I researched is how much we’ve gotten away from a practice that, at one time, involved everyone. Even small children played a part,” she explained. One of the more touching photos from the exhibit shows four young girls posing beside a flower-mounded grave.  The caption explains that young children would often walk in procession behind the coffin, even serve as pallbearers.   This is certainly different from our modern response of increasingly shielding the younger generation from concepts of death, often excluding them from our communal rituals for saying goodbye.  

      The exhibit “Rest In Peace” will be on display the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History through December  17^th.  The Shiloh Museum is home to an extensive photo collection depicting of life in the Ozarks and features regularly rotating exhibits.  They can be found online at www.shilohmuseum.org. 

I’d love to hear your memories of such topics here in the Yell County area.  Do you have a story to share?  Email me at the contact link above or leave a comment below.  Thanks so much for reading.   

Nikki Giovanni to Speak This Evening in Fayetteville.

From the University of Arkansas News Wire

I just came across the news that  Nikki Giovanni —poet, activist, and educator—will be speaking this evening at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville at 7:00 PM.  The lecture will be held in the Arkansas Union Ball Room.   For more information contact Steve Voorhies at 479-575-3583 or email him at  voorhies@uark.edu

This is a wonderful opportunity!  If you’re in the NWA area and attend the event, we’d love to hear all about it.   If you’d be willing to write a short post about Giovanni’s talk please let us know.  No doubt it will be an amazing evening.

From the University of Arkansas Press release:

Giovanni will read from her poetry, talk of the struggle for African American rights in America and human rights around the world and stress the importance of education. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are required but seating is limited.

Nikki Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati and first came to national prominence in the late 1960s with the publication of her first books of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgment.  She has published 30 books so far in her career, including poetry, essay collections and children’s books. Rosa, her collaboration with illustrator Bryan Collier, is a children’s picture book about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks. It was a Caldecott Honors Book and reached No. 3 on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Giovanni has been an outspoken voice for the African American movement all her life, and has lectured widely to promote equal rights for women and gays, opposed hate crime violence and, more personally, described her experiences as a cancer survivor. All of these themes have been prominent in her poetry, as well.

In 1987 Giovanni began teaching writing and literature at Virginia Tech, where she is now a Distinguished Professor of English. In the wake of the 2007 massacre on that campus Giovanni received national attention as she sought to comfort and rally her students and colleagues, telling them, “We are Virginia Tech … we will prevail.”

Giovanni’s appearance coincides with the university’s second annual McNair Scholars Research Conference, sponsored by the Graduate School and International Education. McNair Scholars are undergraduates from underrepresented groups, low-income families, or who are first generation college students. The conference is intended to encourage them to pursue graduate research degrees.

Community Garden Maps and the Fayetteville Community Garden Coallition

Working to identify garden sites, from the FCGC webpage.

Fayetville, Arkansas located in the Ozark Mountains and home to the University of Arkansas, has one of the most amazing farmers market in all the world, a thriving local business community, and artists galore.   It’s also home to the Fayetteville Community Garden Alliance who’s mission is to “ facilitate the development and growth of sustainable community gardens in Fayetteville that build community and produce fresh, high quality food for all.”   They do this by providing resources to help neighborhoods, schools or community centers start, find, and grow gardens, including:

• Leadership development
• Community building activities
• Outreach, referrals for new gardeners
• Support for eligible new gardens
• Assistance acquiring garden materials
• Liaison to city departments who provide services to gardens including land, wood chips, compost & water
• Support network for garden leaders and volunteers
• Email hosting for all gardens
• Educational workshops
• Access to donated seeds and plants (go here).

Just recently the Fayetteville Community Garden Colation launched a handy webpage with a map of all the community gardens around town and a bit of information on each.   Regardless of whether or not you call Fayetteville or even Arkansas home, this webpage is a great example of using the web for sustainable community resources.  Do you know of other towns with equally accessible garden websites?  Let us know and we’ll include them here.

Just to provide a few examples of the various gardens around town, there’s the Butterfield Trail School Garden which is used by the after-school Gardening Club, run by local organziation Apple Seeds, Inc, Mount Comfort Presbyterian Garden where surplus is donated to local food kitchens, and the Walker Park Garden, which is a partnership between neighborhood residents and the Fayetteville Senior Activity and Wellness Center.

Check out the map and list of all ten gardens here.  If you know of other gardens be sure and let them know.

You can also find resources for beginning a community garden here.

What other community garden resources do you find helpful, have helped to create or use?  Let us know!

Saving Our Rural Arkansas Post Offices Toolkit from the Rural Community Alliance

From the Rural Community Alliance site, Save Our Rural Arkansas Post Offices.

Recently we posted about the history and significance of the Dardanelle, Arkansas Post Office and mural, and our thankfulness that it is still open and in use.  But as you’ve probably heard, many rural post offices in Arkansas (Arkansas has the highest rate of proposed closures in the nation) and around the nation are facing closure, something that will, no doubt, deal a devastating blow to many rural communities around the nation.

I saw this morning that the Rural Community Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Arkansas with the mission of helping rural communities and schools thrive, has created the webpage Save Our Rural Post Offices.   The webpage features a tool kit  where you can find action guides to prevent the closing of your posts office, a state by state list of closings, and a list of Arkansas specific closings, which can be found via the national website Save the Post Office.  

The tool kit provides practical tools such as a sample letter to the editor and a petition form you can print out and begin passing around.  Thanks to this great resource, all the tools you need to begin working toward saving your post office are in one place.

The site also provides examples of what other citizens have done, including those of Fox, Arkansas who created a video to help fight for their post office.  Their video is up on Youtube:
 

Here’s a great piece about the hazards of rural post office closings from the Daily Yonder.

And here’s another great piece from our friends at the Art of the Rural.  

And here’s a link to our piece about the Dardanelle Post Office.

To learn more about the Rural Community Alliance click here.

Is your post office facing closings?  What are folks in your community doing?

34th Annual Ozark Quilt Fair this Saturday

With permission from the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History

This weekend the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale is hosting the 24th Annual Quilt Fair.  There will be new and antique quilts on display and for sale, as well as awards presented for Viewer’s Choice awards for both new and antique quilts.  While you’re there you can also check out all the exhibits at the museum and vote on the quilts.  It’s a great time.   The event lasts from 10:00—2:00.

For more events at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History click here.

Quilts on the line. Photo from the Shiloh Musuem

Old-time string band Shout Lulu will be performing from 10:00-1:00.  They’re really good, and they’re super nice people, so you don’t want to miss that.

Check them out here: