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This Folklife Update reports on an entire year again. Please send me any news that you would like included in the future. It generally goes out in January and July, but as before, there's an emphasis on "generally." Maida Owens, Louisiana Folklife Program, NEWS FROM THE LOUISIANA FOLKLIFE PROGRAM Folk Artist applications: To increase the number of applications the Division of Arts receives from folk artists, I have sent letters each January to more than 500 folk artists reminding them that the Fellowships and Apprenticeships application deadline is March 1. Many thanks to Louisiana Folk Roots, Louisiana Folklife Festival, NSU/Natchitoches Folk Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Folklife Department, and the Regional Folklorists for sharing their artist information for the Louisiana Folk Artist Database. We now receive 15-20 applications in each program and these grants are becoming more competitive. As a result, more folk artists are receiving fellowships each year. We are also getting more applications from folk musicians and storytellers for the Touring Directory, managed by Dee Hamilton. But we still weren't getting applications for Artist Mini-Grants. So, I sent a special letter about the August 1 and December 1 deadlines for Artists Mini-Grants and State Artist Roster. I am pleased that we received 14 Artist Mini-Grant applications in August, and eight were awarded. See below. That's up from two to four in past years. A request from the Folklife Projects Assistance panel: Please consider submitting applications for projects other than festivals. The grants panel has received few applications for other than festivals for many years. See below for a list of project grants funded this year. If you have a folklife project that you are considering for the March 1 deadline or the Decentralized Arts Funding Program, I would be glad to review and comment on drafts before the deadline. Changes at the Regional Folklife Program at UNO: The Regional Folklife Program at UNO will now be hosted by the History Department, College of Liberal Arts. This promises to be a productive partnership, as several faculty members number regional culture among their areas of research, and the department is also host to the Midlo International Center for New Orleans Studies. We will post new contact information online when it's available, or contact Laura Westbrook at laura@roussev.net, www.louisianafolklife.org/LFP/main_reg_folk_program.html. The Louisiana Folklife Commission met Thursday, December 11, 2003, and Friday, August 13, 2004, in Baton Rouge. In December, Deborah Clifton asked the Commission to endorse guidelines for the preservation of ethnographic collections in museums. The Commission supports her efforts and agreed that the guidelines should be posted on the Folklife in Louisiana website once developed. Deborah Clifton is researching the issue and will present recommendations. The Commission also formed a committee to consider whether the Program should republish the 1985 publication, Louisiana Folklife: A Guide to the State, or post it online. NEW ON THE FOLKLIFE IN LOUISIANA WEBSITE Susan Levitas wrote a new article, Gefilte Fish in the Land of the Kingfish: Jewish Life in Louisiana and provided video clips from Shalom Y'All: The Documentary Film. Laura Westbrook posted online a new virtual book, More Than Just a Trade: Master Craftsmen of the Building Arts, which is based on the New Orleans Building Arts Project. It features an introduction by Laura Westbrook, an article by C. Ray Brassieur, and interviews with masons, painters, ironworkers, roofers, lathers, tile masons, wood crafters, plasterers, blacksmiths, shorers, and more. Folklife Program Assistant Tamika Edwards Raby designed this site which complements the exhibition book, Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans. This virtual book is part of the Greater New Orleans Regional Folklife Program webpage which features research and projects by Laura Westbrook and that program. We've also added more than 400 photographs to the Louisiana Folklife Photo Gallery. With the addition of these images, practically all fieldwork projects by the Louisiana Folklife Program since 1979 are represented by images online. Another page features all the folk artists who have received fellowships, apprenticeships, artist mini-grants, Governor's arts awards, and other recognition by the Division of the Arts. Click here to view it. All of these resources are found in the Louisiana's Living Traditions section of the website. Select "Louisiana's Living Traditions," and then "Virtual Books," "Articles & Essays," "Award-Winning Folk Artists," or "Photo Gallery." We have finished the reorganizing of the front pages of the website and hopefully people can find things more easily. Our intention was to make it so that any page could be accessed from the homepage in three to four clicks. That's not easy to do with more than 1000 webpages. We also removed the required registration for the Louisiana Voices website. We realized that we were inhibiting use by requiring registration and gave up on that! Instead, we are asking visitors to fill out a voluntary survey online so that we can collect information to pursue other funding. We are also developing Louisiana Voices webpages specifically for student use. This includes four essays adapted or written by Jocelyn Donlon and posters by Tamika Edwards Raby. We hope to post them online in the coming months. Also, we are rewriting Units I and II and adding more activities that demonstrate the value of fieldwork as classroom activities. LOUISIANA REGIONAL FOLKLIFE PROGRAM Susan Roach, Regional Folklorist at Louisiana Tech University The Louisiana Quilt Documentation Project has focused on African American quilting through a documentation clinic and exhibit hosted by the McDaniel Homemakers Club in Bernice. Roach also assisted Bill Scott/Achievement through Art with an African American quilt exhibit featuring American quilter/historian Carolyn Mazloomi. Kerry Davis and Katrina Parker documented quilts from the Parker, Tullos, and Poole family in Jonesville to provide perspective on quilts in one family. The project includes quilts documented in the New Orleans area (see Westbrook below), at the Masur Museum in Monroe, and more than 1500 documents from the Louisiana State Archives from a 1990s project by Sandra Todaro and Judy Godfrey. Once entered in the searchable online database, that database will have approximately 3000 quilts. Our Louisiana work will be included in the National Quilt Index Project to network different state quilt databases. Roach and Westbrook have an article on Louisiana quilts in the 2004 Louisiana Folklife Festival program book. Roach also assisted with the first meeting of the Southern Quilt Study Group, a subgroup of the American Quilt Study Group organized by Gaye Ingram, Ruston. That group includes quilt enthusiasts/historians/scholars/quilters from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Roach will help coordinate the group's next meeting in February 2005. In an effort to digitize the Louisiana Tech Regional Folklife Program collection, Michael Rasbury (La. Tech School of Performing Arts) digitized field tapes and prepared 50 clips for presentation on the Louisiana Tech Rural Development website. Also, photos are being scanned, including photos from the 1984 publication Gifts from the Hills: North Central Louisiana Folk Traditions, now online. Roach assisted Weston High School history and gifted/talented teachers Charlotte Bailey, Lisa Nunn, and Lydia Clary in conducting a Veterans History Project as part of the American Folklife Center's project. Roach provided an introduction to interviewing workshop and a demonstration interview with Robert Crowe, a WWII veteran. The regional program also loaned tape recorders for the project. Roach also assisted the Louisiana Folklife Festival in Monroe (as Narrative Stage Coordinator and presenter and foodways presenter), the Natchitoches Folk Festival (with the Louisiana State Fiddling Championship and a workshop on Caring for Textiles), the East Carroll Tourism Initiative Oral History Project in Lake Providence, and Newcomb College (interview of retired State District Judge Alwine Ragland, the first woman elected to a judgeship in Tallulah). Roach is working to develop a project to document the life stories of this woman and Judge Ragland's oral history of Madison and Tensas Parishes. Documentation of The Shadow Plantation in Webster Parish continued with elevation photographs. Roach's help determined that an outbuilding set for demolition was mid-19th century construction (using mortise and tenon construction) and should be maintained. Roach interviewed Clemmie Ary who worked at the Shadow's plant nursery as a young girl. She is also assisting Margaret Rogers, Mayor of Dubach, and the Dubach Restoration and Beautification Organization with acquiring, restoring, and interpreting a dog trot house to be used as a tourist welcome center. Artists the program assisted with digital recordings and photographs of performances include Po' Henry and Tookie (Delta blues), Jim and Jane Ball, Fred Beavers and Ben Robinson. Roach also assisted applicants with LDOA grants: Richard Allen/Laymon Godwin, Ben Robinson/Catherine Kirby, Paul Woodard/Jim Brown, and Kenny Bill Stinson. Roach also helped assist the North Louisiana Bluegrass Club with its nomination of the Cox Family for a Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement Award, and coordinated the acceptance of the award by Senator Robert Adley and Rep. Jean Doerge as well as a special local ceremony in Arcadia to present the award to the Cox Family. Contact Susan Roach at or msroach@garts.latech.edu, 318/257-2728.
Dayna Lee, Regional Folklorist at Northwestern State University, Louisiana Folklife Center Region 2 continues to work toward a long term goal of creating a regional study to post available online. The study will have several research tracks, including regional development, ethnicity, religion, occupation, and material culture. Individual components are placed online as they are completed. This year, we partnered with the African American Multicultural Tourism Commission (now called the Multicultural Tourism Commission) to create an online tour of sites significant to the African American community in Shreveport. We also added a track to the driving tour of the Cane River Creole community, a photographic essay of All Saints/All Souls Day, and 200th anniversary celebrations at the St. Augustine Catholic Church in the community of Isle Brevelle. These are available online at http://www.nsula.edu/regionalfolklife/. Graduate student Autumn Campbell researched blacksmithing and ironwork traditions to support the iron cross documentation project, which should be completed and posted online in the coming year. Photographic documentation has been conducted in the Red River Valley, and only a few sites are left to be explored. The tradition of placing iron crosses as grave markers began in the late Spanish colonial period, and continues today. Once ubiquitous in Catholic cemeteries within the region, old crosses are disappearing at an alarming rate. An offshoot of this project has been the documentation of memorials and mortuary art, including the painting and decoration of statuary to reflect ethnicity. In partnership with the Cammie Henry Research Center at Northwestern State University, we have received permission to digitize and research the photographic collection of cultural geographer George Stokes, who documented locations and styles of vernacular architecture in Natchitoches Parish in the 1970s and 1980s. Student Michael Fontenot and intern Shawna Atkins have spent the summer working on the collection. Mike has created a GIS base map, and he and Shawna have been following up with fieldwork designed to see which structures remain and to document modifications. The results of this research will be online this fall. The Stokes collection has contributed greatly to our larger objective of documenting vernacular architecture within the entire region. We have worked on several projects with the Creole Heritage Center. We assisted in creating a video on Creole foodways entitled The Common Pot, and worked with it on the Creole Studies Conference held in New Orleans. We are partnering with the Center this year to create a Creole foodways map of Louisiana. It will document Creole communities and food traditions throughout the state. We have worked closely with several tribal groups this year. We conducted photographic scanning workshops at the Jena Choctaw tribal office and will assist it in creating for publication a traditional/historical overview of the community. We have also partnered with the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, which is indigenous to the Red River Valley. The Caddo maintain close ties here and we are working with them to document traditional cultural properties and collect information about sacred places and special resource procurement areas. We are also partnering this year with the Talimali Band of Apalachee to create a virtual driving tour of places of historical and cultural importance to the tribe. Most of these sites are inaccessible and the public can only experience these sites through electronic media. Region 2 also provided technical assistance to numerous community groups and organizations conducting research or planning events. Assistance ranged from workshops to on-site documentation. Groups included the Sabine Heritage Festival committee, the Avoyels-Tensas tribe, the Los Adaes Foundation, the Antioch Baptist Church Historical Committee in Shreveport, and the St. John the Baptist Catholic Altar Society in Cloutierville. Contact Dayna Lee at 318/357-4328 or daynal@nsula.edu.
Laura Westbrook, Regional Folklorist at the University of New Orleans Westbrook has been working with organizations on the connections between culture and environment in southeast Louisiana for the Louisiana Coastal Communities Project with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. The first stage will look at three environmentally-threatened communities in Jefferson, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard parishes. She is assisting the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program's La fete d' Ecologie to include more folklife interpretation. She has been invited to speak on behalf of the sometimes forgotten human population of the coastal areas, as they contend with issues such as land loss and the activities of oil companies, at conferences of the United States Department of the Interior and Save America's Wetlands. She continues work with the Louisiana Preservation Alliance to have Louisiana's coastline declared one of the country's 11 most endangered places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. For the Louisiana Quilt Documentation Project (see Roach report above), Westbrook held eight documentation clinics, primarily at public libraries and small museums. Several libraries received assistance in developing exhibits and quilt-related projects for a "Quilt Month." Several projects have involved consulting with the Regional Folklorist's focus on southern foodways. Dr. Westbrook moderated panel sessions on foodways research and related oral history projects at the annual Society of Southwest Archivists conference themed "Cultural Celebrations and Commemorations: Archives, Memory, and History." She is working with Elsa Hahne, who is doing fieldwork for a book on food traditions of various cultures in the Greater New Orleans area. She has consulted with Liz Williams and Elizabeth Pearce, the founder and curator of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, as they develop interpretive themes, exhibits, and text. Westbrook is also assisting the Greater New Orleans Italian Culture Society to document traditional cookies and other items for their St. Joseph's Altar. She is also working with Central City's Café Reconcile, a not-for-profit institution that mentors at-risk youth as they learn to prepare and serve traditional New Orleans African-American meals. Cafe´ Reconcile also helps match additional services with area needs, assisting staff and locals to identify cultural resources, and to plan economic development and adult literacy and job training projects. Westbrook developed a new course for the University of New Orleans, "Culture and Planning," which focused on methods by which a variety of planning specialists can benefit from incorporating cultural considerations and anthropological methodologies into the planning process. Topics surveyed included funding, citizen participation, tourism planning, neighborhood & community planning, housing, preservation, designing public space, environmental planning, and social policy. In each case, students and guests examined ways in which organizations and planners gather and utilize information about human use of natural and other resources. Participants also discussed how planners could increase their effectiveness when they consider human and other inhabitants of target areas. Students in the course look at the ways various professionals gather information through fieldwork. Westbrook assisted several new or recent festivals: Celebracion Hispaña de Kenner, the Louisiana Maritime Heritage Festival, the Fairview-Riverside State Park Traditional Crafts Fair, and the Ponderosa Stomp (music heritage festival). Finally, the Building Arts Survey lives on! Recently, the Congressional Black Caucus and the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative requested a screening of "With These Hands," the film Dr. Westbrook created from fieldwork with building artisans. This was used to help make the case for revitalizing building arts education programs. Numerous groups throughout the region continue to utilize the Regional Folklorist in similar and related efforts. Materials collected as part of the Building Arts Survey have been excerpted and edited as a new virtual book, More Than Just a Trade: Master Craftsmen of the Building Arts. Contact Laura Westbrook at laura@roussev.net., 504/280-6653
LOUISIANA VOICES FOLKLIFE IN EDUCATION PROJECT During Spring 2004, Louisiana Voices produced four workshops for veteran folklife-in-education practitioners. These workshops, designed to provide professional training in specific areas of folklife-in-education (FIE), gave priority to those educators who had already gone through a Louisiana Voices training or who had already conducted FIE in the classroom. The first, Not Just for Entertainment: Visiting Folk Artists in the Classroom, received unprecedented interest. More than 75 educators applied to attend this workshop, but we could accept only 25. So, we offered three workshops in June: Not Just for Entertainment (Ruston), Product and Publicity (Natchitoches), and Practical Fieldworking: The "How To" Workshop for Producing Student Fieldwork Experiences (Baton Rouge). In addition, Education Coordinator Jane Vidrine conducted presentations and workshops at Louisiana Lagniappe (Lafayette), 21st Century After School conferences (New Orleans and Alexandria), and a Louisiana Association for Geography Educators conference (Caddo Parish). Finally, the Louisiana Voices' promotional packet has been completed for a comprehensive marketing campaign to both the Louisiana education community as well as the national market. Nalini Raghavan, Louisiana Voices' Outreach and Development Coordinator for the past three years, has moved on. Feeling the pull of new interests, she decided to take a more limited role in Louisiana Voices. She would like to thank all of those with whom she has had the pleasure of working through the course of her tenure in this position. We recently announced the vacancy and are currently in the process of reviewing the applications we received.
NEWS FROM THE DIVISION OF THE ARTS The Louisiana Division of the Arts is surveying organizations and individuals as a part of an overall assessment of its programs and services. Please visit our web site so that we can include your ideas. If you don't represent an organization or aren't an artist, you may participate by using the Open Forum. PROJECT ASSISTANCE / FOLKLIFE, $40,000 Total FOLKLIFE FELLOWSHIPS, $5000 Since 1985, the Division of the Arts has awarded 27 fellowships in folklife: 13 for performing traditions and 14 for traditional arts and crafts. They include 11 African Americans, 2 Native Americans, 4 Anglo Americans, and 10 Cajuns. By gender, 23 men and 4 women. Two received a fellowship twice. Click here for a complete list. ARTIST MINI-GRANTS, $500 ARTIST ROSTER ARTS IN EDUCATION—BASIC, $40,000 TOTAL APPRENTICESHIPS, $20,000 TOTAL Master/Apprentice Thomas A. Colvin/Curtis Hebert, Wooden Boatbuilding, Mandeville, $4300 2004 GOVERNOR'S ARTS AWARDS The Louisiana State Arts Council selected two folk artists to receive Governor's Arts Awards this year. Acadian weaver Gladys LeBlanc Clark of Scott is the 2004 Folk Artist of the Year. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to country-bluegrass band, The Cox Family, of Cotton Valley. TOURING DIRECTORY The next Louisiana Touring Directory will be available in print on September 27. It will also be posted on the Division of the Arts website. The Directory includes 19 folk and folk-inspired artists and ensembles. Recently accepted to this five year appointment The Lighthouse Singers, a gospel group. New to the print version are The Magnolia Sisters (Cajun) and Conley's Irish Band. The next application deadline is March 1. In June, two folk groups in the Touring Directory were selected to receive training at LAIEA (Louisiana Institute for Education in the Arts) for artists residencies in schools: Kenny Bill Stinson, (rockabilly) and Henry and Tookie (blues).
MEETINGS/CALL FOR PAPERS The 2005 Louisiana Folklore Society's annual meeting, hosted by McNeese State University, will take place in Lake Charles on March 18-19. Keynoting will be David Hufford, with the presentation "Folk Medicine Comes of Age," at 7:30 p.m., Friday, March 18 in McNeese’s Baker Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the McNeese Banners Series. Dr. Hufford, who has written several books and articles on folk medicine and belief, will discuss the relationship between folk medicine and complementary and alternative medicine today. He is a Professor in the Department of Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey Medical Center), with joint appointments in Behavioral Science and Family & Community Medicine. He also is Director of the Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine at the Hershey Medical Center, an endowed center devoted to improving doctor-patient communication. Louisiana Folklore Society paper sessions will take place on Saturday, March 19, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at McNeese’s Burton Business Conference Center. For more information, or to submit an abstract for a presentation, contact: Keagan LeJeune, Asst. Professor, MSU/Vice-president, Louisiana Folklore Society, 337/475-5312, clejeune@mcneese.edu. Information about the society is available online. The Louisiana Association of Museums (LAM) will host its 2004 Annual Conference, 25 Years of Helping Louisiana's Museums Better Serve Their Communities, Sept. 8-10 in Lafayette. Many of the events and all the sessions will be at the new Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at UL-Lafayette. The conference will include 15 sessions, luncheon, evening events at local museums, and a tour. Registration required. 225/383-6800, lamuseums@aol.com or www.louisianamuseums.org.
NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE The Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have been awarded $31,800 by the Grammy Foundation of the National Academy for the Recording Arts and Sciences to digitize much of the collection. John Laudun, who is in the Department of English and is also associate director for the Center for Louisiana Studies, the unit which oversees the Archives, is the project's director. He reports that working with the Grammy Foundation has been an amazing experience and that the grant has already paid dividends. Working with Parker Dinkins of MasterDigital Corporation in New Orleans, the Archives were able to transfer all the collection's recordings of Varise Conner. Those transfers then became the basis for the first album in the Archive's Louisiana Folk Masters series. The CD series is a co-production with a non-profit record label startup, Louisiana Crossroads Records, which is itself a collaboration between the Acadiana Arts Council and the Lafayette Economic Development Authority. Todd Mouton is project director for the label. The two report that slated for upcoming release are an album which surveys Wayne Toups career, from his first performances to his latest work, and another field-recording-based piece which will focus on Freeman Fontenot. Production of the albums was made possible through support Laudun and Mouton received from their respective institutions, as well as the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Center, Action Cadienne, and the fans of the Mamou Playboys. The Grammy Foundation has supported other Louisiana music efforts. In 2003, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation received a grant to archive oral histories from JazzFest's Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage, and American Routes received a grant to produce a CD. In 2001, Cultural Crossroads of Louisiana received a Grammy grant for The Roots of Jazz in South Louisiana. Folklorist Lynn Hadley reports that work continues for the Cajun Cultural Center planned in Larose. She is documenting tradition bearers along Bayou Lafourche and assists in producing folklife projects. She successfully assisted Hamilton Dantin and Dillon Baronne submit a Folklife Apprenticeship application and wood chips are flying in Raceland! With the Cajun French Music Association chapter, they are producing a Cajun French Music Appreciation Day -- a full day of music workshops with Ray Abshire and Friends followed by a concert and dance. They are working with school music departments to encourage students to attend the workshops. With the Center for Traditional Boatbuilding at Nicholls State University, they are producing a "Wooden Boats of the Bayou" photo exhibit to travel to the Lafourche Public Libraries next spring. The Larose Civic Center will produce the French Food Festival, and with funding from the LEH, they are enhancing the previous years' folklife demonstrations with an additional tent, more folk artists, more presentations, and a traditional arts marketplace! Hadley is also researching the possibility of bringing together folk artists, fishermen, and farmers on a weekly basis on the Larose Civic Center grounds for a folk and farmers' market scene with a music stage. She continues to write an article for the Lafourche Gazette, work on more grants, and maintains the Cajun Cultural Center website. Check it out. Hadley would love any feedback. The West Feliciana Parish Community Development Foundation's African American Heritage Task Force, with funding through the Davis Family Foundation, awarded an internship to Teresa Parker Ferris for summer 2004. Teresa conducted oral history interviews within the African-American community to identify and document locations within the parish important to African-American culture and history. The information will be used to create an African-American Heritage driving tour, which the West Feliciana Tourist Commission will use to produce interpretive materials this fall. Cynthia Simien reports that MusicMatters and the Cajun French Music Association has increased the participation of the Cajun and Zydeco (CZ) folk music community in the National Academy of Recording Arts (NARAS), which awards the Grammies. A concert series in early 2004 generated 40 new memberships. This is part of efforts to establish a separate Cajun and Zydeco Grammy voting category under the existing Grammy Folk Field. The folk category currently houses both Traditional and Contemporary CZ releases. NARAS's Board of Trustees recently approved a new Hawaiian Music category under the folk field. This is a victory for all folk artists as it demonstrates that the Academy does respond to artists. NARAS supports all music genres including Cajun and Zydeco folk music artists. The organization offers support in a way no other organization has ever done before. It offers professional development, archival and preservation funding, funding for health care, and emergency financial assistance through MusiCares. For information on NARAS membership, visit www.grammy.com or contact MusicMatters at 337/837-9997. The Louisiana State Library now has a bookstore, Louisiana Bound! Booksellers that specializes in Louisiana books and CDs. It features books that aren't necessarily in the mass market bookstores. So check it out the next time you are near the Capitol. And if you have a Louisiana book or CD and want it sold here, contact Toni Bova, LouisianaBound@state.lib.la.us or 225/342-4923. The State Library is located at 701 North 4th Street due south of the State Capitol. Hours are 10:30 am - 2:30 pm, Monday - Friday. The Louisiana Festival of the Book will be Saturday, November 6, in Baton Rouge at the State Capitol. Participating authors represent a variety of genres, including both fiction and non-fiction in panel discussions, readings, and lectures. Details are available from the Louisiana Center for the Book, 225/219-9503, 888/487-2700, or http://lbf.state.lib.la.us/. The Atchafalaya Trace Commission & Heritage Area announce "Music of The Atchafalaya" at the Liberty Theater in Eunice on Saturday, October 11, from 6 to 7:30pm. The evening will feature songs and musicians from the new promotional CD, "Water From The Well." The concert is one of more than 60 special events in October as part of "Experience Atchafalaya Days," showcasing cultural, natural, and historic resources of the region. Jon and Jocelyn Donlon, of Donlon & Donlon Consultants, report that Jocelyn was contacted by the New York Times to write an article on Kerry & Edwards' use of the front porch ("Stoops to Conquer in America," 8/19/2004). She drew from her book, Swinging in Place: Porch Life in Southern Culture, and reported on the political uses of the porch throughout history. Jon has been tapped to write, with Jerry Agrusa, a chapter on cultural tourism for a new textbook slated for release next year. Donlon & Donlon continue their work with the Atchafalaya Basin Program to develop 8th-grade educational materials related to the Atchafalaya River Basin. For Louisiana Life, they recently published "Tracking the Gator: from Local Swamps to the ‘City of Shoes'" and "Cypress: Lord of the Swamps," drawn from their Atchafalaya Basin research. LSU's T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History: Jennifer Abraham reports that Director Dr. Mary Hebert Price has resigned. Assistant Director Jennifer Abraham will serve as interim director for the next year. See their newsletters posted online at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/williams/. Carolyn Ware has an article in the next issue of Western Folklore, "Marketing Mardi Gras: Heritage Tourism in Acadiana." She has begun a research project at LSU's School of Veterinary Medicine on occupational lore of vet students and veterinarians. Lana Henry has been hired to research and write the history of the St. Martin Land Company in recognition of their centennial next year. In 1905, 29 investors from Cedar Rapids, Iowa formed the company and purchased 38,000 acres in the Atchafalaya Basin, made available through the 1849 Swamp Act and 1876 Timber Act, in hopes of cashing in on logging. These plans were never fully realized, but in 1939, oil was discovered. Today, operations have expanded through leases for crawfish and rice farming, fishing, hunting, trapping, and beekeeping, making it a true microcosm of regional traditional occupations. The location has placed it at the center of nearly every major development in the Basin, from the Swamp Railway that operated from 1908 until destroyed by the flood waters of 1927, to the Swamp Express constructed across their property in the early 1970s to the creation of Henderson Lake. Originally envisioned as a private publication for stockholders only, the Board of Directors has begun considering a wider audience for the manuscript. It has a projected completion date of May 2005. Tulane University's Deep South Regional Humanities Center was awarded a second 8g grant of $254,621 from LaSIP (Louisiana Systemic Initiatives Program) to provide 60 New Orleans English Language Arts teachers 20 days of professional development. The first 10 days took place at its second annual summer institute, Lessons in Folklife and Technology - English Language Arts (LiFT-ELA). LiFT ELA staff Shana Walton and Cherice Harrison Nelson were assisted by Nalini Raghavan, Teresa Parker Ferris, Adella Gauthier, Mona Lisa Saloy, Rachel Breunlin, among others. Artists also shared their traditions with the teachers. In the coming year, the teachers will receive another 10 days of professional development. Bennet Rhodes reports that the Buddy Stewart Foundation's 6th annual Rocktober Fest on Saturday, October 9, in Baton Rouge will feature Henry Gray, the Neal family, the Lighthouse Singers, Rudy Richard and the Bluenotes, Otis Johnson, and the Rhythm Museum Monday Jam Band. They will honor blues pianist Henry Gray with an exhibit in the Rhythm Museum as part of a series that honors contributors to Baton Rouge's vernacular music heritage. The outdoor event is 11 am - 8 pm at the Rhythm Museum, 1712 North Acadian Thruway. For information, call Philliper Stewart, 225/383-9661.
DEADLINES Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Applications and grant guidelines are available at www.leh.org, 800/909-7990. Staff members are willing to review drafts submitted at least one month in advance of deadlines. October 1st is Deadline For National Heritage Fellowships Nominations
NEW RESOURCES The Southern Arts Federation announced a new exhibit in its Southern Visions traveling exhibit series. (Folk) A.R.T. IS* is an artifact-based exhibit that features the work of 21 self-taught artists from nine Southern states including M.C. "Five Cent" Jones and Al Taplet from Louisiana. Through various media including painting, textiles, and woodcarving, these individuals illustrate their artistic vision and spiritual journeys, document social and political issues, and share memories of family and home. It includes 25 artifacts; four title, introductory, and credit panels; and 21 artifacts/photo panels. For booking information, see www.southarts.org or call 404/874-7244. A Creole Lexicon: Architecture, Landscape, People by Jay Edwards and Nicolas Kariouk includes French, Spanish and English terms specific to Louisiana, and covers the specially modified vocabulary of language used by Louisiana and Mississippi Valley citizens for their buildings, landscape features, vehicles and boats, farms and plantations, units of measure, tools and household implements, furniture, and other aspects of quotidian life. It covers government offices, institutions, and names used in reference to groups of people, classes, races, and occupations. 104 drawings, hardback, $95.00. http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/catalog/fall2002/books/Edwards_Creole_Lexicon.html. Two of Glen Pitre's movies are now on DVD: Belizaire the Cajun is for sale from various sources, including Amazon.com. Home Front (formerly known as The Scoundrel's Wife) is in video stores. The Louisiana State Museum has partnered with the LOUISiana Digital Library, to produce a digital collection of more than 3,400 photographs of Louisiana cities, culture, people, landscape, and waterways. These historical photographs date from the mid 1800s to early 1900 and were taken by many of the well-known photographers of the day. Collections available include: Rowles Stereographic Collection, John N. Teunisson Collection, Chamber of Commerce Collection, Robert Tebbs Collection, Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, and the Robert Maestri Collection. For more information, contact: Louisiana State Museum, 751 Chartres St., New Orleans, LA 70116; or call 504/568-6968 or 800/ 568-6968. Remember: If you publish a booklet or CD with grant funds and want to provide free copies to parish or university libraries, I can submit them as state documents, and the State Library will distribute them. One hundred ten copies will put one in every parish and the 36 state depositories, but at least make sure that the State Library has one copy. |
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September 3, 2004
