Volume 35
Fall-Winter
2009 |
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Cover: “Barn with Long Cloud Sky,” by Mary Michael Shelley
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FROM THE EDITOR
From the Fall-Winter
2009 issue of Voices:
The articles featured
in this issue of Voices
contain a variety of
voices whose messages
are “traditional”—in the
surprising, the comforting,
and even the most
alarming senses of that disciplinary keyword.
In the photo essay “Carving Out a Life:
Reflections of an Ithaca Wood-Carver,”
self-taught carver Mary Michael Shelley describes
how she responded simultaneously
to her Northeastern farm family heritage,
liberal arts education, and the emerging
feminism of her time to claim a form of
man’s work—carpentry and carving—as her own. In the article “From Wild Man
to Monster: The Historical Evolution of
Bigfoot in New York State,” sociologist
Robert E. Bartholomew and historian Brian
Regal offer us a wealth of primary source
narratives of Bigfoot and other “wild man”
sightings in New York State, from the early
nineteenth century to the present. Pete
Rushefsky’s profile of a Manhattan-based
Chinese hammered dulcimer master, Xiao
Xiannian, captures not only the pedagogical
evolution of a virtuoso yangqin player,
but also the determination of a Chinese
family to survive political persecution
and economic oppression by encouraging
musicianship among their children. And in
Trevor Blank’s honest and disturbing report,
“Fieldwork, Memory, and the Impact of
9/11 on an Eastern Tennessee Klansman:
A Folklorist’s Reflection,” we are challenged
together, as readers, to join a young ethnographer
in making sense (with Klan-buster
Stetson Kennedy’s help) of an encounter
with an American racist, struggling with
partial—but not complete—remorse for
his views and hate-group affiliation after the
events of September 11, 2001.
As folk artists and culture workers, we
spend much time considering what speech,
art, ritual, belief, music, material culture,
customs, work, play, and other cultural forms
may be worth remembering in New York
State. We may have devoted our lives to
working toward their preservation. Are there
portions of “tradition,” however, which
might be better forgotten than preserved
or examined? Under what circumstances
should the details of the political persecution
of immigrants before their arrival in the
U.S. be recalled, for example, and for what
purpose? Does the history of hate groups
in New York State, or any other part of the
United States, fall into the first category
or the second? Do we evolve past hate by speaking it and remembering it, sometimes verbatim—or through silence, healing, and
forgetting? Or is there more involved in the
process, the progress toward and beyond
“tolerance”? For more on the history of
hate groups in this state and across the nation,
visit Alabama’s Southern Poverty Law
Center web site, www.splcenter.org, and click
on the Hate Groups Map, as well as What
You Can Do.
Voices welcomes Dan Milner in this issue.
Dan’s new “Songs” column will bring the
depth of his lifelong song scholarship and
ballad and folksong performance experience
to bear on investigating New York song texts
and their histories, contexts, and meanings
within and beyond New York State. Please
keep your thoughts coming our way, in the
form of full-length feature articles, personal
essays, field notes, photography, artwork,
and letters to the editor. We look forward
to reading and publishing your responses
to this issue.
Eileen Condon
Acquisitions Editor
New York Folklore Society |
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Fall–Winter 2009, Volume 35:3–4
Acquisitions Editor Eileen Condon
Managing Editor Sheryl A. Englund
Design Mary Beth Malmsheimer
Printer Eastwood Litho
Editorial Board: Varick Chittenden, Lydia Fish,
José Gomez-Davidson, Nancy Groce,
Lee Haring, Bruce Jackson, Libby Tucker, Kay
Turner, Dan Ward, Steve Zeitlin
Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore
is published twice a year by the
New York Folklore Society, Inc.
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