History Burgoo

On the Road to RootsTech!

When February rolled around, three staff members from the Library boarded planes and flew off to Salt Lake City for the second annual RootsTech conference! What would make three Kentucky Librarians fly to Salt Lake City in the middle of winter you ask? Simple: we wanted to learn about the latest in genealogy technology at the ONLY conference offered for just this purpose! RootsTech is an entirely new breed of genealogy conference. It was started last year as a way for users and developers to interact, dialogue and plan for the future of the genealogy field. Top software developers, vendors and genealogy instructors were on hand to demonstrate how technology has influenced genealogy over the past decade as well as how it is shaping the next generation of research.With over 4000 attendees (up one third from last year), this conference shows no signs of slowing down, and some have called it the most important genealogy conference in the world! Indeed, we met genealogists from across the globe who had already connected to fellow researchers through the very technology tools we were learning more about. As technology increasingly enhances genealogical research on a worldwide scale, don't be surprised if you begin to discover global cousins! So, despite all of the hype, how did these three Kentucky Librarians fare at this year's RootsTech? Let us show you as we list some event highlights and session info we will be utilizing back home in the KHS Library!

Highlights:

The 1940 Census - As many of you are already aware, the genealogy community is eagerly anticipating the release of the 1940 U.S. Census on April 2nd. However, when it is finally released, it will NOT include an index. This has spured three industry leaders to begin a community indexing project that will allow volunteers to index at their own pace from the confort of their own homes. This was a HUGE theme of the RootsTech conference! There were sneak peek sessions, index volunteer stations and fun marketing elements to get people excited about indexing in April! The KHS reference staff will be presenting a more thorough introduction to the access and indexing of the 1940 census at our April 2nd Saturday workshop! For more information about the community program: http://the1940census.com

Kentucky Genealogy Dinner - Before heading to Salt Lake City, we made contact with other Kentucky researchers heading to RootsTech and made plans to meet for dinner on Friday evening. After two full days of the conference under our belts and with a lovely meal to help us relax, we focused our conversation on how to apply what we learned to Kentucky genealogy needs. We talked about workshop ideas, contributing content to wikis, blogging and how to get fellow Kentucky genealogists excited about how technology can assist in research! Here is a photo of the gang from that evening (Around the table from left to right): Louise Jones, Cheri Daniels, Lise Emberly, Jennifer Howard, Pat Layton and Linda McCauley. 

What we learned:

Instructional Sessions on the User Level -

• Utilizing wiki sites for sharing family history and regional/historical information
• Joining a new community effort to develop a better Gedcom
• Publishing family history research in visually dynamic ebook formats
• Using Tablets and genealogy APPS
• Allowing cloud technology to help organize your research
• Utilizing social media tools to help connect with distant cousins and living relatives
  Instructional Developer Sessions -
• How to host webinars so our patrons can attend learning sessions offered by the library at any time, from any place
• Developing online search databases
• Optimize our websites to be found by search engines
• Using web analytics to make our sites more helpful and easier for patrons to use
  Connecting With Vendors -
• GPS and how it is changing the way we record information
• Learning about the latest scanning technologies, such as microfilm scanners and easy-to-use overhead scanners
• The latest developments in family tree building software
• Updates and new features from vendors we currently use, such as Ancestry.com, Fold3, and FamilySearch, plus some new ones like Archives.com and BrightSolid
  
  Research at the Library:

RootsTech itself generates a lot of excitement and energy throughout the week. Yet, there is another underlying energy that feeds some of the attendee excitement: the Family History Research Library. Genealogists from around the world flock to this one Library to conduct research on an international level. Sort of a one stop shop for genealogy research. Can you find all of the records here? No, not even close, but you can find a good chunk of them, and if your ancestors happened to cross a state line, or even a country border, you only need to switch areas of the Library to stay hot on their trail! For many RootsTech attendees, this is their first trip to Salt Lake City and their first opportunity to conduct genealogy research at this amazing Library. For others, they planned ahead and flew in days before the conference to research to their heart's content! The KHS Library gang took advantage of the "Late Night at the Library" offered by RootsTech to begin their introduction to this Palace of Pedigrees! Despite being exhausted, we all got fresh inspiration to carry us on for several hours. We didn't leave until 11:30 that night! Despite all of the wonderful records they have there, we actually came away with a renewed appreciation for our patrons and our wonderful Library. It was an amazing trip - but we are all glad to be home!

--Cheri Daniels, Jennifer Howard, Louise Jones

On the Byway Again

 

 
 
Crazy is a word I woke up to this morning at 5:00 A.M. Crazy as in “I must be crazy to do this” or to quote Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, “this just might be crazy enough to work.”  Anyway, my “crazy” challenge is to do one of my infamous road trips where I extend a conference trip into a family vacation.  Such as driving to New York City for a National Association for State Arts Agency (the other NASAA) and finishing the trip with a family drive through upstate New York and Niagara Falls. My family has taken these kind of trips with me so often that my kids think it is the only way to do a vacation.  They work for me.  There is the fun of exploring and the exquisite joy you feel of finally delivering your paper at a conference, allowing you to be mentally free to enjoy the rest of your trip. 

My self-imposed challenge this summer is to deliver a paper at the National Scenic Byways Conference in Minnesota by first driving there with my wife on National Scenic Byways and at the same time blogging about it.  It doesn’t sound too hard; I have my presentation about our driving tour More the Music: A Heritage Driving Tour of Kentucky’s Route 23 all ready (two copies of the power point stowed away in my luggage), and I have my routes pretty well mapped out to include a part of Indiana’s “Historic Pathways” out of Louisville on Highway 150 through Paoli and French Lick to finish at the George Rogers’ Clark National Historic Park in Vincennes.  From here we will cross Illinois to pick up a portion of the Great River Road along the Mississippi River from somewhere around historic Nauvoo, snaking all the way north to my final destination in Minneapolis. I am just not too sure about the writing part of the project.  I have told myself if it works I will do it and if it doesn’t I will just quit and enjoy the scenery of these National Scenic Highways. 

I have been recently inspired to write about a trip like this by reading Blue Highways: A Journey Into America by William Least Heat Moon.  In the book, the author drives an old van across the United States, going from Columbia, Missouri through Kentucky, he visits Shelbyville and Frankfort, before he continues out to South Carolina, takes a left and basically circles the whole county.  He travels only on Blue Highways, a name he coined for back roads (older maps showed main routes as red and back roads as blue). He had great adventures on his trip often springing from his interest in a strange sounding town or his efforts to live in the moment. 

In my mind National Scenic Byways are some of our best blue highways.  Their website describes it as  “a grass-roots collaborative effort established to help recognize, preserve and enhance selected roads throughout the United States.” Besides the ones that are deemed National, each state also designates other scenic byways. In Kentucky we have six National Scenic Byways and 16 state designated byways.  The National Byways include a 60-mile portion of the Great River Road, the Red River Gorge Scenic Highway, the Woodlands Trace Byway in Land between the Lakes, the Lincoln Heritage Scenic Highway, the Wilderness Road Heritage Highway, and my favorite, the Country Music Highway. 

Although I have traveled them all, The County Music Highway is my favorite because we at the Kentucky Folklife Program spent so much time and energy working with the local communities a few years back to document the traditional cultures found there and to produce our driving tour: More than Music: A Heritage Driving Tour of Kentucky’s Route 23.  This book and four cd collection, written by Judy Sizemore and narrated by Ricky Skaggs, guides you along the route with stories and oral histories based on fieldwork by young folklorists out of the graduate program at WKU. The tour is sold at venues along Highway 23 and is available through our office. 

It is also the subject of my talk at the National Scenic Byways next week.  I am hoping this trip will help me enjoy other roads as much as I have the Country Music Highway. I hope that I can share some of what I find with you as I try to blog this crazy trip.

-Bob Gates

California Burgoo

 
 First, I have to admit…As a native Californian, I had never heard of “burgoo” until I started digitizing some archival video footage of Kentucky Folklife Program director, Bob Gates, interviewing participants at the 2007 Kentucky Colonels Bar-B-Que event in Louisville. This is a small reminder that one full year as a resident of Kentucky still leaves me with quite a lot of regional folkways to learn about. So…where and how can I try the best burgoo? Perhaps you know the answer (leave a comment!).

 As the Kentucky Folklife Program’s summer graduate intern, I’m working at one of the epicenters of public sector folklife research and programming in the state. The 2011 summer season marks the half-way point in the completion of my Master’s degree in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University (the same program which has excellently yielded the full-time folklorists of KFP)--a continuation of my undergraduate degree in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University.

 Building on experiences working in folklife studies and programming at Indiana’s state folklife agency, Traditional Arts Indiana, and with the Smithsonian Institution’s Folkways Recordings, and the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, I’m now very glad to be here at the Kentucky Historical Society, diving into the rich heritage of Kentucky's folk and traditional arts as a seasonal member of the Folklife team.

 Over the summer, I’m helping with a few different projects. A couple days out of the week I organize materials from KFP’s archives. On my first day of work I was organizing release forms from our “More than Music” project—a heritage driving tour of Kentucky’s Route 23, the Country Music Highway—and I stumbled upon the signatures of Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless and other important Kentucky performers involved in the project. I admit I let out a squeal. (Contact us to purchase your copy of the driving tour, 502-564-1792, attn: Bob Gates)  

I’m also helping with our upcoming traveling exhibit, “The Makings of A Master,” commemorating the 20^th anniversary of KFP’s Folk Arts Apprenticeship program. From editorial assistance for the upcoming exhibit, to deconstructing, moving and reconstructing our current traveling exhibit on Kentucky luthiers, it’s been a baptism-by-fire into the joys and mishaps that come with curating and managing a dynamic folklife exhibit. This hands-on experience is particularly timely for me as I’m independently curating a small exhibit at WKU on Freeman Kitchens—a Warren Co., Ky. record collector who founded the official fan club of the America’s beloved Carter Family, producing an important legacy of early music journalism and grassroots documentation of 20th century country music culture in and around Kentucky. The exhibit opens August 27, 2011 at the Kentucky Museum & Library at WKU.

 
Beyond the horizon of these projects, I’ll be going out into the field, for KFP, to document and report on the arts and folk traditions of the western portion of the state in support of a future Kentucky Folklife Festival program on Western Kentucky. I'm thrilled at the responsibilities that have and will be sent my way during my internship with the Kentucky Folklife Program, as I'm swiftly gaining important insight about the everyday life of a public sector folklorist--from grant-writing, to project coordination, to curatorial duties, to the application of disciplinary theory, to archival processes, to fieldwork--it's safe to say I've got a thorough head start on my "Public Sector Folklore" course this fall.

 Amidst all this engaging work, I still find time to take this portrait of our Director, Bob Gates "fitting in" on a work trip to Berea.

 

-Jenn Jameson
Kentucky Folklife Program Intern

Photo Credits:

Image 1: Warren May, dulcimer maker, teaching Jenn to play the dulcimer in Berea. Photo by Bob Gates.
Image 2: Installing the Made to be Played exhibit at the Behringer-Crawford Museum.
Image 3: Bob Gates, Folklife Program Director, enjoys Berea's attractions.

Crowdsourcing: using technology to build community

I just got back from lovely Maysville, Kentucky, where the Kentucky Museum and Heritage Alliance is holding its annual meeting.  This year the theme was "Negotiating the Rapids:  Celebrating our Strength, Service and Stewardship".  Months ago I submitted a program presentation on the topic of crowdsourcing and, amazingly, they selected my topic for the annual meeting.

So you may well ask, just what is this thing you call crowdsourcing?  Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee, to an undefined large group of people or community, through an open call.  Translated that means telling the world that you are looking for a solution to a problem and waiting for some unknown person to solve that problem, usually for free.  Software developers and programmers have long used this method to fix glitches in programs, like "does anyone know how to..."

This can be really useful but, sometimes you get what you paid for, which is to say, not much.  Now I don't have any immediate programming needs nor am I designing any software, so you might wonder what use museums and archives could have for this technique.  Well, if you tweek the parameters just a bit this process can be transforming.  If you broaden the model to a "creative services exchange" where the institution vets the crowd in advance, and the staff facilitate the exchange between staff and crowd, then this can be a melding of staff and crowd knowledge which benefits everyone in the end.

 We are in the process of using this model with the William C. Ogden Photographic Negatives project.  We, the staff at the Kentucky Historical Society, were responsible for caring for, housing and inventorying this collection of over 10,000 photographic negatives.  However, the original housing for these negatives were glassine envelopes on which the photographer, Bill Ogden, had written sometimes cryptic notations.  

We had the knowledge to do a basic inventory, but we needed more contextual information to truly process the collection and make it accessible and usable.  For example, the envelope for the image below stated "Clay W. Buckner" but the image is of a woman in a wedding dress.  Is this Clay Buckner's daughter?  His bride?  We, at KHS, lacked that information.

 
Enter our partner, the Bluegrass Heritage Museum, with director Sandra Stults and her community of volunteers.  This museum is in Winchester, Kentucky, where Ogden resided for over 60 years.  His photographic studio was well known throughout Clark County and neighboring Bourbon, Fayette, Woodford and Franklin Counties.  Many of Sandy's volunteers knew Ogden or had seen photographic portraits created by him.  And better yet, they knew their community, their neighbors and the stories that provided the context for these photographic negatives.

So Sandy and I met and cooked up a plan to bring these two groups together to share their knowledge and to build on that knowledge.  We both wanted to learn more about the collection and to make it useful to researchers and community members alike.  KHS wanted to inventory the collection and to digitize the images.  Bluegrass Heritage Museum wanted to make the collection, or a portion of it, available locally in Winchester through an exhibit.  And so this is the way we used crowdsourcing to inventory, describe, digitize and exhibit this wonderful collection.  

First, we got the older community members to come to KHS to view the collection, and to work with staff to better describe the images.

Then, working with students from George Rogers Clark High School in Winchester, KY, Sandy and her volunteers selected the images they wanted to research, scan and exhibit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then they researched.

And they scanned.

And they described the results of their research and added this to the digital collection.

And we have the beginnings of a finished product.  Just the beginnings, mind you, as there are 28 images up online and 10,000+ in the collection.

And we also have a group that can't wait to come back and do more research, scanning and description.  And now that images are up online and on exhibit at the Bluegrass Heritage Museum in Winchester, we hope that others with knowledge about this photographer and his subjects will also share that information with us.  

A true exchange.  Two organizations working together to make these historic images available to their communities.  Ahh, this is what we are talking about when we say "crowdsourcing".

For further information about the Bluegrass Heritage Museum, visit their website at www.bgheritage.com.

To view selections online, please go to our Digital Collection at www.kyhistory.com.

If you have information that can help us further identify the subjects of these images, please contact us at Refdesk@ky.gov.  Please remember to identify the image by its accession number, so we can add your infomation to the correct image.

-- Louise Jones

 

 

 

 

 

Do You Have Kentucky Roots?

I am sitting at the Kentucky table here at the Ohio Genealogical Society Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio and this is the first thing I say as people approach the table.  This is a great conference, over 800 people are here from all over the country.  A true genealogy fest!  

I have been talking about our efforts of the last three months; all the records that we have put into the catalog and how accessible it is now that we have revamped the front page.  Folks here are very appreciative, they really seem to like what we have done.  I even got to talk about my recent discovery that Campbell County has two courthouses, one in Alexandria and one in Newport, both of which created records.  Talk about making things complicated for family historians!  When we cataloged the microfilm collections, we made sure to add this information to each record, so that people can distinguish between the two.

I even got a chance to talk to two ladies from Defiance County, Ohio, about our War of 1812 activities. They may be able to help us out with our transcription project.  We have digitized a whole group of letters in the Alexander Family papers which document the war through family correspondence between Alexander family and the Madison family.  We are going to put the letters up in our Digital Collections and then have volunteers help us with transcribing them.  If you are interested, please contact Louise Jones at louise.jones@ky.gov to sign up.

 

 Well, I think the sessions are getting ready to flood out of the meeting rooms now, so things will be getting too busy to write much more.

See you soon  back in Frankfort!

--Louise Jones

 

Winter Months - Won't Stop Oral History Outreach

(Library staff processing and rehousing the Alexander Family Papers - AKA the Woodburn Farm Collection)

In anticipation of our public reopening on Saturday (March 12th, yep – this one), we have been diligently finishing up microfilm inventory (600 records in Mercer county), cataloging records and re-housing collections in order to make the library ready for use by patrons again.

All of the fluttering around the library to complete the season has made me think about what I have accomplished in the oral history office over the winter months. Not to even get into the paper pushing, but between January and February I travelled to 11 sites outside of Frankfort – practically one trip a week. I delivered digital workstations and equipment to be used for oral history digitization (EKU and Lindsey Wilson College), I visited with groups of teachers, visited a few college classes (Transylvania and Georgetown), participated in a high school program for Black History Month with the KHS Museum Theatre Dept. (1,100 Woodford County students, yikes!), moderated an OH archival evaluation (WKU), did some actual interviews and most recently spoke with an arts group looking to document their home county through oral history (Mt. Sterling).  While I haven’t been that far Southeast or West this season (mostly because of the unpredictability of the weather and planning trips that far – in advance and distance), I have been lucky enough to get out and around.

One of these visits has been recently renewed in my mind this week, so I thought I would share. My visit (turning into an annual one) to the Transylvania University Community Engagement Through the Arts class was unique in the fact that I spent as much time learning from the students there than trying to convey the knowledge I was asked to present. I am continually impressed by the nature of this class – not only is the purpose to get the college students interacting with the North Limestone community, the campus’ neighbor (and not one where students were traditionally encouraged to wander in), but to actively engage with the residents in that community, whether through storytelling, community crafting or just participating in neighborhood events. (this would be through the arts part). The students are really setting the class direction based on the framework set by the professors, Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova, a model that astounds me every time I experience it. I really enjoy watching the class move as a small swarm walking down North Limestone Ave from the manicured lawns of Transy to the back of whatever space they are meeting in this week (restaurants, furniture stores, graphic design studios etc…) In the spirit of self reflection – and part of the grading system, I am sure - the students all write a series of “This I Believe” essays, based on the resurged radio series on NPR and they are encouraged to reflect on what it is they believe and how that may or may not shift as the semester wears on.

This adventure has popped back up in my mind since I was recently contacted by the class to write my own “This I Believe” essay to add to the annual Community Engagements class publication of essays and projects - they continue to "engage". This year, I talked with (not so much at) the class about sense-of-place, tangible and intangible culture and meeting a community through listening to what people who live there value or dismiss. I really had to think about the question for myself long and hard….since I DO believe in this class, I would like to share.

In the mean time, you should see what the class is doing, you can visit their own blog – check out their photos of projects, read their essays, visit their sites – get inspired or at least maybe get some ideas for how this might work for something in your own community.

So, it is a bit self-gratifying to get to visit these sort of places – I tend to get as much out of it as my institution or the place I am visiting (or maybe more, who knows), especially on a non-existant travel budget. Anyone interested on details of any of my other outreach adventures? Let me know...

 

--Sarah Milligan

 

images: above right: photo from Greg Hardison, Sarah Milligan at the Woodford County High School

above left: Community Engagement Class, photo from Community Engagement blog

Horse Cave - At it Again!

 
Marti Booth and Joanna Hay in front of the introduction sign for the new cell phone tour in Horse Cave, photo courtesy Marti Booth

If you check in with this blog periodically, you may remember an early posting about all of the cool things happening in Horse Cave, KY over the last year. It seems like I am continuing to be drawn or associated with events in this small town. Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the opening event of a cell phone walking tour (www.horsecavestories.com) in this community. I have known the 2 individuals who were contracted by Hart County Tourism to develop and implement this tourism tool, Judy Sizemore and Joanna Hay, for a few years now and love being invited to experience whatever projects they have on their plate (they are always interesting, and always wonderful). Judy and Joanna both are Kentucky Community Scholars – which has continued on with their relationship with the Kentucky Folklife Program – and in this sense were utilizing these trained skills by conducting oral history interviews in the community in order to use them to tell the story of Horse Cave in this new tour. Over the last year, Horse Cave Development Corporation (thank you Ken Russell) received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for Judy and Joanna to create the tour. Go Ladies! I was also introduced to Marti Booth, who is providing the graphics for the project, looks great Marti - great to meet you! 

My role was to invite the donation of  the new interviews to the Kentucky Historical Society (and chase down release forms), since we already have a related collection recently deposited, African American Heritage in Southern Hart County – which focused primarily on this population in and around Horse Cave. I was absolutely impressed by the organization and excitement behind this project as well as the community support the day of the opening – between 30-40 people! It was wonderful to see the newly elected Horse Cave Mayor, Randall Curry, introduce the project and show the city’s support. Folklife director, Bob Gates and family was there to welcome the tour, support recent Horse Cave Community Scholars and document the event - great to see you Bob! The local bakery provided Delicious (yes, capital “D”) cookies and even though there was snow on the sidewalks, people took the 10-stop, 4 block walking tour.


This is a project that has been brewing for about a year and it is just Phase I, I understand Phase II starts in the next few months to add more stops to the cell phone tour dealing with the unique ecosystem of the community to go along with the unique culture already represented. Right now you can go find out who makes square donuts, what is and who started the Repertory Theatre, and what about that cave the community is built on?

So, PLEASE check out their online presence for this project. Get ideas for what you might be able to do in your own community, look and see what you find valuable – physically or culturally – and think about that all important term “sense-of-place” that folklorists and other social observers like to throw around. What would you show someone who was visiting your town? What do you have left to learn yourself about your community? Check out all of the logos and credits on the website for this project – there was a lot of buy in and support for a project like this! Don’t be afraid to think large and get started!

(look who's coming to town!)

-- Sarah Milligan

Photos Courtesy of Marti Booth - top right, community gathering for tour opening. above left, Sandra (Hart Co. Tourism and tour development team member) and Marti test out the QR function (look it up). above right, Sarah and Joanna listen in to one of the cell phone stops (#10). directly above, Kentucky Reportory Theatre

Kentucky Afar

  
The last time I did a blog, we talked about how the Kentucky Folklife Program’s mission was to help conserve Kentucky’s traditional cultures.  We spoke of how conservation in this sense means to encourage the continuity of traditions through research, public presentations, and community scholar trainings.  Grants like our Apprenticeship awards and the efforts of interested people throughout the state who spend time and money help spread the word about their local folklife.  We talked at length about the extraordinary efforts of Dr.  Middleton to conserve the Mammoth Cave basketmaking traditions in the region of Hart County.

Sometimes the traditions of Kentucky find homes outside of the Commonwealth and these too need to be conserved.  The influence of migrants from Kentucky can be seen throughout the nation but especially in the industrial cities a little ways north of us.  Dayton, Ohio and the neighborhoods of south Chicago are known for their bluegrass music offerings.  A few years ago while traveling along Highway 23 in Michigan I passed  a suburb of Detroit that the locals called “Little Kentucky” because of the large population of former Kentucky Residents who followed  others in their family to take auto industry jobs in the region.  These transplanted Kentuckians often form new communities where they share similar worldviews, aesthetics for art forms like music, crafts, and food, traditions, and culture.  It is important for us to document and share the stories of these communities.  With travel budgets being what they are, the prospect of my staff traveling to these communities is remote, but it seems that there are always other ways to skin a cat.

Early this summer a friend of the Kentucky Historical Society, Pat Adkins from Owen County stopped by to talk about a little town in Wisconsin where a relative of hers lived.  It seems that Crandon, Wisconsin made a concerted effort in the early 1900s to recruit residents of Eastern Kentucky to come up and work in the lumber industry of northern Wisconsin.  Thousands of Kentuckians made the trip, worked very hard and stayed.  Pat said that you can hardly walk the streets of Crandon without bumping in to somebody with ties to Kentucky.  She says the accent is a little different, but after a few words you can still tell they are from Kentucky.  Pat said that she would be visiting her relatives this summer around the time of Crandon’s annual “Kentuck Day” festival, a celebration of the town’s Kentucky roots. 

Well it didn’t take long for me to convince her to do some documenting for us.  I gave her a quick overview of how folklorists conduct ethnographic observations. I described how we immerse in a culture events by objectively watching the activities, describing the context of the action and conducting interviews with participants.  A former instructor described it as pretending you were from another planet and your job is to describe to the people (beings) back home the new and wondrous events you were witnessing.  It is sometimes hard to do if you are a insider to the event because you have to pull yourself back and look at things from an outsiders perspective.  Pat was going to be an outsider and her natural curiosity about folklife prepared her well for the task.  At least this is what I told her and she bought it and vowed to take her camera, note pad and enthusiasm to her trip to Crandon.

Well, mission accomplished.  She dropped by last week with an armful of pictures, books, pamphlets, posters (picture above) and notes on her experiences.  She told me about the friendly Kentucky expatriates who welcomed her to the town, accompanied her to the local historical society and  guided her to  the many events surrounding Kentuck Days.   She showed me reprints of the original recruiting books used in the early 1900s to lure Kentuckians to the area.  We looked through recent history books about the county that talked about the cultural contributions of these settlers to the region.  Finally she described some of the events of the annual festival and how it still connects to the community.  I asked her to write up her observations for us to include in our growing files about this Crandon and other similar communities and I will follow up by recording her observation for the collection.  Maybe we can present them in a future blog. The Folklife Program depends on the help of people like Pat Akins who help to conserve the cultural traditions of the Commomwealth.

If you know about any of these Kentucky Afar communities, I would be very interested in talking with you.  Please respond to this blog or give us a call at 502-564-1792.

-Bob Gates

Annual Oral Historian Brain Swap - Whew, What a Conference!

The recent meeting of the national Oral History Association in Atlanta, GA – I must admit – was very interesting. I don’t know an exact count of participants, but it seems that there is a steady attendance for the last few years, somewhere around 400-500 participants. From what I heard and saw, the Wednesday pre-conference technical assistance workshops were well attended (digital preservation, digital audio, oral history basics, digital video and oral history and the law). The opening program was a short view of a on the WPA Federal Writers’ Project – Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story - I have been waiting to see, as well as a panel of participants discussing the topic and the documentary – including Stetson Kennedy, a Florida WPA writer and folklorist I always enjoy.

After this great start of engaging panels and technical workshops, the OHA conference itself , Thursday – Sunday, seemed to follow the lead. There was a good mixture between reports on new model projects (ie: Audio Histories and Tours of Change, Hope,and Adaptation), discussions on theoretical issues (Theoretical and Practical Challenges in Oral History, Ethical Dilemmas Undercover) and practical applications for oral history in a variety of settings (Oral History in the 21st Century Classroom, Oral History in the Reclamation of Cultural Space). There were Plenary Sessions every day, the Thursday plenary was exceptionally interesting as it dealt with oral history projects in post- Katrina Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, 5 years after the hurricane.

There were many Kentucky projects represented, as well as Kentuckians in attendance. I was pleased to see our oral historians and oral history project leaders represent their state as well as lend their support – once again – on a national stage.

There were so many things I participated in that were interesting, inspiring and just useful as far as oral history for Kentucky in the context of the global discipline. I am so grateful I was able to attend. Please let me know if you have questions about specific panels or presenters, I am happy to tell you more about what I know or connect you with those on a national level that were presenting.

Also extremely exciting is a new book by the revered oral historian, Allesandro Portelli, THEY SAY IN HARLAN COUNTY: An Oral History. Portelli is known in the oral history world for ground breaking oral history examinations and since the early 1970s has been conducting oral histories in Harlan County, KY about the people, the culture and the industry. This new publication is a culmination of this research and is getting great reviews. Although Portelli is from and lives in Italy, he often returns to Kentucky to revisit his friends and work. The original interviews are archived at the Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky.

Please, check out the online program to see more about what was discussed during the 2010 Oral History Association meeting.

Next year is in Denver the second week of October. The topic will be focused on “Memories of Conflict and Disaster: Oral History and the Politics of Truth, Trauma, and Reconciliation.” I will be sharing the call for proposals in the coming weeks. Please consider sharing our state’s oral history participation with the West. As for me, you will see me there – early and late – since I have been asked to join the conference program committee.

- Sarah Milligan

Looking back at the Equestian Games

 
It’s been a whirlwind ride for those of us here at the Folklife Program over the past month!  Whether it was being part of a conference panel, or working at the World Equestrian Games, we’ve been running what feels like a mile a minute.

Now, to those outside of Kentucky or the equestrian world, the WEG excitement may raise a few eyebrows.  I can only claim nominal interest in horses (I admit, they’re beautiful and their musculature is intriguing to draw), but being a resident of Kentucky, I’d heard about the games from the moment I drove over the state line.  Seriously, we have a big sign proclaiming that we were the home of the 2010 games as you cross the state border!

Ironically, my experience at WEG didn’t include much by way of horses.  Instead, I worked in the Kentucky Experience portion, acting as logistical support with the Kentucky Arts Council.  Throughout the Games, we had a steady run of performances highlighting Kentucky’s wonderful music scene (four a day or more).  Every kind of style from choral groups right on to jazz took the stage to show the world what wonderfully talented people we have here in Kentucky.  In fact, go check out the Kentucky Arts Council's Facebook page to see the lineups we had daily!

I heard a lot of people, with a lot of different accents, say that second to the Games portion, experiencing Kentucky’s music was one of their favorites.  Of course, my favorite portion was the last day of the games when I could get a good glimpse of all the people who came for the closing ceremonies.  Not to be missed (literally, they were all wearing bright orange! Google "Dutch Fans at World Equestrian Games" and you'll see some good examples) were the Dutch celebrants, who seemed to be in good spirits despite the vandalism of the Dutch carriage shortly before an event.  It could have been because they went on to win the Team Gold in Dressage. 

The folklorist in me really enjoyed the interaction between so many cultures—after all, it’s not often you hear so many Australian accents on a bus through Lexington in one day!  While I won’t be going to Normandy for the next bunch of the Games in 2014, I feel this was a really interesting experience in the aesthetics of the equestrian world…especially for an outsider such as myself!

-Alisha Martin

Image 1: Courtesy of Alltech

Image 2: The James Family Band performs at the Kentucky Experience, Courtesy of the Kentucky Arts Council