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Posted by: Stephanie Hall
Friday the 13th may be considered an unlucky day in some parts of Europe and in North America. For some, the day can cause great anxiety, called paraskevidekatriaphobia, meaning fear of Friday the 13th. The idea that Friday the 13th is unlucky is not very old. It seems to have arisen in the 19th century. …
Posted in: Beliefs
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: the following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a former staff member who participated in many of AFC’s field projects in the 1970s and 1980s. This blog celebrates the life of Geraldine Niva Johnson, who passed away on November 16, 2016. Gerri was a folklorist who specialized in women’s crafts, especially woven rag …
Posted in: Fieldwork, Folk Art, Folklorists, Obituaries, Quilts, Textile arts
Posted by: Megan Harris
As a kid, I hated milk. Unfortunately for me, it was a requisite part of dinner at my house. I remember sitting alone at the dinner table long after everyone else had left it, unwilling to drink my glass of milk so that I might be excused. Nowadays, I will happily gulp down a latte …
Posted in: Foodways, World War II
Posted by: Stephen Winick
The American Folklife Center is pleased to welcome John B. Fenn III as the Head of the Research and Programs section. Fenn will be supervising the members of our staff involved in public programming, publications, research, and training in the field of folklife. John Fenn’s academic training is in folklore and ethnomusicology (Ph.D., Indiana University, …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by Todd Harvey, acquisitions coordinator at the American Folklife Center (AFC). The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce a major acquisition, the Cooperative Recreation Service collection (AFC 2016/051) donated to the Center by fiddler, scholar, and publisher Bruce Greene. The Cooperative Recreation Service is a publishing company founded during …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Dance, Folk Music, Folksong, Religion
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: This is part of a series of posts about Far Away Moses, a fascinating celebrity of the 19th century, who served as the model for one of the keystone heads on the Thomas Jefferson Building. Moses, a Sephardic Jew from Constantinople, knew some of the most prominent Americans of his era, including Theodore Roosevelt …
Posted in: AFC History, Far-Away Moses, Jewish American History, Jewish Americans, Legends, Proverbs, Thomas Jefferson Building