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Category: Foodways

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Summer Festivals and Celebrations

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Summer solstice was traditionally a time of revelry as the end of planting and the beginning of summer were celebrated. As the summer crops ripen, the fruit of the labor of planting is celebrated in various ways, especially the harvest of staple crops. The grain and hay harvests in late July and early August is …

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Filling the Cornucopia

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

At this time of year we gather to give thanks, for many things that have been important to us during the year, but a common theme is thanks for our food. The holiday falls in the time of the harvest. Different cultural groups around the world also celebrate the harvest with a variety of customs …

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Food from the Forest: Some Native Fruit and Nut Trees

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

The last Friday in April is celebrated as National Arbor Day.  The history of Arbor Day is profoundly connected with Americans’ relationships to trees over many generations. When European settlers first landed on the shores of eastern North America they encountered a landscape that is difficult for modern Americans to imagine. Familiar trees such as …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Teaching the Japanese Tea Ceremony: Mine Somi Kubose

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism—Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts …

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Agnes Vanderburg’s Outdoor School for Traditional Indian Ways

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

“A lot of things come out of my chest,” Agnes Vanderburg explained in 1979 when folklorist Kay Young asked about her reasons for starting a school to pass on her knowledge of Salish Indian traditions (recording at the link, go to 1:50 minutes). She had felt frustrated at carrying knowledge that was disappearing as Indians …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Juneteenth

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

This weekend there will be barbecues, pies, home-made strawberry soda, and other treats that have become common features of Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that has its roots in the joyful celebrations of newly-freed slaves in Texas at the end of the Civil War. It is thought to …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Spring Tonics

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Cultures that rely on limited local sources of food in the winter often have traditions about the restorative and curative powers of foods and herbs that become available in the spring.  The American Folklife Center’s Coal River Folklife Project, headed by Mary Hufford, documented folklife in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley (1992 to 1999).  The …