Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Maine Folklife, Vol. 21, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The University of Maine celebrated its 150th anniversary as Maine's Land Grant Institution throughout 2015. The Folk and Tradition Arts area reflected the University of Maine's special milestone with programming provided by students, faculty and staff from several departments on campus.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 20, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Penobscot Dictionary Project is well underway. It is a project that brings together Native culture, linguistics and digital humanities. On the one hand, we are engaged in on-going discussions with members of the Penobscot Language committee on Indian Island to make sure that our work helps their work in teaching and sustaining their language program. On the other hand, we are building a digital file with all of the linguistic information that we can incorporate into the dictonary. Working with a part of the dictionary that was digitally entered onto 5 1/4 inch floppy disks in the 1980s, the …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 19, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Bobby Ives was honored at a brunch held by the University of Maine Foundation to launch the new Sandy and Bobby Ives Fund on Oct. 19, 2014. David Taylor and LeeEllen Friedland established the fund, the purpose of which is to support undergraduate students doing ethnographic and/or oral history research who have had formal training and/or a mentor at UMaine and/or by attending field schools. Students Hilary Warner-Evans and Taylor Cunningham, currently minoring in folklore studies, attended the event and talked about their research.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 18, Iss. 1-3, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

When we began developing the Maine Song and Story Sampler, our graduate assistant, Josh Parda, worked on the project as his primary task at the Folklife Center. Folks who follow us on Facebook or check our website frequently have seen the occasional posts of a song here or a story there that is relevant to some holiday or other event(s) going on in the wider world. And, thanks to our Archives Manager, Katrina Wynn, the full Sampler is available through Digital Commons. However, we went a full year without actually adding material to the Sampler.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 17, Iss. 1-2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Maine Folklife Center has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize the entire collection of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. To that end, the University of Maine has contracted with George Blood L.P. of Philadelphia to provide audio digitization services to create a digital preservation master of each of our sound files for the Library of Congress and the University of Maine from our original copies of analog tapes (reel to reel, cassettes, and VHS). George Blood L.P. was chosen from a group of companies who responded to a request for proposals because his company was …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 17, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

A new collaboration between the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center and the University of Maine will preserve a unique archival collection that documents the history and traditions of Maine, other New England states the Canada's Maritime Provinces. That collection, the entire holdings of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and History, is part of UMaine's Folklife Center.

The library will acquire the entire collection, preserve it at its state-of-the art facilities and serve it online and in person to researchers from around the world. Digital copies will remain accessible at UMaine's Maine Folklife Center.

The folklife center will contract with …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 16, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

British Ballads from Maine, edited by Phillips Barry, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth was published by Yale University Press in 1929. It is an academic collection of Child ballads that the authors collected from singers in Maine. Each ballad is listed with Child numbers with variants used to illustrate the sources and dates of the collection. The authors hoped to demonstrate the richness of New England as a ballad area, to prove that many American ballad texts are old compared with those printed in the Child collection, and to provide a handbook for fieldworkers who might wish to …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 15, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

In April, 2010 we launched our Drive Dull Care Away campaign to raise the Sandy Ives Endowment fund to $1 million. Folklorist Nick Spitzer, who produces and hosts American Routes on NPR agreed to be our honorary chair of the campaign and came to Maine to speak at the University in support of the Maine Folklife Center and preserving the legacy of its founder, Edward D. "Sandy" Ives. The Ives legacy of teaching, fieldwork, publishing and public programming has come under threat due to University budget cuts. First the academic position was cut (teaching), then the archivist's position was cut …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 15, Special Issue, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Some day in the not-too-distant future, the Maine Folklife Center will have a self-supporting endowment. As a result, staff will continue to produce local cultural events, conduct folklife research, and care for the archives, without worrying about the Center's financial future. To make this dream a reality, the Folklife Center recently launched the Sandy Ives Endowment Campaign, through which the Center hopes to increase its endowment by $1 million. Income generated from the campaign will help support the Center's ongoing mission in light of recent unusual budget cuts at the University of Maine.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 10, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Four thousand years ago, Archaic period peoples hunted swordfish in the Gulf of Maine. In addition to fauna remains, archaeologists have recovered stone representations of the distinctive sword-shaped bill, suggesting that these animals had a cultural significance that went beyond their dietary value. What archaeologists don't know is precisely where and how the fish were taken. In our own time, swordfish rarely come inshore. Commercial operators, both harpooners and long-liners, fish the eastern side of Brown's and George's Banks and points farther along the continental shelf. Even if hunters of the Archaic period could travel that distance, it would have …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 10, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Northeast Archives is proud to announce that we have completed reprocessing and preservation work on two major collections, the Aroostook County Collection and the Maine State Federated Labor Council Collection. Our graduate assistants made preservation master and CD copies of each tape and expanded the descriptions of the tape contents to better assist researchers in finding the information they need. This work has been supported by grants from the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Once again, folklorist Edward D. Sandy Ives has been recognized by his peers for his outstanding work. This time he received the Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership at the American Folklore Society meetings in New Mexico October, 2003. In presenting the award to Sandy Ives, Lee Haring remarked that he had known both Sandy and Kenny Goldstein for many years. He imagined what Kenny would have said if he'd been told an award was to be given to Sandy. He concluded that Kenny would have shouted, at the top of his lungs, "OF COURSE!"

Maine Folklife, Vol. 9, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

It may not be the most dignified of nautical customs, but it's certainly one of the oldest and most widely observed. When a vessel approaches the Equator, crew members who are crossing for the first time must appear before King Neptune and his court to demonstrate their worthiness as subjects of the sea. Proof is exacted through tests and punishments that can range from the mildly embarrassing-singing a song or reciting a nonsensical rhyme-to much more grueling treatments: running the gauntlet, tarring and feathering, or crawling through slops. The custom earns the sailor or passenger little more than a certificate …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 8, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

When Stephen Cole first phoned the Northeast Archives in the winter of 1988, to urge us to support a modest documentary of the closing of Penobscot Poultry, Co., in Belfast, Maine, he had little idea I suspect, what he was getting us all into. Penobscot Poultry — Maine's last broiler processing firm located in Waldo County, the heart of chicken processing country — was about to close down, and Steve thought the Northeast Archives should do something about it.

"I Was Content and Not Content": The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry (Southern Illinois University Press, …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 8, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Visitors at the August 23-25 National Folk Festival in Bangor will find themselves wending their way through the North Woods camp, as they walk through the festival. The camp highlights the traditional arts of Maine's people who have made their lives and livelihood on or near Bangor, the gateway to the north Maine woods. Some of the traditional arts to be featured in demonstrations include basketmaking, snowshoe making, fly tying, Maine guiding, boat and canoe making, wood carving, quilting, tatting, weaving and knitting, and herbal arts. Visitors will be surprised at the ethnic diversity of Maine s people as manifested …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The accounts of wars recorded in history books tend to focus on the names and dates of battles, the decisions of political leaders and the heroics of charismatic military commanders. Those facts are important, of course, but they only tell part of the story.

The Maine Folklife Center at The University of Maine, in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, is doing its part to make sure the rest of the story is recorded. The Maine Folklife Center has begun to organize an extensive oral history project that will preserve the war stories of veterans …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 7, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The city of Bangor will be the next stop for the National Folk Festival! Sandy Ives and Pauleena MacDougall are serving on the local planning committee for the festival, and Pauleena will also chair the Material Culture committee and aid the Festival's Executive Director, Bob Libby. The National Folk Festival was brought to Bangor through the hard work of Donna Fitchner, Executive Director of the Bangor Convention & Visitors Bureau, in coordination with the city of Bangor and Eastern Maine Development Corporation. Senator Susan Collins and humorist Tim Sample will serve as Honorary Co-chairs for the event.

The city hopes …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 6, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

We recently completed the NEH sponsored preservation of endangered tape recordings. Over the course of the two-year grant period we built and equipped a first-class sound lab and copied over 600 hours of audio tape-recorded material to high quality preservation master reels — over 250 hours of which were also copied to public-access CD-Rs. We also expanded and standardized our finding aides for these accessions, which are among the oldest and most valuable in our collection. Now that we have the equipment and necessary procedures in place, we will continue the preservation program as part of our regular work load. …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 6, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Pamela Dean has joined the staff of the Maine Folklife Center as archivist of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. A native of Bar Harbor, Dean received her Bachelor of Arts and Masters Degree in history from the University of Maine and her Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1991 to 1999 she was the director of the Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University.

"My career as an archivist and oral historian began in Sandy lves's fieldwork class in the early eighties," Dean said. "You know that book …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

As the incoming director of the Folklife Center, I [James Moreira] have been asked to write a short piece to introduce myself to the members and supporters. It seems, after all, the traditional thing to do in such circumstances.

Originally from Nova Scotia, I have spent much of the past twenty years living in Newfoundland, most recently on the stunningly beautiful west coast where I was teaching at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. I earned a masters and Ph.D. at the Department of Folklore at Memorial University in St. John's.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Edward D. "Sandy" Ives, founder of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History and the Northeast Folklore Society announced that he will retire after forty-four years of teaching at the University of Maine.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 4, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Northeast Archives welcomes Archivist Stephen Green. For the first time in its forty-year history, a highly trained professional archivist manages Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. I am extremely pleased to be able to introduce Stephen Green, Archivist. Stephen comes to us from the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio, where he has been Library Director since 1996. Previously he served as Sound and Image Librarian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill for the Southern Historical Folklife and Oral History Collections. He also served as Archivist for the Appalachian Center Sound Archives at …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 3, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

It's nice to be able to report good news — very good news, indeed — to all of you who have supported the Maine Folklife Center in recent years, and to those of you who have supported us even longer when we were just the Northeast Archives. We learned late in the Spring that a new budget had been appropriated by the University Administration that would provide support for staff salaries and a modest operating budget.

With this kind of support, Sandy and I are very excited about the prospects for the coming year, and for what this kind of …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 3, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

As you are undoubtedly aware, Sandy has operated the Archives on a shoe-string (sometimes almost no-string) budget for nearly forty years. Howevever, with the help of some well-thought-out grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, some smaller grants from foundations, and donations from our members, he and his staff have been able to turn out some pretty good projects (some of them award-winning) including videos: "An Oral Historian's Work," "Woodsmen and River Drivers," thirty-two volumes of Northeast Folklore, and four cassettes of the Maine Traditional Music Radio Program series.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

In the last newsletter, we told you of the different preservation survey work that the Center was undertaking. Well, three "experts" visited the Center — we've been poked, prodded, examined with a magnifying glass — and have we learned a lot! Though we can't possibly summarize everything in this article, we want to share the gist of their findings so that you're aware of the major issues facing the Center.

The Center was very pleased when the Northeast Document Conservation Center awarded us a subsidized preservation survey. In March, Beth Patkus, with training in archives administration and preservaton, traveled from …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 2, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Sandy, Pauleena and Jeff (Smoky) McKeen have embarked upon a new project which will tap a significant portion of our field recordings of music for a series of documentary sound recordings on CD and cassette tape. Our collections include various musical genres representing historical, social and cultural issues and events such as immigrant experiences, occupations, traditions and lifestyles. We have decided to first focus upon the songs of the Maine lumberwoods, Franco-American music, Penobscot Bay maritime occupations, and the Native Americans of the Northeast.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 1, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

In 1987 Ernie Freeberg and Jeff (Smoky) McKeen produced two radio programs, "Music of the St. John Valley" and "Maine's Finnish Communities." The programs consisted of a series of interviews interspersed with samples of music. The goals of the project were twofold: to document Maine's rich musical traditions and to bring to the forefront the history and traditions of Maine's varied heritage. Eight programs were completed, supported by the Maine Folklife Center with funds from the Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Community Foundation. The radio series was broadcast for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. The Maine Folklife Center offers …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 1, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

So much has happened since the last Newsletter appeared that it will be impossible to cover it all, but perhaps a little history would help. Back in 1983 when I became Chair of Anthropology, Rita Breton came on line as Archives Manager...

At about this time we decided to change our name to the Maine Folklife Center, in de facto recognition both that archival work was only a part of what we were doing and that we were getting more and more into public programming. A further part of our plan was to absorb Northeast Folklore and the Northeast Folklore …