Folklife Meeting

Last week, from Tuesday until late Friday, I was in Cullman, Alabama for an Alabama Folklife Community Scholars meeting. There were wonderful speakers there, and classes to update our information on gathering and documenting folklife.

We stayed at the beautiful retreat center here. The rooms were spacious and clean, but no televisions or computers, although they did have Wi-Fi for our laptops and cell phones. We ate at the cafeteria for some of our meals and enjoyed seeing the church, Ave Maria Grotto, and cemetery that are part of the campus.

To me, the best thing about these meetings is seeing old friends and making new ones, people who love our heritage as much as I do. The next few days will be spent working on the data we collected while we were there. It makes me happy that this information will be archived and be available forever for those seeking to know their beginning, to understand why they are who they are.

Does anyone have a story, a particular method of doing a job, a memory that you want to be saved forever? Don't let it die with this generation. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't write down all the stories my Daddy told us before he passed away, and there is nothing I can do to change that now.
Alabama Folklife

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Faith, Folklore, and Friends

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