0:15

Welcome, folksy folks. Welcome to fabric of Folklore. I am Vanessa Y. Rogers, your hostess, and this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. This is a show about story, the stories our ancestors told, the stories we tell our children in modern times. Folklore is more than old folk tales. It's the food we share at a holiday, the jokes, the long held traditions we continue, and the new ones we begin with, our family or friend group. It's a friendship bracelet we make and give to a friend. At the heart of folklore is connection to the land, to the ancestors, to our ancestors, to modern society, to the human experience. And this show is about highlighting that folklore so that we can better understand its significance in our lives.

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We're diving deep to discover its origins and following the thread, to understand how it's woven into the fabric of our lives. At the end of the day, we are all humans surviving on this planet. We're one human race, and the better we ourselves and each other, the better we can connect and grow to better humans together. So if that sounds like a podcast you want to continue to listen to, hit that subscribe button. Whether you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, or you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button so you get notifications every week when our podcast drops. And if you are a subscriber, thank you so much. Please consider giving us a review. Those five star reviews, those written reviews on Apple podcasts are so helpful for independent podcasts like ourselves to be found by other people.

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We have a wonderful Father's day.

2:01

For.

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You today we are talking with TJ Smith about how folklore works within families with a focus on fathers and their traditions. TJ will be sharing with us about how folklores and their deep rooted understanding of culture are valuable assets in the diverse world of nonprofit organizations, including his own work with International the International Friendship Center. TJ is a researcher, educator, and nonprofit executive working in the areas of social and environmental justice, food security, community and economic development, and traditional arts conservation. He has a PhD in folklore from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the executive director of the International Friendship Center, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for adults and children to obtain basic human and social needs with a focus on addressing challenges in immigrant populations in North Carolina. So thanks so much for joining us, TJ.

2:58

Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. Excited.

3:02

So tell us a little bit about how you got interested in folklore. In the beginning.

3:09

I think I came across it a lot, the way a lot of us do in that we may be pursuing another degree and we end up having to take a class. And maybe that class is folklore. That's what happened with me. Anyway. So I was studying creative writing at Georgia State University. And as part of my creative writing curriculum, I had taken an elective within the department of the english department. And there was one folklorist at Georgia State University. He's still there. His name is John Burrison. John Burrison has been on faculty at Georgia State since 1966. He came from University of Pennsylvania in 66. And so I signed up for a class. It was introduction to folklore. And I think within the first two sessions, I was like, I'm hooked on this.

4:06

The department did not offer a major in folklore or a minor at state, so I just took as many of those classes as I could take while I was there. I ended up doing an internship for doctor Burrison my senior year with the Atlanta History center, cataloging some collections that he had, some student work that he had collected over the years. And then when I was looking for graduate programs, I still was kind of waffling between creative writing and folklore. And I found the University of Louisiana, where I could potentially do both. Ernest J. Gaines was the writer in residence in their writing program. And then, of course, they had a really robust and growing folklore program, so. But by the time I got to grad school, I already decided that I was going to stick with the folklore path.

4:59

Well, you know, when I was in college, I didn't even hear about a folk. I mean, I went to University of Texas, which is a very large university, and like, that never even crossed my. My path as a potential degree. And so is. Is it a degree that has become more prominent in the years or is it just remain kind of an obscure degree that not many people know about?

5:27

Well, so when I was looking at graduate schools, that was 20 years ago, and I had never heard of it either until I met John Burrison. I don't. I think at that time, folklore programs were in a better position than they are now. We've obviously lost a few since 2004. And it. Yeah, it never. It never dawned on me as a, you know, as anything until I took those classes. And I still think it's. It's fairly a unknown and even less so now known discipline. I don't think a lot of people are talking about folklore studies. I think people who are inclined towards. I'm thinking about younger kid, younger, this younger generation, things, people that are inclined to story, and maybe it's in things like video games. I mean, we you know, there's.

6:28

There's another program that I've been a part of with the folks at folk wise, and a lot of what we do is, you know, play video games and talk about folklore. And I think that there is, you know, it's there for the people that are already inclined towards tradition, culture, maybe something from their own family or their own communities, and they find it however they come across it. But I don't think it's one of the. We don't do a good job as a discipline is sort of like waving the flag and telling people to come be a folklorist.

7:05

Right, right. Because you. You know about anthropology. I took anthropology course and in college, but never did I hear about a folklore course. And I obviously, I'm doing a folklore podcast, so it would have been something that I would have been deeply interested in college.

7:22

And in your being at UT Austin, was that where you were at?

7:26

Yes. Mm.

7:27

You know, there's some pretty good folklorists that came out of Ut Austin.

7:32

Yeah. So it's. So it's just kind of crazy to me that it never came across my path.

7:40

No. Yeah. You know, there's not to nerd out on sort of the academic history of the discipline, but you go back to the philological disciplines of which folklore was a part in the early part of the 20th century. And, yeah, it's interesting to think that those other disciplines, like anthropology, sociology, they grew into prominence, whereas people just kind of forgot about folklore. And I think it may be, and I'm sure you encounter this, too, when you tell people you're a folklore. So you talk about folklore. People assign it with something that's kind of. I don't want to say hokey, but, you know, it's not. It doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi as anthropology. You know, like, that sounds very highfalutin and scientific.

8:41

Yeah, folklore sounds like, you know, people obviously assign it to fairy tales and that kind of, you know, and myths and legends and these very, I don't know, fantastical things. It's not serious, you know.

9:01

Right.

9:02

And I don't know if that's anything that can be remedied because the. Because the term itself is so loaded with all kinds of preconceived notions. And now, too, we have this intersection of modern culture ever since T. Swift dropped her album back in 2020 called folklore and what that has meant for our discipline, and I think in some ways it's gotten people to google.

9:36

But.

9:37

It'S still it still has a problem carrying weight or seriousness when people, you know, are talking about areas of study.

9:46

Mm.

9:48

Yeah, it's kind of interesting, you know, and I. And I find myself explaining to people all the time, what do I mean by folklore?

9:56

Yeah. Because it's so much deeper and richer than you would expect on the surface.

10:04

Right? Oh, yeah. You know, the. Where I fell in love with it was not, you know, that introduction to folklore class, we. It was a lot based in verbal art and oral tradition going. I mean, everything from, you know, folk ballads, the british and scottish book ballads, to, you know, southeastern United States folk traditions and storytelling and that sort of thing. But it wasn't until, I think, it was my second class that we did. It was a class on handicrafts, and I discovered that material culture is folklore, and that includes food, and that includes these things that we make with our hands and we create. And then I discovered performance as a genre in folklore. And, like, wow, it's such a. It's such an all encompassing space, right. Of the things that make us who we are as human beings. Right.

11:08

And who define us as being members of one community or another or many. That's where I think I really fell in love with it, is that it's also this stuff. Right. There's this tangible thing, and I love material culture. So, yeah, it's a very deep discipline, a lot of layers to it, but, yeah, still very misunderstood.

11:37

Yeah. Well, I hope that it switches paths and more universities start including it in there in a louder sense. Okay, so you mentioned folkwise, and that is actually how I heard about you, because I interviewed Daisy, whose interview will be coming up in the next few weeks. But they told me about you being nicknamed folk dad. Can you tell us a little bit about that nickname and how you came to be folk dad?

12:15

I don't. You know, I think that might have been a better question for Daisy. And that game, I don't. You know, I accept and, get a. You know, it's. It's very heartwarming to be called folk dad. I think it arose out of the AFS 2021 annual meeting where I was contracting with the folk with AFS to help with some of the technical aspects of the hybrid sessions and then the on the ground sessions in Harrisburg. And as part of that, I, you know, and Jessica Turner was also already on board with it.

13:05

But, you know, we suggested that we invite folk wise to come and help us really integrate that online aspect, because this was still, you know, Covid was still so prevalent, you know, travel restrictions and things have been lifted, and things were opening up, but there were still a lot of concerns. So we wanted to provide access for those folks who did not feel comfortable coming in person, but we also wanted to create a nice experience for those who did come to Harrisburg. And so I was kind of charged with being the technical advisor on the ground and sort of networking with the AV people at the hotel and then bringing in these. These young folklorists at folk wise to come in and do some cool stuff that would really enhance that digital component of the conference.

13:59

And so I got to be really close with them, and I'm, you know, I'm very firmly in my mid forties getting into the latter part of that now. And I just, you know, I have a nurturing nature, I guess, you know, comes from taking care of kids you like, you want to help? You know, I. My wife, you know, she always says that, you know, you just want to be helpful. You know, I do. I want to be a helpful engine. So I, you know, I think whatever. Whatever it was that evolved into them calling me folk dad. So it's, you know, like I said, it's. It's a. It's nice to feel that because I comes from a place of love, and it's really sweet.

14:52

Mm. And you're a dad yourself?

14:54

Yes. Yes. I got two. I have two boys, 16 and 14.

14:58

Right. In the smack of the teenage years. Yes, yes. So can you. Can you talk to us about how family is often our first folk group?

15:14

Yeah. So I taught for about ten years in the university system. I still adjunct in the evenings at a technical college that's down the road from where I live. And I'm just teaching, like, freshman composition classes for the most part. And that's, every school that I've taught at has been a smaller, either a two year or gateway institution. So a lot of my english teaching was in that freshman first year composition space. And as part of that, you know, composition and rhetoric, if you're teaching freshman comp, like, there is, the outcomes of, like, these students will leave here with, you know, improved abilities in writing. Okay. But how you get to that is completely up to you as the professor.

16:05

And so, you know, the standard model was, we're going to read some literature, we're going to get a survey, anthology, and we're going to read some poems, and you're going to write about that stuff, because that's what I know as an english teacher, but as a folklorist, what I know as a folklorist is, you know, the stuff of our discipline. And so I found ways of incorporating that in my freshman composition classes. And when I would introduce people like that first day, like, you know, introducing theme, like this class, our thematic element that we're going to be utilizing to become better writers is this thing called folklore. What is that? So on that first day of class, when I'd introduced theme that were going to, you know, this is. We're going to.

16:47

We're going to learn about writing through this thing called folklore, and we're going to talk about your folklore. So think about, when you come together as a family, what traditions do you have? Is it Easter Sunday at your grandmother's house? Where do you all do Thanksgiving? And then think about how you get together with those people. And a lot of times, it's people you don't see often, right? It's the cousins and the aunts and the uncles. But take note of the stories that get told in those settings. It's always the same stories. It's the story about how uncle so and so, you know, once drove his truck into the lake. Or it's the story of aunt, you know, Mildred and. And her adventures as a cowgirl, you know, whatever it is.

17:37

Or maybe it's a story about something you did that was really funny when you were small. My mother, for instance, often tells a story the time that I got lost at the laundromat, or she thought she lost me at the laundromat when I was three or four, and she was actually two. She was a young mother. She was busy doing this, and she turns around, and I'm gone, and she goes frantic, looking for me everywhere. And eventually that leads her to go outside of the laundromat, and she's calling for me. And all of a sudden, this man sticks his head out from a door a couple. A couple doors down from the laundromat, says, ma'am, you missing a little fella? About yay high? He's in here. And she goes in there.

18:21

It's a liquor store, and I'm sitting on the counter with a lollipop, just. Just jabbering on with these guys. And. And from that moment, I knew that my son would never meet a stranger. Now, she tells that story to this day. Every time she meets somebody new that I like, I'm introducing her to, you know, somebody out in public or whatever, and they may make comment, you know, he's really outgoing, and she's like, oh, let me tell you about the, you know, and she goes, in the stories. I think about those stories that your family tells us, that's folklore, and that's the fur. One of the first folk groups that you were part of is that family. And we get in. I get. I don't get too into the weeds with them, but I do talk about William Bascom's four functions of folklore.

19:10

And we. And we highlight, you know, what is the importance of these stories, you know, and we talk at the surface level, there's that entertaining value, and then you start getting into the validation, as, you know, that sort of solidifies you as a member of that group, whatever it is. So, you know, uncle. Uncle Terry's retelling of the same story for the hundredth time that you've heard it, and your cousins are looking at each other going, oh, God, here we go. But in that moment, those people, those cousins that you see once, twice a year, in that moment, you've reaffirmed your connection. You all share the same stories. You've all heard Uncle Terry's story, and now you're hearing it again, and it's something that you share in common. And then we talk about sort of the more.

20:00

I call the more sinister values or functions in that. In that list from Bascom and that folklore educates right about. These are the rules. These are the things that are expected of you within our society, within our group, within our family, and then how it's used to control behavior. And they get really into that shit. Like, they love that. Like, whoa, what? You know, and I, you know, give them a grim tale, you know, and talk about, you know, what. What is Hansel and Gretel really about?

20:32

Mm.

20:33

So. But going back to the. The idea of family being the first folk group, once they understand that the bulk of the semester, and I. And I feel like. Like I'm not being lazy. It just. I know it works. And I've been doing the same thing for 20 years now, or, well, really 15 years, where the first thing we do in that writing class is a narrative. And I have them retell a narrative about themselves, about something that had a great impact on their lives in some way. And then we do an illustrative essay, and we talk about how, as a dad, you know, I do this as a dad. One of my children come to me. They've had a hard day at school. Something happened, and then I connected. Well, you know, when I was your age, this is.

21:23

You know, I went through a very similar thing. Now, not the best parenting tactic, by the way. Everybody says, don't do that. You're just making it about you. But it's such a dad thing, right? Like, you know, when I was your age, but I find myself doing it. It's like, it's. It's wired in there. I don't. Even if I stop myself, it's still just like, man, it's going to come out.

21:44

But I don't know. I feel like it's a good thing because then you. They see that they're not alone. Why is it suggested not to do it?

21:53

That they, you know, they being some. Some parenting experts or somewhere along the line of said, you know, you're. By doing that, you're making it. You're. You're taking the narrative from them and making it about yourself.

22:09

Yeah.

22:10

So I try to act, fine.

22:12

Line.

22:13

Yeah. Do more listening. Let them get the whole thing out. And then I ask now, like, can I tell you a little something about what happened to me? And a lot of times now that they feel like they've shared, they'll. They'll. They're responding, like, yeah, you know, or. And if they don't, they're like, not right now, dad. I'm like, okay, well, maybe later. But we use our experiences. Right, to illustrate some central point. This is a real, you know, just basic hypothetical, but your child is struggling with some activity, like skateboarding. Okay. We skateboard in my family, so they can't get this thing, and they're getting frustrated. We'll try to make the point that it's okay to fail, because from failure, we learn how to get better. Right. You're not gonna just step on this thing and be able to.

23:14

You're not gonna be Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk fell, you know, how many thousands of times before he landed the 900. You know, you look at what these guys go through. It's just part of the process, and it's a hard part of the process, but it's. It's how you get better. And you use those stories to illustrate that point of that. Practice makes for, you know, not perfect, but, you know, helps us become better, that falling down helps us, you know, get back up. So we do those kinds of things, and then the next thing they do is a compare, contrast, and then we do a research essay. I used to. Every now and then, I mix things up depending on the season. I love collecting recipes during thanksgiving and have them.

24:00

Have them conduct a family interview with, like, okay, what's the dish that you cannot wait for at Thanksgiving? And it's like, oh, and so is Mac and cheese or my grandma's stuffing or whatever. I'm like, okay, now let's. Let's think about what that means to you and why. Maybe what's really important is what it means to the people that are making it. Let's talk about how to talk to them, you know, an interview. And so they'll conduct an interview about grandma stuffing, and they'll talk to grandma about it. Like, how did you learn how to make this? Where did you know? When was the first time you made it? Is there anything that you think about when you're making it? Lee Scott, you know, come up with some questions and then provide, you know, write an essay about it and then share the recipe.

24:45

Right. When I was in my first teaching gig, we put together class cooking books, cookbooks that way, so everybody would. Would contribute a story and a recipe, and then we would put. We would compile those into a book.

25:01

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I bet they still use it.

25:05

It was my favorite thing. It was. It really was so, like, finding those ways of bringing. Not really bringing folklore into their lives, but making them aware of it. It's the one thing, if I see students years later, it's the thing that they remember. Like, I'm really glad you had me interview my grandfather. I'm really glad you had me interview my mom. I'm really thankful that you encouraged me to interview my kids. Like, those kinds of things matter. And then they start looking for folklore in other spaces, because we talk about family being the first group. What's the next one? School, church, sports teams, occupations, like, all these different little, you know, these little groups of people with whom we share these. These traditions or whatnot. And I guess that's my personal mission in life, or my.

26:06

Or my personal contribution to the discipline is finding opportunities to share it with people, make them aware of it. And I take a lot. I have. I really enjoy that a lot. I like talking about it. I like seeing folks light up the way that I lit up the first time I realized what folklore was, and I think there's a lot to gain from it. We can. I think we get a lot more understanding of one another as humans when we understand the richness and the depths that we all carry with us.

26:40

What I love that, you know, they. One of the assignments was to interview a family member or someone close to them, but because it gives them a reason that they have to do it. But how would you. What would you suggest to someone who is just interested in, you know, hearing more stories from their family? How do they come to the table to ask for more depth about what's happening? Like, what suggestions would you give to someone who wants their family to share more stories to get more of their family folklore?

27:23

I think it has to be, it has to start with an awareness about the personalities in your family and what they're going to respond to. Some folks would be very not resistant, but hesitant if put on the spot. Those folks need some sort of more organic setting. And I think where you start is think about where those stories occur naturally anyway, and then try to amplify or magnify those moments. So, for instance, one of my favorite spaces for storytelling, and it no longer is because we've had some passings in the recent years with the older people in my family.

28:12

But as a young person, thinking back, the kitchen space at my uncle Terry and Aunt Nancy's house on Thanksgiving and or Christmas Eve, because that's, we would we do one or the other or both every year at their place and that kitchen with sort of the majority of it being women with intersections of some of the men, and the men were in charge of the turkey and, or the duck and the pork roast or whatever was happening in the smoker outside. And then they were having to coordinate with the women who were inside making things or keeping things hot for the meal later.

28:57

And, but just the conversations that took place in and around that space, they could be, a lot of times there were stories about remembrances of past family outings or, you know, family members we had lost, or it was sort of catching up on the news from the year, right. Of what everybody was doing, because, again, these are, and this is extended family, so not everybody gets, you know, we don't, they're, you know, not a lot of talking always over the course of the year, this is like the, one of the few times we get together physically and face to face. So just being in that space and that's, that was a natural space. I think most kitchens are, can be a natural space for storytelling. So thinking about that, if that's your situation, how do you amplify that?

29:55

Well, if you want to get stories from grandma and, you know that, you know, she's somebody who tells stories a lot when she's cooking or whatnot, create a cooking situation. Say, hey, can we have, you know, I'd like to do Sunday supper. Can, you know, can you come over and. Or can we come to you and I'd like to cook with you or whatnot and then just put out, you know, the. The beautiful thing about technology is we're all walking around with av centers in our pockets.

30:25

Yeah.

30:26

And you just set it out. It doesn't have to be a perfect recording. That's the other thing. So long as it can pick up the sound well. And most of these things do now, but you can also get a very cheap, you know, Lavalier mic, or not Lavalier, but microphone that you can plug into your phone. Phone and just set it up somewhere out of sight, out of the way. But that picks up the sound well enough and just have those conversations and just let the thing record. But other family members will respond to, like, I would like to sit down with you and get some family history, or, I want to learn more about this person. And they. They like that formality. And if that's the case, then.

31:08

Then you can approach them as such and, you know, come to it with some questions and sit down. But again, you know, try to keep the recorder out of the way because some people get nervous when they see your recording device still. Yeah, but, you know, initiate this conversations, but just come to it from us, from an understanding of, like, what that individual or individuals, how they would best respond. Because if you want to get that good information, you've got to get. Create a situation where people can get in the flow. A lot of times, storytellers or folklorists or people who do anthropological work talk about folks that get into the flow of a story or get into the flow of that conversation or that storytelling moment, whatever it is, and you want to create that environment for them to get into that flow.

31:58

So they forget about that. This is an interview, and it becomes something that's, like, not to get too, like, weird on you or anything, but, like, you know, I think back to the. One of my areas was medieval studies, the old english shop. You know, getting into the flow of a story and recounting a great saga, and the words come easier, and the. The turn of phrases is just cleaner, you know? And, like, you get some really beautiful storytelling because we are narrative creatures. We are narrative, you know, it is the core of who we are as a species. And when people get really, you know, zeroed in on that, magic happens. Right. And that's, you know, that's the best advice, is to try and create that space for whomever you're talking to. That's going to make them the most comfortable.

33:00

Well, that's great advice. So let's talk a little bit about tradition sharing. What does it look like today as opposed to when your father was passing on traditions.

33:17

So, yeah, I think, you know, I was the executive director at Foxfire for three and a half years, and I don't know if you.

33:26

What is Foxfire?

33:27

So Foxfire is a community based cultural documentation project that started in the 1960s with high school students collecting family and community folklore. It's been, it's been doing the same thing. It's, you know, pretty much the same thing since 66, 67. They published a magazine. They published all these books that were collections primarily focused in Appalachia and in that position and having access to the archives and of course, being familiar with the books and the magazines and everything about it. You know, when we talked about the kinds of traditions that those students were collecting in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, they were not old world traditions, but old, new world. Like a lot of handicrafts, though, pre modern, still a lot of pre modern stuff. So we talk about pottery and basketry and woodwork and some, you know, metal smithing.

34:42

When we talk about material culture, when we talk about oral tradition, we still have, you know, an active ballad singing tradition that's happening in Appalachia. It's waning, you know, in the sixties, it's really going off. But thanks to folk revival movement, people are more cognizant of it. They're going out and finding it. Right. So you have that. And then my generation, though I was born in 1977, my father was born in 19, 48, 57. So much more modern kind of context. And his traditions or the things that kind of got passed to him, to me were not pastoral or handicraft or based in agriculture like that. It was like he, my grandfather was really into motorcycles and my dad was really into motorcycles. So, like, I had a motorcycle by the time I was nine years old, you know, a dirt bike.

35:41

And learning how to work on your dirt bike, knowing how to change the oil, knowing, you know, what it means when it won't crank, it's either fire or fuel. Something's up. You know, that means you just look at the spark plug, let's check, make sure there's not water in the fuel line, stuff like that. Right? And that translated also to auto repair. Like, I grew up in a house where we changed our own oil. You did not take your car into the shop unless it was absolutely necessary, like you needed to pull the engine. I would. I just replaced my, I just replaced my front brake pads yesterday. I still do this stuff, right?

36:20

Yeah.

36:22

And, you know, that was a lot of. But also my dad played sports. He played football and his father played football, so I was expected to play football, and I did so at eight. And so I learned how to, you know, we talk about fathers and sons in a very gender normative way. You know, throwing the ball around that I had that childhood. Like, that was, you know, what I came up in. And I still carry forward a lot of those things. You know, my dad was also just really handy with his thing was figure out if I can fix it first before I call somebody and spend a bunch of money, because there's, you know, if I'm mechanically inclined, chances are I can figure this thing out. And my dad is very mechanically inclined, and so I got some of that right.

37:22

But the way that, you know, in the transmission was very interpersonal, and I think that hasn't changed because for me and my kids, the traditions are video games. You know, like, I'm sure, you know, my dad buying me my first motorcycle or my first bb gun was on par with me going and taking my seven year old, my oldest son when he was seven toys r us to pick out his new ds. Like, his first. His first video game console. That was his alone, right. And introducing him to Zelda and that franchise, that was such a magical moment for me. You have no idea. Yeah, but that, like, that's the tradition, right? Passing on dungeons and dragons to my kids and bringing it into the household as a tradition. But.

38:25

And then food ways, you know, that's the other thing that's kind of cool that hasn't really changed a lot is that, you know, we talk regionally about food ways. I learned food from great grandmothers and then a little bit from my dad, and then I've been. I've passed on some of that, but I've also acquired some new food ways. I'm really into chinese and korean style cooking, and, you know, that has become a part of our household traditions. There are certain dishes that are requested of me, like fried rice or what's.

39:07

Or masubi things that are, you know, how I have no cultural bearing in, but I've, you know, these are things that I've discovered I like and I bring in, and now I've taught my kids how to do it so they know how to, like, take a peck of ramen and spruce it up.

39:23

Yeah.

39:23

And that, you know, that comes from me. The other thing, though, I still, you know, I had to. Another thing, the car that I drive is got 304,000 miles on it, so things happen to it. You know, it's got a lot of miles. So, like, two weeks ago, I had to replace a spark plug and an ignition coil in one of the cylinders, and I got my oldest to help me out with that. And that led to this longer conversation about the engine and the, you know, learning. Every opportunity I get to share with them something about automotive. I do it because he think both of my boys like cars. They think cars are cool.

40:06

They, you know, my 16 year old is driving now, and so that kind of thing is important, too, that I want them to know how to work on a car if they need to, you know, or troubleshoot or problem solve in that situation. That is something that I'm carrying forward. However, sans me, there is a Reddit for every make and model a car.

40:39

Oh, wow.

40:40

I mean, seriously, that's where I go when I run into an issue with my 2013 Ford Flex. What a mundane vehicle. But by God, there are so many Reddit threads about the Ford Flex. I go to YouTube and I can learn about how to replace, like, when I was about to do this electric, this ignition coil spark plug replacement, I went to YouTube and watched a 17 minutes video on how to do it just to make sure I wasn't screwing something up. Right, right. But. But the guys that are making the video, they're just some dudes in their garage, right, who have, you know, through formal education or informal means, have come, you know, to understand motor vehicles and how to work on them, and they're sharing their knowledge, right?

41:33

So this, you know, so much of what we do as folklorist is argue amongst ourselves about what constitutes folklore and what doesn't. Right? And one of the. One of the big sticklers, one of those key characteristics is that mode of transmission, right. So many people get hung up on that. It has to be this intimate person to person, father to son, neighbor to neighbor, mother to daughter, whatever, transmission of information. But the way that we communicate and interact is evolving. To me, it's the same as the people who. I'm not trying to get political, but, you know, we. We have these conversations about the same second amendment in this country. Like, on what planet is 18th century artillery equivalent to 21st century artillery?

42:26

Right.

42:27

There's no. There's no universe where that exists, where people think like musket, same as AR 15. No. Much in the same way our communication, you know, face, intimate transmission face to face was necessary 100 years ago.

42:46

Right, right.

42:47

Telephones weren't widespread, certainly wasn't the Internet. But now look at what we're doing. Look at what you and I are doing right now. And who cares if it's synchronous or asynchronous, but if I have something to share and I record that and I put that out there, I'm talking to you as an art. You know, you're my audience, the individual. I'm sharing my knowledge with you. What I'm removing are the barriers and the obstacles that limits the number of people that I can reach. Right. How is it not still folklore? How folk transmission? You know, I'm just some dude in my garage with. With a camera, and I'm talking to a camera and I'm doing work, and then I'm uploading that to a channel. But it's still. It's still communication. Right.

43:38

I'm still sharing knowledge and putting that out there and teaching people how to do something on their own, you know, for themselves. It's a craft, it's an art. I think that one of the biggest things that is hold. Has held folklore back as a discipline, is our stubbornness, in some instances, to evolve where it makes sense to evolve.

44:08

Mm.

44:09

And I think that understanding that, especially our children's generations. And you've got three gen heirs. You got three gen alphas. I've got a Gen Z. I think one Gen Z er who's on the cusp of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and then one that's Gen Alpha. The way that these generations are going to communicate and carry forward and share information and knowledge and hopes and dreams and all of that is so beyond and different than what we came up with as people who are adults in our forties and our thirties, and. But our way of communicating is not any better or lesser. It's just, it's evolving. And we've got to pay attention to what's happening in these. In these kinds of situations. And I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, folklore can be transmitted in a lot of different ways.

45:11

Yeah. And that brings me to, you know, you were saying that your father passed down different things and you're passing on to your children, and that doesn't mean necessarily that those traditions are going to be lost because of our technology. So they're still saved, but they're not necessarily being passed on to our direct lines. Right.

45:36

So this conversation came up a lot when I was at foxfire.

45:41

Okay.

45:41

And people would come up to me and say, thank you so much for saving our culture and preserving our culture, because it's all being lost. And I would tell them, nothing's lost. When we talk about folklore, but values change and the values we play, you know, folklore, what the reason why folklore gets passed on. And this is. I want to say this is TJ Smith, the folklorist. My perspective, the way I'm thinking, I'm not speaking for the discipline, but my fight, thinking on this is what determines something's being passed down, is whether or not it still possesses value for the culture. Right. If they don't. If we don't find value in it, we leave it. We. You know, the idea of preservation for preservation sake is something very different than in my.

46:49

In my opinion, then, traditions being passed down, because we really only pass down those things that. That have relevance, value. We still get something out of it, because otherwise, it's just. It's taking up. It's taking up memory, right. It's taking up space where it's not necessary. I think so much of our perspectives on history, culture, tradition, get caught up in sentiment for the sake of sentiment, not for the sake of cultural value. You know, in some instances, it's a shame, you know, losing folk pottery traditions or textile traditions. That's art. And it's. It's hard to sometimes stomach that we are losing those things. Losing those things. However, other things, like racism and misogyny, I can. You know, we can stand to be. To live without, like, those traditions just fuck right on off, right?

48:01

Yeah.

48:02

So, you know, this. This idea that we're losing things, I just. I don't. I don't put a lot in that. I think that we. What's really interesting is. Is really analyzing what we hold on to. And why. Why am I holding? You know, working on cars is really hard. Now, I was telling my. I was telling Eli, my oldest son, about this the other day, is like, you know, my second vehicle was a 1973 Plymouth Duster that had belonged to my grandmother. And the engine bay was so large, I could sit in it to work on that car. I would be. If there was something on the backside of the engineer, the firewall, I could literally crawl into this engine compartment and sit on the edge of the hood, you know, on the edge of the ink and work.

49:00

And there was a place for my feet to be that wasn't. You know, you can't do that now, because every square inch of that engine compartment is filled with something. Right. The way that computers have evolved in automotives now, the. The loss of the carburetor. You know, I love a carburetor. It's so much easier to work on engine with a carburetor. You know, but that's not what we do anymore. We don't have carburetors. We have intakes and superchargers and all this other stuff, and it's, it makes it more difficult. But there's, but the reason we hold on to it, we still find ways to make it work, and we create communities on its Reddit and we post videos on YouTube, is because one thing we still value is that is our money, right?

49:54

Is our, is our dollar that we've earned in our budgets and our ability to provide for our families. And if I can save $300 by putting on my own brake pads, I'm going to do it. If I could save $200 by installing my own new spark plug and in the kitchen coil, I'm going to do it, because saving money is where the value is, but also the satisfaction one gets from fixing some shit. Like, there's nothing like that. You know, I try to fix everything my kids had. I taught this to them, too. Both boys at Christmas, like, I don't know, five years ago. Now, six years ago, they all, they both got Nintendo switches, right? The console. Nintendo switch. And one of the faults of the Nintendo switch is that their joy cons, their controllers, have some real. They're just not very.

50:58

What's the word I'm looking for?

51:00

Reactive?

51:01

No, they are very reactive. They're just not. They're. They're kind of delicate.

51:08

No.

51:08

Very sturdy. The joysticks themselves, especially when you've got a seven year old, just, you know, they're getting mad, and they're just. And these joy con, little joysticks are just getting destroyed.

51:27

Yeah.

51:30

And so what, you know, I think Sam, my youngest, was the first one that's like, this thing doesn't work anymore. He gets mad, like, I don't know what's happening. Went on Amazon. They had already, you know, this. I think the switch had been out for, like, a year by the time we got for the kids, but they had replacement kits for those joycons. And I was like, I got this because it's either $60 for a new Joy Con or $10 for a kit that gives me four replacement joysticks so I can replay, I can repair this thing four different times before it. We have to worry about anything else. And so I'm like, I'm gonna try this out. If it doesn't work, we'll go to the store and spend the $60.

52:09

But I'm, you know, this is a $12 investment to see if I can, you know, make this work again. And I did. And then I became the guy that, like, kids brought, hey, Lucas, this thing's not working. Can you fix it? Yeah, let me see it. And, like, you know, I'd replace the joy cons of these things.

52:26

Yeah.

52:28

But that was something that I passed on to them. Another thing was building their own computers. They both wanted computers. I'm like, all right, first thing, we're gonna. You're gonna build your own, and we're gonna start with some Frankenstein shit. So I found, like, cheap Omniplex 70 ten CPU on eBay for $100, found some other used components, and worked with both of them to build their first component computers. And then later, as they got older and got better with it, and sure that they could take care of something like that, we built one from new components and. But that taught them a little bit, too, about computing and about how to put something like that together. It taught me, too, because I'd never done that before.

53:11

Yeah.

53:11

I was like, but I bet we can. And you know how I. You know how we learned one talking to friends? Because I got a lot of nerd buddies that build computers, so I would get on, you know, they're awkward. JJ, for instance, I'd get on the phone with him, be like, hey, man, we want to do this. What are your suggestions? And then to Reddit and YouTube and through that network, that folk network, right. That included in person and digital conversations, were able to create something which is pretty neat. So those, you know, those things, the tinkering, diY, saving a buck, that has value, but the things that don't, either through obsolescence or through just, you know, a tradition that doesn't really carry value for us culturally or from a group perspective or whatever. If those things go away, it's okay.

54:11

Let them go. Right? Let it go. Our job as folklorist, anyway, we're so much, I think, is that we should be focusing on living traditions, right? That's our. That's what we do. We're not archaeologists. We're not studying dead shit, right? We're studying things that have vibrance and life in the moment for now, and that matter, culturally or traditionally to one group or another, whatever. So let the. Let the dead shit die.

54:45

One of the things that you mentioned to me is the change of transmission has changed in part because of an absence of elders. Can you talk a little bit about that?

54:58

Yeah. And I think this is really a western, really american thing, but certainly a western thing. When I was little, my grandmother came and lived with us, and she lived with us from the time I was five or six until my family moved from where were at the time when I was eleven. And she ended up staying there in the house. But it wasn't. I had other friends who had grandparents who lived with them. Them, right. And my grandmother. This is my mother's mother. We were very close. I was close. I had the privilege of having three really strong matriarchs, two great grandmothers, and one grandmother that I had these really strong collections with and stayed with or whatever. But she lived with us, and that created a lot of interesting opportunities.

56:01

Okay, think about a woman who was born in 1911 and a child who was born in 1977, and what my, her experience was versus my experience. And for me, the stories that she told about our family, how we got here, all of that was so fascinating. And I am thankful every day that I had that growing up. But now we don't treat our, we don't invite our elders into our homes. Our. We put them in homes. We, they also don't want to live with their kids. I don't know, you know, in this, I'm off the cuff, anecdotal, total, nothing backing this up. But what I see are, you know, grandkids and grandparents not as connected for different reasons.

57:11

The other thing is, too, that we came up in a generation, at least I did, with parents who had some toxic traits and who part of those toxic traits sometimes were exposing us to people who were older in our families who also had toxic traits. Right. There's, there. You know, I think we've, as a civilization, come to recognize, I don't need to be connecting my child with this person just because of a familial connection. If that person has traits that are harmful to my child, they're alcoholic, they're violent, they're whatever. So I think, you know, as a parent to another parents, I've talked to you about this. We do create boundaries with our elders, too, because there is so much toxicity, I think, within certain generations. Again, this is totally just like, off the cuff. I have nothing to back any of that up.

58:15

I'm really speaking from personal experience, but I know, you know, it just, I don't see the number of grandparents living in households anymore that I saw as a young person. And I think, you know, just generally speaking, we know that we don't take in our older people. We put them someplace. And so there's. The negative aspect of that is that we don't have generation, intergenerational conversations happening in that context anyway, and I'll share one with you that it does happen. But then also, though we may be protecting our kids from stuff we don't want them to be a part of. But I do think intergenerational learning is important. When I was at my last tenured track position was at Georgia Perimeter College in southwest DeKalb county, outside of Atlanta. And we started a community garden project on the front of this campus.

59:19

We built a 9000 square foot community garden. What was cool, among many things, was that the campus was also, because of the lighting and the security that was on site, was a safe place for older women to come and walk in the morning. And where the college was situated, it was a majority minority community of older black folks that lived around the campus. And so you had a lot of older black women who were coming there in the mornings to utilize the pathways and to walk. And this garden project was service learning, experiential learning project that across disciplines. I brought my english classes out there. I had colleagues who had astronomy classes out there, calculus classes, history classes, found ways of incorporating work in the garden with their lessons. Right.

1:00:25

But we would be out there with these young people, and were majority minority serving institution. Most of our students came from South Atlanta, south Fulton, southwest DeKalb. And so you had these younger, 18, some twenties year old black students, and then you had this community of older people that were coming, and the older people would stop what y'all doing garden. And then they would have start having conversations with the young people and, like, teachers, showing them, like, how to better. How to do a better job staking up tomatoes, like, try this. Or, you know, when you're. When you're doing this truck. And so then we created kind of like a community ambassador program for the garden. So we had this group of older women who just, like, they loved being out there with those young people.

1:01:21

And so they would come in the mornings and they helped us tend the garden. They were responsible for different things. But then when we had classes out there, they may share with them some stories about their childhood or about their experience in agriculture, whatever it was. We had recipe swaps. We had all kinds of things. And that garden project, a decade later, no, sorry, more than a decade now. It's almost 15 years later, still going on.

1:01:53

Wow.

1:01:54

It's amazing. But one of the key components is that intergenerational opportunity, right, for young, these people. And it just. I think we have to create. We need to create that sense of community around. Around, you know, outside of age groups and things like that. I think that we have a great deal to learn from. From elders. I think, you know, human history teaches us that, but I think we also just have become more cognizant, too, of, like, how we. How kids and older generations interact, I guess. I don't know. I think intergenerational learning is important, but I think we have to create spaces for it to happen, and we can do a good job of facilitating those conversations in ways that are more meaningful.

1:02:44

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that you mentioned that we. Is a part of dad culture is the dad joke. Can you talk to us a little bit about how dad joke is a part of the folklore?

1:03:02

I don't. You know, and what are dad jokes, really? But they're just really bad puns, right? A lot of times, more so than not, they are just really goofy puns. But, and I don't know how this is one of those interesting intersections of, we talk about the sort of the three spheres of culture that might be an outdated idea, but we talk about, you know, popular culture, folk culture, and then elite academic culture. And I feel like dad jokes are this, like, in the Venn diagram of those three, kind of growing in popularity thanks to popular culture, but they've always been there, and now we're.

1:03:43

And then from linguistics point of view, where, you know, we've probably been studying dad jokes for a lot of times because it's, again, it's just a play on words, just puns, but for whatever reason, and it may have something to do with the generation of dads that is really on the Internet right now, which is a lot of ex zennial millennials. Right.

1:04:06

Yeah.

1:04:06

And we. Who did what dads did, we grow up with. We grew up with some of the greatest television dads ever, some who have now complicated, you know, complex pasts, not mentioning names, but we grew up with a lot of kind of hokey dad joke dads, and that became sort of part of our culture. And then, you know, I think it's a meme, you know, which is, you know, I feel like the dad joke is a meme that is spread. And we talk about memes as folk culture, and there's some really great work on that being done by some of these younger folklorists that I mentioned earlier, like, you know, the folk wise generation of folklorists that are really getting into Internet culture and memes and that kind of thing. But I think dad joke is just like one of the OG memes. Right.

1:05:03

And so, you know, and how do they spread well, sometimes it's. I remember my kids, one of them, they had, you know, the book fair. Every school has a book fair, and so. Yeah, one of my. I think Sam had bought a really hokey joke book at the book fair. It was just dead jokes. It wasn't in the title, but it's what it was. Yeah. And just sitting in the, like, on long car rides and them taking turns reading jokes from this book and just dying, laughing at how goofy these jokes are. So there's. There's that. But then also, they see them in the Internet. Right. And we, you know, there's a couple different tick tock things that I've seen where it's, like, two people sitting across from each other telling one another dad jokes and trying to get the other one to laugh.

1:06:02

I think there's a growing meme cultured around just dad isms in general. I think that the dad as, like, when I was growing up, dads were stern and aloof and kind of, you know, to be feared, where now dads were just goofy and open, not to ridicule, but just like the comedy of our blunder and our, you know, inability to be cool. And I think the dad joke is a really great sort of representation of that uncoolness. Right. Because we think we're so clever, and there's something about that. So it's a. It's an interesting. I think it is. Ultimately, it has become kind of an Internet meme, and I think that's sort of like, its growth in popularity has been around, has been through that channel.

1:07:00

But, you know, those corny jokes were also the stuff of the Cosby show, full house, family matters, all those shows that we grew up with. With hokey dads. Right.

1:07:13

Yeah.

1:07:15

Told dad jokes.

1:07:19

And it's just become a part of our society. I wonder if there has been studies to see if there used to be. If dad jokes were a thing of the past as well, that we just weren't really aware of it because it wasn't necessarily a part of, you know, television or radio.

1:07:38

I. They. It was. These were. These are old vaudeville jokes. These are old, you know, that structure is very much from that early days of film, radio, vaudeville, you know, traveling, theater kind of humor. It's. It's, it's, you know, the freaking. It's the Marx brothers. It's, you know, Abbott Costello, all that stuff. That's where that stuff comes from, I think.

1:08:17

Yeah.

1:08:17

It's just that's, you know, set up punchline. Right. And oftentimes a turn of phrase, a pun. That's the punchline. Right.

1:08:30

Well, and for any dads out there who think that they are the best at dad jokes, there is actually, I'm in Texas. There is a pun worldwide contest that happens in Austin, Texas, on a yearly basis. Yeah. People come from all over to give the best puns. I've never gone, I really need to go. I'm not good at a pun. I am not good at a pun, but I do enjoy a good dad joke.

1:08:59

Yeah.

1:09:02

My favorite.

1:09:03

Yeah.

1:09:07

I don't remember the name of the contest, but it's. I know it's in Austin, so if you're. If you are the king of puns, you should look it up.

1:09:15

And I am not. I have, but I do have, like, I think you asked me in the email if I have a favorite dad joke.

1:09:24

Yeah.

1:09:25

The one that always just, like, sent my kids. I'll never forget telling them this joke that sent them rolling was, why did the chicken cross the road? Because.

1:09:40

Oh, I have to tell. That's my eight year old. I love that because that's a good one. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your work as a folklorist. One of the things that you were mentioning. Let me see if I. That you feel that the skills of a folklorist translate really well in the human and social services nonprofit space. So can you talk a little bit about what got you interested in that particular topic.

1:10:17

You know, like anything else or. A lot of the things in my life, I just kind of fell into it. I think my entree into this was when I was still teaching in Atlanta, and I got caught up in the food justice food security movement in the city there. Part of sort of like this, you know, the community gardens landscape, but then also urban agriculture. Got to interact with a lot of really interesting people, everybody from the founder of the Atlanta community Food bank to a gentleman who was just really a pioneer of the urban ag landscape, especially in the city of Atlanta. And he built these great large urban agricultural spaces in economically depressed areas of the city and really changed culture and changed environments through that work. So that, you know, that got me into it. The.

1:11:18

My first nonprofit job that was outside of folk and traditional arts in the academy was with the Food bank of Northeast Georgia, managing a National Institute of Food and Ag grant, through which my job was to create a food hub, which is basically a center that aggregates local aggregate, like, local agricultural products and supports smaller farmers by sort of, like, aggregating resources. Right. Things like cooler space and refrigerated trucks, and, you know, a lot of things that smaller farmers can afford on their own, we become kind of a central space for that. But then also with the added benefit of serving as sort of a marketing and sales resource for those farmers and helping them identify new markets for their produce. So that was a very different kind of job for me.

1:12:23

However, a lot of my work was going into farm communities or communities of farmers and having conversations about their concerns, their worries, their needs, their aspirations for their work, for their farms. And the program that had been designed through this grant was very prescriptive and had been done without really any farmer input. So the things that they wanted to do, once I got in there and looked at, like, okay, this is the program you want to run. And then here's the reality of the farms and the farmers we're working with. These things don't coordinate. They don't correspond. This is a. This is an idea that was created outside of reality, and then this is reality.

1:13:24

So, I felt my folklore training equipped me really well in drawing that information out of the farmers and really getting them to be really straightforward and honest about their. All of those things I mentioned earlier concerns, dreams, worries, whatever. So, which allowed me to go back to the organization and say, what you've got here really doesn't fit the situation. This is what we need to do.

1:14:03

Yeah.

1:14:04

Which was great. Also a very early lesson for me, or not a lesson, a reminder of a lesson that I got in my graduate school experience through a project that I was invited to participate in. John Loden was one of my professors there at UL. He had connected with this sort of a, like, cross discipline project. It was like the school of, like, landscape and architecture and then public policy and then history, and then us as folklorists going into these small towns and having conversations, having these charrettes. Such a loaded. It's such a hipster word now, but, like, back there.

1:14:58

I don't know that word.

1:15:00

It's like getting a bunch of people together and, like, it's just like an idea. Just like throwing everything out there, like, what's on your mind? Let's hear about your ideas for this. Like, your town square. Like, what. What are your concerns? What is like, you know, putting post it stuff on the wall and writing shit. Like, creating. Like, this is like getting a bunch of people together and getting their ideas all at once, and then constructing some kind of program or plan out of that. So we did these throughout, like, rural Louisiana. Like, going into a town that's like, they want to kind of change direction. They want to reinvigorate their economy. They want to become a more attractive space for young families, whatever it is that they're looking for, and helping them create a plan to do it right.

1:15:48

And that means understanding limitations of infrastructure, resources, but also understanding the culture and the people there and what matters to them and all these things. So fast forward in this work, I took some, you know, some of what I had gotten there to remind me, you can't be prescriptive with. With these spaces and these people. Like, that's not. And I feel like that's one of the things that has crippled nonprofits for so long and has made the work so much harder, is that you get a lot of well intentioned, smart people together who think they know better than the people they're serving, and they're gonna like, we're gonna save you, the white saviors here. We're gonna save you and make everything.

1:16:31

We know it's best for you.

1:16:33

But we. We get prescriptive. We tell people that we know more than they do, you know, and that was a good lesson. And then I went to work Foxfire, and that was one of the first times I got to really be a folklorist. And I was not the best executive director for Foxfire, though, because I was drawn so much to the programming. I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the museum, or I wanted to be in the field. I wanted to be doing that work. I didn't want to be doing administrative executive work, that space, which. And then, like, in retrospect, though, I wonder if that's not true for a lot of people who come from our background, who try to serve in some capacity with an artist, traditional arts organization.

1:17:30

Yeah.

1:17:30

Because we're. It's hard not to get drawn into that, to the, like, into the program development side of it versus maintaining the organization side of it. When I left Fox fire, I freelanced for, like, two years with the American Folklore Society, helped them with different things, new website, new brand, helped facilitate that, and then did some communications work, and then the annual meeting work. And then it was time for me to find full time job again. And this one just kind of fell in my lap. Somebody sent it to me and said, hey, this job is open. You might want to check it out. Now, I have no connection to the hispanic community. I have no background in latin studies. I, you know, my fluency is in French. I went to a francophone university. No Spanish for me there. Took French in high school.

1:18:38

You know, it's like, just. And then. But studying what the organization was doing and trying to achieve. Achieve. I felt that I could help them from that administrative standpoint, but then also, I was somebody who was culturally empathetic enough to also understand when to step back from a conversation or to really put my. My resources and my experience and my knowledge into improving the resources for these groups and giving them the tools they need to meet whatever goals that they have. And I'm a good grant writer. I think, you know, nobody gets into nonprofit work for this long without having written some grants. And I think, but as, just as an academic, I'm a good writer.

1:19:41

So in this job, what I have found is that without the distraction of all the folk and traditional art stuff, I can really focus on the administrative aspects of it. And I become. I consider my position here as service to my staff and then to the clients that they are serving. So my job is to go out and find the resources that my staff needs to improve, you know, the lives of the people that we work with, but then also to leverage my platform, my privilege as an academic, as a white cisgendered dude, to be out in the public and be an advocate for that work and advocate for those. Those communities that we serve. And it suited me.

1:20:44

And I thought, you know, but I keep finding myself, you know, things that I've learned doing folklore work, things that I've skills that I've gained over the years through folklore, because that one of the things about folklore is we have to know how to do everything. We got to have built websites. We got to know how to do podcasts. We got to know how to record shit. We got to know how to, like, splice video together. We got to know how to work on a computer. We got. Yeah, we're great liaisons. We're great facilitators. I think, you know, one of the things that I pride myself on is creating collaborations with other nonprofits in our community to better serve the people that we are all working with. Really good at that.

1:21:36

And frankly, the nonprofit space needs more of that, because, again, so oftentimes, these things are developed from a prescriptive standpoint is even. Even now, as much as people have talked about, like, you know, stakeholder input, and we've got it, you know, it's just not being done. And, you know, nonprofits, especially the larger ones, will come into a space and they'll just elbow their way in and start creating programs that are dead in two years because nobody's taking part of it, because nobody asked for it, and they don't. That it's not what they need.

1:22:15

Yeah. So, but even outside of the nonprofit world, you know, the thing that is pressing in my mind right now, because I'm in Texas, and our education system seems to be falling apart, you know, that the legislators that create the education programs, it is prescriptive. They don't ask educators, the teachers, what is necessary for their schools, what they need to feel supported, to give a better education to children. You know, even being that person between, you know, government agencies and, you know, their programs that they fund, it seems like it would be a great position for folklorists.

1:23:07

Yeah. That I feel like that's. Is harder to break into, though. You're not wrong. I think. I think that. I think the whole world could benefit from a folklorist. But when I think about places where I know we can get in and, you know, I'm thinking about this, too, from a standpoint of, like, how do we grow the discipline? And the only way we can grow the discipline is if there's more places for people to go. Once they finish their degrees, they finish their training, they have, there has to be jobs in place. And I think creating folklore or educating folklorists who are more marketable and saleable outside and beyond the folk and traditional arts is key. And beyond academia, there's only so many professorships. There's only so many, you know, of those jobs around. And unfortunately, the funding is decreasing in those areas.

1:24:08

Right. The hardest thing I've ever had to do is write grants for folk and traditional arts because there's so few, and they're so competitive here. I talked to people about the hierarchy of giving, charitable giving around food, security, children, animals, is way up here. It becomes, you know, it's. And then, but then you can find ways of like, how do you introduce folk and traditional arts through the, through a mechanism like this? We hold a annual, we started this two years ago. We're in our third year now, annual hispanic heritage month kickoff festival up here in western North Carolina called Carnival.

1:24:56

And we're using it as a way of integrating and introducing the hispanic community with the anglo community that's here in a way that centers the hispanic community, elevates them as this valuable, interesting, alive culture that is changing the landscape of Appalachia in really wonderful ways and providing them a space to celebrate that. And that's open enough, though, to the public that other people from outside can come in and enjoy it with them and becomes a celebration around that and it helps to cross those barriers and expand those chasms of difference, because culture and where we intersect with people and really start to become appreciative of who they are as individuals starts a lot with folklore. I wrote the. Did a revised edition of the Fox Fire Book of Appalachian Cookery that was published in 2019.

1:26:08

And in my introduction, I said that food Ways is the gateway drug into folklore. And you think about all the different, like, you know, what's your first interaction with hispanic culture? Oftentimes, it's. It's through food. It's a mexican restaurant you might go to a lot of times, our first interactions with any culture, greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, is through food, right? And so. And then it becomes also about art, right? Like, oh, wow, dance performance. So we create. We did this festival because we wanted to, because, honestly, a lot of times, the hispanic communities in this part of western North Carolina, they are just the labor. They are the people who are doing the landscaping. They are the people who are working in the resorts, you know, cleaning the linens, cooking the food, doing that thing. But. And that's how they're perceived.

1:27:16

Until you see them outside of that context, being themselves and being who they are, that's kind of what we're hoping. You know, we've been trying to do with these festivals, and it's been really great. I think we're transforming perceptions, and I think that's. That helps us as an organization to increase empathy. So raising that empathy, raising concern, compassion around these individuals helps us to develop strategy, raise money, and to get the resources we need to address things like domestic violence, trafficking, the exploitation of labor, housing, lack of housing, lack of access to healthy foods. Those are all the things that these individuals are facing up here. We can. We grow, you know, awareness around those issues and help. And help find, you know, help.

1:28:33

Well, we're running long on time, so let me just ask you, is there something that we've missed that you feel like we need to talk about?

1:28:44

I do want to, you know, kind of end on not really a challenge, but certainly, you know, inviting people to the conversation around. What other spaces can folklorist contribute to, you know, to the world, to the community, to wherever they are, beyond, you know, things that are traditionally where we silo, folklore, folk and traditional arts, public folklore, academics, like, let's. Let's get people out of these silos and start thinking about how, you know, our intellectual and experiential training really does position us in a unique space for, I think, contributing a great deal, especially in spaces where people are vulnerable, at risk.

1:29:51

Those folks need strong advocates and people who really can't understand how to, you know, best understand the needs of those folks because we know how to listen, we know how to center and to empower people to share and communicate their experiences and their needs. I think we do a really great job of that. So I'd like to invite people like, we're. We haven't got an official word yet, but we're trying to convene a group, myself and Meredith McGriff, at this year's AFS conference in Albuquerque, around this conversation of how folklorist, what they bring to the table for, you know, human essential services, nonprofits, and nonprofits in general, outside of folk and traditional arts. So hopefully, once we get official word that's been approved, you'll see it on the, you know, on the schedule at AFS this year.

1:30:51

But also just like, you know, continue those conversations amongst yourselves, especially younger generation of folklorists who are coming up through graduate school now and who are thinking about your future and what that means. I'm so proud of a lot of our younger folklorists because they do have that strong advocacy, compassion perspective on the world, and they're fighting for change around areas of social justice at all different categories, food justice, food security, you know, gender security, LGBTQIA rights, all those different things. Like, I want to see that continue and, you know, tell them that you have the opportunity to carry your folklore self into those spaces and really do something wonderful and contribute a great deal to how we can better serve of those communities.

1:31:52

So, yeah, I hope those conversations can continue, and I look forward to maybe seeing some folks in Albuquerque or even online in future engagements like this.

1:32:05

Well, I'm sure people will take up that challenge, but that sounds like a worthwhile mission to accept.

1:32:16

Yeah.

1:32:16

Thank you. So, thank you so much, TJ, for joining us today.

1:32:21

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Sorry about the technological, technical difficulties.

1:32:29

It happens. It happens. You know, technology, I'm always saying it's a blessing that we're able to have these conversations, you know, far states away. I've had conversations with people india, you know, across the ocean. But then there's also times when technology, you know, gives us trouble, and so we always want it to work. Exactly right. But it. It doesn't always work how we. We expect it to every single time.

1:32:58

It's all good. It's all good. Thank you for this and look forward to seeing how it. How it turns out.

1:33:03

Yeah. And thank you, folksy folks, for listening to our Father's Day episode, all about fathers and families and how folklore is entwined in fatherhood and family. All the links that we talked about today will be listed on our fabric of folklore podcast on our website, www.fabricafolklore.com. You can find all the links there in the show notes we want to know and hear from you. What are your Father's Day traditions? What traditions are you passing on to your children that are different the generation before you? We love to continue the conversation via social media. We have a Facebook group where we have that conversation and a Facebook page where we talk directly about what we spoke about on the show. We're also on YouTube.

1:33:55

The full episodes are aired on YouTube as well, so if you want to see us in person, you can go to the YouTube channel and watch in person on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Not quite as heavily and like I said before, please subscribe. Consider writing a review and sharing with your best friend. If you have an episode that touches your heart, make sure you send that message to someone. If you have someone that is nonprofit, send this episode to them and tell them about how folklorists should be your top pick. Pick for who you hire. So thanks so much for listening and unraveling the mysteries of folklore on fabric of folklore. Once again, my name is Vanessa Y. Rogers and until next time, keep the folk alive.