Tangible and Intangible History

Sarah Umstot

April 1^st, 2010 piece

                I sat at my camp this fine spring evening while the cool air settled in and the dew began to fall. My small fire crackled and echoed off the bank and my puppy lay on a knoll just a bit away from me with a bone. As the light settled around me I reflected on the work of the evening — some garden work, some planting and the never ending game of pick-‘em-up-sticks that I play with the trees that surround the camp. It seems as though in that time and place cultural policy are further from me than the stars in the sky. But just as the ash from my fire flies up and away on the breeze, it and the weight of the ever present policy began to land on my thoughts and my little piece of ground.

                A quote from this weeks reading has remained prominent in my mind. Dyen says of the streets of Pittsburgh “In place of immersion in daily folklife, we now have heritage museums, restored buildings, and neighborhood historic districts that mark where daily folk culture used * to live” (p. 2, *emphasis added). This brings to the forefront, for me, the struggle of cultural sustainability and the possibilities of cultural tourism and preservations versus continuation and sustainability of folklife, folkways and folk traditions. The idea in our field is to take those things that seem to be the most basic, simple and vital to the way of life in a given area and to mold ways for them to last, like adding wood to the fire before it burns out.