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Collect and Preserve your Family's Folklore and Foodways Online
Every family has a wealth of stories and traditions that symbolize who they are, whether recent immigrants or long-settled local families. (Re)Telling Coming-to-America stories or surviving hard times, living through historical events, how you celebrate large and small occasions throughout a lifetime—even tales of pets or songs or nonsense words and “Black Sheep”—all make up a family’s unique folklore. Then there’s recipes unique to each family, often lovingly handed down, usually not written. Learn how to collect and create perhaps the first tangible record of your family lore where none exists except in memory. Or add to accounts you already have. How did you family come to live where you live today? What stories are passed on about forebears, occupations, residences, nicknames, superstitions, home remedies, rituals, and seasonal celebrations religious and secular? This talk will give you some basics for collecting and preserving your family lore in various ways and formats, and look at how the family story, the community history, and the significant events of humanity are intertwined and experienced by individuals and their kith and kin. Your descendants will love you for collecting it and passing it on.
Presenter: Millie Rahn, folklorist; curator, folklife area, Lowell Folk festival and regional festivals; lecturer, Boston University & Lasell University; ethnographer in eastern New England for regional arts/cultural organizations & municipalities
This program is provided by a grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and is part of our At the Table In the Garden series of programming.
- Date:
- Thursday, March 17, 2022
- Time:
- 6:30pm - 7:30pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- Virtual
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
- Audience:
- Adults
- Categories:
- Adult event At the Table event