Tag Archives: Folklore

The digital People’s Court

Posted on by
Reply

Banner, Internet Court of Lies.

Robert Thibadeau wants to jail all of the lies floating around on the Internet. To accomplish this lofty goal, the retired Carnegie Mellon University professor is using an old Moose lodge in a Pittsburgh suburb as a virtual courtroom where he runs the Internet Court of Lies.

Thibadeau’s idiosyncratic approach to Internet truth dismisses decades of scholarship on lies and lying. Instead, he has concocted a dubious definition of “lies” and an even more questionable approach to identifying and mitigating digital dishonesty. I first noticed his “courtroom” while driving through Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, about six miles north of downtown Pittsburgh on the Allegheny River. The banners and other items affixed to the former Moose lodge piqued my curiosity. I bought a copy of Thibadeau’s self-published book, How to Recover Your Lies (Privust LLC, 2019), and then I asked him for an interview.

After a two-hour Zoom conversation, multiple follow-up emails, and communications with a linguist who literally wrote the book on lies and lying, I cobbled together a two-part blog post for the New Directions in Folklore blog. Read about the Internet Court of Lies here:

The Internet Court of Lies: A Digital People’s Court? (Part 1)
and
The Internet Court of Lies – Part 2

The Internet Court of Lies is the first thing people see as they enter Sharpsburg, Pa., from the south.

© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein

 

 

Historic Preservation and Folklore: Dismantling Preservation’s Diversity Deficit

Posted on by
Reply

Historic Preservation and Folklore: Dismantling Preservation’s Diversity Deficit
By David S. Rotenstein
Panel, Historic Preservation and Public Folklore: Successes, Challenges,
and Failures in Responding to Community
American Folklore Society 2019 Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland
October 17, 2019

INTRODUCTION

I began exploring displacement, gentrification, and erasure eight years ago this weekend. My unanticipated trip down this research road began when I spent all of Wednesday October 19, 2011, documenting the demolition of a small home in Decatur, Georgia. That led me to inquire about the property’s history. What I learned there led to questions about the neighborhood’s housing history and where the suburban neighborhood’s African American residents were going. Those queries moved me to ask how history and historic preservation are produced in that neighborhood; in the city of Decatur; and, in comparable suburbs throughout North America.[1]

Along the way, through two states and the District of Columbia, and nearly 200 interviews later, I met lots of people whose families have called Decatur, Silver Spring, Maryland, and Washington home for generations. I befriended people like Veronica, Charlotte, Patricia, Harvey, and Elmoria who navigate spaces where their stories have been erased and marginalized. They are places where the histories of white supremacists have been memorialized in commemorative landscapes and historic preservation plans. My friends will die in these places never knowing what it is like to be fully part of the communities they call home. Continue reading →

The kernel of truth in Trayon White’s conspiracy theories

Posted on by
Reply

Washingtonians lay claim to an urban legend called “The Plan.” It’s a conspiracy theory-rumor-urban legend that has circulated among the District’s African American residents for decades. Basically, it’s a belief that whites are conspiring to push blacks out of power and out of Washington. Mostly it’s a group of faceless, nameless generic whites. The conspiracy theories repeated earlier this spring by Ward 8 DC Councilmember Trayon White, however, combine elements of The Plan with even older and more widespread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews dominating global markets, governments, and the media.

This narrative has lots of variants, all of them involving some secret cabal of white folks hellbent on whitening the Chocolate City. Like all urban legends and rumors, there are kernels of truth to be found embedded in The Plan. With Washington’s demographic shifts and gentrification over the past two decades, many Washington blacks see The Plan coming to fruition.

My first article for the new folklore blog published by New Directions in Folklore tackles Councilmember White’s comments and the context out of which they emerged. The kernel of truth in White’s conspiracy theory narratives lies in the decades during which Washington area Jewish businessmen wielded an invisible hand in discriminatory housing practices that resulted in generations of concentrated poverty, barriers to accumulating wealth, poor healthcare, and unequal educational opportunities.

The Rothschild family around which the conspiracy theories White recounted may not have been involved in Washington-area businesses but we had our own Rothschilds. Their names were Caffritz, Eig, Freenman, Kay, and Gudelsky.

Read THE PLAN, THE ROTHSCHILDS, AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

Going Historical, Going Folk: The Philadelphia Folk Festival Comes of Age

Posted on by
Reply

The copy of my article for the 2010 Philadelphia Folk Festival Program Book arrived via email. It’s a shame I couldn’t make it up to see the festival last month. The Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folksong Society are historic institutions. Drawing on 25 years working in history and academic training in folklore, I can say without equivocation that the festival and its parent organization, the Folksong Society, are indeed historic. They easily pass the time test and both have had profound impacts on musicians, music lovers, folklorists, and communities throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania. Continue reading →

Silver Spring Drum Circle: Starting the Groove

Posted on by
1

August 28, 2010

Since July 2010, when the Silver Spring Civic Building and Veterans Plaza opened, a drum circle has gathered Saturday evenings. I wanted to see how the drum circle forms each week so I arrived at 6:30 PM to see how it comes together. Performances are complex social events. The activities leading up to the actual event can be as significant as the music or drama performed during the performance. With that in mind I tried to catch how the Silver Spring drum circle comes together as a performance. This video is compiled from clips I shot while watching the drummers and their audience gather between 7:00 and 8:20 PM in Veterans Plaza.

Continue reading →

Unmaking Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Updated)

Posted on by
9

In 2006 Montgomery County, Maryland, received international attention for purchasing a 19th century farmhouse that oral tradition suggested was the original “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The county paid $1 million for a little over an acre in suburban North Bethesda. Now, four years later the county is holding community stakeholder meetings to map out the future of what officials are now calling The Josiah Henson Site. I recall the excitement surrounding the announcement that the legendary material link to American literary and social history would be “saved” from land hungry developers gobbling up Montgomery County real estate. Continue reading →

Philly Folk Festival Season

Posted on by
6

Each summer Google directs dozens of visitors looking for information on the history of the annual Philadelphia Folk Festival. This year’s festival runs from August 20 through the 21st and the hits to my site are already picking up. Why is Google sending folks to my Web site? Because in the 1990s I covered folk music for the Philadelphia Inquirer and in advance of the 1992 festival I wrote a Sunday feature on the festival’s history and the folks behind it: The Philadelphia Folksong Society. I was finishing up my coursework at Penn at the time and I just happened to be enrolled in the now-defunct doctoral program in Folklore and Folklife. I also happened to be gearing up for the required FOLK 606: History of Folklore Studies class taught by the inimitable Dan Ben-Amos and I decided to use some of the reporting I did for the Inquirer article for one of my class papers. Since my time at Penn coincided with my early years writing about music I got to use interviews with folks like BB King and others as source material for term papers. Now that was cool.

For the Folk Festival story (and subsequent paper) I interviewed legendary Philly radio personality Gene Shay and many of the festival’s founders. I also interviewed Irish musician (and fellow Penn folklorist) Mick Moloney as well as George Britton (who died recently). Britton was a fun interview. Near the end of our interview he sang the chorus of a tune he wrote about the festival. He called the song, “Barefoot, Bearded and Bedraggled”:

I’m barefoot, bearded and bedraggled
Stoned and drunk as I can be
I’m the counterculture and I’m all folked up
This here’s my cry of liberty. Continue reading →