Extra Credit

This is in regard to the extra credit assignment. I am choosing to do my extra credit on a documentary film that I have watched. The film was extremely interesting and fortunately enough pertains to folklore. This film was based on a community that lives on an island off one if the Latin countries. This community is more so a tribe. This tribe is a very strict and old tribe. The tribe believes that whales once walked the earth and so they pray to the whales, like some people pray to god. Also this tribe is very strict with war and fighting. No woman can become a warrior what so ever. Once a girl is born she is thought of as in-superior. The woman is to stay in the house and cook and clean. Also the woman can not go to class/school with the boys, nor can the sit in front of the male. The female must always sit behind the male, as a sign of respect. Twice a year this tribe has a festival to praise the return of the whale king. They cook food and everyone comes together. The children learn the native dance and they perform it at the festival. Late at night fires are started and the tribe sings and dances all night around the fire praising the return of the whale. At the end of the documentary the tribe found out that the main character, the little girl was the chosen warrior and was the only one that could revive the tribe, due to the fact that this tribe and this way of life was fading out and slowly diminishing. This was a very interesting documentary and I learned a little bit about another way of life.

This is in response to the extra credit on a documentary film.

Chapter Seven Reflection Question

After a lot of thought I came up with a place that I would like to do my fieldwork, if I was a folklorist. My freshman year I had taken another folklore class and in this class we had a guest speaker, who talk up his fieldwork in the hills of North and South Carolina. I loved listening to all of his stories and wished that I could have had more time asking him questions and picking his brain. To me the mountains of the Carolina’s and the life style seem very interesting.

In the Carolina’s there is so much history that has occurred there. There is so much to visit and learn about and I would love to be apart of it. What I would love to study most, is the way of life of a Tar Heel, and the life style of a Carolinian. A way that I would try to accomplish this study, is I would try and find a family member or somebody I know who lives in one of the Carolina’s. I would then stay with them for a while and travel the country side. I would drive and stop at random spots and do my research. I would research the foods they eat, the music they listen to. I would study the person/family’s daily routine. I would study the jobs and task they perform and after they were done with their work, I would then study what they do for entertainment. If possible I would stay a couple days with these random individuals and submerge myself into their life. I would try and get the most out of my experience as possible. I would like to spend three to six months studying and doing my fieldwork. I would try getting in as many individuals and families as I could. I would then compare there way of life to my way life, to see the differences.

The reason that I feel this would be worth doing, is to inform all the other people studying this topic, the necessary information. People could use my experiences to gather the proper information that they need. Also maybe my information and knowledge could fuel someone else simple curiosity. Ultimately the main reason this would be worth doing, is to satisfy my own curiosity.

This is in response to the chapter seven reflection question.

Chapter Six reflection question

I would have to say that I really enjoyed this chapter. Chapter six talks about several topics that is very important. Also each topic discussed in this chapter was extremely enjoyable to read and learn about. I have to admit that I learned some new information from this chapter, as well old knowledge re-surfacing. One of my favorite topics in this chapter was the topic of structuralism.

When reading about structuralism I pick up on some information that I have taken for granted. In the chapter it talks about how important structure is. This is true when you think about a story with no structure. We all have that friend who can not tell a story to save his life. He/ she tries to tell a story but keep going back to add more details, which he or she forgot earlier and the story just is not enjoyable to listen to. A good story teller has structure and can entertain his or her listeners. This goes the same for Jokes. When you tell a joke or listen to a joke you realize the importance of structure. For a joke to be funny there has to be a set up and a punch line. We have all told or heard a joke that was not funny due to the fact that there was no punch line. The book gives an example of a knock knock joke. In order for a knock, knock joke to work, there must be a knocker and a cooperative knockee. This is an example of a structured knock, knock joke. An example that I felt was important in this chapter, is when the author tells the story of “Sleeping Beauty” or “Snow White”. There are several stories and fairy tales that are similar and follow the same plot. With out the proper structure we would not be able to decipher between all the similar fairy tales out there.

After reading this chapter I learned how important it is to have structure. With out structure stories, riddles, jokes, etc. just do not make sense. With using the proper structure, you have a better chance of being funny, or telling a much better story. This essay is in regards to the Chapter Six reflection question.

Fifth Encounter project

In my fifth encounter project I chose architecture. While thinking about what architecture I should write about, I remembered my sister who had just moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I gave her a call and asked her about the region and what she could tell me about her area. She started to talk about the architecture outside the city and how much I would love it. Supposively outside the city there is a lot of old architecture. Lately she said that she has spent several weekends up in Charleston, South Carolina. She talked about the several old homes that were built over a hundred years ago. She told me that most of these homes are no longer homes, but are now museums and preserved for history. She mentioned that throughout the area the land is preserved and can no longer build on the area, in hopes to preserve the history of the land. One way that they can build on the land is if they build the architecture the same ways as the building were, over a hundred years ago. My sister said that you could walk through these towns and see old civil war monuments and tons of history that has occurred in this state. She talked about how beautiful the state is.

My sister also talked about the country side of South Carolina. She mentioned as you drive through South Carolina you see all the old homes. As your driving through the mountains of the Carolina’s you see a home like mentioned in our lecture (shot gun homes). Also like mentioned in our lecture, a lot of these homes sell items outside in front of their homes, items such as pots, rugs, wood working items, etc. One thing that I am excited about is for Christmas I am going to South Carolina to visit my sister and I will be able to see the architecture for myself. This article is in regards to my fifth encounter assignment.

Chapter Five reflection question

Reading chapter five gave me a lot more insight to performance. I never have put a lot of deep thought into this topic. After reading the chapter I never considered myself a performer. According to the chapter, I technically perform several times a day. I was extremely interested learning that when I have a conversation with a friend I’m performing in front of them. Also a big performance in my life is what I do several times a day. When I got to wrestling practice or a wrestling tournament I’m performing In front of thousands. I guess I always realized I was performing, but never really considered it performing. Several times a weekend, when I wrestle like five matches, I am wrestling my opponent in front of a bunch of people. On page 137 the chapter talks about context, “The physical setting and social situation in which members of folk groups share folklore, as well as the relationship among audience members and performers”, which is what take place with me every weekend. Every weekend I perform in front of my audience, who for the most part also wrestle, wrestled, or in some way has been submerged in wrestling in one form or another. Also when I practice everyday, I am performing in front my fellow wrestlers, coaching staff, trainers, and academic staff. Anyone who comes into that room has some relationship with wrestling.

What this chapter did was directed my thinking from the everyday performances that we think of such as, movies, concerts, theater, and plays. I started to think of all the things that could be considered performance and I learned from the book, everyday conversation is performance. Then I thought of all the conversations I have had as well, as answering questions in class, or speaking in public, as well as speaking in front of my team. I then thought of some more performance such as, all the sports that I watch. I never considered my self watching performances every Saturday and Sunday, when I watch my football. This chapter got me thinking on a deeper level about performance.

Chapter Four reflection question

This chapter reflection was a little difficult for me. I could not think of a ritual for my family that we have practiced several times. After reading the chapter I got some more insight and ideas of some rituals that I have been through and my family has performed. The ritual that I have performed is a common ritual practiced in the United States. My ritual was a rite of passage. When someone turns eighteen in my family that is a right of passage and many ceremonial things are performed. For instance our family usually throws a big party for the member of the family who is turning eighteen. Like mentioned in the book, there are foods that are introduced for such a ceremony. The parent of the one’s birthday makes a huge birthday cake for the birthday child. Along with a cake the birthday child gets a birthday breakfast and a dinner of their choice. The parent makes the new adult a meal of their likings. As for myself I ate a big breakfast and had ribs, potatoes, corn, and a chocolate cake. The funny thing with me is I have a twin so we got two cakes and two dinners. Also the best about becoming an adult in my family is being able to sit at the table with the adults. I have such a huge family and when I am able to sit at the adult table, is when I truly felt like an adult. Also mentioned in the chapter was with this rite of passage comes three stages, “separation, transition, and reincorporation”. For my separation was college. Since I turned eighteen in the summer, I went of to college shortly after my birthday. While at college I made the transition into an adult, and I felt like my reincorporation was when I would go home from college. I would have adult conversation and felt like I was truly one of the adults. After thinking about rituals that I have performed in my life, I could only come up with a lot of what the books states as “rites of passage”. Other wise this was the largest ritual that I could think of. This entry is a response to my chapter four question.

3rd encounter project

I was unable to attend a live concert like suggested in the general guidelines. What I did do though is last weekend I got a new vehicle, with that vehicle XM radio came with it. I started going through all the stations and without lying to you I found two of my favorite stations. One of my favorites is the Bluegrass channel. There are not a lot of words being said, but instead you listen to a lot of calming instruments. My top favorite station is the Folk station. Everyone time someone gets into the car I have to change it, because no one else likes it, but when it’s just me in the car I never change the channel. I feel that the folk music is very relaxing. I love listening to all the instruments that other wise I usually would not hear in normal American music (aka rap, country, rock, etc.). I also feel that the folk music is very simple. When you listen to the words it is really easy to hear understand what they are singing about. To me the music sounds like people are having a party in their backyard and there are no computers, speaker, micro-phones, etc. It feels like it is a group of people sitting around singing and playing their instruments and having a good time. With the folk music I can hear everything that is going on, unlike the normal music I listen to, that is over done and a lot of the music and lyrics are drowned out by technology. When listening to this music I feel like I’m in the mountains of the Carolina’s having a cook out and relaxing. It is just really relaxing and calming music to me. I was really excited when I found this station and it is programmed as my number one setting. Also what I realized is with the folk music, there isn’t that great of singing voices, but no one cares. It sounds like their just telling a story of their life with adding musical instruments that I’m not normally use to. I was listening the other day and following the story of the song, and the song was simply about farming the land. The song was about the average day of the farmer. The singer talked about getting up early working the land. He talked about his kids, wife, and animals. That was simply it. I guess what I really get out of this music is it simple, nothing complex about it. This writing is regard to my third encounter project.

Chapter three reflection

While wondering what I was going to write about, I came to the conclusion that I sound like the stereotypical athlete. All of my writings have been somehow related to my sport. Once again though this reflection is going to deal with wrestling, sadly enough wrestling is my life, and pretty much all I do. With wrestling there are a lot of traditions that we try to keep a live and a lot of traditions that we create and hope that they continue on, through out the years. Also there are traditions that we start and haven’t been carried on. One of our wrestling team’s longest standing traditions is the annual Hog Roast. Every year since the early 90’s our team has put on a Hog Roast in late April. The hog roast is put on to celebrate a long hard wrestling season. At this time our season is over and we can relax for a little while. We really go all out for this party. We get T-shirts made for the event, glasses. We also try to set the record each year for roasting the largest pig. It is our wrestling team’s largest party every year and pretty well known through out IU.

A tradition that we started but didn’t catch and eventually died off and is only talked about was created by my class in the dorms. We were a close class and we created this group called “Team Unity”. We would dare each other to do extreme things and if one would accomplish the dare they were added to team unity. We actually created a face book group and everything for it. Eventually we got made fun of for making it and the tradition started and ended with us. Even though one failed there has been more that I’m sure will continue on.

Since I have been here at IU I have participated in several wrestling traditions each. When I was a freshman the Frank Sinatra party was created and has still been carried on. Also freshman induction party is still being carried on. This one consists of another party where the entire freshmen each have to bring at least five friends to the party. This helps them get out and socialize with others and it helps give wrestling a good name. Also the Annual Hog Roast party I have attended every year. IU wrestling has had and have several traditions.

2nd peer comment

I looked at several of my classmates blogs. I was really searching for a good joke, that someone in our class had written about in one of their encounter projects. I finally ran across a good one that I got a kick out of. It was from folkamania and he had written about a joke he heard from one of his friends. Folkamania had mention that he is a Notre Dame and is considered an honorary irish man. He felt that the joke he had heard was mabe a little more funny to him, due to the fact that it kind of hit home for him. As Notre Dame fan, the joke talked about and Irish man and heavy drinking, which im guessing may have hit home for Folkamania. I would also have to agree with folkamania asessement, I also believe it is funny, because of the stereotype of Irish and their heavy drinking. Again I would like to say that this was a good joke and I used several times after reading it.

Second Encounter Project "Restaurant Review"

Well this happen to come in handy this for this weeks encounter project. As you already know I am a wrestler and we are currently starting our wrestling season. Well this means that I must give up the booze, alcohol, late night “fourth meal”, frozen foods, and many more of the enjoyable things that I like to eat and drink. I recently started my diet a week ago to start getting down to my wrestling weight class. Later in this past week I started feeling low on energy and I knew it was because of my calorie intake. Due to the way I was feeling I asked my athletic trainer what he thought that I should be eating. He had mentioned that I should try eating sushi, and then my coach had agreed with him. Well I thought to myself, I should try it, since I have never ate sushi before. Also I had remembered that you had mentioned people writing about their first encounter with sushi, because of these writing. I gathered up some teammates and we gave sushi a try last Thursday night. A bunch of us went to the sushi bar on tenth and the by-bass on 45/46. Walking into the sushi bar I was really excited. This place, being in a strange location, was actually very nice inside. We were fortunate enough to get a room to our selves, which I hear is very difficult at this place. Once we got in there and seated I soon realized this isn’t like your ordinary restaurant. First off I could not understand our waitress and I do believe that she didn’t even speak English. Second their menus are really cool. You actually mark down with pencil on the menu what you want to eat and they take your order that way. One thing that I forgot to mention is due to the fact none of us knew what to order we needed help ordering, and our waitress couldn’t help us since she didn’t speak English, and we couldn’t understand her. Well finally we figured out how to order and our food came. To my surprise the food was a lot better tasting then it looked? The food didn’t look that appetizing. I thought I was going to have a problem eating the sushi, but I had no problem at all. I actually ate some of my teammates and ended up ordering some to go. Needless to say I do not know if it gave me more energy, but I do know that I will be eating sushi more often. I am really glad that I came out of my box and finally gave sushi a chance, because to my surprise it was very enjoyable. This post is in reference to my second encounter project about one of my recent restaurant reviews.

Chapter two reflection

As mentioned in chapter two most people are affiliated with a folk group with work members. Well I feel this is true and my story is no different. My folk group is my wrestling team. We work with each other everyday for eight months and even after season is over were still hanging out with each other. As individuals our make up is so similar. We are so closely alike. Our wrestling team is like a huge family and in reality I see my wrestling family way more then I actually see my own family. We all hang out with each other everyday we got to parties together, we go and see each others families together, we spend weekends in hotel rooms cutting weight and wrestling eight months out of the year. We go out to eat with each other; we all go to the movies or bowling together. We will be walking around and people will say “well you must be a wrestler” and when we ask how do you know? The answer with either “you just look like a wrestler” or “you walk like a wrestler”, which must mean that we must all look alike and we must all walk alike. Outside of my primary folk group I have other smaller folk groups, some that I associate with still and some that I don’t associate with anymore. Other folk groups that I am involved with are of course my family, which is my parents, siblings, grandparent, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am extremely close with my family. Other groups consist of my friend back in Michigan, that I try to remain close with, but tend to be difficult going to school so far away now. Also my friends back home just so happen to be former wrestling team members. These are the groups that I associate with and belong to. "This blog entry is my response to Chapter two reflection question".

1st Encounter Project "Joke"

Let me tell you a little background about where I heard this Joke from. On my Mom side of the family, my grandma created a family website. The entire family gets on the website several times a day. They post on the site pictures of the grandchildren and themselves. They also post comments about new thing in their family’s life, or just plain non-sense. Another thing is 95% of my family lives in Michigan and that is where I am from also. Well if you’re up to date on college football then you know that Michigan took a loss, which is considered the worst loss in college football history. The majority of my family is not considered Michigan fan, but fans of other Michigan team, or other States teams. Moving on, I have one uncle is a tremendous U of M fan (die hard), so on my family’s site everyone has been making fun of University of Michigan, by telling several jokes. My favorite joke of them all was the last one that my Uncle said that went like this, “How many batteries does it take to shock a Wolverine? 1-AA.” The meaning of the joke means it only took one double “A” football team to beat and shock the University of Michigan Wolverines. As far as I know this is a brand new joke. This is the first time I have ever heard this joke. But the heckling of a sports team is far from a new accurance. Heckling of ones favorite sports team is a tradition that has been practiced since the beginning of sports. Sports are meant to be very competitive, it’s the nature of the subject, so making fun of your rival team is typical and natural. Also competition in my family runs crazy. Every one of my mom’s sisters and brothers played high school sports and some of them played sports in college. My moms brothers still play on sports league, and now the siblings are always competing against each other, which is why this joke is so funny to me. On my family’s site my family just keeps going back and forth getting their digs on each other. "This blog entry is my response to the 1^st encounter project about a joke that is circulating in my life currently.

Chapter One Reflection Question

After a while of careful thinking, I came up with a conclusion of what my folklore consist of. I felt it was extremely fitting to talk about my wrestling folk life. I have been wrestling for the last sixteen years of my life, and currently wrestle varsity for the University of Indiana. Therefore my folklore takes place in the wrestling room. My community is made up of fellow wrestlers and athletes. Also in my community are coaches and wrestling junkies. Every where I go there always seems to be at least one other wrestler there. If I go to a party on campus, it is either a wrestling party, or I go to a party with a bunch of wrestlers. When I go to family reunions or party, wrestling is the topic at hand. Another part of my folklore is what I wear as a wrestler. During competition, I wear something that you don’t see in your everyday life. We wear different types of shoes, our outfits consist of a singlet, and we wear headgear on our heads. Also my eating habits are completely different from not only the rest of the community, but other athletes. As a wrestler we will go a couple days on a glass of water or two, while working out several times a day. We will go days without eating, and we aim to lose more weight then we naturally should. As a wrestler my everyday life is extremely different from the norm. I wake up at 5:30am and work out for an hour, go home and shower and get ready for classes. Go to classes all day, and then go to practice at 3:00pm. Then I leave the wrestling room around 6:00pm and get some dinner and do some homework. Then I go back into the wrestling room at 10:00pm and cut weight. After that I go home and go to bed, and get ready to do it all over again the next day. As you can tell I have my own folklore or way of life. This is the way I live, which is obviously way different from the average population. "This blog entry is my response to the reflection question to chapter one".