Tag Archives: summer

Windsor/Detroit Friendship Festival

Context:

The informant grew up near Windsor, Ontario in Canada which was right across the US border from Detroit, Michigan. Since the United States celebrates Independence Day on July 4th and Canada celebrates Canada Day on July 1st, the two towns would join to celebrate together at some point over the long holiday weekend.

Main Piece:

“Detroit and Windsor would do this thing, The Friendship Festival, because it was international friendship. And so they would have shared fireworks between, and they would compromise, do, like, whatever day worked out best over the long weekend, but, you know, sometimes it would be on my birthday, which was July 3rd, so it was especially great to go to Windsor and they’d have fireworks for my birthday.”

Analysis:

These two cities were so close to each other and both celebrate a major holiday on the same weekend, so it makes sense that they would join forces. Some other compounding factors include the fact that the drinking age is two years lower in Ontario than in the US, which already made Windsor a popular destination for those slightly too young to drink alcohol in the States. This tradition makes me consider how a folk does not necessarily end at a national border. These towns, only separated by a river and an artificially enforced border, institutionally celebrate their national holidays three days apart. But because their proximity to each other, and therefore their connection, cannot simply be negated by the borders of their nations, they compromise to create a new festival out of the two.

Cherry Festival (Blenheim, ON)

Context:

AS grew up in Blenheim, Ontario, and attended this festival annually while growing up.

Main Piece:

AS: “So, the area I grew up in, full of orchards, all kinds of tree fruits. And one of them was the Cherry Festival, and it was known because, I swear to god, people compete spitting cherry pits. And the world champion cherry pit spitter came from our town. We were like ridiculously proud of someone who could expel a cherry pit, like, a really surprising distance.”

Analysis:

The Blenheim Cherry Festival (identified in online sources as Cherry Fest) is a great example of the practice of festivals celebrating a key local industry. Since, like the AS stated, the area is “full of orchards, all kinds of tree fruits,” cherries are a large part of the culture of the town. The festival occurs in mid-July, the peak of cherry season in Canada. This peak falls later because the Ontario weather is colder than in many other cherry-growing areas.

One of the central activities at this festival is a cherry pit spitting competition. Immediately, this makes sense because it directly involves cherries, but it also makes sense on further levels. Where the entire festival celebrates the growing of cherries, a full industry that is not especially approachable or accessible to enter for the lay person within Blenheim. If you do not already work in the Cherry industry or own an orchard, it is difficult to start commercially growing cherries. So much of this festival has a clear delineation between the industry insiders who participate in the trade, and the festival attendants who are not involved in the industry, but may still connect with the town’s cherry-centric identity (or just enjoy a good festival). But the cherry pit spitting competition, while it is still centered around cherries, evens the playing field. Anyone can be good at spitting cherry pits; there is no need for start-up capital or a commercial orchard. This competition invites the non-industry lay person into taking an active role within the festival, and therefore invites them into the community of Blenheim.

Traditional Arabic Dish – Koosa and Ejeh

Text/Context

EM – Koosa is a traditional Arabic dish. First, squash is hollowed out using a special scoop. My grandmother uses a scoop that belonged to her mom and grandmother. The squash is stuffed with a seasoned ground lamb meat and rice mixture and cooked in a tomato soup seasoned with spearmint.
And of course the squash seeds can’t go to waste, so they are salted to draw the water out and squeezed to drain as much as possible. They are then mixed with eggs, parsley, onions, and Syrian pepper to make an omelette-like batter. They are then deep fried into little cakes called ejeh. Fun to make and heavenly to eat.
Interviewer – Any special occasions to eat these recipes?
EM – We usually make koosa and ejeh in the summer when we can get fresh squash from the farm.
Interviewer – Are they always made side-by-side? Do you eat them at the same time in the same meal or do you eat them separately?
EM – Sitto (Arabic word for grandmother) doesn’t always make ejeh, but when she does, its always with koosa. We don’t usually eat them together, though. I like ejeh as a snack or breakfast, and koosa is always lunch or dinner.
Interviewer – If your grandmother has the special scoop, can no one but her make them “properly” or do you use whatever scoop you have? Is the scoop actually made specifically for koosa, and what does it look like?
EM – There are other scoops out there. I have my own, but Sitto’s is special because it’s been passed down. I don’t actually know if anyone uses the scoops for anything else but we call it a koosa scoop. It’s a long metal half-tube basically.
Interviewer – Does someone make them better than anyone else?
EM – Sitto makes them the best.
Interviewer – Have you learned both of the recipes?
EM – I know the recipe fo koosa, but not ejeh yet.
Interviewer – Do these recipes feel culturally significant to you personally, or are they just food you are glad you get to eat? Do you feel connected to your family through these recipes?
EM -The recipes are culturally significant to me because I feel close to my family when we make and eat them.
EM – All of my family’s recipes are either in our heads, or in the case of ka’ak and other desserts, the recipe is written down but no directions are given, so the only way to learn to make them is to observe and learn from our elders making special bonds and memories

Analysis

The dishes are usually made in the summer for maximum freshness. Because I collected the story during the winter, the story was not performed with the actual food but rather in a context of discussing favorite foods.
Koosa and Ejeh are examples of food connecting a person to their family and their heritage. The informant has never traveled to Lebanon, and knows only a few words in Arabic, but is proud of their heritage and feels connected when they learn the recipes that are passed down through family, learned by memory, and made with and for their family.

Maypole Dance at Waldorf School

This friend told me this story late at night in the kitchen on May 1, 2021. We were surrounded by four other friends who moved in and out of the room, and he spoke about his experience attending annual Maypole celebrations at a New York (Ghent) Waldorf School.

*

“I went to a very alternative school called a Waldorf School… and they have a lot of different celebrations and practices and things, and one that is very timely is their May Day celebration… one of the main components of May Day is a maypole. I’m not sure which kids are assigned different parts but each has a ribbon and they dance around the pole creating a pattern, this interesting woven pattern on the pole. The ribbons all weave to form a lattice.”

The speaker said that he thought the celebration might be a way to welcome summer, and that different grades performed different tasks in the May Day celebration. The school included grades Kindergarten through twelfth grade, and students in the third grade often performed the Maypole dance. Students in the sixth and seventh grades played instruments (flute, cello, violin, clarinet, viola) in the orchestra.

I asked the speaker to explain, in his own words, what it meant to attend a Waldorf school. “Waldorf school is a pedagogical movement that began in Germany as an education system started by these same people wo run the Waldorf Hotels or Waldorf cigarette companies, and they started this school for the kids of the factory workers,” the speaker said. “And the goal is like to offer holistic creativity-focused education. So there’s a lot of visual arts and performing arts and a lot of things that wouldn’t really fall under the generally accepted scope of academics.”

The speaker said that grounds crew set up the 20- or 30-foot Maypole in late April and that the structure stayed up for a few weeks after May. He said that every student had to take part in this celebration. Younger students would get excited about the celebration. He said that older students did not want to stand in the hot sun playing a violin wearing a dress shirt.

The speaker said that he does not do anything special for May Day, and that he did not appreciate this celebration until after he left the Waldorf school. “That school never really communicated why we were doing what we were doing,” he said, noting that he appreciates this experience in retrospect

*

I did not know that this friend attended a Waldorf school, and I was able to tell him later that the Maypole dance is a fertility dance. It seems odd that third graders would take part in this dance, but they are also young and full of life. The Maypole represents a phallus. I asked questions about how the students received this tradition, and it struck me odd that a school designed to promote the arts would not explain the history or meaning of this celebration.

It is also relevant that this speaker told this tale on May 1. He later explained that he remembered this tradition because he had received a school email describing online May Day celebrations. This shows that some newsletters can be very important for the communities in which they share information. He continues to be loosely part of this Waldorf school community long after he graduated and moved away from this location.

Sōk Sōk – Iranian Children’s Game

Description of Informant

PK (79) is a small, frail woman with dyed blonde hair and piercing eyes. PK was born and raised in Abadan, Iran in an “Oil Company Family.” OCFs were families whose primary income came from the large British oil company in Iran. They were well compensated and taken care of, living in western-style homes in protected communities. Many OCFs were secular or subscribed to a western religion in favor of Islam. PK immigrated to England in 1976 before coming to America (California) in 1978.

— 

Context of Interview

The informant, PK, is cooking a traditional Persian stew (khoresh) while describing the custom to the collector, BK, her grandson. Text spoken in Farsi is translated and italicized.

Interview

PK: The neighbors, they were always together [as children]. In the street, they’d group up— they’d become two groups. Now we were tiny, when we were younger— I mean the older kids didn’t bother us but nobody was following us around. You know? We were smaller.

PK: The older kids, like my sister, brother, the older siblings, would group up and play Sōk Sōk. You know Sōk Sōk, right? You go “Sōk Sōk!” One group would stand with their eyes closed and the other group would go, in the streets, and hide somewhere. It was dark too… there were some lights. They’d hide, one person here, one person there, and then… the first group, for instance, would count to 100 and then go after them. And it wasn’t a small place, you really had to look!

PK: Then, for instance, if I saw you I’d yell “Sōk Sōk!”

BK: Ah, so it’s like American hide-and-seek, but with teams?

PK: Yes. Two groups. And it was so fun! At night, with warm weather, everyone running, laughing, running, “Not here!”, “Over there!”, “Hurry quick!”. We go behind the houses… There was no time limit. You went until you found everyone, and then it was the next group’s turn.

BK: If you find someone, do they “join” your team?

PK: Um… no. No, the person you find, they don’t start going after their own team. You have to stay. For instance, if I found you on Belladonna [a street nearby], you would go back to the starting point and wait for everyone to be found.

Collector’s Reflection

Sōk Sōk’s name is a repetition of the Faris word for “bother” or “bug,” in the way that two children may bug each other. It’s relatively harmless, but annoying. The title is recited during gameplay when you find an opponent, almost in a “Gotcha!” style. Thus, it’s almost like saying, “I’m bugging you!” If you’ve been caught, you’re certainly bothered.

The game is reminiscent of many group-based derivations of Hide-and-Seek, such as Sardines or the more complex Relievio [see here for my article on Relievio in Merrimac, Massachusetts]. It is in a unique category of these derivations which focus on speed. Traditional Hide-and-Seek is a relatively slow-paced game, with one seeker and any number of hiders. Sōk Sōk is all about running, yelling, and the speed at which you find the opposing team. Despite the fact that there is no clear advantage or “prize” to finding your opponents faster, there is informal clout that comes as a result of a speedy victory.