Monthly Archives: May 2016

Dark Classroom

Nationality: American
Age: 62
Occupation: Professor
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 4/20/2016
Primary Language: English

My informant is a professor at a university in the United States. He told me this legend, which is performed by professors to other professors at casual university events.

“The students are famously docile. They don’t—they’re not self-starters in any way, k? And the story is told that one teacher once went into a dark windowless classroom, uh, turned on the lights, and found that the entire class was present in the room already, but that no body had taken the initiative to turn on the lights, ok?”

I asked him to tell me how he first learned the story and if he passed it on.

“Now, this was told to me during my first year there where like most of the loser teachers, I had a windowless classroom and I was shocked. And I told it to many, many fellow faculty people coming in in order to explain the kind of work you have to do to get these kids animated, that kind of thing. Um, and, I—it so captures the truly shocking passivity of these students that I really believe its essence, but when I think about it, it sounds farfetched even about the most passive students I know, k?

I asked my informant what the story means to him.

“Of all the folklore that I’m thinking of, this is the one that’s planted deepest in me. And what interests me is that I tell it in order to confirm a belief of mine, and to explain something that remains mysterious, painful, and shocking, which is the passivity of those students. What interests me is the personal investment in the fiction which makes you overlook the problems with it because it’s so delicious to tell. It’s one-to-one but it’s actually performing a kind of healing work, I think, for each person who hears it and tells it. It explains to them why they’re having such a difficult time. That’s—that’s the gift of it, right? It’s like waving a magic wand and saying ‘This is not your fault.’ That’s the use.”

I believe this legend has stuck with my informant because it confounds him. He is someone who is so good at engaging with students and creating a lively classroom that the idea of a completely passive class challenges what he’s used to. I also think this legend not only comforts professors having a difficult time engaging with their students, but also gives a sense of communal struggle among the faculty. It says “We’re all in this together,” and in that way, makes each professor feel less alone in their efforts to bring their classes to life. It’s also a more acceptable way for them to vent their frustration about the students. Outright insulting the student population would be considered inappropriate. But, by masking their frustration within a story about someone else they can convey their opinion without coming off as rude or disdainful.

Hush Little Baby

Nationality: American
Age: 62
Occupation: Professor
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 4/20/2016
Primary Language: English

The following is a nursery rhyme that my father sang to me when I was a child in order to lull me to sleep.

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. And if that mocking bird won’t sing, Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring…turns brass, Momma’s gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke [laughs] Momma’s gonna buy you a billy goat. And if that billy goat won’t pull, Momma’s gonna buy you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull turn over, Momma’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover. And if that dog named Rover won’t bark, Momma’s gonna buy you a horse and a cart. And if that horse and cart falls down, you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.”

My informant is my father, a 62-year old English professor in New York City. He remembers his own mother singing this song to him, and traces its roots back to this:

“I and my Mom were the beneficiaries of a folk revival movement that really literally started in Asheville, North Carolina where Peter Seeger and other people were looking for the old songs. But basically they were digging in the Appalachian mountains for songs, and then they made records of these songs. And then the mothers of my mother’s generation heard these songs on the records and then they took them into the nursery. These are old folk songs, but they then become personal through records.”

He appreciates this folk lullaby for two reasons:

“As I sing that, two things occur to me. The rhymes weave. Basically, the thing that makes that a long-lived folk song is that the rhymes tell you about the content. As soon as you’ve got the sound, you’ve got to find the mutation in the next line that rhymes. So I was stuck—I couldn’t remember what happened to the diamond ring. Um, but then I went to brass and that led to looking glass. So basically, it’s a chain in memory. But then the second thing is, this is what’s famous about lullabies. They’re often half-hostile. That is to say, this one ends with “You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town, but really it’s a litany of disaster. It’s like Chad Gadya. Yeah, in other words, everything can wrong all the time. And so—so in one way, one powerful folkloric mode is that it mixes something that feels and sounds good with something that expresses the undertow. Parents are exhausted, they’re kind of angry, right?”

As my father says, this song speaks to the endless minor disasters that can occur while raising a child. It makes sense to me that he laughed while singing the song back to me. He has always enjoyed mocking the emergency state our family enters when something small goes wrong or missing. Furthermore, I believe he enjoys the honesty and duality within the song. It doesn’t present a sugar-coated view of the parent-child dynamic, as so much children’s music tends to. I also think this song, in a sweet and subtle way, expresses how badly parents both want to please their child and to distract their child. The song itself is a distraction, a long link of rhymes structured as so to lull a baby to sleep. Of course the parents want the baby to be happy, but they also want the baby to shut up and go to sleep.

Matzo ball soup recipe

Nationality: American
Age: 62
Occupation: Professor
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 4/20/2016
Primary Language: English

The following is a matzo ball soup recipe my father learned from his mother.

“The recipe is simple. It’s six eggs, scram—you know—um, stirred. Uh, and then, um, six tablespoons of schmaltz, chicken schmaltz, which is just chicken fat turned into a kind of butter. And then, um, one, and this was her point, and I have it written down, scant cup of matzo meal. In other words—matzo meal was just crumbled matzo. Scant means that’s there just a little less of the bread stuff and there’s more of the juicy stuff, ok? It’s a cup, it’s a little less. And she was very proud of that proportion. She was also very proud of a trick—and this really does make a difference—because you tasted it all your life—she was proud of a trick where you—the chicken fat is usually just melted and then put it into the stuff, but if you cook onions in the chicken fat, if you cook sliced onions in the chicken fat, that fills the chicken fat with flavor. Then you strain it, so that the onions aren’t in it anymore. And then when you pour that in with the matzo meal and eggs, it’s bringing this rich onion flavor, ok? My mother’s other trick is she was proud of boiling the matzo balls not in water, which is the standard procedure. Remember, they fill up. They swell up. Um, she boiled them in chicken soup from a can. And that actually filled them up with flavor in another way because they swelled not with water but with chicken soup.”

My informant is my father, a 62 year English professor in New York City. He doesn’t have any specific memories of eating this soup as a child, but he assumes that he did. Every Passover, he cooks matzo ball soup using this recipe. I asked him to describe how he learned the recipe:

“My Mom, once, on the phone, very long ago, dictated to me her matzo ball soup recipe. What interests me about it is that it clearly was not her mother’s recipe because the matzo balls that I make from my mother’s recipe taste completely different from the one from her mother’s recipe, ok? So my guess is my Mom’s recipe may have come from my father’s household, because there they make a fabulous matzo ball that tastes a lot like this. But in any event, that recipe is sacred to me and I took it down on just a random scrap of notebook paper. I like looking at that piece of notebook paper. I’ve looked at it for years. It’s got my handwriting and I can remember the phone call. It brings me back in touch with her, especially her voice.  And I can always pretty well remember it because it’s in very specific proportions.”

I asked him if he’s changed the recipe at all, to which he replied:

“By now, it’s become so much mine. I actually have improved it. In other words, it’s got my touches in it. It’s got things I figured out…And I just did what I usually do which is to depend the involvement of flavors, something like that.”

I believe my father enjoys this recipe so much, because as he says, it vividly recreates his mother’s warmth, personality, and knowledge. I imagine he likes sharing the recipe with my brother and I because we never had the pleasure of meeting her. My father has since altered the recipe, but still regards it at his mother’s. This is a wonderful example of the way that folklore can change greatly over time, but because of nostalgia, love, and respect, stay tied in people’s minds to what they perceive to be the originator.

Promiscuous flight attendants

Nationality: African-American
Age: 40's
Occupation: Flight Attendant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/2016
Primary Language: English

Informant: “People think that we’re [flight attendants] all, um, whores. You know? [laughs] And no, we’re not.”

My informant is a middle aged male flight attendant. He has worked in the airline industry since his early twenties, and has encountered this stereotype his whole time in it. I asked him to describe how specifically he’s encountered this stereotype:

“You go out, meet people, talk to people, and that’s one of their first things they’ll ask.
People say, ‘I bet you have someone in every city.’ And I’m like, ‘Really? Really, you think that? [laughs] Do you see a herpes patch on my lip?’ You know, by the time you work a 14-hour flight internationally, you know, you get 4 hours of sleep…been up all night, do you really think that person is—the first thing that person is going to do is go and find hookups? No…it just doesn’t make sense. No. Now, do they meet people?…Do we have sluts? There are sluts in every industry. But the airline industry probably has, you know, the fewest.”

I asked him about where he thinks that stereotype comes from.

“It’s tied with glamour, it’s tied with the 70’s, of, you know, when they [flight attendants] had to be single. And they were some of the most beautiful women in the world. And it was an era when men…there was a lot of chauvinism, you know, chauvinistic pigs, you know, you could grab a woman.”

I think my informant enjoys talking about and laughing at this stereotype because it contrasts so sharply with reality. As he explains, flight attendants are incredibly hard working and don’t have the time to sleep around in every city. This stereotype is also particularly interesting because it speaks to how long it takes for a popular image of a race, creed, or occupation to fade away. It has been decades since the glamorous days of 1970’s stewardesses, yet people continue to think that flight attendants are promiscuous. It also speaks to how much we expect out of flight attendants and service staff in general. They accommodate our every need to the point where we think they can satisfy our sexual urges as well.

Sweeping a foot

Nationality: African-American
Age: 40's
Occupation: Flight Attendant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/2016
Primary Language: English

Informant: “Someone sweeping your foot with a broom…It’s supposed to be bad luck.”

My informant is a middle-aged flight attendant and actor. He has observed this superstition his whole life, but does not recall from whom he learned it. According to him:

“I’m not very superstition but the things that I am superstitious about, I’m very adamant about those things.”

I asked him whether or not he believes it causes bad luck, to which he responded:

“I don’t think it necessarily…I just don’t…it has the potential to because that’s what superstition is. I don’t need that extra mixed in.”

He described the kind of context in which he observes this superstition:

“You know, like suppose you’re in a restaurant, um, and someone’s sweeping, one of the staff is sweeping, and then, they’re trying to get the shit up off the floor, um, there’s a time and a place for that. You don’t sweep the customer’s foot or you don’t sweep around them, you know what I mean? I think it’s incredibly rude…”

My informant is a flight attendant, and so has a fine tuned sense of how to treat a customer’s limited space. Thus it makes sense that he would be so vehemently against violating a person’s privacy and body in this way. He understands and respects the codes of the service industry, and applies them to the way he treats other people in general, regardless of whether or not he is serving them. It also makes sense that a superstitiousness and fear of ill fate would be attached to this behavior. If someone’s foot is swept with a broom, their body is, in a sense, being included with dirt and dust. It is a form of degradation that can signal an equally degrading or unfortunate future.