Monthly Archives: April 2019

What’s the BLUF?

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: JAG Military Lawyer
Residence: Arlington VA
Performance Date: 3/16/19
Primary Language: English

Abstract:

This piece is about the BLUF acronym that is used in the military law career when giving information to commanders.

Main Piece:

“I had a career in the military, in the Army as a lawyer, and one of the things in the Army is that there is not always a lot of time for like long explanations or details when you’re working with a commander and what they always say is “what’s the BLUF?” And BLUF is bottom line up front. So basically, you might want like as a lawyer three pages of analysis, but they’re like “give me the BLUF.” And that’s just like “okay. Yes you can do it and here’s why.” And you always have to put the BLUF at the beginning of any papers you write or any information you give.”

Context:

The informant has had a 25 year long career in the JAG branch of the Army and picked up this lingo as part of her job. She has worked under many commanders and used quick lingo such as BLUF in daily language at the offices. The subject has lived all over due to her military career, from Hawaii, Kansas, Virginia, and Germany. She is originally from Buffalo New York. She says she remembers this particular acronym and saying because it was used so often.

My Interpretation:

Growing up in a military family as well, I definitely see how this phrase/acronym could be used in daily language. My parents would speak in codes that seemed like a different language. Hearing one of the phrases explained is interesting for me, almost like learning a definition for a word you should know, but were always too afraid to ask because it seems like common knowledge. I think if you are around this kind of phrase everyday, then it is just common knowledge. For civilians, I never hear this phrase being used in the work environment.

Camp Seven Hills Serial Killer

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: JAG Military Lawyer
Residence: Arlington VA
Performance Date: 3/16/19
Primary Language: English

Abstract:

This piece is about a legendary serial killer that roams the woods near Camp Seven Hills in New York.

Main Piece:

“Informant: So I spent a lot of summers at a Girl Scout camp called Camp Seven Hills. And of course there were a lot of ghost stories around the fire, but every year they would tell a ghost story about a man who had wandered off from one of the neighbor farms, like right next to the camp, and wandered into the woods one night. Like a really creepy, scary, serial killer kind of man. And his favorite thing to do was to catch little girls, little Girl Scouts and kidnap and murder them. So the whole thing was never wander into the woods at night alone. They would tell this story every year.

Me: Where was this camp?

Informant: Camp Seven Hills in Western New York. I think it was to make sure we didn’t go off on our own, but it like totally freaked us all out every year.”

Context:

The subject is an adult woman who remembers her time as a child in the 1970s going to Girl Scout summer camp. She grew up in Buffalo New York and was an avid member of the Girl Scouts growing up. Camp Seven Hills is located in Erie County, New York and still functions as a Girl Scout camp today.

Interpretation:

I wonder if this legend of this Camp Seven Hills serial killer still exists today or if it has vanished from the folklore of this camp. Since this comes from the childhood of an adult, it would be interesting to compare the stories told to the young girls at this camp today and see if they are similar or very different. I think the informant was correct about the meaning behind this legend, that it would prevent girls from wandering around the woods alone or at night. Stories like this are terrifying for young girls and since it was localized to a nearby farm as the origin, it would make it more believable as well.

 

Becoming A Cow

Nationality: Korean-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/6/2019
Primary Language: English

Main Text

Subject: When I was little my mom told me that if you—this is like the whole story. My mom was like, oh, if you lie down after you eat, you turn into a cow.

Background

The subject is a 20-year-old Korean-American student at USC. She remembers her mother telling her this folk belief from the very beginning of her memory, and estimates she was probably four when she first heard it.

Context

The subject’s mother told this folk belief to the subject, once when she was lying down on the couch after eating lunch or dinner. Her initial reaction was not wanting to be a cow. For several months, she was also convinced that the folk belief was true. She worked very hard to avoid the fate, while also attempting to convince her younger brother to test the folk belief out, before she eventually tried to test the folk belief out herself, after convincing herself that it was “not bad to be a cow.” Upon testing the folk belief out, she “was so scammed.”

The subject confronted her mother after discovering the falsity of the folk belief, recalling that she was “very accusatory.” The confrontation devolved into her mother questioning her why she would want to be a cow. The four-year-old subject argued that being a cow meant an easy lifestyle, because cows just had to sit in the backyard and eat grass all day. Her mother asked her if she knew that their family ate the meat of cows. The subject then countered that she would have lived a good life for a worthy cause. Her mother accepted this and ceased the debate.

Despite having discovered that the folk belief false, the subject still felt uneasy about lying down after eating, and still took folk beliefs from her mother seriously. She felt that even if the folk beliefs were not factually true, they were still “a little more true” since they were supposedly passed down from her grandmother to her mother.

Interviewer’s Analysis

Bizarrely enough, this is a case where the subject transformed a folk belief that had been “proven” untrue, into a “true” superstition. The subject derived her superstitious beliefs, seemingly from the folkloric origin of the belief itself. She seemed to believe that there was a mystical power inherent in the act of passing information down through generations. One could argue that this is a highly abstract form of contact magic, where information “touched” by what was considered truth in past generations, will transfer as the information continues to be passed down the family line. One could also argue that the subject probably derived her superstitious beliefs from romanticized visions of the folk as a “primitive” people with “primal” knowledge.

Chuita

Nationality: Paraguayan-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orlando, Florida
Performance Date: 3/15/19
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Main Piece: The informant’s grandmother, whom many call Chuita, was a midwife and hero in the small town of Caazapa, Paraguay. Chuita only went to school up 1st grade (a very baseline education) and, instead of becoming a nun and living in a convent, she asked her aunt about how she could help the town. Learning under her aunt and looking at her own vagina in the mirror, Chuita learned female anatomy and became the town’s resident midwife, as the nearest hospital was miles and miles away. Using herbal medicine, she delivered over 600 babies without fail in her lifetime, never accepting any form of payment from the poor mothers she helped. “She literally delivered a whole town.” Later, Chuita received an honorary degree from National Health Ministry of Paraguay for having safely delivered more than 300 children during here life in Caazapa, but these were cases that were traced and recorded. “Chuita knows that she delivered well over 600 babies, never losing one. She had an extraordinary faith that her purpose was to serve others through God.” By the end of her lifetime, she was the town’s carpenter, farmer, engineer, civil advocate, emergency first responder, policeman, welfare service provider, tailor, chef, and household organizer. Her and her husband were often considered to be the local king and queen of their town.

Context: The informant (OC) is half Paraguayan and half American, and she speaks both Spanish and English. Her mother immigrated to the U.S. as a young adult, so the informant is first generation, but the rest of her mother’s side of the family resides in their home city – Caazapa, Paraguay – and are very well-known in their community. Her father’s side of the family are “classically Jewish” people from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York. Although she is not religious herself, her upbringing was culturally Jewish and Catholic. Our discussion took place in her home in Orlando, Florida while her mom made us tea and lunch in the background. The informant cites the following legend as the basis for her family’s legacy today, with her larger-than-life grandmother being their small Paraguayan town’s hero. This story was recounted to OC at her high school graduation party from her cousin, who believed that the informant was of age to learn of her roots and the lore that has kept their family devout in their values of hard work and faith. This legend is the basis of the matriarchal power that has been passed down through each generation in OC’s family. In fact, this story served as the inspiration of OC’s tattoo over her ribs, which depicts the mountains bordering Caazapa to honor her roots and larger-than-life abuela.

Personal thoughts: While it’s clear that not all of the astounding facets of this iconic grandma cannot be proven to be true (i.e. the 300 recorded vs. 600 theoretical babies delivered), this legend is rooted in the firm truth of her widely-known feats. The way OC tells this story is reminiscent of ancient legends with a heroic character conquering the impossible; one woman with barely any education becomes her town’s jack-of-all-trades through learning from the little resources she had access to (her aunt, who was her mentor, and her own mirror).Even the way OC phrases her grandmother as the town’s “queen” demonstrates her hero status among her people. Chuita, in typical hero fashion, overcomes her circumstances without complaint and rises to the occasion, setting a legacy of matriarchy and the power of perseverance for her family and town.

Myth of the Creation of Seasons in Maui

Nationality: Hawaiian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Maui
Performance Date: 4/22/19
Primary Language: English

Informant: The ancient Hawaiian myth of Maui straining the Sun is basically that Maui is an ancient chief and his mom was complaining that the days were not long enough because her kapa, which is like a cloth made out of bark, didn’t have enough time to dry in the Sun, so he took his sister’s hair and made a rope out of it and used it to lasso the Sun’s rays. When he caught the Sun with the rope that he made, the Sun was begging for her life and they came to an agreement that the days would be long in the summer and short in the winter, and so that’s the Hawaiian story of how seasons happened.

Context: The informant is a USC student who is from Maui, and has lived in Maui their whole life. They heard this story growing up on Maui, and they remember it because it is the myth of how their home was created. To the informant, this piece is reminiscent of home and the place in which they grew up; this is how they interpret it. This piece was performed in a traditional, face-to-face, storytelling interview, where the informant told me the story and I recorded it.

Analysis:

This narrative piece of folklore is a myth, and it is very indicative of the genre of myths as it is a creation story for a specific location, in this case Maui, taking place outside of this world (in the sky), as it involves the Sun. This myth is intended to tell the story of the creation of the seasons of the island of Maui, and it tells the story from beginning to end, involving the primary character of Maui, whose interaction with the Sun leads to the creation of the world as they know it in Maui. This conveys not just how this story is a traditional myth in that it displays the characteristics of traditional myths: that it is sacred truth, has no relation to our world, and is a creation story that sets up the weather seasons of everyday life, but to me, it also conveys how myths relate to the physical characteristics of the location they are placed in. The climate of Maui is tropical and therefore very sunny, so it only makes sense that the Sun is a central part of this myth about Maui. The physical characteristics of the location observed by the people of Maui translate into their myths, and this is very indicative of a characteristic of myths that I have noticed throughout this class: myths often reflect the world surrounding them in ways that may not have been previously thought of, such as climate, geography, physical surroundings, etc. I know that I did not realize how much this aspect contributed to myths until interviewing the informant and analyzing the story of Maui, and it conveys the way in which geographical locations affect myths. This myth gives a way for the Hawaiian people to pass on the story of the creation of seasons through generations, in a way that sounds familiar to them because of the characteristics that come from the geographical location they are in. This conveys how this myth can create a sense of identity among the Hawaiian people, through the commonalities they will recognize in this myth. Overall, the myth of Maui conveys both a traditional and nontraditional way of analyzing the myth.

Annotation: For another version of this myth, see Chapter XVI, Section 1 (Kalakaua, 63-65), “Hawaiian Mythology, Chapter XVI, Maui the Trickster.” Ulukau,

www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0beckwit1-000Sec–11en-50-20-frameset-book–1-010escapewin&a=d&d=D0.18&toc=0.