Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Watch the Sunset

Nationality: White
Age: 50
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Pacific Palisades, CA
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English

Carol is a Floridian who left the state to study film production at Boston University. She has since started a family in LA and is as much an LA native as a Floridian at heart. She has no remnants of her floridian accent, and knows the entire secret menu at In N Out.

Performance: “Basically if you were bummed or feeling sad, just go to the beach and watch the sunset. “Watch the sunset” was a phrase that was used on a daily basis. It remedied everything from boredom to anxiety to heartbreak.”

Response: This quick folk remedy seems to have far reaching curative powers. Like many Floridian folk remedies, it is centered around the beach, where the sun would set over the water. Unlike other remedies this remedy seems to cure ailments of the mind or heart – nonphysical ailments. It is interesting that watching the sunset is the cure for matters of the “soul” rather than the body, as the old saying goes, “the eyes are the windows to the soul.”

Nighttime Prayers

Nationality: White
Age: 50
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Pacific Palisades, CA
Performance Date: April 29, 2015

Carol is a Floridian who left the state to study film production at Boston University. She has since started a family in LA and is as much an LA native as a Floridian at heart. She has no remnants of her floridian accent, and knows the entire secret menu at In N Out.

Performance: “I grew up with prayers, particularly nighttime prayers, that were unusual to my Roman Catholic upbringing. It was a shock to me that some of my friends made sort of “private a appeal” to God in their nightly prayers. They would say things like “God Bless Nana, and Mittens, and Uncle Fred…” – I would never have thought to be able to appeal to God in that way. Every night, on my knees, my mother and I would pray the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer which would end with  “And God help me to be a good girl tomorrow” not the long litany of prayers for others.”

Response: Prayer is an interesting form of folklore. How to pray is taught not by books but often by family. Carol found it interesting that the way she prayed was different from her friends, despite them being from a similar roman catholic upbringing. Carol’s childhood prayers were clearly more ritualistic than individualistic, and yet to her were just as real and personal.

Hebrew Death Hands

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

Performance: “Ok so we have this thing where you cross your hands like this.” Yon then places his hands out, palms towards himself, and overlaps his lightly spread fingers at a diagonal angle. “It spells death in hebrew. Ma-vet. Yeah. The lines in your hands SPELL mavet, which means death.”

And you do it why? because it’s creepy? Because it’s cool?

“Yeah, we just do it.”

 

Response: This was a very interesting piece of folklore. When you hold your hands at a certain angle, the creases and lines on your palms spell out the Hebrew word for death. Yon didn’t seem to really understand why I was asking why they did it, he said that they simply do. I think this is an example of a cool piece of identity which those who speak hebrew have with the human body. If I looked down at my hands from a certain angle and saw the english word “death” I would think it was pretty cool too.

Jewish Chicken Soup Healing

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: Hebrew
Language: English

Yon is a student at USC who I am close friends with. He is originally from Israel, and this is his first year in America. He speaks with a thick Israeli accent, and jumped at the opportunity to share his culture’s folklore with me.

 

 

Performance: “So one of the most common remedies is like chicken soup. So it’s, it’s like chicken broth essentially. Very traditional jewish stuff. But what I know… I know this stuff….works. Just has all those like sodium and vitamins in it, and it cures like every sickness. Other than that the big thing is like tea… like hot tea with mint, honey, and lemon juice. All three. That helps to make you better too and it works.”

 

Response: Soups seem to be folk remedies that often cure illnesses such as the common cold. I was shocked by how adamant Yon was about the success rate of his mother’s traditional jewish chicken soup. He looked at me like he was telling me the greatest secret I had ever known.

 

For a published study of this folk remedy check out this link to a Chicago tribune article:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19821118&id=0BBOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7121,995422&hl=en

Cross Yourself

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mexico
Performance Date: April 30, 2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Bernie is a very close friend of mine from Mexico. Bernie left Mexico for the first time to study at USC. He loves to talk about his culture, and speaks with a thick Mexican accent.

 

 

 

Performance: “Another thing that is pretty big for Mexico and that my parents always taught me, related to Catholicism is that every time that you um pass by a church either by car or walking if you don’t do…umm…the cross? (he crosses himself to see if I understand) The cross. Then you’re going to have bad luck. My Mom would always tell me that you gotta do the cross every time you pass a church, if not it would be against your faith and bad luck and everything.”

 

 

Response: Crossing one’s self is common practice for Catholics, but i find it interesting that beyond simply being a “bad christian” that Bernie was taught it was actually bad luck. It is interesting when religious practices are sort of hybridized with “luck” which is generally a folk belief tied to folk traditions, rituals, and gestures.