Category Archives: general

Bubonic Plague In Hawaii

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year. 

Context

Informant discusses a friend who could see the spirits of those who died from the bubonic plague in Hawaii under restaurant row. Informant then goes into how the plague was brought to Hawaii and what the afflicted did.

Transcript

Informant: “You know what, they had the bubonic plague, right? In Chinatown, they had a lot of people die, and what they did was they buried them into a mass grave in Chinatown, underneath restaurant row, so a friend’s attorney, a friend’s secretary, could see, could see everything. She could see all these massive graves and just bodies piled on top of each other.

Interviewer: “Oh, damn… so what, what like-”

Informant: “And it is scary though, like at the parking lot.”

Interviewer: “So it was like decaying bodies of the bubonic plague? Just bodies on bodies on bodies of people with the bubonic plague?”

Informant: “Yeah it was just, just like one mass burial in the black plague times. In chinatown, it was bad. Whaling ships came in and brought it, and people where we live, where you guys used to live, they said that people in the neighborhood, the families wanted to die together, so they hiked all the way up into Aiea, where we live, and that’s where they all died. They wanted to die together so they died together with the plague.”

Thoughts

Restaurant row used to be the party place of Oahu, it was the happening spot where everyone would go to get plastered and party. While restaurant row stands virtually abandoned now and was in its prime before I was alive, I had no idea about this side of history until the informant told me about it. The bubonic plague outbreak in Hawaii was never formally taught to us in school, so I had no idea the ground below restaurant row, which is next to a major roadway, is inundated with corpses. Also, I found the part about families going into the mountains to die together was morbidly sweet, like a final gesture of love while they all slowly and painfully died.

Beads of Courage

Nationality: Asian
Age: 44
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the auntie of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has been working as a medical nurse for 16 years.

Context

Informant discusses recurring interactions between patients and nurses at the hospital they work at. This event takes place over the course of a child’s stay at a hospital, especially if they are undergoing extensive treatment like chemotherapy. The conversation happened over FaceTime, as the informant was on their lunch break at work when the conversation took place.

Transcript

Interviewer: “How about like if um, like if a small kid like comes into a hospital like how do you guys make them comfortable?”

Informant: “Oh like bribery?”

Interviewer: “Yeah! Yeah! Like how do you bribe them?”

Informant: “Like toys? We give them toys or, like, like when they’re getting a procedure or… Oh! How about like the beads? Like the beads of courage? That’s pretty consistent. Ok so for you know chemotherapy patients?”

Interviewer: “Mmm hmm.”

Informant: “Uh when they get procedures done like, they’ll have like uhh like specific beads and they’ll make a necklace out of it. So like if they get a shot or like chemotherapy or a medication, they’ll get beads for each specific thing, and I can actually grab you the sheet thing, well, it’s actually like a foundation that provides the beads, you can look it up online, called beads of courage. 

Interviewer: “Cool alright, and the beads represent..?”

Informant: “One bead will represent like a medication, one bead a needle stick, or like a point access. Like each procedure, they get one bead for each thing, and then at the end of their treatment, like they have this long necklace, and it’s like a remembrance of what they’ve been through, yeah.”

Interviewer: “Aww that’s super sweet, yeah.”

Thoughts

I had not heard of beads of courage until this interview, and after listening to my auntie talk about them and learning about their organization, it seems like a sweet memento for a period of extreme anguish. According to the beads of courage website, they “are a non-profit that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and teens coping with serious illness, their families, and the clinicians who care for them through our Arts-in-Medicine Programs” (Beads of Courage, 2021). The organization has been around since 2005 and works with hundreds of hospitals internationally. Beads of courage are not specific to the hospital my auntie works at, but this shared tradition shared internationally across hospitals and their workers shows how international traditions can be. The sentiment of beads of courage exists beyond cultures, the sentiment of receiving a physical item that signifies everything a patient has gone through is recognizable cross-culturally. I enjoy the statement and mission of beads of courage, and think it brings families and patients a source of joy and strength during objectively terrible times.

For more information about beads of courage, visit their website:

Home

Beads of Courage, Beads of Courage Inc., 2021, www.beadsofcourage.org/.

Thoughts Superstition

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

DS: “Here’s a superstition I live by. Every time I think of something negative, I knock on wood three times. If I don’t see any wood, then I knock on my head. It’s all about the transfer of energy. I’m literally trying to knock the bad energy out so it can be replaced with positive energy.”

Context:

DS does not define himself as a spiritual person; however, he does believe in good and bad energy. He wholeheartedly believes in this superstition. DS’s mother first told him this superstition when he was a child and he has lived by it ever since. He is unsure of its origins; however, he does not believe it has to do with his Chinese roots. Instead, it is simply a personal superstition that everyone in his family performs daily.

My Interpretation:

This appears to be a case of Sympathetic Magic. In knocking on wood or his head, DS is expelling the bad energy and leaving room for the good energy to flow. This falls under the Law of Contact, as the action being performed is creating the magical effect. Personally, I think this is a very interesting superstition. I always knew the superstition ‘knock on wood’ but had never heard of someone doing the same with their head. I feel like this helps to illuminate the meaning of the superstition and why it still holds weight to this day.

Annotation:

As this is a famous superstition, there are many variations of it within the popular culture. For further research, be sure to check out this Ted-Ed article:

LaBrascio, Lisa, and Stuart Vyse. “Why Do We Knock on Wood?” TED, May 19, 2017. https://blog.ed.ted.com/2017/05/18/why-do-we-knock-on-wood/. 

Feet Up Over Railroad

Nationality: American
Residence: NJ
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

BR: “Back when I was a little kid, every time we would drive over a railroad track my grandma used to remark, ‘Pick up your feet! We’re going over a Railroad Track!”

Context:

BR has been doing this for his entire life. According to him, picking your feet up when crossing a railroad has nothing to do with luck. Instead, it is a fun tradition that likely spawned out of necessity. BR claims that when his grandmother was a little girl, railroad tracks were legitimately dangerous. They were extremely bumpy and if you did not pick up your feet when you crossed, you could injure your ankles. As a result, picking your feet up over a railroad track became a habit for BR’s grandma and she passed this down to her children and grandchildren. The result is a tradition that BR claims everyone in his family has fun with.

My Interpretation:

I think that this is a very interesting piece of family folklore. What was once a necessity eventually evolved into a fun tradition he performs every time he crosses a railroad. Traditions like these are what create a sense of unity within a group and I think it will be interesting to see this tradition evolve as it passes hands from one generation to the next.

Hold Your Breath For A Graveyard

Nationality: American
Residence: NJ
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

BR: “Every time you drive past a graveyard or pass through a cemetery you need to hold your breath! If not, evil spirits can enter your body!”

Context:

BR is unsure as to the first time he heard this particular piece of Folklore; however, he has been living by it his entire life. According to him, this is not something that he ever really believed. That being said, he has always held his breath anyway. BR claims that he knows the superstition isn’t true. His deductive sense of logic tells him that it isn’t real. Yet, he said that he never does superstitions based upon whether or not he deems them real. Instead, BR performs superstitions because he does not want to be on the other side of one that isn’t fake. In his own words, “I am not a superstitious man, but I need to cover all my bases just in case.”

My Interpretation:

I think this is a very valid superstition and I have heard variations on it during my life. However, what I think is most interesting about this superstition is the reason BR still performs it. I believe that the majority of people do not actually believe in superstitions. However, everyone does them anyway. I think this can be tied to our innate understanding that we do not know everything. BR knows that an evil spirit won’t enter his body if he breathes in a cemetery, but he holds his breath anyway. This shows that people are unwilling to dismiss the supernatural, even if their better judgment tells them they can.