I chose to review the album Classic Bluegrass Vol. 2 from Smithsonian Folkways. This album finished in 2002, it is a compilation of many of the best bluegrass songs that were in the Smithsonian “vault”. The Folkways Project of the Smithsonian started in 1948 by Moses Asch in New York. Asch had been very involved with music as he created his own business with the labels of Asch and Disk. During the 1940’s, he produced several records by people like Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, Woody Guthrie, and Hobart Smith. The first compilation of folk music came about in 1952 with the Harry Smith’s compilation of Anthology of American Folk Music. More records came about when the innovative style of three-finger banjo playing by Earl Scruggs. In 1956, Pete Seeger suggested to Asch to contact this brother in order to make recordings of people who played guitar in the Scruggs’ style in their area. The project resulted in a recording that jumpstarted the career of Mike Seeger, Pete Seeger’s brother. Recordings started to fly off the press and until Asch’s death in 1970, recordings of folk music sky rocketed with thirty-six titles in eight years. The negotiation of these works to be donated to the Smithsonian became the project of Ralph Rinzler in 1987. Thanks to him, there is now the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. This compilation, along with the first CD, serve as an introduction to the “breadth of bluegrass that exists in the Folkways catalog.”

I really enjoyed all of the songs on this album. However, my favorite songs come from the Mountain Bluegrass Style album. One of the guys in this group went on to become a member of the Foggy Mountain Boys, which I’m sure most of you have heard of from the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou? Another song that I really like is number 11 Back Up and Push. There are no lyrics and the banjos and guitars just keep strumming along at a pretty good tempo. The group, the Friendly City Playboys, played at the 1961Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention. This song is pretty famous and has been recorded by several different groups several times. Number six, Rocky Run sounds very familiar, but I just can’t put my finger on it.

I really like when some of the songs have spoken introductions to them by the artist themselves. It makes the music seem more personal and gives a little more needed background to the songs. I did not realize that there were different types of bluegrass music before listening to this album. After listening to all of these songs, I think that my favorite type is the mountain bluegrass style. I just really like the rolling rhythms of the banjos and guitars and makes me just want to stomp my feet and clap my hands. I really enjoyed this album.

This is in response to the Album Review Project.

I am a Material Girl, Living in a Material World

A couple of weeks ago I went home and decided to go to the Eiteljorg Museum in Downtown Indianapolis. I don’t usually go to this museum, but since I hadn’t been there in such a long time, I felt it necessary to go. I came across the Contemporary collections and found a piece that particularly tickled my fancy. This piece is a canoe made by an Algonquin Indian. The title of the piece is “History in Two Parts”.It is particularly interesting because it is not made out of regular canoe materials. In addition to the normal wood used for canoes it also consists of birch bark, cedar, ash, spruce root & gum, aluminum. In a way, it is blending the new with the old. The Algonquin Indians were famous for their birch bark canoes. They used them to fish and also as a way of transportation. Today, they use cars. Cars are made out of a bunch of different metals, including aluminum. By combining the wood with the aluminum, the craftsman is showing how their culture has adapted to modern day society. These Indians live in Canada, more specifically in southern Quebec and eastern Ontario. They used to use birch bark for their homes as well, but now just build with that material for fun. The move from birch bark to man made materials also shows the struggle that the Indians were going through in order to stop companies from clear cutting their forests. In recent years, this has been a very big problem.

The meaning of this piece of art work goes much deeper than face value. The struggle of the Indians against the rest of North American society has always been a problem. While this canoe is beautiful and very interesting, it shows the huge struggle that Indians went through, and still go though with trying to retain their original identities. Nadia Myre, the craftsman of the boat, is an Algonquin Indian who I am sure understands the meaning of her boat completely. Upon googling her name, I found that she has her own website with past pieces of artwork that she has done. Her pieces are representative of her life and how tribal communities relate to others near where she lives in Canada.

I’ve seen other pieces of art that try to combine the new and the old and convey messages of struggle, but this is the best one I have seen. At first glance, one might not think that it would be significant, but with further investigation, and reading of the name of the piece, all sorts of thoughts start flowing. I find it more interesting that this piece of work does not invoke feelings of dislike towards others, like other pieces I’ve seen. I would be interested to see more of her artwork and see if it is similar in nature to this canoe.

This is in response to the Material Culture (object) project.

Architectural Wonders

Dog trot cabins are very similar to log cabins. These houses were first introduced in Arkansas in the first 250 years of early Pioneer life. These differ from log cabins in that they are separate sections with a doorway in the middle. The house really just consists of two rooms. Larger dog trot homes have 4 rooms, with two on each side of the door. The house is symmetrical with a continuous roof over the entire thing. No one is completely sure as to why dog trot cabins came into existence, but there is one theory that the one continuous hallway was a very primitive form of air conditioning. Because the winters brought lots of drafts into the house because of this, cultural geographers do not accept this theory. I am not sure that I agree with this theory either, I just think they built the houses this way because it was simple and easy to reproduce.

In an article by William Ferris, who wrote an article entitled, The Dog Trot: A Regional Home and Its Builder, he explores one specific dog trot home built by the father of Richard Foster in Mississippi. Ferris writes that, “Both the structure of individual buildings and their configuration on Foster’s farm reflects the builder’s plan as he “worked it out in his mind””(4) His work is very specific to the region, more specifically the south. The article comes with a blueprint of the home so it is much easier to imagine what the house really looked like. Now that I have read this article and seen the blueprints of the house, I understand the idea of the air conditioning hallways now. Even in the article, Foster says that, “This is the plan he laid out. Said he put a hall in there so the air would circulate through and make it cool”(6). It is interesting now to read that because it definitely makes the theory true, because at least one person followed that design. He planned the interior furnishings to go with this design. Very much planning was put into his because that is what he loved to do.

Dog trot cabins do not really exist today because if people have kept these homes, then they have probably renovated the house with more rooms, therefore, no longer making it a true dog trot cabin. Upon more research, I found out that the dog trot cabin was a form of Cracker Farmhouses. These were just a style of shelter found in Georgia and Florida, but spread through the south and turning into different forms, like the dog trot house.

Ferris, William. The Dog Trot: A Regional Home and Its Builder . Perspecta, Vol. 17. (1980), pp. 66-73.

This is in response to the Architecture Project.

When I grow up, I want to be an artist

Last night I went to the SOFA gallery end of semester show. There were many pieces up to look at including photography, jewelry, ceramics, and even original stationary. The show as amazing and even had an auction for the jewelry and surprisingly enough, a lot of the stuff was being bought and the prices were not that cheap. While I did not speak directly to someone who was showing in the art show, I went to the art show who is an art student here at IU. She concentrates on ceramics for her major and was very helpful with all of our questions. One exhibit at the art show was a series of hanging busts and heads. She explained that for one of the heads, it would take approximately 20 hours to do (and that was one of the small ones). She told us that they had to be hollow in order for the clay to actually dry enough to be fired and also they would be extremely heavy. We talked for a couple of minutes about clay but then resumed walking around the exhibit admiring all of the art. After we left and went back to our friend’s apartment, we started to talk more about clay. She described all of the techniques of firing the clay. I did not realize there was more than one type of kiln (there are electric mini ones, large ones, and brick ones). We also talked about the different types of heating there are (I only remember one kind, and that was the use of small cones that melt and unhook so that the temperature does not need to be constantly checked). I used to take ceramics at art camp a long time ago and was always curious as to how long ceramic pieces needed to be in the kiln. I was very surprised when she said that a normal piece takes about 1.5 to 2 days. For some reason I always thought that they took at most a couple hours. She did however say that there is a technique that only two hours because the heat is so intense, but in order to do this, the artist has to make sure their piece is perfectly made otherwise it would crack, or worse burst. After she said that something could burst in the kiln, I asked if she had every had any pieces burst. She gave a thankful sigh NO, but had has pieces crack because even if the piece looks perfect without any imperfections before it goes into the kiln, the process of the firing brings out any imperfections . She said she has a piece right now that has a funny mark on it because of the firing, but is going to attempt glaze it in order to mask it. As a final question to her being why she chose to do ceramics, she simply said, “Because I like to shape and touch things. Ceramics is the easiest field to do that because you are working directly with your hands.” Well said.

I had never seen her work before, so she took us to her apartment after our little chat. The living room was filled with all of her work, mostly of bowls, but there were some extremely interesting pieces. She and her roommate have a bar with supports sticking out at floor level, and she created ceramic feet to cover the supports. She also made a huge hand holding a heart that is actually an urn. It was quite creepy, but very cool that she could make all of this cool stuff. I find it so interesting that with my major, at most a couple people would read my papers and give me comments. But an art major has hundreds of people looking at their stuff, constantly judging them. I would love to have something to show for my major like art majors do!

This is in response to the Material Culture (Artist/Craftsperson) project.

Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song

I will be reviewing the Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song from the Library of Congress collection for this entry. The exhibition highlights the letters that Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song wrote in the 1940’s-1950’s to the Library of Congress. There are also several other parts including a page about the “Life and Times of Woody Guthrie” written by Mark Allan Jackson. He essentially writes a timeline of his life starting from his birth in Oklahoma to his search for more work in California to going to New York to play Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road, and finally to his death in 1952 because of Huntington’s Disease which his mother also had. The page has loads of information with some really interesting pictures, but I think that with a little bit more of an interactive twist, it would have held my attention longer. The long lines of text made me think it was more like a newspaper or some other printed publication and didn’t hold my attention for long.

The next page is a more in depth timeline with no explanations to events, just dates and specifically what happened. This would be very useful for someone writing a report or researching Woody Guthrie because they can get straight facts without having to sift through other information.

With more look at the site, this exhibition would be perfect for someone doing a research paper. There are straight facts with lots of information and nothing getting in the way of finding that information. For someone just wanting to learn about Woody Guthrie, this could be a bit boring and make them want to go to another site. Upon looking at the “About the Collection” page, it says that one can access all of the songs for Woody Guthrie, but they are on a different site. I would think that it would be beneficial to everyone if the songs were on this specific site, or even a direct link to the other one. I’m not going to say that this exhibition is bad because there is so much information and pictures that it cannot be bad. But I will say that a lot can be done to make it more approachable to a broader range of people. Maybe something as simple as not putting as much text on one page because it becomes very hard to read after a certain point. I think I would very much enjoy this exhibition if I had a specific intent to get something deeper out of the exhibition, like research for a paper. One thing that this site does do for me is make me more interested in researching his songs and listening to them. The addition of letting the reader of the site look at the specific letters that Woody wrote to the Library of congress is quite amazing and something that I will take a further look into at a later time.

This is in response to the Web Exhibition Review Project.

The Nutcracker

The definition of a ritual is that “they are repeated, habitual actions, but they are more purposeful than custom; rituals are frequently highly organized and controlled, often meant to indicate or announce membership in a group.”(Sims and Stephens 95) A ritual that I recently went to that some people may not think of as one is the Nutcracker ballet. I thought about it as a ritual because as I looked around and saw all of the families there, they definitely have specific things they do to get ready for the show; whether it would be to eat a special dinner before the show, or to get dressed in their very best Christmas clothes. As a person who had never been to the Nutcracker before, I was almost equally amazed at the way the lobby was decorated as the sets for the show. So much time and effort goes in each year to making the lobby of the MAC look like a winter wonderland just for this specific show. As I looked around the lobby I kept thinking that this goes on all over the world. The Nutcracker is the quintessential Christmas thing to do and every place that shows it probably dresses their lobbies up “to the nines”. I felt so out of place wearing my sweater and jeans because I did not realize that it was such a big deal to dress up in my best clothes. Nevertheless, we found our way to our seats in the second balcony and sat down next to a young girl and her grandmother. The young girl was dressed very nicely and was playing with her ballet Barbie doll. I asked the girl if she was excited and she replied with, “yes, now I know Christmas is soon!”

The entire show was amazing and I am very glad that I have had the chance to experience this ritual. To me, it is not a ritual, and probably never will be, but it is amazing that it means so much to so many different people. The show is definitely highly organized and controlled, even though it is not very frequent. It does indicate membership in a group because most, not all, of the people that go to the show every year are Christian. Even though it was my first time going to the show, and I didn’t understand all of the rituals and experiences surrounding the show, I had a very good time. I thought it was about time to see the Nutcracker and seeing it at the MAC was a great experience. It gave me a new outlook on what exactly the Nutcracker is. Now I will not just think of it as a ballet, but a whole experience that really gives kids something to look forward to.

THis is in response to the Ritual, Festival, and Celebration project.

The Jokes on You

There are jokes that have been around for ages, like “knock-knock” jokes, or new ones that are created everyday through everyday experiences and through the gatherings of friends. One of my favorite jokes is not an old classic one, but a new one that was created one day during one of these gatherings of friends. The creation occurred last year during my study abroad in Israel. The reason this is important to note is because half of the joke is in Hebrew and half is in English. The multilingual joke is exactly why my friends and I think it is so funny. To the normal person, they would either not understand it due to the language barrier, or not think it’s funny because it is more of an inside joke. The two languages are imperative in order to somewhat comprehend the joke. If the joke was told completely in Hebrew, it would not make complete sense. This is because not all English is translated directly into Hebrew and it would make it a bit complicated. The joke would make sense in English, but it just way more fun in Hebrew.

Here it is:

Mah haHevdel bein dag l’psanter? (What’s the difference between a fish to a piano)
Ee efshar l’Tuna Fish. (It’s not possible to “tuna fish”).

You may not think this joke is funny when you read it, but it has a lot more meaning to me. Being able to combine things that I love (Hebrew and humor) means a lot to me and being able to share this joke (even though I didn’t create it) with others means even more. It was always amusing to tell this joke to little Israeli kids because they don’t know what tuna fish is, but they understand the rest of the joke, so they think you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Jokes mean different things to different people. This joke is very funny to friends and me, but not to other people. There are many different kinds of jokes that strike and wonderful chord with some, but insult others. There are blonde jokes, women jokes, and much worse kinds. There are jokes that kids create for fun, jokes for stand up comedy, and many others. I don’t know very many jokes, but when I hear a good one, I keep it in my memory to try to pass on to others

Even better than Lion King...

I went to go see the Drummers of Burundi on November 2, 2006. The entire evening was definitely an interesting experience. The night started with walking into the auditorium and hearing the sounds of drums. My friend and I weren’t sure what was going on so we ventured into the lobby where different people were performing in a drum circle. The idea was to get the audience into the mood and it sure did the trick. As the concert neared, we got more and more excited and found our way to our seats in the balcony of the IU Auditorium.

The concert started with the Mombasa Party group. This group consisted of only 4 performers. They all played different percussion instruments and there was some singing. There were also some interesting native instruments like the tashkota, which is like a table-top banjo. Interestingly enough, when I searched this word on Google and Wikipedia.com, the only time this word came up was when the Drummers of Burundi were being talked about. This leads me to wonder if the group essentially invented this instrument. The music that was played was divided into six different sections. Each song had a different title that was to indicate the type of music that was going to be played. All of the music was more “flowing” than the drumming in the lobby and very easy-going. My favorite piece was the last one entitled “All Jambo”. Jambo means hello in Swahili which is a language spoken in the native lands of these peoples. I particularly enjoyed this song because the beat was really fun to follow and the words were very familiar as they were, Hakuna Matata.

After the Mombasa group played, there was a brief intermission and then the Drummers of Burundi came to the stage. Literally, they came into the auditorium by the side door with their drums on their heads and played up to the stage. There were twelve drummers in all, all wearing red, green and white. Once they got onto the stage, they assembled into a semi-circle with a single, more decorated drum in the middle of the circle. Drummers would take turns going into the middle and continuing with the beat or creating a new one. Sometimes there would be two drummers in the middle and that would create much more excitement. Three of the drums would essentially do a base beat and the other drums would all be in-sync with a different beat. Along with the drumming were some fancy footwork and hand work. Many times the drummer in the middle of the semi-circle would “wrap the stick around their head”. The way they would do it would make it seem like they were actually wrapping it around like a rope, but that just shows how good they were. One of the funny moments of the evening was when one of the drummers accidentally lost control of his stick and it flung into the orchestra pit. I thought that he would just get a new one from back stage, but eventually he climbed down into the pit and got it himself. The performance ended with them group coming out the same way they came in. One by one they put their (what looked like very heavy) drums on their heads and headed off the stage.

This performance was definitely one I had never witnessed before. I’ve heard this kind of drumming on CD before, but to see it on stage in real life was definitely an experience I will remember for a while. Seeing the group come in with the insanely heavy drums on their heads gave me a new found appreciation for carrying things on my back and complaining. Hopefully I will have a chance to see more of this group or similar groups in the future.

This is the Musical Performance Visit Project.

This will make you hungry!!!

I am not one to eat very ethnic foods. Last year, while studying abroad in Israel, I had a very hard time going to many of the restaurants there because most Mediterranean food has lots of spices and zip to them. It's not that I don't like spicy food, I just can't eat it. My mouth gets insanely hot and dry and I feel like my stomach will explode at any minute. When given this assignment, at first I wasn't sure how I was going to do because a lot of the ethnic restaurants here are Asian or other influences that my stomach can literally not handle. A good compromise was the Irish Lion. It is an Irish restaurant that most people don’t know about. I asked several of my friends in the past week if they had ever heard of it, and while some said yes, absolutely no one knew where it was. It is next to Crazy Horse (about ½ block from the Court House on West Kirkwood).

The décor is very Irish. There are fake animal heads adorning all of the walls, with plaques and posters boasting Guinness Beer and other wall hangings to make Irish Lion more authentic. The menu is also very authentic, more so than the wall decorations, because the food is real. Ireland has always been known for the use of potatoes in its cuisine. This comes from the time when there was the Great Potato Famine in 1849. One of Irish Lion’s signature dishes, it certainly is signature as it has a trademark next to its name on the menu, are the Blarney Puffballs. These little balls are little gooey blobs of potato mixed with garlic and cheese. Garlic is another essential ingredient in Irish cuisine according to Wikipedia.com. A little added touch was the sour cream with scallions on top. As you can guess, the scallions are also important in Irish cuisine. There were many things to choose from on the menu ranging from very traditional cuisine like coddle (layers of boiled pork sausage with sliced potatoes and onions cooked in the stock The only flavoring is usually salt, pepper, and parsley), other stews, many different types of meat, and fish.

I was very lucky when doing this assignment because I went with my boyfriend and a bunch of his coworkers, so there were plenty of people to get different things off the menu. Our waiter was very helpful with telling us what was more traditional fare to order off the menu. The first thing we ordered was the Blarney Puffballs because they were the most authentic and the only thing that my boyfriend and I could eat. I keep kosher, so this assignment was even more difficult without being able to eat any of the meat. A couple of us also ordered what are known as “half yards”. They are literally half yard glasses (basically only 22 oz because they are very thin) with any alcohol you want in them. The guys ordered traditional stout and I ordered Irish cider. The glasses are so long that it is almost impossible to drink it without hitting your neighbor. They also have full yards, but with the policy of “you break you buy it” with the glasses ($70 a piece) it seemed a little too intense to try.

After the appetizer we ordered the main courses. There were so many options to choose from. One guy ordered the Liffey Salmon. Salmon is one of the most common fishes used in Irish cuisine. I didn’t know this at the time, but the Liffey River is a river that flows through Dublin, Ireland. Two people from the group ordered coddle and stew. Both of these soups came with soda bread is an absolute staple of Irish Cuisine. It is just as important as potatoes. The stew also had the main ingredient of lamb which is also very popular and ethnic. Due to the no meat policy, I got the trout entrée. According to Wikipedia.com, trout is more and more popular in Ireland now because obesity has taken its toll of the residents of the country to the high fat content of its very traditional foods. Now more healthy foods, like trout and more vegetable have been added to the menus to help with this issue.

Upon the end of our meal, we heard some loud yelling come from a back table. When we asked our waiter what was going on, he said they were yelling an old Irish drinking toast. He said the basic gist to the toast was “health to the men, and may the women live forever”. We later found out that they didn’t know what they were saying and their waiter had just told them to yell it. The whole evening was very fun and gave me some more insight on a culture that I did not know much about. Hopefully I will be able to go back again soon with more friends so more people can find out about the glory that is Irish Lion.

Lots of geography covered with an ethnography (just trying to make it rhyme!)

This is a very hard reflection question to answer. Last year, I spent my junior year abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. I was fortunate enough to take a couple classes that dealt with the culture of Israeli’s and their neighbors. Through one of these courses, a small group including myself did an ethnographic research project in a neighborhood in Haifa. Haifa is known for being cohabitated by Jews and Arabs. We had to formulate our own questions, give the interviews and then transcribe the interviews into formal papers showing our research. Through this assignment, it gave me a much greater understanding of what ethnography is and made me want to do even more of this type of study.

I would love to study the Jews of London. They have been there for such a long time, beginning with the migration of Jews from the Ottoman Empire. There is such a long history with them, and I never even realized there was such a big community until I visited there for a few short days last year. When I visited, my friends and I arrived at our destination on the bus and were able to see all the Jewish shops and whatnot. We could tell the exact moment from which we entered the community. I would love to do more research there, of people young and old to hear how they came to the community and how they feel about it. After doing this research, I would then like to study the places in which the people of the community came from. As I have learned from a class I am taking at the moment, a lot of the Jews from London originally came from Portugal. I would love to see if this still is prevalent in the London community today.

I would try to accomplish this work by going to a Synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of London and ask to be set up with a family nearby. Through this, I would be able to gain connections with others in the community and nearby. This would be worth doing because the history of the Jewish people is very important to me personally and academically. I am a Jewish Studies major with a concentration in History and Society. I am fascinated with the history of all the communities of Jewish people and for some reason, the London Jews fascinate me the most.

This is in response to reflection question 7.

conjunction junction, what's your function?

Upon reading chapter 6, I find the structuralism approach the most compelling. I do not agree with the functionalism approach because I think there is much more to folklore than what it does and means. Structuralism focuses on even more than on a plot of a story, but also the characters and the actions they perform. This approach goes deep into a story and can bring out more meaning than just looking at the plot. A riddle or joke is a good example of this because in order to truly understand the riddle or joke, it is necessary to dissect every word in it. The structures of myths and the like vary from culture, religion, and the region from where is came from. The structure can give big hints as to the answers of these questions. The structuralism approach is mainly for verbal folklore but it has grown into being for written as well. It is much more difficult understand the meaning of something spoken, than something written.

I also think that the psychoanalytic interpretation is very interesting. I like how it goes even further than functionalism, by that it also goes into interpreting symbols and other things beneath the surface of a story and the like. Using linguistically cues and symbolic metaphors is so interesting to me and I think it is really interesting when they are interpreted correctly.

This is in response to reflection question 6.

When I grow up, I want to be a performer.

Performance has definitely grown into a phenomenon on all levels, whether is it cultural or social. Chapter 5 introduces different ideas and examples to deepen this opinion. The chapter describes what performance is as well as why it is so important. What is important about is the “explicit and implicit relationships between performers and audiences, and the complex dynamics that lead to or stem from these relationships” (128) Performances all around us, whether is it storytelling, music, or anything in front of an audience. Not all performances are apparent, as they can be very informal and happen on a daily basis. Clarity is imperative in the relaying of a performance, because if the audience doesn’t understand, or even worse the performers don’t even understand, then the message of the performance is lost. This chapter has deepened my understanding of performance because I used to think performance was just a group getting in front of an audience and doing something, just in general. I didn’t realize that just saying a joke with a friend in front of a couple people could count as a performance. The chapter also gave me a better understanding of the cultural and social aspects of a performance. Those things influence a performance, the performers, and the audience.

I recently went to a performance of Indiana University’s acapella group, Straight No Chaser. They are not a folk group, but essentially are a folk group of the university because they carry a history and are very much associated with the university. Along with them, everyday I see performances going on just on the street, and now I will be more aware of them due to the reading of this chapter.

This is a response to reflection question 5.

peer response

This blog is a peer response to Btown Folk’s response about being far from home. Btown Folk wrote about moving away from home after living in the same town for such a long time. He made a big leap from going from a small town, to a huge school like IU with 40,000 people. He soon was able to connect with a small, close-knit group of people, so he was able to feel more like he was at home.

When I first came to IU, I thought that I would never see anyone I knew because the campus is just so big. I knew that I would have to fit in somewhere and find my own “folk group”, but it just didn’t seem possible with that many students. Four years ago, on my first day as a freshman, I realized that two people from my high school were living on the floor right below me. I couldn’t believe it and knew that I would be able to find my own group. Over the next several weeks, as I joined Hillel, the Jewish group on campus, I started noticing more and more people I knew. Everywhere I went, I would see people I knew from Hillel and it would just amaze me that with a campus so big, I would be able to connect with so many people so quickly. Even within Hillel, I met people who went to my camp and we would be able to sit for hours and just share things that no one else would understand. I didn’t even know they went to school at IU, but they introduced me to people they knew and it just snowballed into a huge group.

There is just something that makes me feel good when I walk through campus and randomly see people I know. It makes me feel even better when I haven’t seen them in a long time and get to reconnect. I hope that this will continue on when I move away from IU and get a job somewhere else. I am looking forward to the day when I run into someone I met from IU and can just stand in the middle of the street and reminisce.

Rituals - to do or not to do?

Rituals have always played an important part of my life. Every day I do some sort of ritual, whether it be my morning ritual of washing my face and brushing my teeth, to something religious like saying the blessings over my food. The type of rituals mentioned in the chapter are those that "are performances that are repeated, patterned, and frequently include ceremonial actions that incorporate symbols, actions and repetition" (Sims and Stephens p. 95) These types of rituals are those such as life cycle events, holidays, and other types of events. The chapter then goes on to discuss different types of rituals. There are low-context and high context rituals and invented rituals. Low-context rituals are less formal than others and may not be planned in advance. The only one that I can think of is the one that is already written in the book, and that is the ritual of throwing salt over oneÂ’s shoulder if it gets spilled. After thinking for a bit another one I can think of is when someone says to someone else who is driving to not get in a crash and the driver knocks on wood. A High-context ritual is one that is planned out and is more formal. In the Jewish faith, before eating, one is to wash their hands and say a blessing. This would be an example of a planned out ritual. The last type of ritual is the invented ritual. The difference between the different rituals are that "invented rituals may primarily reflect awareness that a group needs traditions to participate in with some regularity and which can identify individuals as members" (Sims and Stephens p. 101)

I have participated in several invented rituals. Two that are the most vivid in my memory are those from elementary school. I went to a Jewish Day School when I was younger and in order for us to feel more like adults, they created ceremonies for the 3rd and 5th graders. In 3rd grade at the beginning of the year, the students are given their own siddurs (prayer books). Each student prepares one of the prayers and as a whole the class prepares a song. After a couple weeks of learning, the students are given their siddurs at a ceremony with all of the parents. It is a pretty significant ceremony to the child at the time as they are given a book that allows them to pray whenever they want and to "find" G-d when they feel fit. The 5th graders go through a similar type of ceremony but are given a Chumash (Torah) instead. In both instances, these are invented rituals that have grown significancence over the years at the school. I still remember both ceremonies very well and will probably remember to tell my children about them when they are old enough.

This is in response to reading question number 4.