The Expressive Lives of Elders , livre ebook

THE EXPRESSIVE LIVES OF ELDERS
Jason Baird Jackson, editor
THE EXPRESSIVE LIVES OF ELDERS
Folklore, Art, and Aging
Edited by Jon Kay
Indiana University Press, in cooperation with the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Indiana University Press
A free digital edition of this book is available at IUScholarWorks: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/22075
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03707-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03708-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03711-4 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
This edited volume is dedicated to the memory of
Alan Jabbour:
folklorist, fiddler, friend
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Folklore and the Expressive Lives of Elders / Jon Kay
PART I . Observations on Folklore and Aging
1 Boot Lasts and Basket Lists: Joe Patrickus s Customized Art and Life / Lisa L. Higgins
2 Aging with Grace and Power: A Puerto Rican Healer s Story / Selina Morales
3 Fieldworker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History in Wood and Words / Juli n Antonio Carrillo
4 The Role of Traditional Arts in Identity Creation in the Lives of Elders / Patricia A. Atkinson
5 I Don t Have Time to Be Bored : Creativity of a Senior Weaver / Yvonne R. Lockwood
6 Still Working: Performing Productivity through Gardening and Home Canning / Danille Elise Christensen
7 Quilts and Aging / Clare Luz and Marsha MacDowell
8 Curating Time s Body: Elders as Stewards of Historical Sensibility / Mary Hufford
PART II . Folklife and Creative Aging Programs
9 Elderhood Arts / Kathleen Mundell
10 Dancing Chairs and Mythic Trees: The Power of Folk Arts in Creative Aging, Health, and Wellness / Troyd Geist
Index
Acknowledgments
F ROM THE BEGINNING of this book project, I wanted to enlist authors who could write from rich firsthand experiences. I thank the eleven contributing authors who generously penned their insights into their respective chapters to make The Expressive Lives of Elders: Folklore, Art, and Aging a readable and actionable collection of essays. This book, however, also benefited greatly from the perceptive suggestions of two engaged peer reviewers whom I thank for their contributions to the shaping of this book. I also thank Jason Baird Jackson, the Material Vernacular Series editor, for his thoughtful direction on this project.
Throughout various stages of this project, student workers helped with the formatting and compiling of the manuscripts. Thanks go to Dom Tartaglia, Micah Ling, Evangeline Mee, Katlin Suiter, Emily Hunsicker, and Donald Bradley for their work on this project.
Gary Dunham and his team at Indiana University Press made this project a reality. At the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society, Gary suggested an edited volume on folklore and aging. The next year, several of the volume s authors contributed papers to two panels on the topic for the 2017 annual meeting. After the conference, Janice Frisch and Kate Schramm at the press worked their magic, helping me stay on track and on time with this project. Their dedicated efforts and gentle reminders helped bring this collection into existence.
I am thankful for the scholars and elders whose words and influence informed these essays. From Barbara Myerhoff and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to Alan Jabbour and Simon Bronner, several scholars have broadened and deepened our understanding of the expressive lives of older adults. The observations offered in this volume came from the contributors working with dozens of older adults who shared their lives, talents, and insights with us. While the names of the elders who helped shape this book are too numerous to list here, I would acknowledge Joseph F. Patrickus Jr. (1947-2018) for his contribution to this project as his life was drawing to an end. I am appreciative of him and the many unnamed older adults who collaborated with the authors of this volume.
THE EXPRESSIVE LIVES OF ELDERS
Introduction
Folklore and the Expressive Lives of Elders
Jon Kay
F ROM 1997 TO 2004, I worked as the folklorist at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center in White Springs, Florida. This was my first long-term position as a public folklorist, which meant that I was based in a community for an extended period. As the folklorist for this state park, I coordinated craft demonstrations, produced public events, and hosted Elderhostel programs. Looking back on those years, it was then that I began thinking earnestly about the expressive lives of older adults: that is, how the stories, foods, crafts, games, music, and other forms of traditional knowledge that a person accumulates throughout their life become a valuable resource for them as they reach an advanced age. This is what this edited volume explores-the creative practices of older adults and how elders use these expressive forms in their daily lives.
While working at the Folk Culture Center, I witnessed how traditional arts not only supported older adults in later life but also helped many to thrive well into their eighties and nineties. Each fall, the center hosted a festival called Rural Folklife Days, a multiday celebration of local traditions. Most of the participants at the event were of retirement age; this group of elder quilters, blacksmiths, cane syrup makers, jelly canners, checkers players, musicians, and storytellers shared skills they learned in their youth with thousands of schoolchildren ( fig. 0.1 ). While the event aimed to teach the students about local history and cultural practices, I quickly realized that the older artists got as much or perhaps more out of the event as the students. In addition to the small stipend the park paid the demonstrators for their participation in the event, each elder was rewarded with the opportunity to share their life stories and special skills with the young attendees. I recognized that these demonstrators were not like many older adults in the United States, who suffer from isolation, boredom, and helplessness (Yale 2004). Instead, these elders were connected, engaged, and capable. I found the elders involved in this public program inspiring, and they contributed much to my understanding of life as a whole-not just the folklife they were hired to present. Programs such as Rural Folklife Days are not unique in the work of public folklorists in the United States. From the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall to an African drumming workshop at a local library, folklorists work with older tradition bearers to help them share their personal experiences and talents with the public. However, folklorists seldom focus on how the programs and events they produce may work to improve the quality of life of the older participants.

Fig. 0.1. Ivy Harris making cane syrup at Rural Folklife Days in White Springs, Florida, 2002. Photograph by Jon Kay .
Recently, I was hosting a limestone-carving program at a state park in Indiana, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older artist whom I had worked with a few years earlier. Glenn Hall s daughter had driven the ninety-three-year-old man to the event. He made me bring him here to see you! she explained. Long time no see, Mr. Hall, I said to the retired farmer turned metal sculptor. It was May the fifth 2012 at the Patoka Festival, he replied. His daughter stared at him and asked, How did you remember that? Well, it was just about the best day of my life, he explained. The one-day festival at which Glenn had demon-strated was just one of several arts programs that I helped produced that year ( fig. 0.2 ). I had enjoyed watching Glenn interact with visitors at the festival but had given little thought to what his participation meant to him. As this book demonstrates, the projects and programs that folklorists facilitate benefit the lives of older adults. Currently, these culture programs are primarily designed to support community engagement and demonstrate the artistic excellence of an art form or artist, per National Endowment for the Arts guidelines. However, public folklore theories, methods, and models, I believe, can also be deployed to improve the lives of older adults.

Fig. 0.2. Glenn Hall at Patoka State Park with his metal sculptures, 2012. Courtesy of Traditional Arts Indiana .
For example, folklorists study the dynamic ways that stories, art, food, music, dance, play, and similar expressive forms help build and support our social lives. When Dan Ben-Amos (1972) redefined folklore as artistic communication in small groups, he foregrounded both the communicative and social aspects of expressive forms. Similarly, Richard Bauman (1972, 33) encouraged folklorists to study the social base of folklore in terms of the actual place of the lore in social relationships and its use in communicative interaction. My years of studying the social interactions of older adults has confirmed for me that jam sessions, quilting bees, bocce ball tournaments, writing clubs, and morning coffee klatches help elders constitute and maintain their social ties. Gerontologists now recog-nized that these small groups and social networks are essential for maintaining an elder s health and wellness in later life. A 2015 study reviewed data from more than three hundre