Heritage Education Resources

2005-09-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since my last post, April 2005. A lot has happened since then, and it has been a time of busyness and substance.
I finished the wood workers project and have copied about 60 CDs to go to the tradition bearers, historical societies, and libraries. I haven't heard from anyone yet, so I don't know the CD is being received. I now need to look into creating a web site, and I believe I can ask Melissa Anthony of Marianna to do the work.
The search for funding In the Best Interest continues, but now we have a web site and only need money to put it up. Melissa has done a fine job with the site, and I plan to utilize her skills for other projects, namely the book, and It's In My Blood.
I am currently preparing a grant narrative to go with an application to the American Association of University Women (AAUW). It has grants for organizations doing work in the name of women and girls, and In the Best Interest fits the bill. This is an expose project, but it is an educational project as well.
I don't see funds coming in for awhile, but maybe this grant will break the spell. I don't know, I don't understand the grants making process, though I can write a grant with no problem.
I am frustrated, but I want to keep going.. I think something is of value here, and I want to fight for it.

2005-04-25T08:21:00.000-04:00

Am still waiting to get the grant award packet from the DCA regarding the wood working project. Once I get the grant activated by signing some papers, I will be able to head out and get to work. I will start by going to the Forest Museum in Perry. I think there will be leads to people there.

Penny Crandall got a windfall from her uncle and told me to buy a camcorder. I bought a Sony handycam that anyone can use. This is Penny's camera, but I will be using it for the DV project. I am humbled by Penny's committment to the project. I will start using the camera in June when I go back down to Vero and record Cindy's experiences with the legal system. I have to check about cameras in courtrooms. Penny can steer me in the right direction regarding that.

I call Lisa Tessier about an interview at the end of April, and I will call Cindy as well. I also need to try and hook up with Angie again. Missed her at Blitches in Bonifay last week.

I continue to be stunned by these women's stories, even moreso than I was with These Are Our Stories. Perhaps it is because children are so much in the foreground here. The power packed into these stories is tremendous. I hope I can keep a steady hand with them.

The wood working project will provide me with balance I think, and I need that. Doing something that isn't as intense, isn't as hurtful to balance things. I need all the luck I can get with all of the projects.

2005-04-06T05:37:00.000-04:00

Today, HER switches hats and will go to the panel meeting of the Division of Cultural Affairs where the panelists will evaluate my application to do a photographic roster of north Florida folk artists who work in wood. I don't know what will happen because I have never applied for a grant in this category before. There's not much money left in the pot at DCA, so all we can do is wait and see what the panel says.

Fund raising continues for In the Best Interest, and it is slow going. I have joined the independent film makers association whose journal, The Independent, lists funding opportunities. I need this resource, so it was worth the $70 investment.

I hope to do two interviews with women from north Florida for the project. This will let me get my feet wet with the topic and allow me to figure out direction and possible filming angles. I haven't been able to reach the women yet, but will keep trying.

2005-03-26T09:07:00.000-05:00

I forgot to give my address for donations:

Heritage Education Resources, Inc.
2636 Mission Rd. #53
Tallahassee, FL 32304

(850) 580-9889
herjer@earthlink.net

2005-03-26T08:56:00.000-05:00

In this blog post, I make an appeal. My video project, "In the Best Interest" needs your support. This project is important because it will reveal the true state of the legal and social services systems as they relate to battered women in Florida. The women's situation in Florida is not unique - - others in other states have similar stories. It is just that HER is willing to document those stories, in the voices of the women, and share them with the public.

This project will cost up to $200,000 to produce, from start to finish. Your tax deductible donation will help with filming and production, as well as research. Any amount, from $50 to $500 will be gratefully accepted.

2005-03-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

Well, the new project is taking shape, but right now funding is the problem. I've asked for foundation support on both phases of the project: fieldwork and filming. I am receiving rejection notices from foundations, and just pray I get a nibble.

I will, however, start doing fieldwork up here around Tallahassee and the Panhandle. I can manage that on my own for now, and want to get started. My two advisors, Penny Crandall and Janet Lupher, are gathering the names and numbers of women to interview. I will have to go to DCF and the courts on my own. Well, maybe not the courts. Janet and Penny can guide me there too.

So we should be off and running by next week. I look forward to it.

2005-03-07T05:37:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened since my last post. These Are Our Stories has been formatted and sent to the indexer, John Bealle, for indexing. I feel as if I have let something go, and look forward to Johns work.

Once the work is indexed, I can add all the front and back matter, print it all on a laser printer, and send it to University Press of America for their review. With luck, all will be all right. Then I can get the cost of the book and proceed to selling the work, 50 copies.

I feel very good about this and am excited to see what happens.

The next project is an outgrowth of These Are Our Stories. It will be a documentation project of women's experiences with the legal and social services system in Florida. It will be a state wide project, culminating in a documentary video and a book. Janet Lupher, an outpatient counselor, and Penny Crandall, a lawyer, will be helping me with this project. I am in the process of seeking funds for the first phase of the project, conducting fieldwork to collect stories and see who would be interested in being a part of the video. I expect there will be some interest here, as no one is satisfied with the legal or social services system when it comes to domestic violence. But we shall see what happens

2004-12-25T07:44:00.000-05:00

I have finally formatted These Are Our Stories for publication. My next step is to scan the resource guide for domestic abuse in rural counties and the graphic of the Power Wheel for the Introduction. Once I get these things done, I will construct the table of contents and get to work on the index. I might have all of this done by Spring 2005 instead of Winter 2006. That would be a good deal.

The folk arts in wood grant application is ready to be photocopied. After the first of the year I will have the slides processed and prepared for inclusion as support materials. I am also expecting a support letter from Congressman Allen Boyd. I will photocopy everything at Kinkos where I will be able to collate as well as punch in holes for the binding.

Erica hasn't been writing, and I am afraid she will not make her March deadline. This is a self imposed deadline, so she'll be able to change it however she wants. I only hope she is realistic about all of this. She doesn't seem to be right now. We shall see what we shall see.

2004-12-14T04:42:00.000-05:00

At this time, Heritage Education Resources is in waiting mode. I am waiting on a number of things to happen, including: hearing from the Production Manager at University Press of America to help me with formatting the book; receiving more autobiographical writing from Erica for me to edit; support letters and slides for the folk arts in wood project.

The folk arts in wood project is a new addition on to the plate. What I want to do is create a photographic roster of north Florida folk artists who work in wood. The roster would at once honor tradition bearers and serve as a marketing tool for their work. I am applying to Florida Division of Cultural Affairs for a grant to help support this project. So right now I am waiting on people to send me various support materials for the application.

So, it's a lot of waiting going on, but I hope that will end soon.

Heritage Education Resources will also be researching grants for a Southern Gospel trio, Jenkins and Company. They want funding to build a recording studio, and continue their ministry in song. I don't know what is out there for them, but it is worth a shot. Any suggestions on where to look would be more than welcome. Write to herjer@earthlink.net

2004-11-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

It has been awhile since I last posted, and a lot has happened. The project work continues, slow but sure, but there have been some new developments worth posting.

First, I have a publisher for These Are Our Stories. University Press of America has agreed to publish the book. Of course, there are a few catches. First, I have to make the book camera ready according the the press' standards. Second, I have to sell 50 copies of the book before actual publication. I don't know how much the book will cost; I believe that is determined after I make it camera ready. So we shall see.

I am hoping to have the book out by winter 2006. This will be a unique contribution to the literature on domestic violence, given that it is a book of transcripts with a brief introduction, a resource guide, and a brief bibliography. I really want the transcripts to speak for themselves here and not douse the voices with any strict analysis. I don't know how acceptable that is, but I am going to do it anyway.

The second piece of news is that Erica has been busy with her autobiography Don't Go Back, and I am currently editing Chapter Three. I don't quite know how many chapters she has planned, but as one reader put it, the work is a "page turner." I finally met Erica at her home in South Carolina where she shared more of her story as well as documentation of the abuse in her second marriage. She plans on including excerpts from police reports and a deposition in the book.

I have completed, for the time being, editing my paper on a folkloristic theory of folklore and education. With luck I will read it at the meeting of the Florida Folklore Society as a dry run for presenting it at the American Folklore Society meeting in 2005.

I have two project ideas, both of which will require fieldwork. The first project is a revisitation of forestry fieldwork I did with Florida Folklife Programs in 1989. I want to revisit fieldwork from then and follow up on forestry culture today. If this works out, the project will produce a booklet aimed toward the centennial celebration of the US Forest Service in 2005.

The second project is fleshing out fieldwork conducted with Tallahassee area tradition bearers already identified by Florida Folklife Programs. The fieldwork would be incorporated in the Programs' web site.

I don't know if any of these projects will fly. I meet with the state folklorist on 22 November to discuss my ideas. Funding, of course, will be an issue. Hopefully the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs will support one or both projects. I also hope the Florida division of the US Forest Service will be supportive. We shall see.

My days have been filled with project planning and working on current projects. The great thing about these projects is that they are currently inexpensive to work on. This might change with future projects, but for now, everything is under control.

2004-09-10T20:04:00.000-04:00

Dare I say it? I am almost done with These Are Our Stories. I should have a manuscript in shape by 5 October before I head to Albuquerque and Salt Lake City. I need to do a couple of things: scan and install graphics and create a table of contents and cover sheet. I also need to insert the resource guide for domestic violence as well. I get the resource guide on 9/14 and will work with it. I have to take the graphics to an outside source for scanning since my scanner doesn't handle these particular diagrams.
It has been a long time coming, and I am excited. Now I must continue my search for a publisher as well as seek a production grant. I now know that this can be done, and I am glad for the work that is going into the project's completion. Actually, it won't be complete until I find a publisher. But we are at a good stage here and I can see an end to it. The women will get their book.
The other projects are moving slowly. Erica hasn't written much of her autobiography and I am concerned. I don't think she will make her self imposed deadline of 1 December. At this point I have nothing more to edit, and it is frustrating. But she will realize that she has to develop and impose a writing schedule, that writing is a lot like gestation and birth. She must nurse her project, and right now she is not doing that. I can only hope.
The homeless shelter project is in the hands of the grant writer, and she plans on having the application to the Illinois Arts Council done by the end of the month. It will be really neat if this particular project works out: writing with homeless women. I am looking forward to it.
It seems like HER is very busy, but it isn't. I could be doing more, and am looking for more to do.

2004-08-15T17:04:00.000-04:00

Project work continues slow but sure. At the end of the month I will be conducting the last interview for the domestic violence project. By then I will have 8 narratives, two essays, and a series of poems, all dealing with domestic violence in rural north Florida, a section of rural north Florida that is.

I am looking for a publisher and have been receiving the most encouraging rejection letters. While presses may not be able to publish the anthology, at least there are voices of support for it.

This is the frustrating part of doing a publication, trying to sell it. There is a press that is devoted to domestic violence, but because the geographical region I am dealing with is so small, the press doesn't want to publish the anthology. It said that it would consider the project if I could find a production grant. This is hard to find, but I will keep looking.

I am at work on other projects, including Don't Go Back, a woman's autobiography that revolves around domestic violence, and a writing project with Holy Angels Homeless Shelter in East St. Louis. I am excited about these two projects and will write about them more later on.

2004-07-20T17:34:00.000-04:00

The work proceeds slow but sure. I have had more interviews with the domestic violence project, and I believe fieldwork will be done by summer's end.

Next comes the tricky part, finding a publisher. I am using Writer's Market for listings and will be sending out queries next week. I hope I will find a nibble.

Work continues on the other projects. The child-centered theory of folklore and education work is at a standstill right now as I try to figure out where to take things next. I keep reading over what I have written so far to see where I need to fill gaps. This will take time, and I am in no rush.

The other writing project depends greatly on the writer whom I am editing. She sends me sections for me to incorporate into the general text and we are moving along fine. 1 December for the first draft. 1 May for the final draft. And then too we will need to shop for publishers.

I am getting a great lesson on patience here. I must learn to be patient with the work and with myself. It is a slow process and I know this. Sometimes it is too slow for my liking. Oh well, there it is.

2004-06-20T07:30:00.000-04:00

I continue work on a child-centered theory of folklore and education. As I have written before, I am using the theories of education from John Dewey to formulate this theory and am having great success with the work. My next step is to explore the uses of folklore and education as agents of social change. This is the capstone of Dewey's work, and it definitely applies to work in folklore and education.

Work on domestic violence also continues, and I am now waiting to hear from the Salvation Army domestic violence program in Bonifay, Holmes County, Florida. There are several women in the program who wish to tell their stories and now I am waiting for clearance so I may interview them. I seem to be jumping through hoops with this project, but it is worth it.

I met a woman the other day who used to be involved in DV in Florida rural communities, and she suggested I contact community action agencies and centers for leads for interviews. I have been trying to reach the Leon County Community Action Agency, but no one seems to be in the office at present. I did contact the NE Florida CAA in Jacksonville, and was told they were unable to help me. I will contact other CAAs in this region and see what they might have to offer.

Funding remains a problem. I haven't heard from any more foundations, and would like to think of this as a good sign. I will continue on my own until some kind of funding comes in. It is frustrating, but it is also a reality.

2004-06-14T08:21:00.000-04:00

Today I meet with Marilyn Trigg of Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence. This will be my first meeting with FCADV on an official basis. I hope to get the organization's endorsement of the domestic violence project. It will possibly give me more credibility with funders and possibly some entry into women's shelters for the project. I don't know what will happen, but I hope for good.

On another subject, I have joined Big Bend Hospice as a volunteer. I will be providing respite and companionship to patients and their families, and will be working on a Life Review Project where I will be recording oral histories and other personal documentation related to patients and their families. It will be a perfect opportunity to use folklore skills and I hope it will turn into something more permanent.

2004-05-25T04:35:00.000-04:00

One thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of literature that talks about the cultural influences on domestic violence: class, ethnicity, values, and the like. But there is very little talk about the culture within domestic violence. And this is what I want to address. There are cultural variables working within the abusive situation, learned behaviors that guide the actions of abuser and abused. True, these learned behaviors have a past. But I want to look at how they operate inside the abusive situation.

To do some of this, I look at the Power Wheel developed in Duluth, MN by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project. This wheel describes a number of tactics, learned behaviors, that an abuser uses in an abusive situation. Unfortunately, there is no Power Wheel for the abused in the situation, perhaps because it is viewed that she is powerless. I don't think she is powerless overall, I think she uses power to survive the situation. It may seem like powerlessness, but in actuality the woman is using her culture to survive. For the abuser the aim is to control. For the abused the aim is to survive.

I could go on in circles about this, but I think there needs to be a cultural theory of the internal workings of domestic violence. This is what I will try to do in my contribution to the Introduction to the book.

2004-05-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

An anthology. An anthology of women's stories of abuse and survival. An anthology that will serve to highlight an important issue in our American lives, unedited, with resource information. I have started writing the Preface to These Are Our Stories, and am outlining information for the Introduction. The Preface is highly personal, and the Introduction will be more technical, with contributions, I hope, from staff at the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Life Management of Northwest Florida.
As I wrote on 4/29, I'm still waiting to hear from foundations so I can continue the fieldwork needed for this project. I hope I will hear from someone soon, as I am getting impatient. Well, patience is not one of my strong points, so I guess I will need to learn how to sit on my hands with greater ease.
But I am excited about this, and will try to post drafts of the Preface, provided I can figure out how to do it.

2004-05-10T14:58:00.000-04:00

Finished B's transcription and now it is time to take another break. I hope in June to start doing more fieldwork, starting with Pat who has written poems about her experiences. I think I may have written this before, but I'll rish repeating myself.

I am now reading about the Dewey School and am finding the whole learning by doing philosophy dynamic and wide reaching. For folklore and education there is a fit here, but not quite, because folklorists in education still need to teach about what a tradition is and how it works in our culture.

2004-05-04T17:27:00.000-04:00

I've been working on a particularly detailed transcription. The informant, B, is a very animated teller, relating experiences of four marriages, all of which ended with violence. I have been struggling with how to deal with the transcription, and have decided to keep to standard convention in the text, but have been very liberal with punctuation. A lot of commas, exclamation points, and of course, quotation marks. I think this arrangement will work.

Still no word from foundations. I do not want to call them to see what is going on lest I come across too pushy.

As of Thursday, HER will enter into a volunteer venture: hospice. I will be volunteering with Big Bend Hospice, possibly as a volunteer chaplain. I am looking forward to this new development, which I have been thinking about for some time. I hope that something paying will come of it, but first things first, and that means working as a volunteer.

2004-04-29T15:07:00.000-04:00

HER continues to wait to hear from foundations regarding requests for operational and project support. This waiting is frustrating, but I suppose it is part of the game.

In the meantime, transcribing continues and I hope to finish by the end of next week. I may set up an interview in May, and would like to set up more for June. Millie says she can find more women in the Jackson/Washington/Holmes county area, and I would like to identify women in other counties.

2004-04-28T14:55:00.000-04:00

I started transcribing B and expect to be working on her for awhile. Like I wrote before, hers was a three hour interview where we ran out of tape! What I was able to record was a document of incredible suffering and survival.

HER has come to the point where it can no longer be totally funded by personal funds. I ask fellow bloggers for their support of an organization devoted to providing service revolving around heritage and cultural diversity. The current project is the domestic violence project, and all funds will be applied to supplies and travel. For more information on how to contribute contact me at
herjer@earthlink.net

2004-04-26T18:31:00.000-04:00

I've been reading John Dewey and have been thinking about how to apply the lessons of his university school to developing folklife in education residencies. What I have to do is approach the kids to find out what kinds of traditions they are interested in exploring. The idea is to act on the interests of the kids, but within a framework, in this case traditions.

It is interesting how Dewey is best known for his work in education, but he didn't work in education all that long. His theory, however, was controversial and very different from the prevailing work in educational psychology. He left Chicago in a huff and moved over to Columbia University where the prevailing theories were born. I wonder if he interacted with that group of people ever.

This week I will begin transcribing again, working on B. She is very dramatic, very much the oppostie of P. I wonder how it will go.

2004-04-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

I have finished P's transcript and am taking a break. I am thinking of a new project to add to this work in domestic violence, and in fact it is informed by this project.

What I want to do is undertake a course of study of John Dewey and pragmatism. Pragmatism is similar in approach to relativism and as a folklorist, I practice relative thinking. What I want to learn here is the nature of knowing, the nature of experiencing. Dewey's thought is at the forefront here, and I want to explore this in greater depth. I give myself the summer to do this.

I hope that I can get Jeff Milligan a professor of educational inquiry to be my guide post. He is going to be working in the Phillipines this summer, so what I hope is that we can stay in touch by e-mail. I hope he will help me out.

2004-04-18T18:02:00.000-04:00

I've spent the day off and on transcribing P's recording of her experiences of abuse and survival. What amazes me about the women I've been working with is their resolve to leave their abusive situations, although it often times takes a number of tries. Survival is a difficult task, and these women are strong cases in point. I can't imagine being in their shoes. I can't at all.

People have asked me why I'm doing this project and my answer is long and convoluted. As a folklorlist I am interested in how people express themselves when it comes to what is important to them. Surviving abuse is important. And there is a story to be told.

When I meet these women and record their stories I am interested in the experience and how it is related. You can see it in many ways, from gesturing hands to the constant use of phrases like "Do you understand?" I don't know if I will ever completely understand, but I am trtrying.

2004-04-17T07:41:00.000-04:00

I just sent off the Introduction to Millie's poems to
www.ariga.com. Millie talks a lot about how her poems/letters deal with feelings and emotions, and this is reflected in the Introduction. Again, the site for the poems is
www.ariga.com/southernjourney/millie-index.shtml