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                             Folklife Center News
                           American Folklife Center
                           The Library of Congress  
                                   Fall 1998
                              Volume XX, Number 4
                  ISSN 0149-6840  Catalog Card No. 77-649628
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The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S.
Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation,
reference service, live performance, exhibition, publication, and
training. The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture,
which was established in the Music Division of the Library of
Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of
ethnographic material from the United States and around the
world.

Administration

Alan Jabbour, Director
Doris Craig, Administrative Assistant

Acquisitions

Vacant

Processing

Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Archivist
Nora Yeh, Archivist

Programs

Peter T. Bartis, Folklife Specialist
Camila Bryce-Laporte, Program Coordinator
Mary Hufford, Folklife Specialist
David A. Taylor, Folklife Specialist

Publications

James Hardin, Editor

Public Events

Theadocia Austen, Coordinator

Reference

Jennifer A. Cutting, Folklife Specialist
Judith A. Gray, Folklife Specialist, Coordinator
Stephanie A. Hall, Automation
Ann Hoog, Folklife Specialist

Administrative Office

Fax: 202 707-2076

Reference Service

Tel: 202 707-5510
 
Board of Trustees

Congressional Appointees

William L. Kinney Jr., Chair, South Carolina
James F. Hoy, Vice-chair, Kansas
Charles E. Trimble, Nebraska

Ex Officio Members  

James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
I. Michael Heyman, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Bill Ivey, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts
William Ferris, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
Alan Jabbour, Director, American Folklife Center


FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS

James Hardin, Editor
David A. Taylor, Editorial Advisor
John Biggs, Library of Congress Graphics Unit, Designer

FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS publishes articles on the programs and
activities of the American Folklife Center, as well as other
articles on traditional expressive culture. It is available free
of charge from the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center,
Washington, D.C. 20540-4610. FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS does not
publish announcements from other institutions or reviews of books
from publishers other than the Library of Congress. Readers who
would like to comment on Center activities or newsletter articles
may address their remarks to the editor.

TELEPHONE AND ONLINE INFORMATION RESOURCES

American Folklife Center publications (including FOLKLIFE CENTER
NEWS), a calendar of events, collection guides, general
information, and connections to a selection of other Internet
services related to folklife are available on the Internet.

LC Web is available through the World Wide Web service
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/). The Center's home page can be accessed
from the Library's main menu. The direct URL for the Center's
home page is: http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife/

Folkline, an information service providing timely information on
the field of folklore and folklife, including training and
professional opportunities and news items of national interest,
is available through the above Internet server. For telephone
service, call the Folklife Reading Room: 202 707-5510.


EDITOR'S NOTES

Center Gains Permanent Status

After being reauthorized eight times since it was created in
1976, the Center has now been authorized permanently by the
Congress. The new status may be attributed to the work of members
of the Center's Board of Trustees (and in particular former and
current board chairs Judy McCulloh and Bill Kinney) and to the
many persons around the country who sent letters of support to
their congressional representatives. All of us at the Center are
grateful for the eloquence and enthusiasm of those letters and
heartened by the tribute they paid to the Center and to the work
of folklorists and of folklife programs and organizations in
general. Many thanks for your help.

Library Launches Local Legacies Project

 The Library of Congress was founded on April 24, 1800, and
currently has underway a number of projects to celebrate its
bicentennial. One of the largest, and a favorite of the
Librarian, James H. Billington, is a project to document local
community traditions. This Local Legacies project will be the
most comprehensive national documentation project ever engaged in
by the Center. And we are gratified that many state folklorists
and folk arts coordinators have expressed enthusiasm for the
project and a willingness to participate.

Ramp Suppers

 An excellent example of a "local legacy" that might be
documented for the Library's project is the ramp supper that Mary
Hufford describes in her article in this issue. Hufford shows the
way seeking out, preparing, and talking about ramps ties a West
Virginia community to its local landscape and to one another.


Cover: Children selling ramps on Drew's Creek Road, Naoma, West
Virginia, to motorists en route to the annual Ramp Supper in
1997. Photo by Lyntha Eiler. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the
Integrity of "The Mountains"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By Mary Hufford


Biodiversity has been protected through the flourishing of
cultural diversity.  Utilizing indigenous knowledge systems,
cultures have built decentralized economies and production
systems that use and reproduce biodiversity. Monocultures, by
contrast, which are produced and reproduced through centralized
control, consume biodiversity.1 Vandana Shiva

The Ramp House on Drew's Creek

      It is mid-April, and throughout the tributaries of West
Virginia's Big Coal River, peepers are announcing spring. High in
the hills, coves drained by chortling creeks are alight with the
whites of trillium, the yellows of spice bush, the reds of wake
robins, and the bright greens of ramps. From the valleys the bare
woods appear spangled with the russet blooms of "hard" maples,
the green-tinged yellows of "soft" maples, the white bursts of
"sarvice" and dogwoods, and the deep pinks of "Judas trees."
Soon, they say, the bass will be leaving the river and swimming
up into the creeks to spawn.

      I am sitting fairly high in the hills myself, paring knife
in hand, in a modest rectangular building officially known as
"The Ramp House." Perched as far up the hollow of Drew's Creek as
a person can drive in a two-wheel drive car, the Ramp House faces
the Delbert Free Will Baptist Church across a small parking lot.
For more than forty years it has functioned as a community
center, where women of the church hold weekly quilting bees, and
families assemble for reunions. But its name registers its most
public and celebrated purpose: sheltering friends, neighbors, and
kin who come together each spring to feast upon ramps. 

      Ramps, _allium tricoccum_, are wild leeks. Thriving
throughout the Appalachian range in rich, dark woodlands near
mountain streams, ramps are among the first edible foods to
appear in the early spring, when they pierce the gray and brown
leaf mold with a spire of tightly furled, onion-scented leaves.
In June the lance-shaped leaves wither and the plant sends up a
stalk with an umbel of white flowers. Underground the stems swell
into white bulbs connected by a mass of fibrous rootlets. These
diminutive leeks reek of garlic, only stronger.

      Throughout the Appalachian South, ramps are hailed with
feasting at ramp suppers and festivals. The most famous of these
community fundraisers include the Ramp Festival at Cosby,
Tennessee,2 and the Feast of the Ramson at Richwood, West
Virginia. Richwood, in fact, is home to the NRA--the National
Ramp Association. But many smaller events proliferate throughout
April and well into the month of May. From noon until 8 p.m., the
women who organize this particular event will serve nearly five
hundred plates piled high with potatoes, fried apples, pinto
beans, cornbread, and ramps.

      The week before the ramp supper is one of the year's
busiest, and members of the Delbert Free Will Baptist Church
divide the labor of production. Each evening the women meet in
the Ramp House to clean and refrigerate the ramps brought in by
the men from the upper-elevation hollows wrinkling the
ridgelines. The female camaraderie on these evenings, pungent
with the aroma of ramps, coffee, and sassafrass tea, and
punctuated with laughter, makes this an event in its own right.
"We sit in a circle and clean ramps and talk," Delores Workman
told me at last year's ramp supper. "It's a lot of fun. I love my
ramp circle."  

      "You should hear the tales Jenny tells," laughed Judy
Griffy. Hoping to, this year I am in the Ramp House the night
before Ramp Day, chopping ramps and tape-recording the talk of a
dozen women, worn out from a week of preparation, but excited
about the day ahead. Only one man is present, Laffon Pettry's
husband, Bob. Bob tolerates the women's razzing with good humor.
"You put down that cigarette and get your knife and get busy,"
Mabel warns him as he tries to take a break. "You'll be the first
one we fire, Bob!"

      "He's slightly outnumbered, isn't he," murmurs Theresa.
      "He'd better watch it here with this gang of females!" Mabel
teases, brandishing her knife.

      Dusk gathers outside, and in the wake of the setting sun the
stars are brightening into the sign of the ram, for which it is
said that ramps were long ago named "ramsons" by the Swedes.3
Inside, the air is thick with the smell and the talk of ramps.
Jenny tells about a ramp-themed basket her granddaughter gave her
for Christmas, containing ramp vinegar, ramp seeds, dried ramps,
ramp jelly, pickled ramps, even ramp wine. "I had some of the
jelly," said Jenny. "It stunk."  Other possibilities are
advanced: ramp pizza or Jenny's ramp casserole, with sausage,
potatoes, and cheese.

Crafting Locality

      Historically, in these mountains, female sociality has
flourished around the gathering and processing of greens and
other wild produce. On the heels of ramps a host of other greens
start popping up: dandelions, poke, shawnee lettuce, woolen
britches, creasies, and lamb's tongue. And around these, women
have fashioned womens' worlds. "That was the big deal when
everybody used to go green picking," said Carrie Lou Jarrell, of
Sylvester, on another occasion. "That was the event of the week.
Mrs. Karen Thomas would come up and she always brought Jessie
Graybill with her, and then Miss Haddad would come, and most of
the time Maggie Wriston came with her. And usually Sylvia
Williams was always there to do green picking with them. I knew
from the time I came into the world that she was just a good
friend. But that was the thrill of my life to get to go with all
of these women, because they talked about good stuff." 

      Such talk is one means of crafting locality. It catches
people up into a dense fabric of kinship and community and
fastens that fabric to places and events in the mountains.
Through such talk the women enunciate their place in the hills, a
place remarkable not only for its biodiversity, but for the
interweaving of biodiversity and community life. In the Ramp
House the women laugh over how Violet once mistook sassafrass tea
for bacon grease and poured it over the frying ramps: "We need
you to come season the ramps," Mabel kidded her the other day.
They compare the aromas of poke and collard greens, and marvel at
how window screens get black with flies when you're cooking them.
They wonder where the creasies (dry land cress) are growing this
year, and Jenny points out that creasies won't grow unless you
till the soil.

      In southern West Virginia a mixed mesophytic forest (known
among ecologists as the world's most biologically diverse
temperate-zone hardwood system) is not just a product of nature.
It is integral to a cultural landscape that has taken shape over
many generations. On Coal River, I have heard people say the best
place to look for red mulberry trees, now in serious decline, is
on farms; that the cows that grazed throughout the mountains well
into the twentieth century kept the snake population down; and
that Peach Tree Creek was named for peach trees encountered there
by the first white settlers entering the region in the early
1800s. In the Ramp House they say you can start your own ramp
patch from the bit of root they're chopping off at the ends.4
"Mabel has a few ramps growing in her yard," said Jenny. "I do,
Edna does, and Sadie does. You don't, do you Theresa? You're
going to have to plant you a patch of ramps and some molly
moochers." 

      This week the molly moochers are coming in. Molly moochers
are morel mushrooms. They say you can hear them popping up
through the dried leaves when it rains. Old apple orchards,
scattered throughout the woods where people used to live, make
good places to go molly mooching. A neighbor found fifty-six
today in an old apple orchard behind Laffon's house. "He found
thirty-seven yesterday," said Laffon.

      "Gladys was finding them out there," says another woman.
      "Oh Gladys," Laffon chuckles."She's the queen of the molly
moochers!" 

      The salient feature of ramps is the smell. The Menominee
Indians called it "pikwute sikakushia": the skunk. "Shikako,"
their name for a large ramp patch that once flourished in
northern Illinois, has been anglicized to _Chicago_: "the skunk
place."5 Our chopping of leaves is filling the air with aromatic
organosulphur compounds, characteristic of members of the allium
family but carried to extremes in ramps and their consumers.6
Some have seen in this practice of restoring the body while
emitting a sulphurous odor a rite of death and resurrection,
serendipitously coinciding with Easter.7 Actually with ramps the
motif appears to be breath and insurrection. Liberating
organosulfides seems to comprise, if not a rite of inversion, at
least a delicious form of backtalk: the country backtalking the
city, the improper backtalking propriety. The efforts of official
institutions to quell this annual olfactory uprising have been
rehearsed at every ramp supper I've attended.

      "Let me get this down so I can move on," said John Flynn at
the 1995 Ramp Supper. "We did not eat ramps. There were very
strong women in my family who did not like the odor. Also, if you
ate ramps and went to school, they sent you home because of the
odor. There were a lot of authoritarians in the school, so you
didn't do a lot of ramp eating. Someone might get up the guts to
do it once, but they didn't do it twice. The odor was the issue."
Ways of annulling the odor creep into ramp talk.

      "I like them raw," said Jess Duncan, of Sylvester, "like
you'd eat a hot pepper or something with a sandwich."

      "Fried potatoes, pinto beans," added Pat Canterbury.

      "You can't beat them," said Jess, "and they don't stink if
you don't eat very many of them."

      "They do too," said Pat.

      "If you eat them with a sandwich, they don't," Jess
insisted. "My wife's never complained."

      "Now, if you're confined close," cautioned Bob Daniel, of
Dry Creek, one morning in Syble's Bed and Barn, "say in an office
with people, I'm sure it would offend people like that, but in my
line of work I don't think I bother anybody with them."

      "If you don't like the smell," laughed Mae Bongalis, "go the
other way. Stay at your house!" 

      The most famous official censure of ramps was brought on by
the late Jim Comstock, editor of the WEST VIRGINIA HILLBILLY.
Comstock, inspired by scratch-and-sniff advertising for perfume
and coffee in several local papers, announced the Richwood Ramp
Supper one year by lacing the printer's ink for his spring issue
with ramp juice. "We got a reprimand from the Postmaster
General," Comstock recalled. "And we are probably the only paper
in the Unites States that's under oath to the federal government
not to smell bad."8

      Behind the powerful aroma it appears there really is
something good for what ails you. Ramps have long been
recommended for their germicidal and toning effects. The beliefs
that ramps are good for the heart, that they thin and purify the
blood and that they relieve the common cold are widespread.9
Scientific research suggests that such faith in ramps is well-
placed. The allicin (diallylsulfide oxide) in ramps, which has
antibiotic properties, has been linked with reduced rates of
cancer.10 Ramps are higher in vitamin C than oranges.11 They
contain cepaenes, which function as antithrombotic agents.12
Ramps also contain flavanoids and other antioxidents that are
free radical scavengers.13

      As the first of the wild foods to appear, ramps satisfy the
body's craving for living food at the end of a winter filled with
produce that's been dried, canned, frozen, or shipped from
faraway places. "They used to say," said Jenny, "that people that
lived out like we did didn't live near grocery stores, so they
said in the springtime you always need green things, like
vegetables. So they said in the springtime the country people got
ramps, that was our spring tonic." 

      "What does a spring tonic do?" I asked.

      "Cure for spring fever, I guess," said Jenny.

      "Strawberry rhubarb pie is my spring tonic," said Laffon.

      Spring fever is twice cured by ramps, which lure people into
the higher reaches of the mountains. "Ramps are fun to hunt,"
said John Flynn. "You can go out in the yard and get all the poke
you want, but you have to go into the forest to look for ramps." 

      "The higher you go," said Woody Boggess on another occasion,
"the more ramps and the bigger." 

Ramp Patches and the Commons of "The Mountains"

      Ramp patches in the mountains have long functioned as a
common resource. Most of the ramps served at the ramp supper,
some fifteen bushels full, do not come from peoples' personal
patches. They come from the upper-elevation coves rising high
above the Ramp House. "I've got a few planted up the holler
here," said Dennis Dickens, of Peachtree Creek, a beloved
octogenarian who passed away this year. "They just grow at an
elevation of about, I'd say 2,000 to 2,500 feet. Real rich soil."

      For many, eating ramps _in_ the mountains is as much a rite
of spring as attending the ramp supper. "I love them," said Bob
Daniel, over breakfast at Syble's one spring morning. "I like to
dig them and eat them right there. Sit down in the woods with a
piece of cornbread and eat them." 

      "That's the fun part," said Mary Jarrell, speaking in
Lloyd's Convenient, which she operates with her husband at the
mouth of Rock Creek. "Getting them and cooking them out. We'd go
to several places, like Hazy, where they've closed it off. We
would always go and take a skillet and make cornbread and take
some potatoes and get the ramps and clean them and fix them on
top of the mountains." 

      "We'd take our corn bread and pinto beans," said Mae
Bongalis, of Naoma, during the 1995 ramp supper. "And go to the
mountain, up Board Tree Hollow, dig ramps all afternoon. Then
we'd clean them in a little stream coming through the patch, wash
them and cook them and then have dinner. They taste better that
way, too."

      The higher elevations, known simply as "the mountains," have
long functioned as what anthropologist Beverly Brown terms a "de
facto commons,"14 an open-access area where people go to hunt,
picnic and party, gather a variety of roots, herbs, nuts, and
fruit, or to enjoy some solitude. Ramps inaugurate an annual
round of small-scale subsistence harvesting of woodland bounty,
and afford the first opportunity to get back into the mountains.
But they are fortifying throughout the growing season. "Ramps are
sweet this time of year," said Tony Dickens of Pettry Bottom, one
late September evening. "You'll come across a ramp patch when
you're out ginsenging. Last week I dug more ramps than ginseng!" 

      Supporting an unusually diverse seasonal round, central
Appalachia's mixed mesophytic forest distinguishes these
mountains among America's de facto commons. Telltale signs of
this diversity abound in the hollows and coal camps, and in yards
and homes on the river: the handful of butternuts curing on a
step, the coal bucket of black walnuts ready for shelling, the
hellgrammite seine at the ready on the porch, the ginseng drying
in the rear window of a car, the squirrel meat marinating in a
bowl, the gallon of blackberries ready for canning, the plastic
bag full of homemade "deer jerky," the jar full of "lin" (white
bass) honey, the paw paws in the freezer, the molly moochers
soaking in salt water, the pickled ramps in the pantry. 

      The traditional knowledge sustaining this annual round of
harvesting is anchored in a peoples' landscape inscribed all over
the mountains, a literary work writ large.15

Reading the Cultural Landscape

      The hills rising away from the Ramp House are rich in family
and community history. Names bestowed on every wrinkle in the
ridgeline commemorate people, events, and moments in the seasonal
round. What appears to be a jumble of coves, ridges, creeks,
knobs, branches, gaps, and forks is as legible to some residents
as a metropolitan grid is to an urbanite. "These different little
hollows," said Howard Miller, "they had a name for each one, so
when a neighbor talked to another neighbor about a certain thing
that happened at this holler, they knew exactly where it was at,
they knew even from Beckley down to Racine down to Madison."

      The names for the coves anchor local history and knowledge
in the land: Mill Holler, Peach Orchard Holler, School House
Holler, and Bee Light Holler, where they baited bees in order to
"line" them to wild hives, filled with honey from mixed
mesophytic flowering trees like basswood ("lin"), tuliptree
("yellow poplar"), and yellow locust ("mountain locust"). Thus
indexed, the landscape is a dynamic repository of rural life,
knowledge, and history, which elderly raconteurs render into
narrative. "Quill Holler's below the ramp house," Howard went on.
"They used to get a hollow straw and drink sugar water where they
notched a sugar tree. Something like these straws at a
restaurant, but it's a plant."

      The cultural landscape is rife with landmarks. Over
generations of working the seasonal round, a language for
navigating the mountains discriminates them into a wide array of
landmarks: not only the highwalls, mine breaks, augur holes, and
other traces of industry, but into "knobs," "drains," "coves,"
"swags," "ridges," "crossings," "gaps," "flats," "bear wallows,"
"orchards," "homeplaces," "sink holes," "walk paths," "hill
climbs," "camp rocks," "bottoms," "brakes," "graveyards," "bee
trees," "den trees," and "benches."

      This landscape supports the common world celebrated in the
Ramp House. Cultural practices like ramp suppers, ramp talk, and
roaming the mountains have co-evolved with an industrial
landscape16 as ways of holding together a world chronically
visited with environmental, social, and economic crisis. Only by
bracketing out the civic commons is it possible to reduce a
mountain to "a worthless piece of dirt," as one industry
spokesman put it, "good for nothing, save for snakes and scrub
pine."17 An alternative view--of biodiversity flourishing in the
context of community life--is rehearsed in stories and jaunts
that map the commons back onto the land.

Ramp Talk and the Cultural Landscape of Hazy Creek

       Many of the ramps for this year's ramp supper came from
Hazy Creek, a long, lush, meandering hollow that hooks around
Shumate's Branch like a sheltering arm. Hundreds of people lived
at the mouth of Hazy in the nineteen-forties when the coal town
of Edwight was the bustling hub of the river between Whitesville
and Glen Daniel. Though Hazy Creek and Shumate's Branch were
evacuated of dwellings in the 1980s,18 people continue to comb
the hollows of Hazy Creek for ramps, ginseng, molly moochers,
yellow root, mayapple, bloodroot, berries, and signs of history.

      According to Dennis Dickens, Hazy got its name before the
Civil War. "Some hunters came through there," said Dickens, "and
they camped over along Drew's Creek. And they decided to go over
in Hazy to hunt one day. They got to the top of the mountain,
they looked down in there, it was foggy and hazy. They said, 'No
use to go down in here, it's too hazy. We'll not do any good.'
And called it 'Hazy Creek.'" Though the coal industry has closed
Hazy Creek to the public (Cherry Pond Mountain is slated for
mountaintop removal), people still enter with permission to
gather plants and hunt, or to visit historic sites and
cemeteries.

      On a trek up Hazy for ramps in 1996, Dave Bailey and Woody
Boggess distilled sights on the overgrown landscape into signs of
former communities everywhere: the rusting incline hidden on the
hillside; the sludge pond, its banks "reclaimed" in thorny field
locust; a stand of Indian corn near Charley Rock, named for
Charles Wiley; the remains of a "splash dam" once used as a
skidway for easing timber out of the mountains; red dog from the
slate dump that burned for years and was haunted by an old
woman's ghost; a big rock that Woody says Hobart Clay could have
cleared in his Hazy machine, and camp sites marked by the
presence of ramps. "People have camped there for years,"
commented Dave. "They set them out so they'd have some."

      As access is increasingly curtailed, people vividly
reconstitute Hazy Creek through stories. In a conversation that
Woody Boggess videotaped in Andrew, Dave Bailey and Cuba Wiley
conjure and re-occupy Hazy as a capacious and generous landscape
where they both lived for many years. Cuby, who hasn't been up in
Hazy lately, wonders what it's like since the people moved out in
the late 1980s. "People tell me I wouldn't know it up that hollow
now," he says.

      Dave imaginatively takes him up there, and Hazy Creek floods
into the room through their words and gestures. "You go up there,
Cuby, where the mines is, you go across that creek, go over to
the left, go right on up that road to the mines. You can stop the
car where the road's washed out, you walk maybe to the top of the
hill, and the side of the mountain is covered with ramps." 

      "Well," picks up Cuby, invoking another space where ramps
grew, "what about the Straight Fork of Hazy, where Three Forks
used to come in together, and I used to go in the Straight Fork
of Hazy, and just go up there a little piece on up that hollow
and walk in on the right, and that scoundrel mountain was lined
with them." 

      "That's right," says Dave. "Just as far as you could see."
They go on to the Everett Fork, Hiram Fork, and Bradley Mountain
(where Lige Bradley fled from marauding Yankee and Confederate
troops during the Civil War, and where people returned to tend
and harvest apples in the Wayne Bradley Field long after Bradley
was evacuated for strip-mining). On the way out, Dave and Cuby
pause for a moment at Road Fork and Sugar Camp.

      "You know what?" says Cuby, "I'm gonna tell you something. I
was in Sugar Camp, way up in there, I could look down over there
at the Coffee Pot Restaurant and all that, and that walk path
that goes right on up through there takes you to Bradley."

      "Yup," says Dave. "I know where it's at." 

      "I believe I could find it yet," Cuby resumes. "That walk
path, I'd turn left and go up just a little ridge, about fifty or
seventy-five yards and that scoundrel ridge was _lined_ with
ramps, and I'll tell you who else went in there and found them
before he died: Calvin Clay. Calvin Clay and them found that
patch." 

      "I didn't know they were in there," Dave marvelled.

      "Sugar Camp," says Cuby. "Good patch, buddy." 

      Reconstituting Hazy, Dave and Cuby walk its paths, populate
it with fellow gatherers, and savor its views, routes, and
destinations. Stories of plying the seasonal round, of gathering
ramps, molly moochers, fishing bait, and ginseng, are like
beacons lighting up Hazy's coves, benches, walk paths, historic
ruins, and camp rocks. In fact, such stories and inscriptions
constitute a rural industrial landscape as coherent, as saturated
with "traditional cultural properties,"19 as representative of
America's rural-industrial history as any landscape recorded on
the National Register.

      Like other productions of the commons, ramps, ramp patches,
and ramp talk are resources for holding together a way of life
that is continually dismantled by plans for progress.20 The civic
commons of the Ramp House and the commons of the cultural
landscape are mutually sustaining and cannot be reclaimed by
covering a stream with spoil and putting a pond on top of a
highland complex, moving a smokehouse from a homeplace to a
pioneer village, or relocating a family cemetery from its
ancestral grounds to a commercial cemetery many miles away.

      The commons on Coal River models an alternative, integrated,
community-based approach to the conservation of natural and
cultural resources. The seasonal round, itself a cultural
production, outlines a roster of "services" we might expect from
central Appalachia's post-mining landscapes. Common pool
resources like the ramp patches of the named systems of coves
might qualify for protection not as endangered species, but as
vital resources for mountain life--"traditional cultural
properties." Such sites, scattered throughout the mountains,
define the social collective, serving both as touchstones to a
shared past, and as thresholds to a future in which a historic,
mixed mesophytic landscape continues to form a hedge against
chronic social, environmental, and economic crises.

Notes

1. BIOPIRACY: THE PLUNDER OF NATURE AND KNOWLEDGE (Boston: South
End Press, 1997), p. 72.

2. For a discussion of the festival at Cosby, Tennessee, see
Michael Ann Williams, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN FOLKLIFE (Oxford,
Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), pp. 172-77.

3. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, _ramps, rams_, and
_ramsons_ all apply to the broad-leaved garlic, _allium ursinum_.
_Ramson_ derives from the Swedish plural for rams. Several
sources link this term with the sign of the ram, Aries. See Doug
Elliott, ROOTS: AN UNDERGROUND BOTANY (Old Greenwich,
Connecticut: Chatham Press, 1976) p. 46. 

4. This practice is widely attributed to the Cherokee as
something that occurred in the past. See, for instance, Runkel
and Bull: "The Cherokees gathered wild leek bulbs by cutting or
breaking off the little stub under the bulb--actually the stem
from which roots come--and replanting it so the plant would
continue to grow. This is an excellent example of resource
conservation." WILDFLOWERS OF IOWA WOODLANDS (Ames: University of
Iowa Press, 1987) p. 151.

5. Ibid. Runkel and Bull, p. 251.

6. Marilyn Singer, THE FANATIC'S ECSTATIC, AROMATIC GUIDE TO
ONIONS, GARLIC, SHALLOTS, AND LEEKS (Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1981), p. 106.

7. William J. Darby, Paul Ghalioungui, Louis Grivetti, FOOD: THE
GIFT OF OSIRIS, Vol. II (New York: Academic Press, 1976), p. 662.


8. Jim Comstock, "Ramps in the Ink," GOLDEN SEAL 20 (Winter
1994):23.

9. See also, Wayland Hand, POPULAR BELIEFS AND SUPERSTITIONS: 

10. Eric Block, "Organoselenium and Organosulfur Phytochemicals
from Genus Allium Plants: Relevance for Cancer Protection," in
FOOD FACTORS FOR CANCER PREVENTION, H. Ohigashi, t. Osawa, J.
Terao, S. Watanabe, T. Yoshikawa, eds. (Tokyo: Springer, 1997),
pp. 215-21.

11. Thomas M. Zennie and C. Dwayne Ogzewalla, "Ascorbic Acid and
Vitamin A Content of Edible wild Plants of Ohio and Kentucky,"
ECONOMIC BOTANY 31 (1997):76-79.

12. See Elizabeth M. Calvey, Kevin D. White, Jean E. Matusik,
Deyou sha, and Erick Block, "Allium Chemistry: Identification of
Organosulfur Compounds in Ramp (Allium Tricoccum) Homogenates,"
PHYTOCHEMISTRY 49 (1998):359-64.

13. Crellin and Philpott observe that allicin "has a mild
stimulating action that lies behind the reputation as a
counterirritant." HERBAL MEDICINE: PAST AND PRESENT: A REFERENCE
GUIDE TO MEDICINAL PLANTS, Vol. II (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1990) p. 319.

14. Beverly Brown, "Fencing the Northwest Forests: Decline of
public and Accustomed Rights," CULTURAL SURVIVAL QUARTERLY
(Spring 1996), pp. 50-52.

15. In this array of wild produce we glimpse the outcroppings of
an alternative, rural economy that enables survival outside the
mainstream. On the central Appalachian plateaus, a patchwork of
strategies that includes gardening, wage labor, and forms of
subsistence-borrow-and-barter is richly adumbrated by resources
from the mixed mesophytic forest. See Rhoda Halprin, THE
LIVELIHOOD OF KIN: MAKING ENDS MEET "THE KENTUCKY WAY" (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1990), and Paul Salstrom, APPALACHIA'S
PATH TO DEPENDENCY (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1994).

16. For a fuller account of the "industrial landscape" in the
region, see Mary Hufford, "American Ginseng and the Idea of the
Commons," FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS XIX, nos. 1 and 2 (Winter-Spring
1997), p. 3.

17. Fred Holroyd, "State Agencies Send Mixed Messages in Land
Use," WEST VIRGINIA COAL BELL (July 1998), p. 4. 

18. Shumate's Branch has been turned into a "coal refuse
impoundment." See Mary Hufford, "Weathering the Storm: Cultural
Survival in an Appalachian Valley," in Harvard Ayers, Charles
Little, and Jenny Hager, eds., AN APPALACHIAN TRAGEDY: AIR
POLLUTION AND TREE DEATH IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES (San
Francisco: Sierra Books, 1998).

19. See Patricia Parker and Thomas King, "Protecting Traditional
Cultural Properties," Department of the Interior Bulletin 38.

20. Hundreds of square miles in southern West Virginia and
Eastern Kentucky have been approved for a method of coal mining
known as "mountaintop removal," which removes the top of a
mountain (the "overburden") in order to recover multiple seams of
coal. The overburden is disposed of in coves and streams,
producing a landscape of "highland mounds," "wetland drainage
areas," and "valley fills." For a study of the ecological impact
of this form of mining, see Stacy Edmunds (with Orie Loucks), "A
Landscape View of Mountaintop Removal." M.A. thesis, Miami
University, in progress.


Mary Hufford is a folklife specialist at the American Folklife
Center. The present article is part of a larger study of the
cultural impact of mountaintop removal and reclamation.


Hufford:  Captions


Patrons of the 1996 Ramp Supper greet one another on the porch of
the Ramp House at the head of Drew's Creek (see map on page  ).
Photo by Lyntha Eiler


Mabel Brown, Jenny Bonds, and Peggy Gilfillen, cleaning ramps for
the 1995 Ramp Supper. Photo by Terry Eiler


Carrie Lou Jarrell, Sylvester, West Virginia. Photo by Lyntha
Eiler


Mabel Brown in her ramp patch, Brown's Hollow, Drew's Creek.
Photo by Lyntha Eiler


Ramps at Edna Turner's house, ready for cleaning. The roots are
chopped off and the outer membrane (also known as the "slimer")
is removed. The roots can be replanted to start new ramp patches.
Photo by Lyntha Eiler


Patrons at the 1996 Ramp Supper. Photo by Lyntha Eiler


The seasonal round on Coal River, showing the continuing role of
the mixed mesophytic forest in community life. Many of these
activities rely on common pool resources located in the
mountains. Produced by Suzuki Graphics, based on a field sketch
by Mary Hufford


Vivian Jarrell, of Dry Creek, with a jar of frozen ramps. Ramps
must be stored in jars, according to Judy Griffy, in order to
keep the odor from permeating other foods in the freezer. Photo
by Lyntha Eiler


David Bailey, of Stickney, digging ramps on Hazy Creek, not far
from the Poplar Flats. Photo by Lyntha Eiler


Judy Griffy, Drew's Creek, demonstrates the way to open a papaw
(Asimina triloba). The prized custard-like fruit of the papaw
(also known as "the West Virginia banana") grows wild in the
mountains and is gathered in the early fall. Photo by Lyntha
Eiler


The cultural landscape of a de facto commons on Hazy Creek. For
elderly raconteurs, the place names and structures on this
landscape index an oral history of land-use and settlement that
begins before the Civil War. Map produced by Suzuki Graphics,
based on interviews and field sketches by Mary Hufford


Using a net suspended between two broom handles, Ray Cottrell and
Randy Sprouse seine for hellgrammites on Coal River near the
mouth of Hazy. The technique involves raising rocks and allowing
the water to carry what's underneath into the net held
downstream. Hellgrammites, also known as grampus, are the larva
of the dobson fly, and are favored by the small-mouthed bass in
Coal River. Sprouse directs the newly formed Coal River Mountain
Watch, a Whitesville-based organization dedicated to cultural and
environmental preservation on Coal River. Photo by Terry Eiler


Charlie Rock, a "camping rock" near Spring Hollow on Hazy Creek,
known as a place to camp out when digging ramps in the spring or
hunting for ginseng in the fall. Such named rock shelters are
found throughout the mountains, and many of them are prolific
sources of Native American artifacts. Photo by Lyntha Eiler


A "valley fill" in the foreground of a mountaintop removal
project near Clear Fork. Designed to store excess rock and spoil
from the mines, such structures have displaced more than nine
hundred miles of streams and coves, according to a recent survey
by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Also displaced are
populations of ramps, ginseng, and other resources of the commons
that flourish in native hardwood coves. Photo by Lyntha Eiler



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Easter Onion
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
by Johnny Russell 

Years gone by, still they gather 
Tribute to a heritage, gloried past
Easter onions, in Appalachia called ramps
Family, friends, people from far and wide.

On Coal River, up Peachtree to Pine Knob 
This time of year, everyone a memory to share
Good music, preaching, and food; thank you, Lord
The sun warming, trees making horizons green. 

Blooms hanging heavy, petals fall like snow
With the spring, hope springs like flowers 
Time to come together, everyone welcome
Fill your plate, come and set a spell.

A time to reminisce, spin a tall tale or two
Cars line the dusty lane, even a politician feels at home 
The pungent smell gives way, heaven in the taste 
In His infinite way, the Lord gave us the ramp. 

A Savior risen, and so is the ramp 
Food for the heart, food for the soul
Hopes renewed, yet another season
I awake each year, and spring's Easter onion. 


Johnny Russell is a coal miner from Montcoal, West Virginia. He
wrote this poem in 1996.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bicentennial Project to Document Local Traditions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By James Hardin


      The Library of Congress Bicentennial Program in cooperation
with the American Folklife Center has launched a nationwide
project called Local Legacies, as part of a larger program to
commemorate the Bicentennial of the Library of Congress, which
was founded April 24, 1800. The objective of the project is to
increase public and congressional awareness of, support for, and
participation in local, state, and national programs and
activities that document, preserve, and present traditional
culture.

      The Local Legacies project encourages the formation of teams
in every state and congressional district to document aspects of
our nation's diverse culture and assemble a selection of
documentary materials to be presented to the Library of Congress
for sharing with others. The materials will be exhibited during a
special event in May 2000, to which all participants and their
senators and congressional representatives will be invited.
Later, the material will be made available online on the World
Wide Web and added to the Library's collections, so as to provide
present and future generations of researchers with information
about the nation's community life and grassroots culture.

      The idea for the project was suggested by the Librarian of
Congress, James H. Billington, during the May 12, 1997, meeting
of the American Folklife Center's Board of Trustees in New
Orleans. Billington suggested that each congressional district
might nominate an example of "extraordinary creativity" to be
placed in the Archive of Folk Culture and have digitized to share
with the rest of the country on the Internet.

      All 50 states, the 435 congressional districts, the U.S.
Trusts and Territories, and the District of Columbia have been
invited to launch community-based Local Legacies projects.
Cultural documentation is performed by persons conducting
interviews, taking photographs, and writing notes on their
observations and discoveries. Documentary materials include
photographs, written reports, sound and video recordings, and
miscellaneous material, such as local newspaper clippings,
posters, and flyers, relating to the subject of study. The Local
Legacies project teams will be sponsored by Senate and House
congressional offices in the states and districts; members of
Congress will name team leaders to represent each state and
district; and resource persons invited to help will include state
and local librarians, folklorists, and state arts and culture
specialists.

      A "local legacy" is defined as a traditional activity or
event, identified as emblematic of a particular area or having
special significance for a community, and worthy of documentation
and preservation for future generations. A local legacy might be
a rodeo, powwow, auction, market-day celebration, or annual
parade, procession, or traditional music festival--a "signature"
event that many know. It might include the music, crafts, and
foods that represent the traditional life in a particular region
or district. A local legacy might also include the artistry of
individuals performing traditional music and dance or working at
crafts and trades, such as fishing, farming, or ranching.

      Since documentation of some events may be extensive, the
Library is asking for only a selection of material: photographs,
a written report, and the administrative information. That
selection, made in close consultation with senators,
congressional representatives, and resource persons, should be
sent to the Library of Congress by November 30, 1999.  The
resource persons, among them the state librarians, may also
recommend that the entire collection of project materials be
deposited in a local or state archive, library, or other
repository as a resource for the community.

      As the nation's Library, serving all the people, the Library
of Congress encourages the participation of every citizen in this
Local Legacies project to highlight America's cultural heritage
and provide future generations with "snapshots" of everyday life
in America at the turn of the century.  Readers with Internet
access who wish to learn about other Library of Congress
Bicentennial projects, can visit the Library's web pages:
http://lcweb.loc.gov.bicentennial/


Caption:

Folklife Center staffers James Hardin and Peter Bartis review
photogaphs of Center field documentation projects, which will be
used with Local Legacies informational material to provide
examples of traditional activities that might be documented for
the project. Library of Congress photo by Glenn Krankowski

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Folklife Center Gains Permanent Authorization
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By James Hardin

When President Clinton signed the 1999 Legislative Branch
Appropriations bill on October 21, 1998, the American Folklife
Center gained permanent authorization, a goal sought by the
Center's Board of Trustees and supported by many of its friends
from around the country. Former board chair Judith McCulloh, who
spearheaded a 1997 and 1998 nationwide campaign to enlist support
for the Center, said, "Fantastic! Thanks are due to everyone who
kept the faith and rallied to support the Center when support was
most needed. All of us who have enjoyed working with the Center
and its staff over the years look forward to continuing that
relationship. I'm off the Center's board of trustees, but as a
Center supporter I'm still on-board."

      The Center had been reauthorized eight times since it was
created in 1976 by Public Law 94-201, the American Folklife
Preservation Act. Many board members and some members of Congress
have regarded the periodic review of the Center associated with
congressional reauthorization hearings as a good way for the
Center to maintain relations with Congress and congressional
constituencies.

      But attempts to gain reauthorization for fiscal year 1996
were unsuccessful, and only the intervention and strong support
of Sen. Mark Hatfield (a cosponsor of the original legislation
creating the Center) during the summer of 1996 resulted in a two-
year authorization for the Center for fiscal 1997 and 1998. At
the time, Senator Hatfield recommended that the Center's Board of
Trustees and the folklore community work to increase fundraising
activity and expressed the hope that "the next Congress will
enact a permanent authorization for the center."

      Over the past year and a half, the Center's board solicited
the help of hundreds of friends and supporters from every state
and region of the country, who responded with letters, telephone
calls, faxes, email messages, and direct-contact conversations
with members of Congress in both the House and the Senate--all
endorsing the work of the Center and affirming the national
importance of the Archive of Folk Culture. The campaign not only
helped to create new supporters but reassured previous supporters
that the Center had an active, concerned constituency.

      On March 4, at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Rules
and Administration, Sen. Thad Cochran spoke in support of
permanent authorization and later introduced a bill in the Senate
to that effect. The language from the Cochran bill was included
in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, with provisions
calling for permanent authorization for the Center, the
elimination of a salary for board members, elimination of the
position of deputy director (which has remained unfilled since
the retirement of Ray Dockstader in 1993), and the addition to
the board of six new positions--four appointed by the Librarian
of Congress and two ex officio (the presidents of the American
Folklore Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology). The
Librarian is instructed to name to the board "individuals who are
widely recognized by virtue of their scholarship, experience,
creativity, or interest in American folklife traditions and
arts."

      Center director Alan Jabbour was elated by the news.
"Permanent authorization will allow the Center to undertake more
effective long-range planning, fundraising, and the acquisition
of major folklife collections," he said. "The Center is now
shifting to a new stage. Permanent authorization will change the
conversation within and outside the Center, allowing us to show
new leadership nationally and accomplish new things within the
Library of Congress."


caption:

At the October 6 meeting of the Center's Board of Trustees, Board
chair William Kinney reviews the provisions included in the
Legislative Branch Appropriations bill that provide permanent
authorization for the Center, along with fellows trustees: (from
left, front) Alan Jabbour, Kinney, James Hoy, and Charles
Trimble. Looking on are Christa Maher (digital conversion
specialist); Joseph Hickerson (former staff member), Ann Hoog
(reference specialist) Geraldine Otremba (director of the
Library's Congressional Relations Office), Rachel Howard (digital
conversion specialist); Stephen Kelley (congressional relations
specialist); Thomas Bramel (team leader, digital conversion
project); and Nora Yeh (processing archivist).


News from the Montana Heritage Project


The Library of Congress has donated 110 recycled computers to
schools participating in the Montana Heritage Project. Folklife
Specialist Peter Bartis worked out the donation with James Kopp,
who coordinates the Library's participation in a government-wide
computer recycling program called "Computers for Learning." In
this photograph, Teri Cinnell, project manager, loads computers
into a horse trailer at the Montana Heritage Project office for
the final leg of their long journey from Washington, D.C., to
Libby, in the remote northwest corner of Montana. Libby received
25 of the 110 machines. Montana Heritage Project photo  


Libby, Montana, high school student Chris Pearson checks out one
of the computers donated to the Montana Heritage Project by the
Library of Congress. Pearson has a visual impairment and needs
the computer to do regular schoolwork. In the background are
teacher Rod Tempel and Montana Heritage Project director Michael
Umphrey. Montana Heritage Project photo


In the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, curator Beverly
Brannan (right) shows historical photographs of Montana to
visiting Montana Heritage Project students and teachers, April
30, 1998.  From left to right: teacher Philip Leonardi, Annemarie
Webber, Gayle Price, Kate Campbell, teacher Annmarie Kanenwisher,
Matt Martindell, and Brannan. Photo by Peter Bartis 


Liz Claiborne (left) and Art Ortenberg (right) meet with student
participants in the Center's Montana Heritage Project during
their visit to the Library of Congress on April 30, 1998. The
project has been supported for three years by generous grants
from the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation, and students
from Corvallis High School presented the couple with this quilt
in appreciation.  Pictured behind the quilt are students Matt
Martindell, Gale Price, Kate Campbell, and Annemarie Webber.
Photo by John Nelson