Folklife Festival 2012: "Campus And Community: Public and Land-grant Universities and the USDA @ 150"

If it's the Fourth of July, and you're in the nation's capital, it's Smithsonian Folklife Festival time! Every year I look forward to what the good old James Smithson's legacy institution has to offer. There are always 3 presentations. Traditionally, they have been 1) a governmental agency or anthropological idea, 2) a state or U.S. region, and 3) a nation or world region. In past years these have included Tibet, Mali, Texas, Wisconsin, Vermont, Nasa, the Spoke Word, and Wales. In the recent past, they've been changing up the themes...

This year would be a perfect example. The three offerings are: 1) Land-grant Universities and the USDA, 2) Anacostia (DC neighborhood), 3) and the AIDS quilt. On it's face, I was very disappointed and perplexed. But it's summer, and so I go!

The bulk of the space was given over to the section titled: "Campus And Community: Public and Land-grant Universities and the USDA @ 150" Full disclosure, I did not attend a Public or Land-grant University. I attended a small regional university and a small regional college for my Bachelor's degrees and M. Ed.

Best I could tell, 22 schools were invited to participate. The first thing I noticed was the University of Tennessee's offering: it was the same solar house that they had displayed back in March on a site near here for a Department of Energy sustainable living competition. Interesting, but for me "been there, done that". So what were some of the other schools peddling as Folklife?

University of Maryland: Robotics with Legos. Okay, this might not be a bad as I originally thought...

University of Montana: Finding dinosaur bones.

University of Mississippi: Milking a robotic cow. Very popular!

Indiana University: Community quilting and cultural heritage. I got to sign a patch that will be made into a memory quilt of the festival by a group from Fort Wayne called "Sisters of the Cloth Quilting Guild".

University of West Virginia: Witness protection programs. Gotcha! I don't know what their focus was, the freaky mascot stole all of my attention.

University of Texas Pan American: Mariachi Music. They were awesome! Beautiful harmonies.

University of Hawaii: Traditional Hawaiian Mele Oli & Mele Hula.

I stayed for this lecture. It started with a performance a cappella by Aaron J. Sala, musicologist and professor of the traditional mele "Hole Waimea".

He then distributed copies of his translation of the traditional poem and deconstructed it in the face of the island nation's history. What a gift, and I was so glad that I had recently read Sarah Vowell's "Unfamiliar Fishes".

USDA: Plants and a Test Kitchen

I stepped in here long enough to listen to this woman basically tell us that if you don't cook the meat you buy from the grocery store within hours of purchasing it, you're playing with bacterial roulette. She went on and on ad infinitum to the degree that I wondered how many more minutes I had to live after my recent lunch from the Azerbaijani Food Tent (more on this later).

Plants in boxes... Been there, done that, too!