Festivus Folklore Finds!

Happy Festivus everyone! Hope you all had some quality time to grab the Festivus pole, air your grievances and display great feats of strength. Here is the stuff that filled my folklore folder during the holiday weeks:

• Google introduced a brand new toy: Google Books Ngram viewer. It's a sharp tool that lets you track the use of set words and phrases in Google's collection of millions of scanned books. Jason Baird Jackson has already played with it some. I did too. The Boston Globe discusses the possibilities for scholars. The New York Times, however, is more cautious in its optimism. I think that there is great potential here for the patient scholar - I wish I had this tool when I started my work back in the dark ages of the late nineties :)
• Our sisters and brothers over in the anthropology world are having some sort of brouhaha over their self-definition (as folklorists, we can more than relate). Anthropology in Practice as a fuller recounting of the imbroglio.
• Boing Boing owns the intranets. Here they discuss Wade Davis & drugs, and here they discuss British Oral Histories.
• And the Hindustani Times has an introduction to the study of folklore!

Try not to eat too much figgy pudding and Kwanzaa cake this week!

The Quail-a-day Diet

From the good folks at Snopes, an investigation into the belief that it is impossible to eat quail for thirty days in a row. This is the kind of bet I would happily take.

Cleaning Out My Folklore Bookmark Folder

I have months-worth of folklore bookmarks to share with you wonderful people. Consider these my early Festivus presents. Warning: not all of these are timely.

• How exactly do Russians celebrate Christmas? Don't turn to the Internet for answers: they usually tell you how Russians used to celebrate Christmas. Instead, read this. (This reminds me of a headline I saw on Vesti.ru the other day: "Ded Moroz does not like letters that start with 'Gimme.")
• Folklorist Dan Barnes was feted at the AFS meeting. Since retirement he spends a lot of his time tickling the ivory, quite an accomplished chap. Congrats on the award.
• Are you a folklorist looking for a tenure-track job? Apply here! These jobs don't grow on trees, you know.
• The estimable Jason Baird Jackson recounts his adventures at the AFS conference. Prof. Jackson is one of the folklorists behind the Open Folklore project - which just might be the greatest thing to hit folklore since the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index. I order you to subscribe to his blog right now.
• Vance Randolph's "Pissing in the Snow" is a major influence on my folklore career. But there was way more to him than collecting obscene folklore - here's a bio on the influential writer.
• My advisor wanted me to submit a chapter of my dissertation to The Journal of Folklore Research. I got lazy and never revised it. Now it is way out-of-date. But here is the new issue for your enjoyment. (I don't subscribe to Project Muse, but the articles look interesting, especially the "Undoing of of an Encyclopedia" and "Slovenian Folk Culture" articles).
• I am sure I have discussed my love for the works of Henry Glassie before. Meeting him at a talk at the University of Virginia was a highlight of my folklore life. Here he is discussing creativity in the context of winning the AFS award. Here's the press release about the award.
• The Boiled Down Juice is another folklore blog I demand that you read. Here she reviews a book on the life of Hazel Dickens.
• The Chicago Folklore Prize this year goes to . . . .David Delgado Shorter of UCLA for his book "We Will Dance Our Truth: Yaqui History in Yoeme Performance."

The Unibrows of Tajikistan

This article proves that conceptions of beauty are definitely culturally influenced. Personally, I find it more pretty than collagened lips.

"Where the Unibrow Reigns."

Your Folklore Festivus Gift Guide

Sorry for the dormancy! Let me welcome myself back! I will start it off with a holiday guide of new folklore books:

• The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth - Wendy Doniger. Columbia Classics in Religion.
• Chicano Graffiti and Murals: The Neighborhood Art of Peter Quezada - Sojin Kim. Folk Art and Artists Series. University Press of Mississippi.
• The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales - Haruo Shirane, translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press.
• Hungarian Classical Ballads and Their Folklore - Ninon Leader. Cambridge University Press.
• Folklore and Folklife in the United Arab Emirates - Sayyid Hamid Hurriez.
• Wyoming Folklore: Reminiscences, Folktales, Beliefs, Customs, and Folk Speech - Federal Writer's Project; James R. Dow, Susan D. Dow and Roger Welsch, editors. Bison Books.
• Myth, Ritual and the Oral - Jack Goody. Cambridge University Press.
• Mulan's Legend and Legacy in China and the United States - Lan Dong. American Literatures Initiative.
• Santeria Garments and Altars: Speaking Without a Voice - Ysamur Flores-Pena and Roberta J. Evanchuk. Folk Art and Artists Series. University of Mississippi Press.
• Kinship Myth in Ancient Greece - Lee E. Patterson.
• Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives - Joseph Sciora, ed. Critical Studies in Italian America. 3rd edition. Fordham University Press.
• Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World - Mineke Schipper. Leiden University Press.

See you soon!