From our friends at SaveCulture.Org: Contact us today at SaveCulture.org

Oral History In Progress

The voices of our elders are our area’s true gems.

Filming Local History

No one else brings our local history to light like the Center for Cultural Preservation.

Telling Forgotten Stories That Matter

Many folks don’t realize that North Carolina was the first gold producing state in the United States. Between 1803 until 1838 it produced more gold than any other place in the country until 1849 when gold was discovered in California. Although most of this gold was found in the Piedmont, gold has been found throughout Western North Carolina.

Although there’s unlikely to be any great caches of gold in this region outside of the Biltmore Estates, perhaps the greatest gold mine in our community resides in the legacy of our region’s elders and the folkways that they left behind.  

One of the dreams I’ve had for years has been to make accessible the 500 or so oral histories I’ve collected not only in North Carolina, but throughout the South. Only a small fraction of these interviews ever make it to the final cut of my films, meaning that much of the treasures buried in the interviews with elders never see the light of day. What if ALL of these oral histories could be made available to the world? But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. To make such a treasure chest fully accessible to students, academics, history lovers and all of us, this interface would need to be searchable which requires some intense work by a web programmer, an IT expert and a team of transcribers in addition to editing each interview to be useable.

Fortunately, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History of the University of Kentucky has created a web-based system that allows interviews to be synchronized with transcripts to bring rich repositories like ours to life. This application is mostly used by large universities that have IT departments that can handle the sophisticated coding and transcription involved. But our little ole cultural nonprofit, the Center for Cultural Preservation, based in Hendersonville has chosen to create this landmark program here in WNC.

To understand how valuable this archive truly is, here’s a sampling of what you will soon have access to:

Larry Ball, 7th generation Dana elder was a collector of WNC’s history. He collected small memorabilia but also locally produced tractors, corn stalk cutters, corn shellers and horse-drawn items and he rebuilt three 19th century wooden cabins on his property that were about to be demolished. He gives a tour of his treasures including his rebuilt country store and post office.

Effie Mae Russell discusses canning over an open fire and plowing her farm with oxen with her sister.

Rev. Bobby Hill Dr. discusses the rich African American world in Hendersonville and the racial hatred that surrounded him.

Jerry Wolfe, “Beloved Man” of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, discusses the rich resilient world of the Cherokee Indians.

These interviews include African American, Native American, Scots-Irish, Jewish communities among many others. These oral histories tell the story of the lives of the people whose sweat and tears rests in the soil and whose resilience and craftsmanship is a testament to the powerful interconnected lives that people lived over the generations, connected to the land, to their faith and to each other. You can become a cultural savior by supporting the Center’s work by helping us raise the $40,000 we still need to complete this work and get at least half our archive online by this time next year while we continue our legacy by making additional films.

You can make your tax deductible donation online HERE and earn a host of premiums from DVDs, our long-awaited Appalachian Storytelling Jewels Vol II, a paddling trip and more or you can mail your check to the Center for Cultural Preservation at PO Box 1066, Flat Rock, NC 28731. Thank you in advance for your support!

DONATE HERE

SPOTLIGHT ON A CENTER SPONSOR

Adept Word Management has been transcribing many of our oral histories for nearly a decade. In addition to high quality transcribing of anything from medical records to family histories, they also have translation services and do video captioning.

The Center highly recommends them for all your transcription needs! You can reach them HERE.

FOLLOW US

Questions? Contact us today at SaveCulture.org

From our friends at SaveCulture.Org: Contact us today at SaveCulture.org

Oral History In Progress

The voices of our elders are our area’s true gems.

Filming Local History

No one else brings our local history to light like the Center for Cultural Preservation.

Telling Forgotten Stories That Matter

Many folks don’t realize that North Carolina was the first gold producing state in the United States. Between 1803 until 1838 it produced more gold than any other place in the country until 1849 when gold was discovered in California. Although most of this gold was found in the Piedmont, gold has been found throughout Western North Carolina.

Although there’s unlikely to be any great caches of gold in this region outside of the Biltmore Estates, perhaps the greatest gold mine in our community resides in the legacy of our region’s elders and the folkways that they left behind.  

One of the dreams I’ve had for years has been to make accessible the 500 or so oral histories I’ve collected not only in North Carolina, but throughout the South. Only a small fraction of these interviews ever make it to the final cut of my films, meaning that much of the treasures buried in the interviews with elders never see the light of day. What if ALL of these oral histories could be made available to the world? But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. To make such a treasure chest fully accessible to students, academics, history lovers and all of us, this interface would need to be searchable which requires some intense work by a web programmer, an IT expert and a team of transcribers in addition to editing each interview to be useable.

Fortunately, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History of the University of Kentucky has created a web-based system that allows interviews to be synchronized with transcripts to bring rich repositories like ours to life. This application is mostly used by large universities that have IT departments that can handle the sophisticated coding and transcription involved. But our little ole cultural nonprofit, the Center for Cultural Preservation, based in Hendersonville has chosen to create this landmark program here in WNC.

To understand how valuable this archive truly is, here’s a sampling of what you will soon have access to:

Larry Ball, 7th generation Dana elder was a collector of WNC’s history. He collected small memorabilia but also locally produced tractors, corn stalk cutters, corn shellers and horse-drawn items and he rebuilt three 19th century wooden cabins on his property that were about to be demolished. He gives a tour of his treasures including his rebuilt country store and post office.

Effie Mae Russell discusses canning over an open fire and plowing her farm with oxen with her sister.

Rev. Bobby Hill Dr. discusses the rich African American world in Hendersonville and the racial hatred that surrounded him.

Jerry Wolfe, “Beloved Man” of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, discusses the rich resilient world of the Cherokee Indians.

These interviews include African American, Native American, Scots-Irish, Jewish communities among many others. These oral histories tell the story of the lives of the people whose sweat and tears rests in the soil and whose resilience and craftsmanship is a testament to the powerful interconnected lives that people lived over the generations, connected to the land, to their faith and to each other. You can become a cultural savior by supporting the Center’s work by helping us raise the $40,000 we still need to complete this work and get at least half our archive online by this time next year while we continue our legacy by making additional films.

You can make your tax deductible donation online HERE and earn a host of premiums from DVDs, our long-awaited Appalachian Storytelling Jewels Vol II, a paddling trip and more or you can mail your check to the Center for Cultural Preservation at PO Box 1066, Flat Rock, NC 28731. Thank you in advance for your support!

DONATE HERE

SPOTLIGHT ON A CENTER SPONSOR

Adept Word Management has been transcribing many of our oral histories for nearly a decade. In addition to high quality transcribing of anything from medical records to family histories, they also have translation services and do video captioning.

The Center highly recommends them for all your transcription needs! You can reach them HERE.

FOLLOW US

Questions? Contact us today at SaveCulture.org

We’re transcribing some oral histories of musicians in North Carolina. The speaker is talking about music he listened to as he was growing up. He says “Let’s see, there was not much music when I was growing up that was easy to get access to. I’m sure some of you who are my age know that that was—you know—the television had just a little bit; radio had some. But I didn’t like stuff like, How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

The transcriptionist researched the song (which is exactly what she’s supposed to do). She found that the original title of the song was “That Doggy in the Window.” It is cited as “(How Much is) That Doggy in the Window.”

Wikipedia says this: ”(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” is a popular novelty song written by Bob Merrill and first registered on September 25, 1952, as “The Doggie in the Window”. On January 27, 1953, its sheet music was published in New York as “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window”.[1]

The song was first recorded by Patti Page in December, 1952, and has been re-released many, many times. But it’s best known as “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

In this usage, though, he’s not citing the exact title of the song—either “That Doggie in the Window” or “The Doggie in the Window.” The song has been released so many times, it’s become a colloquialism. Oxford Languages defines a colloquialism as a word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation.

The (How Much Is) in parentheses would just distract from the conversation, so we decided to use the popular title, “How Much is That Doggie in the Window.”

What do you think?

Subscribe now

We’re transcribing some oral histories of musicians in North Carolina. The speaker is talking about music he listened to as he was growing up. He says “Let’s see, there was not much music when I was growing up that was easy to get access to. I’m sure some of you who are my age know that that was—you know—the television had just a little bit; radio had some. But I didn’t like stuff like, How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

The transcriptionist researched the song (which is exactly what she’s supposed to do). She found that the original title of the song was “That Doggy in the Window.” It is cited as “(How Much is) That Doggy in the Window.”

Wikipedia says this: ”(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” is a popular novelty song written by Bob Merrill and first registered on September 25, 1952, as “The Doggie in the Window”. On January 27, 1953, its sheet music was published in New York as “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window”.[1]

The song was first recorded by Patti Page in December, 1952, and has been re-released many, many times. But it’s best known as “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

In this usage, though, he’s not citing the exact title of the song—either “That Doggie in the Window” or “The Doggie in the Window.” The song has been released so many times, it’s become a colloquialism. Oxford Languages defines a colloquialism as a word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation.

The (How Much Is) in parentheses would just distract from the conversation, so we decided to use the popular title, “How Much is That Doggie in the Window.”

What do you think?

Subscribe now

When I look to my left and see my dog deep into his fifth nap of the day, I cannot help but wonder how the “dog days” expression came to mean something other than the most desirable kind of days. Dogs have come a long way from the time this idiom was coined, but did you know it initially had a different meaning? Read on and find out!

Grammarphobia

Dog days: Are you pooped?

Pat and Stewart

Dec 11

Q: How did the expression “dog days” change from meaning the hottest time of the year to a period of sluggishness or stagnation?

A: When “dog days” first appeared in English in the 16th century, it referred to the hottest part of summer in the Northern hemisphere, a period once considered unhealthy and evil.

Because of the lethargy caused by the heat or fears of malignant influences, the term came to mean a period of stagnation and inactivity. Here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “dog days” as “the hottest part of the summer, associated in ancient times with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star in the Mediterranean area, and formerly considered to be the most unhealthy period of the year and a time of ill omen.”

The expression has its roots in Greek mythology, where Sirius is the name of the hunter Orion’s dog. In the Iliad (Book XXII), Homer refers to the star as κύν᾽ Ὠρίωνος (kun Orionos, Orion’s dog).

English borrowed the phrase from the post-classical Latin caniculares dies (dog days), which was borrowed in turn from the Hellenistic Greek κυνάδες ἡμέραι (kunades hemerai, dog days).

When the phrase first appeared in English the 16th century, it referred to the hottest days of summer. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (1538):

“Canicula, a lyttell dogge or bytche. Also a sterre, wherof canicular or dogge days be named Dies caniculares.”

The dictionary says the phrase soon took on the figurative sense of “an evil time; a period in which malignant influences prevail.” The earliest citation for this sense is from a letter by a Protestant clergyman (and later martyr) to a fellow inmate at Newgate Prison in London:

“Neither that any giddy head in these dog-days might take an ensample [example] by you to dissent from Christ’s true church” (from a 1555 letter by John Philpot in The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, 1842, edited by Robert Eden).

The OED says the evil figurative usage is seen “now (in weakened sense): a period of inactivity or decline.”

It’s not uncommon for the sense of a usage to strengthen or weaken over time, as we note in a 2021 post. A linguist might refer to weakening as “semantic loss” or “semantic reduction.”

It’s unclear when the weakened sense of “dog days” first appeared in English, though this Oxford citation may be an early sighting or a perhaps an indication of things to come:

“What then shall wee now expect in these dogge-dayes of the worlds declining age?” (Achitophel; or, the Picture of a Wicked Politician, 1629, three sermons by the philosopher and Anglican clergyman Nathanael Carpenter).

The dictionary’s first clear example of the weakened sense, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 12, 1992, article in The New York Times about mid-level bosses being laid off in troubled economic times:

“One possibly beneficial byproduct of the managerial dog days may be that it will prepare younger people for the job- and career-jumping likely to be their lot.”

And here’s the OED’s most recent example: “In the dog-days of The Beatles, one of Paul’s plans for holding it all together had been for the world’s most fabled band to just go out and play” (“The Beatles: Stoned, sloppy—shelved!” Mojo, February 2002).

Oxford notes that “the dog days have been variously reckoned, as depending on either the Greater Dog Star (Sirius) or the Lesser Dog Star (Procyon), and on either the heliacal rising or the cosmical rising (which occurs at an earlier date).”

The heliacal rising of a star occurs when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon at dawn just before sunrise. The cosmical rising occurs when it rises in the morning at the same time as the sun.

“The timing of these risings depends on latitude, and they do not occur at all in most of southern hemisphere,” the OED says, adding that “very different dates have been assigned for the dog days,” with their beginning “ranging from 3 July to 15 August, and their duration varying from 30 to 61 days.”

In the Calendar of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, the dog days run from July 7 to Sept. 5. In current calendars, Oxford says, “they are often said to begin on 3 July and end on 11 August (i.e. the 40 days preceding the cosmical rising of Sirius at the latitude of Greenwich).”

The dictionary says the usage “arose from the pernicious qualities of the season being attributed to the ‘influence’ of the Dog Star; but it has long been popularly associated with the belief that at this season dogs are most liable to go mad.”

When I look to my left and see my dog deep into his fifth nap of the day, I cannot help but wonder how the “dog days” expression came to mean something other than the most desirable kind of days. Dogs have come a long way from the time this idiom was coined, but did you know it initially had a different meaning? Read on and find out!

Grammarphobia

Dog days: Are you pooped?

Pat and Stewart

Dec 11

Q: How did the expression “dog days” change from meaning the hottest time of the year to a period of sluggishness or stagnation?

A: When “dog days” first appeared in English in the 16th century, it referred to the hottest part of summer in the Northern hemisphere, a period once considered unhealthy and evil.

Because of the lethargy caused by the heat or fears of malignant influences, the term came to mean a period of stagnation and inactivity. Here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “dog days” as “the hottest part of the summer, associated in ancient times with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star in the Mediterranean area, and formerly considered to be the most unhealthy period of the year and a time of ill omen.”

The expression has its roots in Greek mythology, where Sirius is the name of the hunter Orion’s dog. In the Iliad (Book XXII), Homer refers to the star as κύν᾽ Ὠρίωνος (kun Orionos, Orion’s dog).

English borrowed the phrase from the post-classical Latin caniculares dies (dog days), which was borrowed in turn from the Hellenistic Greek κυνάδες ἡμέραι (kunades hemerai, dog days).

When the phrase first appeared in English the 16th century, it referred to the hottest days of summer. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (1538):

“Canicula, a lyttell dogge or bytche. Also a sterre, wherof canicular or dogge days be named Dies caniculares.”

The dictionary says the phrase soon took on the figurative sense of “an evil time; a period in which malignant influences prevail.” The earliest citation for this sense is from a letter by a Protestant clergyman (and later martyr) to a fellow inmate at Newgate Prison in London:

“Neither that any giddy head in these dog-days might take an ensample [example] by you to dissent from Christ’s true church” (from a 1555 letter by John Philpot in The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, 1842, edited by Robert Eden).

The OED says the evil figurative usage is seen “now (in weakened sense): a period of inactivity or decline.”

It’s not uncommon for the sense of a usage to strengthen or weaken over time, as we note in a 2021 post. A linguist might refer to weakening as “semantic loss” or “semantic reduction.”

It’s unclear when the weakened sense of “dog days” first appeared in English, though this Oxford citation may be an early sighting or a perhaps an indication of things to come:

“What then shall wee now expect in these dogge-dayes of the worlds declining age?” (Achitophel; or, the Picture of a Wicked Politician, 1629, three sermons by the philosopher and Anglican clergyman Nathanael Carpenter).

The dictionary’s first clear example of the weakened sense, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 12, 1992, article in The New York Times about mid-level bosses being laid off in troubled economic times:

“One possibly beneficial byproduct of the managerial dog days may be that it will prepare younger people for the job- and career-jumping likely to be their lot.”

And here’s the OED’s most recent example: “In the dog-days of The Beatles, one of Paul’s plans for holding it all together had been for the world’s most fabled band to just go out and play” (“The Beatles: Stoned, sloppy—shelved!” Mojo, February 2002).

Oxford notes that “the dog days have been variously reckoned, as depending on either the Greater Dog Star (Sirius) or the Lesser Dog Star (Procyon), and on either the heliacal rising or the cosmical rising (which occurs at an earlier date).”

The heliacal rising of a star occurs when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon at dawn just before sunrise. The cosmical rising occurs when it rises in the morning at the same time as the sun.

“The timing of these risings depends on latitude, and they do not occur at all in most of southern hemisphere,” the OED says, adding that “very different dates have been assigned for the dog days,” with their beginning “ranging from 3 July to 15 August, and their duration varying from 30 to 61 days.”

In the Calendar of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, the dog days run from July 7 to Sept. 5. In current calendars, Oxford says, “they are often said to begin on 3 July and end on 11 August (i.e. the 40 days preceding the cosmical rising of Sirius at the latitude of Greenwich).”

The dictionary says the usage “arose from the pernicious qualities of the season being attributed to the ‘influence’ of the Dog Star; but it has long been popularly associated with the belief that at this season dogs are most liable to go mad.”