The "Walk-In Bible" was a roadside shrine
constructed by the late Mr. Varner of Soddy Daisy, Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Inside were hundreds of hand-carved and painted objects illustrating various
passges of the New Testament, including an Upper Room, complete with wooden
loaves and fishes. Most of Mr. Varner's work was executed in native
cedar. Photo by Douglas Day, 1991. Southern Council for
Folk Culture. All rights reserved.
This site was originally the home of the Southern Council for Folk Culture, an independent non-profit I set up in 1997 to run the Southern Folk Festival in Chattanooga, then to do contract folklore fieldwork until 2002.
From 2002 to 2008, I was the executive director of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, and spent most of my time doing their website instead of this one. High points of my tenure there were:
- the preservation and digitization of the Russell "Rip" Payne Collection, the life's work of a local freelance and news photographer;
- the preservation of a large collection of 150 paintings by local folk painter Frances Brand;
- and the enlistment of the Society in the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project (for which I continue to train interviewers for the American Folklore Society).
I now am an independent folklorist. Have camera and tape recorder (and guitar), will travel.
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"American folklife" means the traditional expressive culture
shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic,
occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range
of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill,
language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual,
pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by
imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit
of formal instruction or institutional direction. (The American Folklife
Preservation Act, P.L. 94-201, enacted by Congress in 1976.)
Alphonso Devlin (center), leader of the Golden Stars of Greenwood, South Carolina, in concert at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, 1999. Photo by Douglas Day, all rights reserved.
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