August 2011

Dear Friends,

If there were a shared trait of Folkschoolers, I think it would be that they are dedicated to making things better, not only baskets and pots, but the situation, the world, themselves- and the Folk School, for sure.

At a time when many great organizations have faltered, you have helped keep your Folk School strong- with new buildings, increased comfort on houses and safety in studios, expanded outreach to Brasstown and “off,” which is anywhere else.

With your loyal help, we’re riding out economic difficulties in good shape, and making progress for the future. You are helping us through a rough patch, just as the school helps people through challenging spots in their storylines. JCCFS is a great place to celebrate the joys and triumphs of life, but it also serves to help in aftermaths, transitions, growing up and growing older. The Folk School brings to bear the challenge of good work, the distraction of intense focus, the satisfaction of accomplishment, and the solace of good company.

There are always young folks around, at the concerts and the community dances, but they take over for “Little/Middle” Week and Intergenerational Week, with teen/elder partnerships. When the 350 kids finished their week of Little/Middle, we asked them on a questionnaire, “What did you like about the Folk School?”

One youngun’s answer is also why I now ask for your donation:

“The extreme awesomeness of everything.”

We hope that you will help us reach our annual loyalty fund goal. This fund helps strengthen our programming, purchase new equipment, and beautify our campus- but most importantly it contributes directly to the “awesomeness.”

With love from Brasstown,

Jan

June 2011

Dear Friends,

Not long ago, were almost no road signs around here.  If you didn’t know how to get somewhere, you probably didn’t have any business going there.  If you didn’t know where you were, well bless your heart, the best thing would be to go back the way you came.  But if you asked somebody in Murphy how to get to the Folk School, they would tell you a lot about the winding road up the Hiwassee River, and end with, “When you see the big green fields, you’re thar.”  Today, thar, the clouds are as cumulus as I’ve ever seen them, stacked high in a sky of primary blue.   The green field is dotted here and there with easels and their painters, a photographer is shooting their picture, a phoebe on a perch and a poet on a porch are finding their songs, pickers pluck berries that bakers pile into pastry and new fiddlers play old tunes and hope for pie.

If you think I’m making this up, you haven’t been to the Folk School lately.

Inside, there were woodturners, carvers, book artists, tinsmiths, enamellists, knitters, potters, felters, papermakers, jewelers and lots of people whose activities defy labels.

No matter what your interests, here at the Folk School, we are connected to the soil, water, trees, plants, and animals.  A lot of us turn natural materials into baskets, bowls, brooms and jelly.  Oak leaves, possums, vines and dogwood blossoms turn up in clay, fiber, wood and metal. We are in tune with the seasons: morel, poke, ramp, blackberry and baseball bat zucchini.

All year round, we are here, keeping the Folk School together, teaching hundreds of students, making the campus safer, better equipped and more efficient. I hope you will make a generous contribution to the Folk School Annual Fund to help keep your school in good shape, operating well, and prepared for you.

Your contribution to the Annual Fund will also help more kids, young adults, teachers and work/studies to attend the school.  It helps to support all the staff; it helps us to get the word out, so that more people will know about the Folk School, and new people will always be joining our community.

It supports everything you like at the Folk School, and many things you may not have considered:  Easter egg hunts, after-school music, garden seeds, water-mains, electricity and hummingbird food, and everything else that keeps it all going for you until you get back thar.

Love From Brasstown,

Jan

­February 2011

Dear Friends,

Before retiree Dave from Wisconsin left for a big road trip he prudently called the toll-free number to tell his credit card company, “We’re going to New York, Canada, Florida, and the last week of the month we’ll be in a place called Brasstown, North Carolina.”

“Sweet,” said the anonymous call center, “gonna make you a dulcimer?”

Hello from a place totally famous to those of us who know us.

The Folk School’s a great place to learn, and it’s famous because it can transform us in huge and small ways: relieving our stress, restoring our perspective, keeping minds sharp with the edge of discovery, changing our sense of the passage of time, and allowing us to focus intently on what would be a trifle if it were not in the service of creation.  Laughter is rediscovered, relationships are affirmed, new friendships are made, life mates are found.  And that’s just before breakfast.

In eighty-five years, the Folk School has found its own traditions and practices—it does not fit models of other schools or organizations.  Alas, not everyone understands us, so it’s great when someone—especially the Windgate Foundation—“gets it.”  Windgate Foundation will grant us $250,000 on the condition that it be matched.  Part of this match has already come from other hip and wise foundations like Lyndhurst and Cannon and from great families like the Coolidges, kinfolks of Olive Dame Campbell.

This is where you come in.  If you make a donation now to match the Windgate challenge, the value of your gift is doubled, and the Folk School gets Two-Dollars-for-One. Here’s what we will do with your money and theirs:

• Restore and adapt the historic Hill House.  With its broad views toward Chunky Gal Mountain, it will have five student rooms with baths. The living room, where generations of makers and musicians have gathered, will again draw students to its fireplace.  Comfortable and energy efficient, it will still look and feel like the European-inspired stone and timber house designed by the Belgian Leon Deschamps and built by Folk School volunteers in the 1930s.

• Let the sun shine in.  The Folk School’s buildings face south across big fields.  In a major step toward efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint, we will install solar water systems on Olive Dame Campbell Dining Hall, Maintenance & Housekeeping, Orchard House, Mill House, Keith House, Hubble House, Log House and Davidson Hall.

I have been writing these letters for 18 years, and many of you have been with me all the way. I have never known an opportunity like this:  if you can give or pledge right now to the Folk School, your dollars will be doubled.

In Brasstown we know there are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can’t.

Counting on you.

Thanks,

Jan

Fall 2010

Dear Friends,

Brasstown, to those who know it, has always been a fun place. When the Folk School started in the 1920s, one of the suggestions its founders made to the local community was forming some clubs to bring folks together. Soon there was a women’s club, and a farmers’ club, and the group of whittlers who became the famous Brasstown Carvers.

Another group of older gents formed the “Sons of Rest.” They dutifully drew up bylaws and elected everyone in the club to an office. There was the President, several Vice Presidents, two Secretaries, a Treasurer, a Sergeant-at-arms, and a Banana Keeper, to which storekeeper Fred O. Scroggs was always elected, since he possessed Brasstown’s only bananas.

As soon as you make the turn at Clay’s Corner, you know something is up. There are hay fields, flowers, welcoming porches on old buildings, and a big red sign. It’s made of iron, framed in graceful forged S-scrolls. The letters for “John C. Campbell Folk School” are cut out and through the spaces you can see green grass, golden autumn trees, old buildings with red doors and people painting at easels, hanging dyed wool to dry, picking banjos. At the top of the sign, there are soaring upward curves and finally, against the sky, there are stars.

People all over the world know your personal motto as a Folkschooler: “I Sing Behind the Plow.” This affirmation of joy in work, of art in the everyday, of hope in the face of challenge, helps us in times of trouble and reminds us that we have within us a lot of what it takes to make things better. It also helps us give ourselves permission to enjoy the process.

But the big red sign with the stars helps to remind us of another thing: that the individual work we do and the things we create are for others. Our works don’t mean much until we share them. The talents we have and discover only become “gifts” when we pass them on. Clay Spencer and I designed the sign inspired by a favorite Danish Folk School song translated in the 1920s by our founder Olive Dame Campbell: “Love life. Hate no one. With joy and sorrow, hope and faith, you shall build here on earth a bridge up to the stars.”

The economy has diminished our attendance, but together, we have spent the tough times getting better: you have helped us build a needed new house, fix up our historical buildings, install energy efficient systems and open the magnificent new Clay Spencer Blacksmith Shop. I hope you will help your Folk School now with a gift for its future.

As we celebrate our Folk School’s 85^th year, we need more than ever to keep it strong through good times and bad, because what it can give is more important than ever.

Love from Brasstown,

Jan

In the Cooking Studio. From left: Chocolate Making Instructor Robert Reeb, Governor Beverly Perdue, and Jan Davidson

Today, Governor Beverly Perdue came to Cherokee County. In downtown Murphy, she visited the Cherokee County Court House and The Cherokee Scout newspaper, and then it was on to Brasstown.

The Governor asked me to ride with her so we got a chance to talk about the Folk School. I told her how we contribute to the local economy, providing income for our staff, 650 instructors, and hundreds of craftspeople in the shop and the Fall Festival. I wanted her to know that we are teaching people skills that add value to raw materials and create home businesses. I wanted her to know about our local involvement, our young folks’ programs, our free concerts, dance community, and our plans for a “greener” Folk School. I had an opportunity also to say thanks for the North Carolina Arts Council, which is a great supporter of our programs.

By the time we reached the Folk School, I had offered the Governor several options. Decisively, she chose to go straight to the chocolate class, where Robert Reeb and Chris Carroll and a roomful of students from all over the country were dipping coconut macaroons in dark ganache.

The macaroons were really good, and the Governor ordered all the troopers to try some. Everybody tried some and nobody wanted to leave.

The party proceeded to the Clay Spencer Blacksmith Shop, in only its second week of operation, where Tom McElfresh demonstrated for Governor Perdue a forge weld on a basket-handled poker. As we left the blacksmith shop, the Governor jumped almost into Brendle Branch to pick some forget-me-nots and to select a flat rock for her collection of rocks from cool places in North Carolina.

Resident potter Mike Lalone gave her a bowl which she likes very much, and we fixed her up with “the Full Folk School” with caps, tshirts, DVD, CD, apron and a jar of Folk School Sourwood Honey.

I found out afterward that the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce gave her a jar of honey, too.

Then I found out she’s a beekeeper and put up 170 pounds this year. So The Governor’s got honey.

According to the Cherokee Scout, the last time a sitting governor came to Cherokee County was when Governor Jim Hunt landed his helicopter on the Folk School maypole field, and dedicated the Folk School’s new classroom building. It is now Davidson Hall, home of the chocolatiers.

Governor Perdue wore a white jacket that remained spotless through ganache, forging, flower picking, rock collecting and hugging chocolate makers and blacksmiths. It was a quick, but pleasant visit with someone who would be fun to have as a classmate at the Folk School. She’s hoping to take a weekend class, maybe in pottery.

Blacksmithing Instructor Tom McElfresh demonstrates a forge weld for Governor Perdue

Gathering forget-me-nots and rocks from Brendle Branch

Governor Perdue and Jan in front of the Francis Whitaker Blacksmith Shop

Governor Beverly Perdue at left visits Robert Reeb's chocolate making class.

Summer 2010

Dear Friends,

It was 1954.  We were about 6 years old and Appalachian as a pickled ramp.

The yellow bus pulled up in front of the Keith House.  Miss McCombs’ first grade from Murphy Elementary piled out and went through a red door and into another world.

There were jokes about chickens and stories about Jack and tales requiring animal noises and sudden movements.  There were good things to eat.  We were world class connoisseurs of floppy store-bought white bread, cornbread (never, never put sugar in cornbread) and cathead biscuits, but we had never tasted anything like the Folk School’s warm, dark whole wheat.  There were puppets that tried to dance and fell into a pile.  There were songs that made you laugh, and some that made even 6-year-boys thoughtful.  There were people who treated you like somebody important, even though you were a kid, or never been there before, or didn’t know what to expect.  I was all of that.

We had never heard anybody talk like Georg Bidstrup.  Later we found out he was Danish.  We could tell he was saying something nice, and “Welcome” or some longer word with “Welcome” in it.  Whatever he was saying was very nice, we could tell that and we were all nodding our heads and smiling like we knew what he was saying.  Finally I leaned over to my cousin Luke and grinned real big and asked, “What’d he say?”  My cousin Luke grinned real big and said, “No idy!”

Finally Georg Bidstrup said something like “Make a Beeeg Circle!”   We understood that much, so we made a big circle and held hands and for reasons that turned out to go very deep into the history of Cherokee County, North Carolina, Prussian expansionism in the mid-nineteenth century, the American rural settlement school movement and the Appalachian Handicraft Revival, we little boys and girls from Hanging Dog and Murphy and Martin’s Creek did a dance that was Danish as a pickled herring.

A few years back, one of our neighbors came to office and took me by the hand.  She said, “Jan, come in here a minute.”  She led me into the Living Room and pointed at the corner said “Right there is where it happened.”

“What happened?”

“That’s where I decided I would marry him.”  Her husband had passed away recently.  They were both students in the early 1930s.  “I wanted to see if that window seat was still there.”

Yes, it’s still here.  And a lot of us have found our lives changed in that Living Room, around that fire place, on the stage, and on the dance floor.  When most of us say we’re “going to the Folk School,” it is likely that the mental picture is of the Keith House.  Normally, I write these letters asking you to support the annual fund, but today, we have another important task to accomplish together.  I am asking you to make a contribution to help us renovate our most vital building. The Keith House is not simply an important structure because it has stood at the center of our campus for over eighty years but because it has been home to our most memorable and wonderful moments, a witness of our joy.

With Love from Brasstown,

Jan

The Folk School recently completed Little Folk School and Middle Folk School–“Little Middle” or “L/M” as it looms on our planning calendars.  There were 284 students: 156 Little (age 7-12) and 128 Middle (age 13-17), mostly locals, in 26 classes with 30 amazing teachers and a 37-member volunteer crew.

The whole local community participated in Little Middle.  There is a special feeling during the week.  The local community was especially involved this year through the presence of a speed monitor placed  by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department between Harshaw Road and Davidson Lane.  It helped to slow down even the log trucks and gravel haulers, and gave our local commuters, staff (your Director included), and neighbors a reminder of how slow 25 mph really is.

There was a lot of music and laughing in Morningsong.  There were hilarious and amazing classes.  Flowers, mountains, dinosaurs and snakes were executed in every imaginable medium.  There were whimsical flights of fancy were made, and underneath it, if you looked close, you could see people discovering what will become a lifelong fascination with the challenges and joys of clay, wood, metal, fiber, narrative, movement and performance.

Some of them performed miracles (especially the magic class) and many of these young folks made objects never seen before on the earth.  Some made things that we human types have made and loved for a long time, and they were taught to make them faithfully, and with respect.  The borderland of tradition and creativity is where we dwell.   We all saw in the young students a sense of pride in their own accomplishments, and delight at being a part of what was obviously a grand opportunity for fun.

Life-long friendships were started, mentors were identified.  People of many ages found themselves transformed by the experience.  The Brasstown Fire Department arrived Wednesday and sprayed all who wanted to get sprayed with a fire hose.

Little/Middle is one week out of our 49, but in importance, it may equal all the others.  It’s a seed bed for our future.  After 19 years, it’s a pleasure to see so many teachers and assistants in this program who grew up in it and have sort of grown up, and have assumed their place in the continuity of Little/Middle and of the larger Folk School world.

Looking at the program now, it is hard to imagine that in 1976, the entire attendance was 25, and the staff was two:  Phillip Merrill and an 18-year-old work/study, Miss Nanette Buchen.  About six years after that, Nanette and I got married in the Open House, and in time became parents of three L/Ms.  Sam just entered his M years with woodturning and blacksmithing and provided for his family dibbles and barbeque forks.

At the end of Little Middle week, we had the John Neil Davidson Dance, which supports a scholarship fund for young folks.  There was a silent auction organized by Chloe Davidson, and supported by a stellar cast of makers and bidders.  There was a memorable dance, and an unbeatable snack and drink sale.  It represented the work of many dear friends and raised over $1,800.

Thanks for being part of the Folk School.  There’s nothing remotely like it.

Spring 2010

Dear Friends,

Now sings the tufted titmouse “peter peter peter” and the bluebird soars by carrying the sky on his back. The earth has tipped, the days extend, the ground is making worms again. The chickens can’t believe their luck, there’s treasures everywhere. The crows are calling back and forth across the fields. You have probably noticed roadkill never includes crows, though they spend plenty of time in the road. This is because they help each other out. When one is in the road, there’s always another one up a tree yelling, “Car! Car!”

The people are also cooperating and having fun in Brasstown. They are making beautiful objects everywhere, new tunes, gardens, poems and pies. New places to live and work: you have helped build a new student house, and put us well on the way to a New Forge at the Blacksmith Shop. There is good news and excitement here, optimism and progress. People tell me the recession focused their mind on meaningful values, and that the Folk School has become more valuable than ever. We teach the best things in the best ways, in the best facilities for the best teachers and the best students. It’s that simple. To be the best, we must be strong, which will require your help. I hope you will send a donation by return mail. We promise to think of you in Brasstown and wish you back.

I like seeing the lively old birds of my age finding their creativity at last, but it is a special thrill to watch young folks learning how cool the Folk School is. Young instructors who learned here are now among our best teachers. We are discussed in colleges amongst select groups of youth who know what’s up. We have second and third, even fourth generation local folkschoolers dancing around and learning. One recent Saturday night, a suave group of youths arrived at the Community Dance, sparkling in tuxes and sequined gowns, having decided they wanted to dress up, and the Folk School had a more fun dance than the high school formal. For one thing, they said, people dance at our dances. For another thing, there’s music. It’s a brave new concept in dancing. Will it catch on?

Robin Tucker danced here and visited some Fall Festivals and was moved to write me a letter:
“We bought some woodcarving tools, wood, and a book and I have begun learning. I really like the Campbell Folk School. I think your organization does a great job. I have been saving my allowance for several years and plan to donate one-third to charity. I am sending you a donation so you can continue your great work.” Robin is eight years old.

So, Robin’s in. I know we can count on you too.

Love from Brasstown,

Jan Davidson, Director

By Jan Davidson

Great old rooms have their own personalities. The Living Room at Keith House is one of the pleasantest places at the Folk School. It is cozy, informal, and timeless. Sometimes it is boisterous and sometimes it is contemplative. It has dignity, but it enjoys a good laugh. It is made of wood and books. You can sit in chairs that arrived in September, 1927. You can stumble across odd old books that people have wondered at for eight decades and more. You can feel the patina of a thousand months of conversations, singing, learning and hanging out. On its door, a sign says

“In honor of William B. “Brad” Coolidge.”

One of the great Folk School friends of all time, he passed away on February 9, 2010. He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, age 92.

Brad Coolidge as a child

He was Olive Dame Campbell’s nephew, the son of Olive’s sister Ruth Dame Coolidge. His father, Richard, served on the Folk School board from its inception in 1925 into the fifies. Brad himself served on the Folk School Board for over twenty years. He was a member of the Board at the time I was hired as Director, and I appreciate his trust and support. He was a great source of inspiration, wisdom and knowledge to the School for all these years.

Brad was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1916, and graduated from Tufts University in 1937. He was a journalist in Japan from 1937 to 1939 during the rise of militarism, the invasion of Manchuria, and the last days before World War II. As a United Press correspondent, he went into Japanese-occupied Manchuria and China. On his return, he earned a Harvard master’s degree in International Affairs. He joined the Army and served as an intelligence officer, using his knowledge of Japanese and other oriental languages in his work as an analyst. After the war, he was asked to join the State Department, where he became a Foreign Service Officer, serving in Japan, Thailand and Turkey. In retirement, he divided his time between Bethesda and Nantucket, with trips to Brasstown at least annually. He was an avid sailor, a fine photographer, and a stellar Folk School student. He was the quintessential Yankee: self-effacing, solid, capable. He was certain of his anchors, and kept his eyes on the stars. He loved to hike in these mountains with his cameras on a hunt for flowers and birds. He enjoyed listening to people and learning about their lives, which is why he was a fine representative of America in other lands, and why he was, as we say in Brasstown, “folk school all the way.”

“Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”

Brad in Madaket Harbor

You meet the most interesting people here.  Over the years, I’ve learned from and enjoyed talking to some of the world’s great characters right here in Brasstown.  Shortly after I became the Director of the Folk School, I asked some of my musical and crafts friends to tell me great people we should try to get to teach at the Folk School.  A trusted musical advisor, Beth Ross Johnson, said “Get the great ballad singer Norman Kennedy.”  My weaving advisor (spouse Nanette) said, “Get the great weaver Norman Kennedy.”  These two turned out to be the very same ponytailed Scotsman.  So for the last eighteen years or so, he has made visits to Brasstown which are always memorable for us here, jazzing up weavers and spinners, slamming tweed on the table to the beat of the ancient waulking music, where the singing and the weaving come together, as the song propels the cloth sunwise around the table while all the hands of the people lift it up and slam it down and pass it on to the next waulker.  In this way, the wool is preshrunk, softened, bonded and unified.  The people likewise, except they are not preshrunk.

Born in Aberdeen, he was gifted with a lovely singing voice and a prodigious memory.  At an early age he began to learn ballads with hundreds if not thousands of verses, in both Scots and Gaelic.  He could even sing in English.  He even claims to speak it, but sometimes it is hard to tell.  Whatever English he is speaking, it’s way down deep within thick layers of Norse and Pict and Braid Scots and the cosmopolitan sounds of a seaport town.  Forty years in Vermont have not influenced his accent because the people there do not speak.  Remember what Calvin Coolidge said?  Neither do I.  He was from Vermont.

Norman can rare back and close his eyes and sing you off to castles, mysterious rides through the wood, long sea voyages, back to the old cattle stealing days, the sailing times, the rhythms of long evenings sitting by the hearth.  He can break your heart with songs of lost loves and tragic ends.  He can tell you how his sailor father went roond the world seven times wi never a passport, and how if somebody told his mither she was getting auld, she’d say, “I’ll knock ye doon and dance on ye!”  At an early age, Norman fell in with the Scottish Traveller singers like Jeannie Robertson and Davie Stewart who handed on to him riches of song.  This was in days and places where there were not many audio recorders, but fortunately, Norman was there instead.  He could listen one time to some ancient song with about 147 verses, and remember the whole thing.  He also became fascinated with spinning and weaving, and he sat and spun and sung with old ladies who were the last of their ilk.  He has never forgotten a detail of his long life and it has all been profoundly funny, to hear him tell about it.  He was taught by great masters and he has become their legacy to us now.

It never works to stereotype Folk School people.  Norman can sing the heck out of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and he loves Hank Williams.  He first came to this country in 1965, to represent Scotland at the Newport Folk Festival.  Norman had just finished singing on the famous day when Bob Dylan went electric, to the dismay of his folkie fans.  With his typical open-mindedness, (and working-class musical roots which included Scottish country and western bars—think Texas oilfields, only tough) Norman liked Bob’s new sound and thought the audience would come around.

It was great to see him again.  He’s still way Scottish, but he’s been a great American singer and craftsman for a long time now.  A few years ago, he was presented with the National Heritage Fellowship, our nation’s highest honor for keepers of tradition.