Folklore is a topic that has always fascinated me, and I got to play with it a little in my radio work. Ghosts is a little sound portrait of people’s stories about their brushes with the supernatural. La Llorona is a story about a woman who goes momentarily insane and drowns her two children in the river by their house. Once she awakens to the reality of what she’s done, she spends eternity wailing as […]
Read moreCategory: Folklore
Legends & other cultural tales
Amazonian Folklore
There is an ancient myth from the Amazon, first documented in writing by José de Anchieta in 1560 and discovered by me yesterday in a book Molly loaned me: Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. It concerns a demon that the native Pirahí£ call Curupira. Most commonly Curupira is described as a dwarf with long, red hair. He dwells deep in the rainforest. His most […]
Read moreSteel Drivin’ Man: The Legend of John Henry
Before I upload my pictures from my recent visit to West Virginia, I’ll tell you about one day in particular: our field trip to Talcott: “The home of the John Henry Legend.” I’d spent a lot of time tromping around there while producing Steel Drivin’ Man. You can read more about the documentary or visit the old Web site I did about it years ago, or read an article I wrote about producing the program, […]
Read moreLa Llorona
I wonder how many raisins I have to eat to get my iron levels back to normal. Here’s a program I produced about twenty years ago. La Llorona — the crying woman — is the Mexican equivalent of the bogeyman in the US: a great story and an effective behavior modification tool. The show aired on NPR’s All Things Considered. I suspect that listeners wondered about the mental stability of the producer. In fact, I […]
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