Honoring heritage and spirit: Stirring festival at new Asian Cultural Center

Sure, county fairs are fun but how many Americans pay respects to their ancestors, become immersed in the arts of their heritage and learn some cool mythology while taking out plastic ducks in the shooting gallery or wolfing down pink popcorn?

Not many.

Though my childhood friends and I liked rickety Ferris wheels and fried dough as much as the next guy, the most highly-anticipated fête in our neighborhood each summer did not involve carousels, cotton candy, Tilt-A-Whirls or fireworks. No, it was a far more esoteric roster of attractions that had us counting down the days right about this time every year: things like fierce taiko drumming, mesmerizing, fan-waving, kimono-clad dancers, scrumptious yakitori skewers, sweet azuki bean candy and games such as scooping up a floating dragon out of a wooden tub of water before your rice paper ladle dissolved.

It was the Obon Festival, a wonderfully convivial, bustling weekend abundant with traditional Japanese music, dancing, games, martial arts and cultural activities held every August on the grounds of the Buddhist Temple where my best friend Donna Ujita and her family were active members.

Being raised in a completely non-spiritual, ethnically myopic household by socially circumspect and, to be frank, desperately unexotic British people, I soaked up every element of the Obon Festival like the WASP sponge that I was.

From the glowing lanterns, ancient fencing demonstrations and solemn tea ceremonies to ikebana flower arranging workshops, judo bouts and bonsai displays — patiently nurtured by expert sages as diminutive and sinewy as their centenarian creations — the Obon was the grand finale of summer and it was only when I moved away that I realized how lucky I'd been to have such rich experiences so early on.

This exposure to the spectacular breadth and beauty of Japanese culture was what led me to Japan years later and it was there that I learned of its many other festivals or "matsuri", as they're called, and the specific occasions, traditions or people they celebrate.

While the Obon seeks to soothe spirits of the dead, who are said to be visiting during that time, there's also Kyoto's Gion Matsuri, which originally sought to appease the gods of fire, earthquake and pestilence, the Shogatsu Matsuri commemorating the New Year, the Hina Matsuri honoring women and girls.

Thanks to two visionary Windham County residents, we have the opportunity to experience a matsuri first-hand at the Asian Cultural Center of Vermont, this Sunday from 1pm to 4pm.

Less than a year after opening the center, Executive Director, Adam Silver and his wife, Artistic Director, Cai Xi Silver, are holding their first annual Tanabata Festival in the Center's fine arts gallery at 814 Western Avenue in Brattleboro.

Also known as The Star Festival, the Tanabata originated with a 2,000-year old Chinese story about two celestial beings, Orihime, a weaver princess and a cow herder prince, Hikoboshi, who spent so much time frolicking about and shirking their duties that the king punished them both by putting them on opposite sides of the Amanogawa River (aka Milky Way). These stars, known to us as Vega and Altair, were allowed to meet only once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, which by our calendar is this weekend, and the festival celebrates their annual togetherness.

The Tanabata, which seeks to promote the improvement of skills, will feature vibrant streamers, songs and foods and Japanese experts will offer lessons in origami folding and calligraphy, using rice paper, ink and brushes, as well as a haiku poetry workshop and reading.

The tale of the Tanabata will also be told, incorporating the tradition of writing down one's wishes for the coming year in the form of poetry on small pieces of paper called "tanzaku" and hanging them from tree branches in the garden behind the gallery.

Concurrently with the Festival, a rare exhibit of extraordinarily moving and meticulously crafted "paintings" will be on display, made in 1945 by children who miraculously survived when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima.

After the blast, a teacher from the Hiroshima Girls High School, Ataki-san, found that only about 50 of his 250 former students were still alive and he established a makeshift school in a tent in order to restore some semblance of normalcy for them.

"He looked for ways to help these young women somehow resume their lives as they recuperated", said Executive Director, Silver, during a recent conversation. "Some couldn't use their arms at first but over months and years the paintings were developed using a traditional method called "kir-i", which involves laying down tiny strips of fabric with rice glue and creating these small, exquisite paintings."

The source of their medium is as poignant as the girls' tenacity itself: they pulled these small fragments of material from the ashes and rubble of Hiroshima.

"Ataki-san told the girls to create a picture that reminded them of the beauty of where they come from", Silver explained. "Some did portraits of women they'd known but the majority are pictures of places they remembered."

The journey of these paintings to New England is compelling as well. Northampton resident, Phyllis Rodin, a renowned peace-activist now in her 90's, was a psychiatric nurse in Hiroshima during the 1960's and helped many of the young women who'd been students of Ataki-san with the post-traumatic stress that still affected them decades after the devastation.

According to Silver, Rodin remembers that some of her patients had been maimed and they told her the story of how the paintings allowed them to begin healing emotionally. In thanks for her work with many of the 150,000 "hibakusha" — explosion-affected people — Ataki-san and fellow citizens of Hiroshima presented Rodin with 19 of these remarkable artistic expressions of post-war anguish and hope, and the Asian Cultural Center will have them on display through the end of the month.

Rodin herself will also be present at tomorrow's reception, which goes from 4:30p.m. to 8:30p.m., so it's a great opportunity to meet someone who was directly involved in Hiroshima's process of recovery and to see the fruits of her patients' mettle as they turned tragedy into beauty. The gallery is also open daily from Noon to 6pm and by appointment by calling 579.9088.

During the reception, Japanese bamboo flute master, Elizabeth Reian Bennett — the first woman to be certified in Japan as a Shakuhachi master — will perform at 7pm. One of the pieces she'll be performing is called Nesting Cranes, a fitting composition based on the symbol of post-atom bomb healing.

We're very fortunate to have our own Asian Cultural Center here in southern Vermont, so do try to stop in for any or all of these events, which are free and open to all ages, and consider becoming a Friend of the Center by making a donation as well. Domo arigato!

Every story needs telling: Oral history gives voice to our rich past

Who knew a bit of adolescent mischief would become a treasured record of aural ancestry contained on one dusty old cassette tape? Not me, that’s for sure.

I was in my early teens and in England with my family visiting a colorful quartet of great aunties, all in their 80s and about as lively and irreverent as anyone I'd ever met older than 14. There was Auntie Hetty, Auntie Minnie and Aunt Polly, but one we usually stayed with was Auntie Maude who was as sharp as a tack and, despite having lived a life laced with adversity, as cheery as a kid in a sweetshop.

Her bright disposition was especially remarkable to me because she was living amid what I perceived to be inordinately harsh privation: in a tiny cottage with no hot water, no bathtub or shower, no fridge (kept her milk bottles in a bucket of cool water in the shade), only two channels on her black-and-white telly and no phone.

It didn't seem to bother Auntie Maude, though, for she always seemed content. My memories of her center on the endless production and consumption of tea so stout you could stand a spoon in it, a high-emission cigarette perpetually poised between knobby fingers and a steady stream of affable, wry socio-political commentary, along with peeks into her past.

This latter pastime was what inspired me, one afternoon, to pop a blank cassette into my portable tape player. I'd brought it on the trip, along with the latest from Queen, Rod Stewart and Led Zeppelin, among others, to break the monotony of what I remember as excruciatingly tedious summer days in rural England.

Seeing as my older siblings had buggered off, probably to the pub for a shandy, leaving me with nothing better to do, I surreptitiously pressed "Record" on the recorder and slid it through the doorway just as they began bustling around getting the tea ready.

What my dastardly surveillance yielded was a muffled but entertaining wall of chatter, delivered in a singularly East Anglian volley of lyrical inflections and guttural "r"s and punctuated by the occasional "Well, I nevvah!" "Oh I say!" and "Like some tuyh, duhyuh?"

Later, sitting on the back stoop with my big black headphones on and replaying this jumble of familial conviviality, I was enrapt. Having an audible document of my female elders — women who had survived wars, abuse, loss and abject poverty, and who'd been maids, factory workers, cooks and suffragettes — was a connection to my past more palpable than all the Cadbury's in London.

That illicit recording was what sparked an impulse to start documenting my family history and I've been interviewing relatives ever since, amassing a collection of factoids, comical moments, historical data and all-too many sorrowful tales as well.

This has mostly been in the form of hastily scribbled notes, however, since no relative has ever granted me permission to tape them and at this point I have several files fat with crumpled bits of paper.

As have so many immigrants, I'm attempting to put this family lore into a book, though it's a daunting notion in several ways. When yet another aunt bestowed hundreds of family photos and various mementos upon me after tearily announcing that, since I was as sentimental as she was, I was being duly appointed the next family historian, it came with a weighty, albeit self-imposed, imperative to do right by her.

I've always been enthralled by my roots — from the minutiae of daily existence to the chronology of our post-war mass exodus to America — and all those tatty scraps of paper serve to remind me that a lot of hard work, happy times and heartache preceded the likes of me.

Though I'd figured this fixation on the past just meant I miss Mother England and like to write, I was recently informed that I am, as a matter of fact, an ethnographer; well, an amateur one, but an ethnographer nevertheless.

The person who informed me of this is Gregory Sharrow, director of education and folklorist at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, with whom I spoke recently about his coming talk on recording oral histories. I mentioned how the book project grew from a tendency to pelt elderly relatives with questions about their lives. I retold a favorite account, about my great-grandfather who used to keep bees in the wall of his one-room home and who subsisted on a single oaty flapjack a day, which he would procure from a local vendor for a farthing.

According to Sharrow, this is ethnographically rich information, in story form with characters and visual details and it's what oral history is all about. For nearly 20 years, Sharrow has been immersed in this holistic, hands-on approach to socio-cultural anthropology, conducting field work that involves finding Vermont residents who are willing to talk and recording their recollections and observations.

With a Ph.D in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, he trains educators and the public in this vital form of historical research and documentation. On June 12, he'll be doing a presentation on the subject at 7 p.m. at Hildene in Manchester and the evening will include various excerpts from his extensive library of recordings, such as farmers telling charming anecdotes about making hard cider or sobering truths from life during the Great Depression, all honoring extraordinary stories of ordinary people, simply through listening.

"I want to motivate people to explore the details of everyday life because things that are the most fundamental are also often the least visible in historical research since they're taken for granted," he explains.

Hosted by the Vermont Humanities Council, the event is an opportunity for all of us to learn how to delve deeply into the history of our own family as well as that of our community.

"Oral history is about discovery and not just filling in the blanks," Sharrow says. "It's how the world looks from someone else's point of view, distinct from conventional perspectives of history."

It's also not only about the past, he points out. "During our Summer Institute program, on day one I send people out to places like a saw mill, a tattoo parlor or a general store and they come back so excited about what they learned by just talking to people."

The Folklife Center doesn't only focus on Vermont's history. Sharrow and his colleagues also record the stories of refugees who have come here from places such as Bosnia, Tibet, the Sudan and Laos, entering their stories into the center's archives and encouraging the public to come in and soak up the diverse strata of experience and heritage that comprise our communities.

The Vermont Folklife Center has just relocated to spacious new digs in downtown Middlebury and — with its multimedia exhibits, workshops and research tools as well as a massive collection of recordings — it's a cultural goldmine that enlightens and inspires.

At one point, Sharrow asked if I'd do a talk about my research methodology as I complete my book. That would be pen, persistence and a faithful notepad. With my Mum's cousin about to arrive from across the pond for his annual visit, all three are at the ready.

Grab your own implements of interviewing because, as the song sort of goes, every pancake tells a story — especially in this state.

For information: Marion La Torella, 362-1277; www.vermontfolklifecenter.org or www.vermonthumanities.org.