Folklife and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve. Report
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 313 304 SO 020 349 AUTHOR Hufford, Mary TITLE One Space, Many Places: Folklife and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve. Report and Recommendations to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission for Cultural Conservation in the Pincluniis National Reserve. INSTITUTION Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. American Folklife Center. PUB DATE 86 NOTE 152p. AVAILABLE FROM American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 ($10.00). PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Reports Research/Technical (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Community Change; Community Characteristics; Community Development; *Conservation (Environment); *Cultural Context; Cultural Differences; Cultural Traits; Environment; *Folk Culture; Geographic Regions; *Regional Characteristics; *Regional Planning IDENTIFIERS Culture Preservation; New Jersey; *Pinelands National Reserve ABSTRACT In 1978, the U.S. Congress established the Pinelands National Reserve on a million-acre landscape of New Jersey woodlands, farms, marshes, suburbs, towns, rivers, and bays. The reserve was to protect not only the region's great natural beauty and scientific value, but also the cultural life of its people, which is largely undocumented. In 1983, the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress inaugurated the Pinelands Folklife Project, a field survey that documented on audio tape and film hundreds of residents of the area, capturing images of their lives in songs, stories, recipes, poems, crafts, festivals, recreation, tools, and technologies. Like natural resources, such expressions warrant consideration from planners, but their intangible aspects pose a special challenge. This document refutes the popular image of the region as a wilderness sparsely populated with quaint, backwoods people, presenting instead a place rich in cultural and environmental diversity and describing how residents convey their sense of place through myriad cultural expressions, which planners can factor into their land-use decisions. The concluding chapter on cultural conservation makes specific recommendations for protecting the region's cultural heritage. Dozens of illustrations, including black and white photographs, line drawings, and charts and maps from the Pinelands Folklife Project Archive complement the description and analysis. Appendices provide information on the logistics of the survey and a checklist for development review for municipal planning boards. (JB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Artwork and design by Blair, Incorporated, except where otherwise indicated Maps hr Donald Sharlene and Blair, Imo:pawed ONE SPACE, MANY PLACES Folk life and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve Report and Recommendations to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission for Cultural Conservation in the Pinelands National Reserve By Mary Hufford American Folklife Center Library of CongressWashington 1986 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pine lands Folk life Project (NJ.) One space, many places. (Publications of the American Folk life Center; no. 15) Bibliography: p. Supt. of Docs. no.: LC 39.9:15 1. Pine lands Folk life Project (NJ.)2. Pinelands National Reserve (NJ.)3. Cultural property, Protection ofNewJerseyPinelands National Reserve.4. Pine Barrens (NJ.)Social life and customs. 5. Land useNew JerseyPinelands National Reserve. I. Hufford, Mary; 1952 II. New Jersey. Pinelands Commission.III. American Folklife Center.IV. Tide.V. Series. F142.P5P57 1986 333.78'4 86-600368 Rev. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 ABBREVIATIONS 5 INTRODUCTION 7 A Piney's Lament 7 The Need to Integrate Scientific and Humanistic Approaches 8 Sense of Place 11 Folk life Expressions 16 THE ORGANIZATION OF CUITURAL DIFFERENCE 20 Native Views, Native Peoples, and Pineys 20 Folk Groups 24 Other Places in This One: Ethnicity and Sense of Place 26 Formal Associations 29 Celebrations 32 THE ORGANIZATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DIFFERENCE 34 Ethnoscience and Native View 34 The Landscape Vocabulary: Categorical Forms 37 Naming and Classifying Natural Species 41 Ethnoecology and the Seasonal Round 44 The Collective Memory in Action: Working the Cycle 44 GENRES OF PLACE: FOLKLIFE EXPRESSIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGE 49 Place-Naming 49 Way-Finding 54 Recitation and Song 59 Story and Legend 62 Craftsmanship: Critical Canons and Flexible Forms 64 Recycled Tools, Technologies, and Symbols 69 Displaying Place and the Past 74 AESTHETIC RESOURCES AND SENSE OF PLACE 75 Nature Contact 76 The Aesthetics of "Goodness of Fit" 83 Woodland Yardscancs 88 NATURAL RESOURCES AS CULTURAL RESOURCES 92 The Cultural Organization of Fire 92 Family Trees and Cultural Vessels: jersey Cedar and Jersey Boats 96 TELLING THE REGION: OLD-TIMERS AS LANDSCAPE RESOURCES 102 Environmental Masters and Apprentices 102 The Human Unit of Time 103 v V CULTURAL CONSERVATION AND THE PINELANDS NATIONAL RESERVE 107 The Collective Memory: A Resource to Conserve 107 Public Policy and Cultural Conservation 109 Pine lands Commission Goals and Policies 110 Pine lands Folk life Project Recommendations 111 The Role of the Cultural Conservation Planner 114 Focusing on Land-Use Themes 114 Integrating Approaches to Development Review and Public Education 119 Intergovernmental Coordination 120 The Role of the Municipal Folk life Consultants 120 A Folk life Designation Process 121 Conclusion: The Songs Are in the Fishermen, Not in the Boats 122 NOTES 123 APPENDICES I. The Pine lands Folk life Survey 126 II. Checklist for Development Review for Municipal Planning Boards 135 III. Summary of Expenditures and In-Kind Contributions 140 vi fl . ttig1 A colonnade of transplanted birch trees, reminiscent of those found in Eastern Europe, prefaces a Russian home in Cassville (Photograph by Maly Hufford. 83.8MH217992-27-26) 1 C. U ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The American Folklife Center is grateful to the many in& iduals andagencies who conti ibuted to the Pinelands Folklife Project and to this report. We would like especially to thank Sue Samuelson, the project's administrative coordinator who, as Malachi O'Connorput it, is a masterful organizer, and the fieldworkers who surveyed the region in 1983 and 1984. Bonnie Blair,Tom Carroll, Eugene Hunn, Jens Lund, Rita Moonsammy, Malachi O'Connor, Gerald Parsons, Nora Rubinstein,and Elaine Thatcher We would also like to acknowledge the project photographers JosephCzarnecki and Dennis McDonald and the archival consultants Jay Orr, Ann Dane}, and Carol Stern, who put in many months behind the scenes organizing the documentation, ensuring its accessibilityto the public. We also wish to express our shock at the loss of fieldworker Christine Cartwright whowas killed in the field while working on this project. Weare enriched by her thoughtful fieldnotes, photographs, and sound recordings and saddened by the tragedy that kept her frompursuing further the work that she began with so much heart. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection providedus with headquarters in a cottage at Lebanon State Forest, and Christian Bethmann, the park superintendent, provedto be a gracious host throughout the two months of the field survey. We are also gratefulto the state's Department of Human Resources for providing the fieldworkers with lodgingat the New Lisbon State School, and to the school's director, Richard Cesta, businessmanager Peter J. Finnegan, director of personnel Don Fitzgerald, and supervisor of housekeeping MarkSepulvida for their warm hos- pitality The Pinelands Commission made space for large meetings and suppliedus with maps and information whenever we needed it. John Stokes, the Commission's administrativeassistant, and Barry Brady, cultural resource specialist, helpedus to think about land-use planning And cultural resources. Elizabeth Carpenter deserves special thanks for her help in documenting thecommunity of growers, and for her diligent readings of this manuscriptat various stages. We would also like to acknowledge the intellectual and moral supportwe received from a number of individuals in the National Park Service. At the Regional Officein Philadelphia, superin- tendent James Coleman endorsed the project, and Patricia Sheehan-Bentley, Bill Bolger,David Glassberg, and Stephanie Rodeffer contributed good ideas. We would also liketo thank Ted Pochter, preservation planner of the Interagency Resources Division in Washington, for his long-standing encouragement of the cultural conservation effort. The project could not have happened without the participation of staffat the Center and elsewhere in the Library of Congress. Carl 17leischhauer, the project co-planner,deserves special thanks not only for helping to organize the survey, but also forsupervising the project's audio and visual documentation and automating the Pinelands Folklife Project data base. Forthis automated data base we also are greatly indebted to the Library's Automated Systems Office, whereJames Godwin and Lela Beth Criswell gave generously of their time andresources. Gerald Parsons wrote seminal memos or. railbirding and trapping, and brought many useful article:, and booksto our attention. Lisa Oshins often pitched in on short notice, conducting bibliographic andphotographic searches and related archival chores. 2 Portions of this report were developed for articles in Iblklife Center News and Thlklife Annual 85. They