Tag: Staunton

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Culture Living

Ancient skills: The Frontier Culture Museum threads the past into the present

Photo by Erika Howsare

When I find Mary Kate Claytor, she’s cross-legged on the grass under a catalpa tree, working a deer hide over the sharp point of an awl made from deer bone, trying to poke a hole. The hide is wet: It recently came out of a freezer, where it’s been waiting since it was taken from a deer hunted last fall.

We’re at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, where recreated homeplaces from Europe, Africa, and North America tell the story of how many civilizations blended to create a new, American culture. This is the Native American portion of the museum’s sprawling outdoor grounds, and Claytor’s work as an interpreter involves demonstrating processes that people of Eastern Woodlands nations would have performed as part of daily life. Poking this hole is one of the first steps in tanning the deer hide to make buckskin.

The awl sits on its rounded handle, pointed straight up, and Claytor wiggles the hide down over it. Finally the awl breaks through. The hide is incredibly strong. It’s fur-side down right now, and we’re looking at a smooth surface with pinks, whites, and light browns swirling over it. To the touch, it’s rubbery and a little slimy.

In front of her on the ground is a wooden frame with dozens of handmade nails pounded into it at regular intervals. Having made holes all around the border of the hide, Claytor begins to thread jute twine through the openings, then winds and knots the twine around the nails on the frame. “When I get it stretched,” she explains, “as it dries it will contract and become more tight in the frame.” This should make the next step—scraping off the hair—easier.

But she’s not there yet; stretching the hide takes quite a while. Every time she threads another hole, she’s got to carefully pull the jute tight with one hand while massaging the hide outward with the other. Sometimes the jute snaps. It’s far more likely to break than the hide itself.

The strength of deer hide is part of what made it so useful to indigenous peoples. Claytor hands me a piece of finished buckskin, which is just like what she’ll have at the end of this tanning process. It’s seductively soft, velvety, thinner than I’d imagined. I immediately want to wrap myself in it, and it’s big enough to be at least the beginning of a garment. Moccasins and pouches can be made from buckskin, too.

As Claytor works her away around the hide, her colleague Misti Furr explains to some nearby museumgoers that deer hide also became an important export from the American colonies back to Europe, where buckskin was used to make gloves, and rawhide served as pulley cables. “These skins helped fuel the Industrial Revolution and make a lot of money for the mother country,” she says. “It’s one of the colonies’ most stable exports”—more reliable year-to-year than cash crops like tobacco.

That trade changed life for Native Americans; they acquired European goods, and hunted more deer to satisfy European demand. Furr weaves a tale of interlocking changes that stretches from the woods of eastern North America to the shores of West Africa and down to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. The usefulness of deer hides—their size, their pliability, their abundance and toughness—made them a valuable resource in the early global economy. But before that, they were a basic life material for people all over this continent.

“Brain tanning is a traditional method used by indigenous peoples across North America,” says Claytor. Native Americans processed many animals, including buffalo, using the technique that Claytor will be following with this hide: The animal’s own brain is made into a solution in which the skin gets soaked. Oils and fats in the brain tissue lubricate the fibers in the skin, making it soft and workable. Then the hide is smoked over a smoldering fire to preserve and waterproof it. It’ll take the better part of a week altogether.

Claytor’s approach to this project isn’t totally purist; it’s a mix of old and new. She made a deer leg bone into a scraper to remove the fur, for example—using a Dremel tool. And she’ll scrape the hide before removing it from the frame, while Native Americans would have been likely to do it with the hide laid over a log. Claytor and her colleagues do it that way sometimes, too.

“We’re in this weird place—non-Native people interpreting Native culture,” she acknowledges. Interpreters don’t always know exactly what the old ways looked like—they do a lot of experimentation to help figure it out—and of course the old ways changed over time and geography. They weren’t the same everywhere, and they evolved as all cultures do.

Finally the hide is fully stretched. Claytor stands the frame on end and flips it around so I can see the fur: dark brown along the spine, lighter on the flanks, white on the edges. The sun is behind her, and just for a moment it shines through the skin, lighting it up and making it glow.

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Living

Rail fun: Through the countryside and under the mountain on the passenger train

From Charlottesville to Staunton, Amtrak’s Cardinal provides a beautiful one-hour ride through the countryside. Photo: Ben Schumin

Three days a week, an Amtrak train called the Cardinal rolls through Charlottesville on its way from New York to Chicago. Unless you’re planning a long trip to a city along the route (Indianapolis, anyone? Cincinnati?), you may not look twice at the train. But it’s more than a means of transport. For a family, the train can be an outing in itself.

I have a longstanding romance with trains, from the battered freight cars I saw snaking along the Pittsburgh rivers of my childhood, to the coaches I rode through Switzerland and Greece as a college student, to the BART light-rail cars that carried me to work in San Francisco. I love them all, and I consider a train journey to be a special window in time, when one’s only job is to gaze at the fascinating world crawling past.

Wanting to give my two girls a taste of that magic, I had eyed the Cardinal for a while. They’re still rather young, so I didn’t feel they were ready for a more ambitious trip, for instance, to Washington, D.C., (which would entail staying overnight, in any case). But I noticed that we could ride from Charlottesville to Staunton in the mid-afternoon, giving us about one hour on the train. All we’d need would be a driver willing to pick us up on the other side of the mountain.

I told my kids I had a surprise for them and didn’t reveal a thing until we pulled into the parking lot at the Amtrak station on West Main Street. It was a Friday afternoon. When they realized what was happening, they bounced around joyfully, just as I’d hoped they would. We waited on the platform in a state of high anticipation, gazing east down the tracks, and when the Amtrak engine finally slipped into view, the girls’ eyes grew wide. The three of us squeezed into two seats, and soon the train lurched into motion and the city started rolling past us.

One of my favorite things about train travel is that it can reveal a new side of places you thought you knew well. We drive between Charlottesville and Crozet all the time, but to see that part of Albemarle from the tracks offered a totally different perspective. It was exciting to shoot through downtown Crozet at high speed. I felt as if we were strangers in these parts again, wending our way past the unknown fields of Greenwood and beginning the long climb up the Blue Ridge. And once the train dove into the tunnel that carries it under Rockfish Gap, we entered a new realm. I felt a bit disoriented, and the girls fell silent, as we descended toward Waynesboro.

Though I’d brought along things to do—books, sketchbooks, snacks—we really didn’t need them. The girls were enchanted to be able to ride without seat belts, to feel the motion of the cars, to hear about how far these tracks could take us if we were to keep on riding. My older daughter pulled out a little notebook and wrote me a note: “Dear Mom, Thank you for this.”

When we pulled into the Staunton station, we were by no means tired of the train. But we had a new adventure before us—to explore Staunton, sans car. A block from the train station, we caught the trolley and rode it to Gypsy Hill Park, Staunton’s large (big enough to have its own golf course) and pleasantly old-fashioned greenspace.

Named for the nomadic people who frequented it in the 1800s, Gypsy Hill is highly programmed. It reminded me a little of New York City’s Central Park, with amusements from horseshoes to skate ramps and ball fields around every turn. After sprawling under a beautiful tree to nosh some snacks, the girls and I were drawn first to the large pond, where you can buy pellets to toss to the ducks and swans. Later we drifted toward the big playgrounds at the park’s other end, passing along the way another train, the Gypsy Express—this one a child-size railroad that tootles around the park on weekends.

After a while, my husband heroically appeared to drive us back to Charlottesville in an ordinary car. It was the end of a legendary day, one we’ll talk about for a long time to come.

If you go

Amtrak’s Cardinal route runs between New York and Chicago and passes through Charlottesville, heading west, on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:52pm. Tickets to Staunton cost $12 for adults, and for each adult, one child gets a half-price fare (Amtrak.com). Gypsy Hill Park is located at the intersection of Churchville and Thornrose avenues.

Categories
Arts

Staunton Music Festival pushes past tradition

Musicians from around the world gather August 10-19 at the Staunton Music Festival to perform classical and modern music. Many of the artists, such as UVA’s I-Jen Fang (shown performing a John Cage piece last year), return thanks to the festival’s unique programming and performance opportunities. Photo by Les Kipp

What do two cellists, one percussionist, and a tennis match have in common? The answer is “a lot,” if you ask UVA faculty member and distinguished percussionist I-Jen Fang. On Sunday at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, as part of the Staunton Music Festival, Fang will be joined by cellists Jan Müeller-Szeraws and Michael Unterman. “Chair umpire” Fang and her “tennis players” will perform Mauricio Kagel’s 1964 composition Match—appropriately scored for three players, according to music publisher Universal Edition.

“The percussion is like a judge and we have to act. I’m putting my hand out and saying, ‘You, go!” Fang says. She enjoys the theatricality of the piece, and the challenge of not knowing how the cellists performing alongside her or the audience will react.

Ever since Fang began her music education at age 6, she’s incorporated a sense of innovation and fun into her studies and practice. She grew up in Taiwan playing with a Chinese drum as a toy, which she looks forward to playing again in Match. She’ll also perform Kagel’s composition using various types of cymbals, police whistles, castanets, toy instruments, and a Brazilian drum called a cuíca, which Fang says creates a funny sound similar to crickets’ chirping or a dog barking.

For professional artists like Fang, the Staunton Music Festival provides a 10-day-long opportunity to delve into avant-garde musical territory such as Kagel’s contemporary work, while also celebrating classical compositions by Beethoven, Wagner, Vivaldi, and dozens more. (For many performances of pre-1850 symphonies or chamber music, musicians will play historical instruments made in that era.) Festival executive director Jason Stell says this lineup highlights the festival’s ability to bring together works that aren’t typically programmed together and creates an intimate listening experience.

“Performers love coming here because they do things they don’t get to do anywhere else,” Stell says. “They’re not just coming here for a paycheck. They’re here to reconnect with old friends, be challenged musically, and to perform music they are inspired by that they don’t get to stage elsewhere.”

Stell points out that of the festival’s nearly 80 artists, approximately 60 of them participated in the event last year. Host families in Staunton have offered to house over half of the artists for the musical celebration, something founder and artistic director Carsten Schmidt says is an important feature of the festival.

“It’s a great way to connect [artists] to the community. It’s one thing to just come stay in a hotel and perform, but some artists have been performing here for 10 to 15 years. There is a sense of community,” says Schmidt. “There is a special feeling that’s created.”

Another performance that contributes to this unique gathering is opening night. It’s a semi-staged presentation of Handel’s baroque opera Hercules. By Schmidt’s estimate, the festival’s staging of Hercules will be the first time the opera has been presented in the United States in a decade, and only the third stateside production.

“It’s a big deal,” Schmidt says of the rarely-heard opera. “It’s not a stuffy opera. Some people might think it’s a little out there, but it’s very much in relation to the contemporary world we live in.”

Peter Walker, who sings the role of Hercules, agrees with Schmidt. “At the end of the day, human nature hasn’t changed appreciably since 18th-century England or ancient Greece,” says Walker. He concedes, however, that clothing has changed over the course of that millennium, and points out that his modern costume includes a leather jacket instead of the hero’s oft-depicted lion skin garment.

Though Walker performs in locations ranging from St. Petersburg to London and other international destinations, he looks forward every year to returning to the Staunton festival. This August marks his fifth year performing in it, though he feels “lucky enough” to perform in the Charlottesville and Staunton region several times a year with the baroque ensemble Three Notch’d Road. During the festival, Walker also attends as many shows as he can. He feels it’s a wonderful chance to hear “some of the best chamber musicians in the world” performing repertoire both familiar and new.

Fondly remembering a conversation he had last year with a local restaurant owner who attended his performance the night before, Walker says, “I think this [experience] shows a level of connection that’s rather unique, and very special when it happens.”

Staunton Music Festival

Downtown Staunton

August 10-19

Categories
Living

Day trip: The Frontier Culture Museum brings history home

An American farmhouse in the 1740s was often a one- or two-room log cabin built by family members. Husband-and-wife teams used crosscut saws to clear the forest where they intended to live and grow crops. Courtesy Frontier Culture Museum

Just like America, the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton is big, complicated and beautiful.

It’s one of my favorite places to take my two girls—a museum where almost anything can be touched and very little is written down. Creative writing professors often exhort students to “show, don’t tell,” and this museum nails that concept, presenting history as a living, 3-D phenomenon.

If you’ve never been, here’s a summary: The FCM illustrates the lifeways of the many cultures, including European, African and Native American groups, that collectively formed the melting pot of the Shenandoah Valley, plus early American life as it evolved over time. It does all this through recreated farms and villages—dwellings, livestock, gardens, costumed interpreters—many of which were actually moved from their original locations.

It’s really a staggering concept, when you stop to consider it. Of course, kids may not be quite ready to wrap their minds around all the complexities of the last four centuries, but this is a place that they can certainly enjoy—and learn from. I’ve found myself referring back to the FCM in conversation with my daughters, just as we often do with another touchstone, the Little House books.

To my way of thinking, there is too much here to see in one day. Spread over the museum grounds are English, Irish and German farms, a West African farm, a Native American village and three separate American farms of different eras, plus a church and a schoolhouse. Each deserves much more than a glance, so I’ve taken my kids multiple times and tried to concentrate on different sections each time.

One favorite is the 1700s West African farm. This is a new addition since I first came to the FCM in the early 2000s, and it does a lot to deepen the story the museum tells. I always have to pause to appreciate a pair of beautifully carved wooden doors at the compound entrance; they remind me of how much I don’t know about life and culture in historical Africa.

Meanwhile, my kids run ahead to duck inside one of the dwellings, built of earthen walls and thatched roofs. One of the things that becomes a commonality across many parts of the museum is that people have built their houses out of whatever their environment provided—bark, mud, tree limbs or stone.

We all love being able to pick up and touch things: brooms, pots and skins that serve as “mattresses” for sleeping. And I’m glad when my kids get an inkling of how few possessions most people through history have owned, a stark contrast to our own stuff-laden culture.

Since animals have been a crucial part of the human story too, it’s more than fitting that the FCM keeps many kinds of livestock to round out the picture of each farm it recreates. And, of course, animal encounters are just plain fun. My daughters were delighted once to be approached by two small, very polite goats on the path from West Africa to England. I assume they were actually supposed to be behind a fence somewhere, but their escape was a happy accident for us.

At the three European farms, the level of detail is rich (partly owing to the fact that the buildings really are old, not just built to look that way). The excellent interpreters have much to share about the work they are doing. We’ve chatted with them about spinning and dyeing yarn, working a forge, cooking on an open hearth and much more. Two interpreters at the Native American village—another newish addition to the museum—once mesmerized me and my kids as they painstakingly scraped a deer hide with stones.

When you arrive, by foot or by golf cart, at the American section of the museum, you’re struck by the evolution of American life over time. The cabin that would have been typical in the 1700s, when the valley was just being settled by Europeans, is unbelievably crude compared with the smart, prosperous farm of the 1850s.

I loved learning that, on the frontier, husband-and-wife teams often used crosscut saws to clear the forest where they intended to live and grow crops. And I loved even more seeing my girls try out that very saw.

Yet, of course, the skills they’ll need in their own era are very different. Just beyond the trees, I-81 thunders past (one interpreter jokingly called it “the great trade route”). It’s a reminder of where all this history has led, and the fact that my daughters will be helping to write a new chapter we can’t yet imagine.

If you go

The Frontier Culture Museum is located in Staunton, just off I-81. Hours through this fall are 9am-5pm daily, and ticket prices are $12 adults, $11 students and $7 kids ages 6-12. (Younger children get in free.) Walking paths connect all exhibits, and golf carts circulate to offer rides to the weary. See frontiermuseum.org.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Shenandoah Fringe Festival takes center stage

The force and fearlessness of art takes center stage with Shenandoah Fringe Festival’s diverse lineup of film, theater, music, puppetry and more. Local and national artists unite with the declaration, “We can be students and painters and refugees and baristas and mothers and mimes and waitresses and vaudevillians all in one without invalidating the others.” JMU grad Valerie David presents her one-woman show, The Pink Hulk, based on her experience battling two separate bouts of cancer by immersing herself in performance, and girding her perspective through a superhero approach.

Sunday, April 8 and Monday, April 9. $10-90, times vary. Downtown Staunton. shenfringe@gmail.com.