folklife festival 2005
Jun. 29th, 2005 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleThe Smithsonian Folklife Festival this year features Oman, the Forest Service, and Food Culture USA. The heat on Sunday was oppressive, but we spent most of our time in the shaded displays off to one side of the Mall.
I found K in the Forest Service section, longing after a small forest of carved mushrooms. The woodcarver was happily going on about the nature of the woods he chose, the different ways they responded to turning, why he preferred green wood and how he removed the moisture. He also liked showing off bits of fungus discoloring that he discovered during carving.
We waited patiently until he chose a log of walnut and put it on the turner. As the log spun, he applied his carving tools, sometimes holding a hand between us and the log to protect us from flying chips. It was like watching pottery spinning on a wheel, each touch of the chisel creating a rippling effect down the surface. Wood chips occasionally flew outwards despite his best efforts. I took shelter behind my Woodsy the Owl cardboard fan.
The man finished the mushroom's structure but got ambitious, and tried to create a rippling ring of bark around the cap. Mistake; the entire covering of bark sheared off and flew to one side.
Food Culture USA was not, in fact, a display of McDonaldses and Starbuckses, but was instead a series of informative stands (each sponsored by a company; can't let go of commercialism altogether). As we headed towards the "Spices" stand, I looked down the row at "Tea, Chocolate..."
K grabbed my hand to prevent me from heading straight for the "Coffee" stand, so we did things in order. The Spices stand featured open baskets of lavender, cumin, whole nutmeg; dried peppers overflowed from a bag and spilled onto the ground. I buried my hands in cinnamon. "What does the thyme scent remind you of?" the girl asked me.
"My thyme plant," I replied, at a loss as to what she was expecting of me. What is thyme supposed to remind you of?
The Tea stand was sponsored by Honest Tea; they had open baskets as well, of various teas and chai spices and hibiscus, and also featured a huge roll of tea bag paper. Didn't quite know what to do with that one. The Chocolate stand had examples of chocolate in unprocessed forms, and the Coffee stand nearly killed me with longing when I inhaled deeply from a bag of roasted beans.
We spent a long time in the Culinary Institute of America stand, where they had a large display of professional chef's tools. K showed off his Alton Brown knowledge and quizzed the chefs as to their cooking processes. We watched one chef demonstrate the quickest way to dice an onion, and watched another carve a girl's profile into a watermelon without seeming effort.
The Oman exhibit did not successfully differentiate Oman from any other Arabic country with Bedouins, desert and coastline, but it was still interesting to look around. The calligraphers were chatty and accomodating, and I liked the detailed metalwork on the plates and bowls. The incense display made me dizzy, though, so I missed out on the display of tiny clay pots.
I wasn't too taken with the fabrics tent at first, which seemed to be nothing more than a display of traditionally-dressed women (they looked bored, and hot, and I felt uncomfortable staring), but then I realized that some of them were actually embroidering. "It's an Oman stitch 'n bitch," I told K, and took pictures. They embroidered a white pattern on a white surface, then filled in the spaces between with a darker color. Negative image stitchery.
We went back to K's car to drop things off, and then K realized that he'd forgotten to look for wooden mushrooms to purchase; we braved the heat back to the Mall. The mushrooms proved overly expensive, so we sought out the Post Office Pavilion instead and finished off the afternoon with Ben and Jerry's milkshakes. Food Culture USA at its finest.
I found K in the Forest Service section, longing after a small forest of carved mushrooms. The woodcarver was happily going on about the nature of the woods he chose, the different ways they responded to turning, why he preferred green wood and how he removed the moisture. He also liked showing off bits of fungus discoloring that he discovered during carving.
We waited patiently until he chose a log of walnut and put it on the turner. As the log spun, he applied his carving tools, sometimes holding a hand between us and the log to protect us from flying chips. It was like watching pottery spinning on a wheel, each touch of the chisel creating a rippling effect down the surface. Wood chips occasionally flew outwards despite his best efforts. I took shelter behind my Woodsy the Owl cardboard fan.
The man finished the mushroom's structure but got ambitious, and tried to create a rippling ring of bark around the cap. Mistake; the entire covering of bark sheared off and flew to one side.
Food Culture USA was not, in fact, a display of McDonaldses and Starbuckses, but was instead a series of informative stands (each sponsored by a company; can't let go of commercialism altogether). As we headed towards the "Spices" stand, I looked down the row at "Tea, Chocolate..."
K grabbed my hand to prevent me from heading straight for the "Coffee" stand, so we did things in order. The Spices stand featured open baskets of lavender, cumin, whole nutmeg; dried peppers overflowed from a bag and spilled onto the ground. I buried my hands in cinnamon. "What does the thyme scent remind you of?" the girl asked me.
"My thyme plant," I replied, at a loss as to what she was expecting of me. What is thyme supposed to remind you of?
The Tea stand was sponsored by Honest Tea; they had open baskets as well, of various teas and chai spices and hibiscus, and also featured a huge roll of tea bag paper. Didn't quite know what to do with that one. The Chocolate stand had examples of chocolate in unprocessed forms, and the Coffee stand nearly killed me with longing when I inhaled deeply from a bag of roasted beans.
We spent a long time in the Culinary Institute of America stand, where they had a large display of professional chef's tools. K showed off his Alton Brown knowledge and quizzed the chefs as to their cooking processes. We watched one chef demonstrate the quickest way to dice an onion, and watched another carve a girl's profile into a watermelon without seeming effort.
The Oman exhibit did not successfully differentiate Oman from any other Arabic country with Bedouins, desert and coastline, but it was still interesting to look around. The calligraphers were chatty and accomodating, and I liked the detailed metalwork on the plates and bowls. The incense display made me dizzy, though, so I missed out on the display of tiny clay pots.
I wasn't too taken with the fabrics tent at first, which seemed to be nothing more than a display of traditionally-dressed women (they looked bored, and hot, and I felt uncomfortable staring), but then I realized that some of them were actually embroidering. "It's an Oman stitch 'n bitch," I told K, and took pictures. They embroidered a white pattern on a white surface, then filled in the spaces between with a darker color. Negative image stitchery.
We went back to K's car to drop things off, and then K realized that he'd forgotten to look for wooden mushrooms to purchase; we braved the heat back to the Mall. The mushrooms proved overly expensive, so we sought out the Post Office Pavilion instead and finished off the afternoon with Ben and Jerry's milkshakes. Food Culture USA at its finest.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 05:21 pm (UTC)The idea of rollyourown teabags is just amusing as all heck. *grin*
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 08:52 pm (UTC)Man, if I could've rolled my own teabag, I would totally have stolen all of that lovely chai blend. Mmm, chai.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-30 05:43 am (UTC)