Back at it again at Krispy Kreme!! My best friend says the writers on this season on my life are really amping up the storylines. "I know," I said, "and my Hot Dad storyline never even got resolved." "They'll bring him back in a couple of seasons with a 'Previously on "Inky and Skate"...' recap so the fans will remember where things left off." Shortly after this conversation, my mom's boyfriend was hospitalized and I had to update her. "For heaven's sake," she replied, "we have to be close to the season finale with all this ramp-up." "Can we get a musical episode?", I mused. "I want a retro episode where we play our parents in the '70s." This semester I have a class in Oral Histories, and I had to do a project for it recently (I would up making it about how oral histories influence modern witchcraft), and I wanted to go a little more in-depth about it but had a time limit to adhere to. (Specifically, I wanted to discuss how we have a wealth of information on hoodoo from both WPA writings and the works of Harry Middleton Hyatt, and how that works itself into witchcraft practices in the American South/Appalachia, but that's a whole panel in itself.)
However, in the planning stages of this presentation, I was doing a little Hurston research and came across the excerpt above (it's from a letter that Hurston wrote to her mentor). This is my hometown! I called my mother and asked if she had ever heard of such a thing - my hometown is a 13 mile long island, and word gets around to be sure - but she hadn't. I called the history museum and asked them about it, and the archivist said she hadn't ever heard of it, but she said "If this man was a slave at Harrison Plantation and was given property upon emancipation, it could be in that area. More to come on our research." Part of me is so afraid that this beautiful house has been lost to the ages. But another part of me is hoping that some family has it and just refuses to show it to anyone because they don't want the attention. I wish MaVynee was still around. She would've known for sure.
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
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