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About Heritage Trails |
ABOUT Heritage Trails is a series of 9 publications published between 1984 and 1986. The Staff of this publication changed over the years, but included Otto A. Krumbach (whose permission was obtained for this website version), Roberst Blumetti, Elaine D. Rapp, Ronald Reniewicki, Harold F. Wahl, Mary Lee Gorkun, Jean D. Lohman, James E. Monagan, and Arthur T. Nelson. The following was taken from the first publication of Heritage Trails in the winter of 1984, and gives a good introduction. The Awakening Something has been happening. A stirring has been taking place. Growing interest in ancient folk practices and ethnic origina has been manifest on the American scene. In response to the new interests of the electorate, an Act of Congress was passed in January, 1976, establishing the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. At about this same time, the Smithsonian Institute created a Folklife Unit. The subject is also now being introduced into elementary and high schools. It is of interest to note that despite the fact that the majority of people in the United States are of European origin, this fact has not been of significance to many of them as they identified themselves simply as "Americans." In this process many of them lost track of their own cultural heritage. Apparently, attitudes have now changed as more and more people indicate a desire to participate in "folk" pursuits and the ethnic festivals. Even today the people identification of many European-American remains indistinct. The rapidly growing folk interests no evident seem to center upon various personal activity preferences, carried out in small groupings of people sharing similar interests. This is as it always has been. The individualistic nature of typical persons of European originn, and their primary interest in local action and organization, have been characteristic of them down through the millenia. As a consequence, there are few pan-European organizations in existance to promote folk activity and few country-wide European-American groups which are active outside of a small number of ethnic, or specific interest groups. This has made communication between European-Americans on topics of special interest to them rather limited. Heritage Trails will seek to meet the obvious need for improved communications. It is hoped the effort will help to enrich the lives of interested people by providing stimulating new views of their unique cultural heritage. -The Editorial Staff of Heritage Trails, Winter 1984 What has changed since this was published over 20 years ago? The internet became popular and paper publications such as this have been traded for web sites that can share ideas with a much broader audience. Because of the relavence of these articles even today I have decided to create this page to share these in a way the paper publication's authors never dreamed possible. |
