The Folklife Portal

In spring of 2020, face masks were one of the few tools we had against covid-19, and you couldn’t buy one. Anywhere. When hospitals started calling for homemade fabric masks amid a world shortage of personal protective equipment, people with sewing skills in Vermont and around the world began to respond. This three-part mini-series explores the pandemic experience through the voices of some of Vermont’s mask makers. In Episode 3 - Masks and Identity we learn how mask makers began expressing themselves creatively through the masks they made, and how they helped others affirm their identities in the middle of a global crisis.

In spring of 2020, face masks were one of the few tools we had against covid-19, and you couldn’t buy one. Anywhere. When hospitals started calling for homemade fabric masks amid a world shortage of personal protective equipment, people with sewing skills in Vermont and around the world began to respond. This three-part mini-series explores the pandemic experience through the voices of some of Vermont’s mask makers. In Episode 2 - Community and Collaboration we hear from mask makers who worked together to share resources and solutions when elastic or fabric were hard to find and offered mutual support amid the isolation of the early pandemic.

In spring of 2020, face masks were one of the few tools we had against covid-19, and you couldn’t buy one. Anywhere. When hospitals started calling for homemade fabric masks amid a world shortage of personal protective equipment, people with sewing skills in Vermont and around the world began to respond. This three-part mini-series explores the pandemic experience through the voices of some of Vermont’s mask makers. Episode 1 - Sewing in a Crisis, looks at mask making as an outlet for anxiety and considers the complexities of mask makers earning money, or not, in exchange for their labor.

It’s the 2021 VT Untapped Spooky Halloween Special! This year we teamed up with our friends at Vermont Public Radio and put out a call to all Vermonters, inviting them to get in touch and tell us their scariest ghostly encounters and supernatural sightings.

In July, 2021 residents of the town of Mendon, VT gathered to share stories and reflect on the impact of tropical storm Irene, 10 years after it tore through their small town. In this episode of VT Untapped we hear excerpts from this story circle event.

Nine years ago the Vermont Folklife Center released “Weathering the Storm” - an audio documentary created with Vermonters from towns across the state hard hit by tropical storm Irene. In this special episode of VT Untapped we are re-presenting “Weathering the Storm” in its entirety to mark the 10th anniversary of this historic event.

Over a year since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic we take a moment to look back on a year of the Listening in Place project, focusing on submissions to our Sound Archive. The project began with a small collection of audio recordings submitted via a portal on our website in response to an invitation to sit down and interview someone in your household, or remotely, during our first weeks of lockdown. In this episode we hear a selection of the first interviews shared through Listening in Place.

“Sweetest Joys Indeed we sugar makers know!” So goes the refrain of the song “Maple Sweet,” composed in 1858 as an ode to the seasonal milestone that is sugaring season in Vermont. From songs to stories this episode shares a selection of audio excerpts from the VFC archive that reflect the sugaring tradition and its prominence in Vermont life across generations.

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. This month’s episode touches on two themes that have consistently emerged through Listening in Place: resilience and human connections. Less of a “meet cute,” this year’s February episode of VT Untapped explores Covid as a catalyst for strengthening an existing relationship--a story about love across distance and across borders.

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. This month we bring you excerpts from the audio diary of Pete Sutherland, who has been using the Voice Memo app on his smartphone to record his thoughts and reflections since early March.

As we’re all gearing up for what is likely to be one of the most, shall we say “unusual,” Thanksgivings of our lifetimes (thanks again, 2020), here at VT Untapped™ we reached out to the VFC founder Jane Beck once more in search of suggestions for a seasonal story. Not surprisingly, once again Jane came through! Listen in to hear Earle Fuller’s story of driving (by this we really mean herding) over 500 turkeys from Vermont to market in Boston. Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. This month we meet members of the 2020-2021 cohort of the VFC’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and learn how they’re continuing to work and create under pandemic conditions.

It’s the 2020 VT Untapped Spooky Halloween Special! Are you brave enough to descend the creaking stairs down to the depths of the VFC archive as we dust off an old tape and listen to Floyd Cowdrey tell us about the most haunted of Vermont houses?

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. We’ll be sharing audio recordings generated by the project in our podcast feed. This month we visit Camp Killooleet in Hancock, VT, closed this summer for the first time in 93 years.

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. We’ll be sharing audio recordings generated by the project in our podcast feed. This month we visit Project Independence, an elderly day care facility in Middlebury, VT.

Our Listening in Place initiative is a participatory interviewing and sound recording project offering a way to connect and document the experiences of Vermonters during the COVID-19 emergency. We’ll be sharing audio recordings generated by the project in our podcast feed. This special episode of VT Untapped features three stories shared in a Virtual Story Circle hosted by VFC staff on April 5, 2020.

VT Untapped kicks off Season 2 with another round of “meet-cutes.” Adorable and surprising stories from Vermonters about meeting their sweeties. It’s 2020 after all so some meet online, some owe it to the Seven Days personals and thank goodness, some still meet in a good, old fashioned, hipster coffee shop. Hear them all in this month’s episode of VT Untapped.

A guy walks into a bar and…starts singing? If that bar is Brattleboro’s McNeill’s Brewery and it’s the third Saturday of the month between 3-5 pm then the chances of this happening are pretty high. That’s when the Brattleboro Pub Sing meets. And in this episode of VT Untapped you get to come along.

This month on VT Untapped we hear spooky stories told by Kim Chase of Essex Junction. Kim is a second-generation, bilingual Franco-American and the stories she shares were passed down through generations of her family members. Gather round Kim’s rocking chair and listen up. Don’t be too scared!

June is a month when we celebrate our fathers, so we would like to use this months VT Untapped episode to show you Vermont through the eyes of a unique father and daughter team: Perkins Flint and Katharine Flint DuClos.

Inspired by the exhibit currently on display on our Middlebury Gallery, Ice Shanties: Fishing, People and Culture, this month we focus on the seasonal community of fishers that remerges each winter on the ice at the Retreat Meadows in Brattleboro.

This month’s episode explores the persistence of Franco-American culture in Vermont through the life and work of the late Martha Pellerin. Learn about Martha and her work to promote, validate and share the contributions made by Vermonters of French Canadian descent to the culture of contemporary Vermont.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we honor the achievements of three extraordinary women: Nellie Staves, Daisy Turner, and Gert Lepine—all of whom were interviewed extensively by Vermont Folklife Center founder (and pioneer in her own right) Jane C. Beck.

The “meet-cute” is as old as love itself. This term refers to the conditions under which two potential partners meet. Your true love could be on the other side of the desk at a job interview, at the end of a scavenger hunt, or the last one out of the clown car. Yes, these are all true stories. Hear them in this month’s episode of VT Untapped.

Major J. Francis Angier tells the gripping story of being shot down over Germany during World War II, surviving as a prisoner of war, and saving two ships carrying hundreds of soldiers from certain doom.

Based on interviews with hunters conducted by the Vermont Folklife Center, “Deer Stories” doesn’t advocate for or condemn hunting but rather explores the experience from an insider’s point of view.

“What’s my drag?” That’s the question photographer Evie Lovett found herself asking after spending time with Kitty, Mama, Candi, and Sophia, all drag queens at the Rainbow Cattle Company, a gay bar in Dummerston, Vermont.