I was the Deputy Director of the '74 World's Fair Folklife Festival, where tchbgh's older brother rolled logs and panned for gold. "The Northwest, A Gift of the Earth" was the first six-month long folklife festival ever to be held at a world's fair. Bob Glatzer, Suzanne Tedesco, Kathleen Sullivan and myself researched and manifested this entity, starting in Glatzer's dining room in Peaceful Valley, overlooking the Spokane River beginning about two years before the fair.
We originally worked for the Smithsonian Institution, who got cold feet about three months prior to opening day and fired us all, cancelling the project. We held a good old Irish wake for ourselves, complete with sympathy cards and good wine. Then we crammed for a night and presented a proposal and contract to the Expo '74 Corporation to continue the project—hoping with all hope that we could bring our efforts to fruition, and knowing that we would mount a memorable event. After all, we had worked for almost two years by then, and knew the richness of the cultures we had to draw from. We succeeded. While we were designing and building our site, which had open grassy areas, a medium sized amphitheatre, several kiosks for crafts and cooking, sluice, steam engine on tracks, logging demonstration area and a gorgeous longhouse, we attempted to get to know the Russian workers building the Russian pavilion just down the way. The KGB tightened security, however, and any hopes of ending up with a Russian pen pal went by the wayside. We were real interested in bartering for their denim overalls, which were the finest I've ever seen.
Our 'exhibit' was the only live one at the fair, bringing ordinary people from a wide range of occupational and ethnic groups to share their heritage, rituals and customs with the public. We drew participants from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Hawaii. We changed thematically from week to week, featuring the food, crafts, stories, music and dance from immigrant and indigenous cultures from Klingit to Basque, from Japanese to Scotish, from Ukrainian to Gypsy, from ranching to logging. Every week was alive with the excitement of not only the featured community of the week, but permanent exhibits where you could pan for gold with an old timer from North Idaho, play cribbage with retired railroad workers on a turn of the century (the last one) steam engine, or don caulk boots and try your luck on the spar pole. The human interaction, unpredictability and sheer joy of life was profound at this event, and it was the most locally publicized site at the fair. We had a story in just about every Spokesman Review from May until October.
U. Utah Phillips, renowned Wobbly, labor historian and folk singer, was our on site host, always open, smiling and encouraging the shy ones to sit down and try their hand at pysanki egg coloring or to join in a folk song or two at our amphitheatre. The ambience ranged from quiet, meditative ballads to raucous caber tossing and clog dancing. An artist from B.C., exhibiting at the Canadian pavillion, was so taken by her experience on our site that she wove a huge hat out of video tape to serve as a shade structure when the temperature rose in late July and August. This is the kind of spontaneous celebration of life that happened there. We opened at 10 a.m. and closed at 10 p.m. 7 days a week, changing over in the middle of the night on Sunday. We housed our participants in dormitories at Gonzaga U and we had a staff of about 40 or 45, including student interns by the time we ended.
It was truly a memorable and transforming experience for me and the
millions who came to visit us, some again and again. Some of us went
through withdrawal when it ended; who would want to leave such an
enjoyable, informative and fun experience? In the end the stress took its
toll and we were all thoroughly exhausted by October. Oh, but the stories we
all have. We've discussed having a reunion …but no-one has organized it yet.
We'd better not wait too long.
—samara
