Tabitha Brown, Portland, OR (WPA interview)

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Whoa, Dave, you've found the Sara Wrenn interviews.  I cruised these a couple years ago, and had missed some you forwarded.

I find Sara almost as intriguing as the subjects she interviewed.  She was apparently an expert stenographer, from the authentic-looking dialectical spelling and phrasing she sometimes included.  I also note now (and had overlooked before) that she was at least somewhat familiar with the Jargon, as she used Gibbs/Shaw/Gill spelling where she was able to quote (a few words of) Jargon.

She seems to have been a bit sad and weary, judging from her condescending comments about the environs, appearance and intelligence of her informants, and her frequent complaint that she couldn't get sufficient folkloric detail from her aging subjects' failing memories.  She apparently didn't grasp that what she sought as "folklore" was just plain, unremarkable life to her informants.  (These were ordinary people who quietly but gratefully ended up in Portland, not an isolated village of Amish craftsmen.)

I wonder what she did before she ended up in the WPA.  (Or after?) Her name kind of rings a bell. (Maybe she also wrote for the Oregonian or Oregon Journal?)

One of her interviews was a long and rambling one of an early principal or school board chairman of the Concord School District (she grew tired of him--local political history and boasting didn't qualify as "folklore"--but still, she took most all of it down), which offers a rare and detailed look at the history of my "old neighborhood" south of Milwaukie.

Regards,

Jeff