"EPUB Distracted by Alabama: Tangled Threads of Natural History, Local History, and Folklore
Reflections on fifty years of interaction with the people, places, wildlife, and folkways of Alabama In 1971 James Seay Brown Jr. moved to Birmingham with his young family to start his first full-time teaching job at Samford University specializing in modern European history. Within days he discovered the Cahaba River, and soon was regularly exploring many of Alabama8217s rivers and much of its countryside8212from the Paint Rock River on the Tennessee line to Wolf Bay on the Intracoastal Waterway. He was enchanted both by the myriad animals and plants he discovered and by the surviving old-time settler and Native American folkways so closely tied to their seasonal migrations and development. About the same time, Brown became particularly interested in the folkways that arose from European cultural nationalism in the Romantic age. As he delved deeper into folklore studies for their insights into history, local examples presented themselves in abundance8212Sacred Harp singers and
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