Thank goodness for cobblers (and cheesemakers and banjo players!)

Audio

The weather is getting cooler and I’m realizing that I don’t have any appropriate footwear–my boots are falling apart.  Don’t want to throw them out, don’t want to buy new ones, what to do?  Well turns out, there are stifolklifeposterll cobblers out there in the world.  I met two of them at a festival celebrating the folklife apprenticeship program funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.  Other endangered arts that are supported by the program: cheese making, Mongolian mask making, oyster shucking (having recently shucked my first oysters, this is much harder than it sounds).  I reported on the event for Virginia Public Radio–you can listen to the story here.  Plus the folklife program took some amazing photos from the showcase.