For several generations, the small town of Hugo in southeastern Oklahoma has been a “wintering over” town for family-owned circuses. Many of its residents are working or retired circus workers and circus references are found throughout town –from store signs to gravestones. Joel Mashburn, a Hugo pharmacist who is fascinated with circus elephants, explains how they intersect with his life and work to researchers Tanya Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program “’Big Top’: The Show Goes On.”

As part of a larger Occupational Folklife Project on “Grass-Roots Agriculture in Vermont,” Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting, owners of Maple Wind Farm in Huntington, Vermont, talk with folklorist Andy Kolovos about moving to Vermont in 1999 to become farmers; how their small business expanded into a diversified produce and livestock operation employing 18 workers; and how they are trying to move towards more humane and ecologically friendly farming.

Natalie Ameral, a port sampler in the large fishing port of New Beford, Massachusetts, talks with fieldworker Madeleine Hall-Arber about her specialized job collecting and analyzing the species, sizes and genders of fish harvested by the port’s fishing fleet. She reports her findings to the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which uses her results to inform their regulatory and environmental decisions. One of the first women to work serve as a port sampler, she was interviewed for the Occupational Folklife Project “Working the Port of New Bedford.”