The poet Sharon Olds said, "To a poet, the human community is like the community of birds … singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds." Bird flight and birdsong provide lyrical and potent metaphors for life, love, freedom, death, and spirituality in cultures throughout the world. Jeni Foster will incorporate folk music to discuss symbolism and metaphor in lyrics throughout the years in "Birdsong: Birds as Metaphor in American Folk Music." Benton County Historical Society is pleased to host this Oregon Chautauqua program from the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

Selected Resources for Oregon Chautauqua
Birdsong: Birds as Metaphor in American Folk Music

Allen, Glover Morrill. Birds & Their Attributes. New York: Dover Press, 1962.

Cocker, Mark and Mabey, Richard. Birds Britannica. London, England: Chatto & Windus, Ltd. (Random House), 2005.

Gibson, Graeme. The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany. Scarborough, Ontario, Canada:Doubleday, 2005.

Holmgren, Virginia C. Birdwalk Through the Bible. New York: Seabury Press, 1972.

Kroodsma, Don. The Singing Life of Birds: The Art & Science Of Listening to Birdsong. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Lamott, Anne. Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  New York:  First Anchor Books, 1995.

Rothenberg, David. Why Birds Sing: A Journey Through the Mystery of Bird Song. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Rueckert, William H. KB Society Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 2, Spring, 2006:  Metaphor and Reality: A Meditation on Man, Nature and Words:  http://kbjournal.org/rueckert

Stap, Don. Birdsong: A Natural History.  New York: Scribner, 2005.

For Children:

Rupp, Rebecca. Everything You Never Learned About Birds. North Adams, MA:  Storey Books, 1995.

Jeni Foster: Profile

Jeni Foster has always loved to sing - her mother says she started singing as soon as she could talk. Growing up in an isolated environment on a Montana cattle ranch, Jeni became good at entertaining herself. Singing and reading were her favorite pastimes. She often would sit on the windmill platform and sing to the cows - which in retrospect was a good way to exercise vocal projection. All of her life Foster has entertained at family gatherings, and she sings at family weddings and funerals.

Folk music had a great impact upon Jeni in the 1960s, when she was a teenager. She took up the guitar and sang at every opportunity in high school and college. Foster spent a number of years as a grade school music teacher and found that she particularly enjoyed connecting music with history and literature.

Over the past twelve years Jeni developed and presented a number of programs combining lecture and music. Programs that have previously been in the Oregon Chautauqua catalog are: Plowman Poet: The Life and Songs of Robert Burns; Mother Jones: The Miners' Angel; and My Grandfather's Immigrant Eyes: Songs and History of the Irish Emigration to America. Combining songs with history and literature is a wonderful educational tool that is surprisingly seldom used. In all of Jeni's programs she encourages audience participation in singing along on the choruses.

Jeni has performed at libraries, historical societies, churches, and schools, and for Celtic societies, genealogical societies, AAUW groups, Dine & Discover, Elderhostel and many other community organizations. She also entertained at the Sisters Quilt Show, the Sisters Country Fair, Portland's Benson Hotel for Scottish Power, and the Silver Legacy in Reno for the Mule Deer Foundation conference. She's been a soloist with the Sisters Community Choir and the RCC Chorus and the Three Rivers Choral in Grants Pass. She is grateful for the opportunity to share the songs and stories she loves with people across our great state, and now also presents programs in Arizona in March of each year.