In Web and social-media time, it feels like Jennifer Warwick and I have been friends for ages and ages. It’s really been only since 2004, but she’s one of my “oldest” virtual friends, meaning that I have all sorts of warm feelings and admiration for her even though we’ve never met.
One impetus of my admiration is the radical way she has reinvented herself. She was a high-powered, in-demand consultant, blogger, coach, and speaker in fast-paced LA. About three years ago, she moved to Texas and became an actress, singer, director, writer (and other roles that I’m probably inadvertently leaving out), and above all, champion of rural life. Here’s what she said at the time:
After 20-odd years in the hustle and bustle of LA, we moved to a little teeny town of 7,000 just outside Austin to recalibrate our lives and spend more time with each other and doing things we love.
That town is Bastrop, and Jennifer has initiated a story-based project about her adopted little town; thus, writing about her today provides an appropriate followup to yesterday’s entry about Barbara Ganley and community storytelling.
Jennifer’s vision is to collect, preserve, and celebrate Bastrop’s stories.
In a project update, she writes:
… The Bastrop Folklife Project will become a self-sustaining nonprofit
organization, significantly contributing to Bastrop’s quality of life and its cultural and
heritage tourism efforts. We will provide Bastrop residents of all ages with training in
collecting and preserving oral histories as well as in the performing arts, and will entertain thousands of citizens and visitors annually with high-quality live performances, books and recordings, celebrating a history and culture that is uniquely Bastrop.
The Bastrop Folklife Project captures vanished ways of life and specific moments in American history by collecting the folklore, myths, songs and memories passed down over the years by members of our community, and creating illuminating and memorable books, soundtracks, and live performances to keep those stories alive.
It’s exciting to observe this project at its birth. I hope to report on its progress. It’s one thing to note a community-storytelling project; it’s another to see it in its infancy and watch it grow. Watch the development of the project’s Web site, now under construction.