**

Fwiw, let me respond to some of Grab's questions:
[Grab's questions are placed in quotation marks and my responses follow}

"However, isn't it fair to say that your major interest is in Afro-American culture, and particularly in the increased role that you think African culture should play in that?"

Actually, my major interest in Mudcat and outside of Mudcat is contemporary children's rhymes. It is true that I started out collecting only African American children's rhymes, but have "branched out" to the collection and study of the continuity and changes in children's rhymes and the role that race/ethnicity may "play" in the text structure, use of colloquialisms and other referents, and performance activities, {among other things} of those rhymes.

However, it's true that I'm interested in the role African cultures have had and continue to have upon African American cultures-particularly in things like naming traditions, music, dance, hair styles, and oratory traditions like the dozens and the use of exclamations to affirm that you hear and agree with a person who is speaking.

"After all, you've spent years researching African culture, you've created a job for yourself in publicising and teaching African culture to Afro-Americans, and you've done a awful lot of investigation into Afro-American traditions and the connections to African traditions".

It's true that I spent years researching {as an armchair folklorist even though for most of those years I didn't know what a "folklorist was} African American and African cultures. However, unfortunately, I've not created a job for myself publicizing and teaching African American culture to African Americans or anyone else. That is unless you're referring to the 2 years thirty years ago that I was employed as an African storyteller with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. And that is unless you count the small stipends and small grants that I've received since then to tell {adapted} West African stories, to facilitate African American game song sessions, and to start my website www.cocojams.com. I would trade my real job as a foster care caseworker in a heartbeat {well after giving the required notice, that is} to work "in publicising and teaching" the aspects of African American culture that I know to African Americans and to
non-African Americans.

But sad to say, like so many other folks here, what we love to do is more our avocation than our vocation.