ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns critical humanism and documents of life specifically, as they relate to the Summer Carnival as a case study. The Summer Carnival is far more than an annual parade and fair. Although many townspeople can tell the story of the restarted Carnival in 1989, the reasons for the demise of the old Carnival seem almost universally forgotten, or perhaps as the account of one townsperson suggests, deliberately silenced. The author was at the Carnival doing research as part of a larger ethnographic project concerned with stories in relation to belonging and community in rural Northumberland. Scanning through the microfiche, the Carnival stopped for several years during World War II and resumed in 1949 with the proceeds aimed at funding a new swimming pool. Perhaps the lack of constant reminding that is retelling is the reason that the old Carnival's demise has slipped from memory.
