Maine Humanities Council

Home of the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book
“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”

— Time Regained
Marcel Proust

1. Imagine What It’s Like

Imagine what it takes to put together a powerful collection of stories, essays, and poems with themes of care-giving, death, and dying. The scholarship—not to mention the emotional toll—is great. Then, once the volume is ready, imagine an eight-year process of sending it to publishers—not for commercial publication, but merely for publication so that it can be shared with program participants. That was the situation that MHC Associate Director Victoria Bonebakker was in with Literature & Medicine’s proposed anthology. Ruth Nadelhaft, the program’s first facilitator, selected the works and wrote the essays that introduce each section (“The Experience of Illness,” “Beginnings and Endings,” “Trauma and Recovery,” “Coming to Terms,” “Healing Costs”), while Victoria, while aiding in the text selection, also sought permissions, funding for publication, and performed all the other aspects of getting this volume in print.

And now it is in print: Imagine What It’s Like, the anthology of Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ. This volume will soon be in the hands of program participants across the country, in more than 19 partnering states. Its works are powerful. Open to any page and read about a 24-year-old doctor performing his first tracheotomy on a three-year-old girl in rural Russia, a WWII veteran about to shoot his family, a mother who sits beside a son critically injured in an accident and, the sounds of the hospital around her, watches him die. Works like these inspire thought and discussion and remind readers of how difficult medical experiences can be. It is an important book not simply for those in the medical industry.

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2. MHC News

Cathryn Falwell performs Turtle Splash!
photo: Joan Prouty

Connecting books to real life is one of the most important ways of encouraging young children to love reading. On May 10, in a Born to Read event at the Scarborough Public Library, a group of Maine children made that connection when they met local author and illustrator Cathryn Falwell. Falwell read aloud from her books Scoot! and Turtle Splash! Countdown at the Pond. A small foam pond, complete with lily pads and turtles on a log, gave atmosphere to the scene. Falwell ensured audience participation, first by handing out cards with animals from Scoot! to all the children with instructions to wave the cards in the air as each animal was mentioned, and later by soliciting volunteers from the young audience to use turtle puppets to help Turtle Splash! along. With audience members ranging in age from 16 months to six years, it was a diverse and very appreciative crowd.

In conjunction with this event, Born to Read launched a new book bag lending program for Scarborough-area early childhood programs. At a workshop for the staff in these programs, participants exchanged family outreach strategies that they’re currently using, then discussed additional strategies from Beyond Bedtime Stories, co-written by Susan Bennett-Armistead of the University of Maine. Each participant left with a copy of Beyond Bedtime Stories, along with 15 new children’s books, sorted into three themed bags with activity cards and links for more information online.

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Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ is holding a training institute from June 22 to June 25 in Chicago. The central location will make it easy for the program’s nationwide partners to attend, as well as for medical staff and humanities council staff who are interested in starting a Literature & Medicine program. The location speaks to the initiative’s broad reach and the demand that has developed over ways to help people in the medical industry to communicate with one another and with patients.

Participants will attend small group discussions, plenary sessions, and talks, and have the chance to interact with experienced program facilitators. They will receive clear instructions on how to implement the program from scratch; learn about the program’s goals, structure, and outcomes; and experience the art of facilitating a group.

Past institute attendees have called the experience “informative, stimulating, occasionally truly transforming.” If you are interested in attending, sign up immediately; space is limited.

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“Princesses,” the theme for this month’s Born to Read book list, includes different cultural representations of traditional princess stories, as well as tales of princesses learning humility, courage, and independence.

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Podcast Update

Now available as podcasts:

  1. Dido’s Lament: Virgilian Epic and 17th Century English Opera (from Winter Weekend 2008)
  2. Believing Shakespeare: Religion in Shakespeare’s World and in his Plays (from the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series)
  3. Peaceable Stories with storyteller Jody Fein at the East End Community School
  4. Art for Justice: Using Writing to Create Social Change (from the Stonecoast M.F.A. program)

3. Facilitator Profile: Let’s Talk About It

Jeff Aronson and his never-failing Land Rover.
photo: Julia Walkling

A fervent enthusiasm for Land Rovers, the Boston Red Sox, and in-depth reading and discussions don’t always combine in the same person, but they do in Jeff Aronson. A scholar who has been with the MHC for almost two decades, Jeff is as well known for his willingness and ability to drive anywhere—and that means anywhere, any distance, through any weather—to facilitate Let’s Talk About It (or several other MHC programs) as he is for his ability to draw out even the most reticent participant.

Jeff facilitated his first Let’s Talk About It in Dexter in the early 1990s. Since then, he has facilitated programs from Kittery to Caribou and Fryeburg to Machias. Including discussion series that he has managed for other New England organizations, too, Jeff has led over 1,000 reading and discussion sessions in libraries, historical societies, factories, prisons and schools.

He is a favorite of Let’s Talk About It’s libraries. Marilyn Law, librarian at the Bristol Area Library, requests Jeff specifically every year. He knows his subjects, either through his experience as a professor, principal, management consultant, scalloper, sea-urchin fisherman, and public television producer; or through his informal research. His sense of humor and the respect with which he listens to all participants wins admiration from this library, too.

Jeff has facilitated a wide variety of Let’s Talk About It series, bringing out deep issues from a wide range of themes, from detective fiction to Plato. Not long ago, a library requested the series “Individual Rights and the Community in America,” not an oft-requested series, and Jeff along with it. He led a discussion of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Plato’s Republic, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Jeff made these texts come alive by linking them to current events and current issues of concern, helping people understand the connection between the theme and their own lives.

Creating the connection between books and lives is something Jeff has always been very good at. In the late 1990s, he helped create Stories for Life, which came out of other MHC reading and discussion programs that were being held in Maine prisons and jails. This program helps men and women in the probation and parole system use literature to reflect on their thoughts and experiences.

Jeff himself loves the work, as is evidenced by the number of miles of service racked up for the MHC on his Land Rover (known as the QE I by the East Coast Rover Co. and readers of Rovers North News—edited by Jeff). He tells us, “The real delight of reading and discussion programs arises from the enthusiasm of readers at all levels in Maine’s towns and cities. Mainers clearly have ideas they want to share; every participant has taught me something. The shared act of reflecting upon a theme through works of literature never fails to invigorate me.”

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4. Grants and Events

Events include lectures in Thomaston on Henry Knox’s military career; a series of discussions in Damariscotta and Waldoboro about measuring a president’s greatness; and a symposium in Lewiston on Maine folk art.

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The recently funded grants list includes:

$1,000 to the Classical Association of New England, Dartmouth, NH, for Revolution and Reaction: Radical Changes and Continuities in the Ancient World
Funded jointly by the New England Humanities Councils, the Summer Institute offers lectures & courses on revolutions in ancient literature, in Roman and Greek history and political thought, and in classical art and architecture, as well as on the continuing importance in today’s world of those ancient revolutions. Also included will be a musical evening and a lecture in the Hood Museum of Art.

$435.16 to Zero Station, Portland, for 007: Acts and Actions (Program Notes and Advertisement)
The Portland Film + Video Artists Collective presented a video screening on Saturday, June 7, 2008. Each of the thirteen works screened received detailed written explication in the illustrated program notes funded by this grant. The notes provide a material document of Portland cultural activity and media arts dialogue.

$300 to Waldoboro Public Library, Waldoboro, and $300 to the Skidompha Public Library, Damariscotta for America’s Ten Greatest Presidents
Two public libraries are offering this discussion program with a purpose to examine the historical process of evaluating past presidents. To do so, the group must evaluate the numerous “yardsticks” used to evaluate presidents and select those which seem most useful to the public to compose its own list of presidential greatness.

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5. What We’re Reading

This booklist includes personal favorites of MHC staff members, as well as books used by MHC programs. This month, featured titles are Sky Sweeper, Seedfolks, The Uncommon Reader, Ceremony, Come Spring, and The Education of a Gardener.

 

 

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6. Quote of the Month

“I wasn’t one to read books, papers, or stories. My reading was null. The reason for this was I didn’t understand what I was reading or who the characters were, or their function, or what was happening or where it was happening. I was invited to join the book club. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. My comprehension has improved tremendously. My reading has improved. I’m so excited. The book was the best tool I’ve ever put in my hand.”

—A New Books, New Readers participant in Sanford.

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