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Cover Page
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Grants with Long Legs
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Back Cover
The Maine Humanities Council takes particular pride when one of its grants "has legs" – i.e., gives rise to another project down the road, whether in another locale or another format. Here, for example, are two projects that "took off":
Grants with Long Legs
BARBARA GOODBODY'S INDIA
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| Photo: Barbara M. Goodbody |
Ten years ago at mid-life, when her youngest child left home, Maine resident Barbara Goodbody embarked on a new pursuit. Expanding her skills as a photographer, she accepted a workshop classmate's invitation to visit India with her camera. "And off I went," Goodbody reports. "I went innocently into a culture vastly different from my own and felt a body, mind, and spirit awakening I had not felt before." The result was India: The Sacred and the Secular, Photography by Barbara M. Goodbody, an exhibition of her color photography sponsored in 1998 by the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine, with the aid of a small grant from the Maine Humanities Council. Her show, Goodbody explained," reflects my vision of India as I explored its villages and was attracted to the people, the activities of their daily lives, their arts and crafts, and to Hindu devotional ritual – the worship of their one God manifested in many forms. I have also been drawn to the ephemeral art of the village women, which is a visual expression of their belief and connection with the Divine." A year later, again with the help of a small Council grant, these compelling images traveled to the University of Maine at Presque Isle, under the title Exploration India, where they were a central element in a series of events to celebrate India Republic Day. In a part of the state with little exposure to non-Western culture, students and townspeople heard Goodbody talk about her village photography, enjoyed an Indian dinner, and heard a concert of classical Indian music by Shafaatullah Khan. The show was also attended by members of the small Indian community in Presque Isle. Goodbody's photos of India are now being exhibited in Iowa, and she has gone on to produce a major exhibition of her work from the Tibetan Homes School for Tibetan children in exile in Mussoorie, India. Echoes Across the Himalayas has been on view recently at the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland and the Belfast Free Library and includes Tibetan poetry, painting, and artifacts. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art and has been published in New England Monthly, Arts Indiana, and Edward Lucie-Smith's Art Today.
LINDA LORD'S BELFAST
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| Photo: Cedric N. Chatterley |
Linda Lord experienced a mid-life career shift of a different kind. After more than 20 years at Penobscot Poultry Co., Inc., she suddenly found herself hunting for a new job when the company – a major employer in the Belfast area – went out of business in 1988. How Lord dealt with this crisis is at the heart of "I Was Content and Not Content": The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry, by Cedric N. Chatterley and Alicia J. Rouveral, with Stephen A. Cole (Southern Illinois University Press). "I Was Content and Not Content" began with the help of a small planning grant from the Maine Humanities Council. A major Council grant funded an exhibit of Chatterley's photographs in 1989 and a series of public forums across the state. A further grant helped underwrite the appearance this year of the work in the form of a hardcover, illustrated book. Lord's story is interwoven with two other stories – the economic history of the rise and fall of Maine's once thriving poultry industry and a more journalistic account of the impact on the 400 or more Waldo County families who relied on Penobscot Poultry for a living. The strands are brought together by Chatterley's powerful photographs from the company's final days and after. Working in the tradition of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange, Chatterley may make you hesitate before you ever eat chicken again. Lord spent much of her time in the "blood tunnel," where she finished off the birds that had survived the automatic neck-cutting device. She had gone to work as a poultry processor right out of high school because it paid slightly more than the other work available to women. Then, suddenly, single and self-supporting, she finds herself jobless and only semi-skilled at age 39. How Lord pieces her life back together is told through oral history interviews, at various stages of her job search. She emerges as a resourceful, determined, self-reliant, and very likeable woman, who in her "spare" time serves on the Brooks Volunteer Fire Department, tends her garden, supports her elderly parents, plays the drum in a local band, and helps her neighbors slaughter their chickens.
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