Maine Humanities Council

Maine Humanities Council grants awarded in July 2010 include:

$1,000 to the Victoria Mansion, Portland, for Magic Lantern Shows

Three magic lantern shows (a popular form of entertainment in the 1890’s that involved projecting colored images on a screen accompanied by live music) will be presented as part of the Victoria Mansion’s yearlong celebration of life in Maine between 1890 and 1930. Victorian stories, songs, and games will be offered to engage both adults and children in activities of the era.

$1,000 to Opera House Arts at Stonington Opera House, Stonington, for ShakeStonington

This multi-week, multi-event community immersion project revolves around a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Stonington Opera House. Activities in August 2010 include three public library “reads” of the play, a multimedia blog, a Twitter account exploring the language of the play, student writing internships, and two post-show discussions.

$1,000 to Portland Ovations, Portland, for Ovations Offstage: Maine Connections

Six pre-concert lectures between October 8, 2010 and May 7, 2011 will feature Maine performance artist/scholars drawing connections to Maine’s historic and contemporary role in the performing arts. Themes include the significance of music and dance for Maine’s French Canadian community, the legacy of Tony Montanaro, and the power of music for Maine’s African immigrants.

This spring, I attended the annual Infant Mental Health of Maine conference to hear the keynote speaker, Vivian Gussin Paley, whose dedication to storytelling with kindergarten and preschool children has made her a legend as well as a MacArthur award recipient.

Paley’s many books sold rapidly at this conference, but I also found on the sales table, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination by Robert Coles, which was published just over twenty years ago.  Anyone who is a fan, as I am, of the reading and discussion programs of the Maine Humanities Council would enjoy this testimony to the power and pleasure of ideas in books to transform lives. Coles depicts how his psychiatric practice was transformed when he was a resident in training at Harvard and a supervisor makes a plea for “more stories, less theory.”  He began to visit regularly with William Carlos Williams and became influenced by his view of stories, “yours, mine‑it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.”

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One of the opening pages of Carl Little’s The Art of Dahlov Ipcar strikes the mood of the folktale world, tinged with the energy, magic, and power: a fox turns back its head, teeth bared, as partridges rise in gorgeous brown haste to fly in all directions (Fox Moon). This is one mood of Dahlov Ipcar. Other works in this book show zebras galloping across a series of whispering lines, or Caribbean animals of the sea arranged in a segmented mandala, and whisper the influence of Rousseau, another mood.

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Rachel Carson, perhaps best known for her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, which exposed the dangers of chemicals like DDT, was a quiet and intensely private individual. Yet, coupled with these traits, Linda Lear’s biography (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature) demonstrates that Carson possessed incredible strength and conviction. These characteristics ultimately led her to place herself under scrutiny as she challenged the powerful chemical industry. While Lear seems somewhat protective of Carson, she does a thorough job of recording Carson’s life and influences, and explores what compels a person as weary of the public eye as Carson was to put herself in the spotlight. In an era in which admirable people like Rachel Carson are being forgotten, Lear should be commended for bringing her life and work back to the forefront.

Recommended by Martina Duncan

Little Dog and Duncan (poems by Kristine O’Connell George and illustrations by June Otani) records, through short poems, the friendship between two dogs and a little girl. At the start, Little Dog and the girl are excited to have Duncan, the neighbor’s dog, come to visit and stay with them, but, as with many of us, once Duncan’s family leaves, homesickness sets in.  Throughout the rest of the poems, Duncan’s spirits are revived by Little Dog and the girl, and the poems chronicle their adventures through Duncan’s stay.  George’s poems capture the relationships and emotions very well, and children will enjoy this introduction to poetry.

Recommended by Martina Duncan

The National Book Festival, a program of the Library of Congress, will take place on September 25th, 2010, on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Each state is represented at the Pavilion of the States, and Erik Jorgensen, the MHC’s Executive Director, will be at Maine’s for the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book, sharing great information about Maine’s literary scene with the thousands of festival goers.  Each year, the MHC chooses one children’s book to share, and this year’s selection is Hardscrabble Harvest by Dahlov Ipcar. It is a wonderful look at the growing season in northern New England, the trials farming families endure, and a celebration of the culmination of the harvest over Thanksgiving dinner.  With Ipcar’s beautiful, unique illustrations, it’s a must-read.  For more information on the festival, please go to http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/.

View of St. John River from Edmundston, New Brunswick toward Frenchville, ME (credit: Daniel Picard)

The St. John Valley in Aroostook County is an area rich in history and culture. When I visited it two years ago for the second time in my life, I saw rural lawns mowed in straight rows, houses painted perfectly, and window boxes full of flowers. Fields of grass, clover, potatoes, and broccoli were everywhere. The landscape spoke of an idyllic life with a shared pride in community, and the people I met reflected this, too.

The MHC has always had programming in the St. John Valley, from a children’s literature seminar last year in Fort Kent to many New Books, New Readers adult literacy groups to several grants awarded to, among other projects, the development of a cultural tour (“Voici the Valley”). And recently, we’ve had Let’s Talk About It library-based reading and discussion groups.

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Each year, the adult education programs that partner with New Books, New Readers eagerly await a new series, and just about every year, the program provides one. In 2010, New Books, New Readers developed a series on the immigrant experience in the United States. “Caught Between Cultures” explores such questions as: What do immigrants find alien about America? How does America start feeling like home? How can you maintain the culture that you were born into and still become American? What do immigrants value most about America?

New Books, New Readers is a reading and discussion program for adults who struggle to read. It uses children’s books with simple language but enormous ideas. The texts for “Caught Between Cultures,” like all other series, are capable of prompting powerful conversations:

Home at Last, Susan Middleton Elya

Grandfather Counts, Andrea Cheng

In English, of Course, Josephine Nobisso

Angel Child, Dragon Child, Michele Maria Surat

Molly Bannaky, Alice McGill

When Jessie Came Across the Sea, Amy Hest

A Day’s Work, Eve Bunting

Hannah Is My Name: A Young Immigrant’s Story, Belle Yang

Coolies, Yin

Posted on behalf of our friends at PaperTigers:

The Spirit of PaperTigers project is part of the PaperTigers program. Through its website and blog, PaperTigers promotes multicultural books for young readers from and about anywhere in the world. The purpose of the Spirit of PaperTigers project (SPT) is to select a set of books and to put them into the hands of children in different parts of the world, especially in schools and libraries in areas of need. The seven books in this year’s set have been chosen because their content and focus promote our goals, i.e. to promote reading and literacy, as well as greater understanding and empathy among young people from different backgrounds, countries, and ethnicities.

Three phrases sum up what we hope the book sets will represent for all who use them: “a cultural encounter in or through a book”, “a fun encounter”, “a path towards empathy”.

While book set recipients are free to use the books in whatever way they judge best suited to their situation, an “SPT User’s Guide” is included with each set and offers suggestions that teachers and librarians might find useful.

A crucial element of our SPT project is the sharing of the feedback we get from recipients. Recipients are asked to provide feedback on the responses of the young readers to the books in the form of reports, observations, drawings, photos etc. We will then be able to feature this feedback, and the school or library that uses the book set, on the PaperTigers site and blog. In this first year of the project, sets of books are heading towards destinations within the United States but also to countries as far away, and as diverse, as India, Kenya, the Philippines, and Uruguay. A limited number of sets are still available and we would be delighted, even though we cannot say yes to all, if schools and/or libraries in Maine were to let us know if they wish to take part in the project. The quickest way to contact us is through email, or by regular mail at: PaperTigers Managing Editor, 300 Third Street, Suite 822, San Francisco, CA 94107.

Jennifer Crane, photo credit: Diane Magras

Each summer, the MHC holds week-long History Camps for Maine high school students, akin to Music Camps, Writing Camps, Computer Camps, and so on: participants spend their days studying or practicing what they love best. In this case, it’s inspiring history to life. Students have behind-the-scenes experiences at museums, learn how exhibits are created, investigate primary sources, and hear experts speak. In 2010, the MHC will offer “The Cold War, McCarthyism, and Margaret Chase Smith’s ‘Declaration of Conscience‘” (June 28 through July 2 in Skowhegan) and “Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold and the Maine Frontier” (July 12 through 16 in Augusta). More information will upcoming on the MHC website.

“Quest for the Pole,” offered last summer in partnership with the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College, was very close to the heart of Jennifer Crane, one of the camp’s instructors.

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