Photo credit: Bangor Museum and History Center

It wasn’t always easy back at the homefront during any war, as residents of Bangor knew during the 1860s. Many aspects of the rough-and tumble-lumber capital disappeared in the fire of 1911. From June 25 through 29, 2012, 7th – 12th graders can learn what life in Bangor was really like during the Civil War at Life on the Homefront, a MHC History Camp.

Learn about daily life in the Civil War era, including medicine, funerals, cooking, and clothes; the logging industry and Irish immigrants in the region; and how and why urban environments change. Work with Maine Bureau of Parks and Land Historian Tom Desjardin and explore the Bangor Museum and History Center and Leonard’s Mills, a historic settlement in Bradley. Sign up soon to have a spot!

Because the humanities are all about exploring thought through a variety of media, the Maine Humanities Council will be doing precise this with a graphic novel in an upcoming program, Lost in a Graphic Novel in Maine: Recreating a Classic Book on May 12. The MHC is collaborating with Down East Books, which published Lost Trail, a graphic novel version of the 1939 classic Lost on a Mountain in Maine, to hold a half-day teacher program based on the graphic novel. We’ll be working with K-12 teachers in Bangor and will provide historical context for the book as well as feature conversations with Ben Bishop, the graphic artist; noted children’s writer Lynn Plourde, who adapted the original book to this new format; and Donn Fendler, on whose experience in the wilds of Mt. Katahdin both books are based. We’ll help teachers think of new ways to present this engaging piece of Maine history to their students, as well as come to a greater understanding of the graphic novel genre and its possibilities in the classroom.

Have you thought about Lost on a Mountain in Maine every time you’ve been hiking or in the woods? Please let us know how that book has stayed with you. The MHC is giving away five copies of Lost Trail to the first five comments we receive to this post on that topic. And then perhaps Lost Trail will inspire new thoughts while you’re outdoors this summer.

(Posted by Diane Magras)

Once a seasonal resident of Bristol, Sarah Jane Wolf-Wade has lived in that town year-round for fourteen years—long enough to develop the perspective she offers in today’s poem.

They All Come Back

By Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade

The girl who shone in Broadway shows

was born here in the village on Fourth of July

and a Rockette who danced in the chorus line

came back to raise babies ten miles away.

The clamdigger brothers, working two tides a day,

sculpted like statues, left town in their prime.

The doctor brother returned to build homes,

the recovering teacher now fishes the sea.

The stenos, hairdressers, building inspectors

now all snuggle into the arms of the village.

People who married, those who traveled abroad

nestle into the homesteads built by their fathers.

Some born in the town migrate south in the winter,

reappear with songbirds early in spring.

The city-based clerk breathes deep of Maine air

as she crosses the Kittery bridge heading North.

Up on the hill among all the gravestones

lie the man shot dead in a place far from home

and a faraway baby who lived only a day.

Aunt Emma says, as she picks up a stitch,

“Our folks, they all come back in the end.”

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2008 by Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade. Reprinted from Down the Bristol Road, Snow Drift Press, 2008, by permission of Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Miss May Sarton (1904-1995), 1936; oil on canvas, by Polly Thayer Starr. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Courtesy of the Polly Thayer Starr Revocable Trust and the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust

Commemorating the 100th birthday of the acclaimed poet, novelist, and memoirist who lived and worked in Maine for the last 22 years of her life, the May Sarton Centennial Symposium will take place May 3 – 6, 2012, in York. It will focus attention on May Sarton as a major literary voice, building awareness of Maine as a place where literature and the arts are supported and celebrated. This exemplary program by the May Sarton Centennial Committee is supported by a major grant from Maine Humanities Council.

May Sarton wrote 16 books of poetry, 19 novels, 12 published journals and memoirs, and two children’s books, as well as essays, articles, and thousands of letters to her friends and readers. She wrote about empathy and compassion, nature and spirituality; she engaged deeply with the ideas of the feminist struggle, of developing a sense of self, of marriage and friendship, and, later, of old age and the links between art and death. The Symposium will explore all of these facets of Sarton’s work.

Symposium presenters will include Lenora Blouin, her bibliographer; filmmakers Linda Thornburg and Martha Wheeler, who have explored her life; and Susan Kenney, creative writing professor, author and longtime friend of Sarton. Maine’s current poet laureate Wesley McNair, and past poet laureates Betsy Sholl and Roger Finch, will also take part. A New England clambake featuring readings of Sarton poetry and the announcement of the winner of the May Sarton poetry prize will conclude the symposium. Programs will take place at the York Library, the Parsons Center (formerly Remick Barn), and First Parish Church.

This event is for all Sarton fans, readers and writers, teachers and students. Many York County book groups and community organizations are reading Sarton’s works in preparation for this program. For example, York Reads,
a community-wide reading experience for residents of all ages, this year selected Sarton’s House By the Sea.

The Symposium is being developed and managed by the May Sarton Centennial Committee, a group of local readers and friends in partnership with the Museums of Old York (Old York Historical Society), the Maine
Writers & Publishers Alliance, and the York Public Library.

Registration and more information are available online.

(Guest Post by Victoria Simon, co-chair of the May Sarton Centennial Committee)

At the Maine Festival of the Book, one of Maine’s best-kept secrets!

Held on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus from March 29^th-April 1^st, this annual event grows bigger and more exciting each year. Most events are free and unticketed (with the exception of Opening Night), and available first-come, first-served. The Maine Humanities Council has been happy to provide support for the Maine Festival of the Book each year through grants to its organizer, Maine Reads.

Civil War historian and best selling author Tony Horwitz (pictured above) is the featured speaker for the festival’s official opening on March 30^th. He will speak about his new book on abolitionist John Brown titled Midnight Rising. Horwitz won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for reporting. He is the author of four other books: A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without A Map.

The Maine Festival of the Book continues Saturday, March 31 and April 1. On Saturday starting at 9 am at the Abromson Center, enjoy a day of free programs featuring more than 50 authors. Programs for all ages and interests!  The festival continues Saturday evening with the Poetry Party and all day Sunday with the Book Arts Bazaar at USM and a performance at Portland Stage Company.

In its five years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 300 authors, including five Pulitzer Prize winners and been attended by more than 12,000 people. Don’t miss it!

And please stop by the MHC’s booth at the festival to say hello. You can also take a chance on the book baskets that we have contributed to the  festival’s raffle!

For directions and a full schedule for the festival, visit http://www.mainereads.org/

For podcasts of past speakers, visit our website: http://mainehumanities.org/podcast/archives/category/book_festival

Phillip Booth

The late Philip Booth of Castine had his own way with free verse, creating his music from the repetition of words and their placement on the page. Today’s poem, about the realities of old age, provides a striking example.

Old

by Phillip Booth

Old, the old know cause to be bitter:

they’ve seen

their children (as if they could tell)

insist they are growing deaf:

they’ve found

old friends invent new friends

to prove the old don’t matter:

they have hardened

themselves to let memory rust out;

with only themselves to hold on to,

they have grown

beyond any surprise;

to get their way

they have aged again

to be children:

beyond control, they have gained

control

of every last life save their own.

They know it can get no better.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 1990 by Philip Booth. Reprinted from Selves, Penguin Publishing, 1990, by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Mekeel McBride lives in Kittery and teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. In her poem she shows us what we have missed in the winter trees we observe every day.

Where Inspiration Has Learned a Thing or Two

By Mekeel McBride

From the trees because they are the true intuitives.

Palm readers of sunlight and storm, calm interpreters

for any kind of wind, doing most of the detective work

on shooting stars and aurora borealis. Their easy come,

easy go romances with migrating birds scarcely bear

recording and not even the quick cinema jump cuts

from summer to snow bother them. Even if there is snow,

temperature in the minus numbers, something continues

to live, invisible, at the core. Looking at the trees, you might

see in the bare branches only the bones of Babayaga’s hand

or the possibility of kindling for your wood stove, owl haven,

or a kind of living elegy blessed on the highest branch

by one thin crow. Of course you could be wrong. What

inspiration looks like is never really what it is.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2006 by Mekeel McBride. Reprinted from Dog Star Delicatessen, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006, by permission of Mekeel McBride. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Margaret Chase Smith

by Jim Melcher

Margaret Chase Smith, who served Maine in Congress for 32 years, is still one of the most iconic figures in Maine political history over 15 years after her death in 1995. She remains a significant figure in American national political history as well. What can we still learn from “The Red Rose of Skowhegan”’s experience in politics almost three decades after she left the Senate in 1973? As a scholar of American politics, I tried my hand at this question at a conference titled “The Politics of Conscience: Margaret Chase Smith and Today’s Political Climate” hosted by the Maine Humanities Council at G.W.-Hinckley (formerly Good Will-Hinckley) this past September. (The podcast available here on the MHC website is from a later presentation on this topic I made in Professor Amy Fried’s class on Women and Politics at the University of Maine). I argued that not only are there ways in which we can learn from Margaret Chase Smith’s experience still holding valid today, but that there are other ways in which her experience offers a contrast to the way American politics works now.

What’s often mentioned about Smith is her courage and her “firsts” as a woman in politics. Her notable stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy in her first “Declaration of Conscience” speech and being the first woman to receive votes for a major party nomination for President (at the 1964 Republican convention) are among the most familiar examples.  But these events also point to a legacy somewhat more difficult to observe: a political career that proved that principled partisanship and civility can go together effectively. She was able to combine a career in which she was both a nationally noted spokeswoman for her party and a senator able to both work and enjoy civil relationships with political leaders from across the aisle. Her 1970 “Second Declaration of Conscience” speech, reacting largely to uncivil politics and behavior on college campuses, effectively made the point that civility in politics is not just something to be asked of political leaders, but of the public as well. Finally, an examination of Smith’s 1964 presidential campaign strategy and her suspicion of the role campaign contributions (and disdain for raising them) shows that even where the approaches she took might not work as well in today’s political world, they offer a contrast that shines light on how American elections work today. Even as much has changed in American politics since she first was elected to Congress in 1940, Smith continues to stand as an illuminating example of the possibilities of principle.

Jim Melcher is Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Maine at Farmington

Sound familiar? But it’s not today’s news from Afghanistan. It’s a tale first told some 3,000 years ago by the Greeks. On March 9-10, 2012, at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, the Maine Humanities Council returns to this ancient yet only too fresh story for its 15^th annual Winter Weekend, devoted to Homer’s The Iliad in the Robert Fagles translation.

The weekend features scholarly yet accessible lectures—led off by Mainer Caroline Alexander, author of the bestselling The War That Killed Achilles—small-group discussions, a reception, and a Mediterranean feast.

This interdisciplinary program will especially appeal to students and teachers of epic poetry, mythology, world civilizations, and international relations. (CEUs are available.) Speakers will examine The Iliad not just as a literary classic but for what Homer has to tell us about war and peace, revenge and forgiveness, violence and its psychological impact.  We will highlight, for example, how Homer has been used with remarkable success in hospital reading groups with Vietnam and Iraqi War veterans.

There are still a limited number of places available – an excellent holiday gift for the thoughtful readers on your list! The $225 registration fee includes tuition, a copy of the text (which is also available on audiotape), three meals, the wine and cheese reception, and background readings. Register now!

Liam Riordan

The MHC is pleased to announce that Dr. Liam Riordan, early Americanist scholar, MHC Board Member, and Associate Professor of History at the University of Maine, Orono, will be doing archival research and teaching at the University of Glasgow in spring 2012 as a Fulbright Scholar. His honours level undergraduate course will focus on the early American republic, and he will be pursuing two main research projects. The first is to locate material about the Loyalist Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston, who lived in Scotland with her family in the mid-1780s before moving on to Jamaica and then Nova Scotia. Second, he is starting a new research project about outmigration from Glasgow throughout the Atlantic World, and especially to Virginia, the British West Indies, and the Canadian Maritimes, from 1760 to 1820. He will be joined in Glasgow by his wife Susan Thibedeau (on leave from the English Department at Bangor High School) and their sons Cormac and Declan.

Liam has many publications to his credit, including the forthcoming collection The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era and Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic.