Maine Humanities Council

Celebrated Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer signs Vecka nr.II, a reflection of his poem "Galleriet," an artist book by multi-award Iraqi-Swedish Modhir Ahmed, By Tokistar (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Each year, I eagerly await the Nobel Laureate in Literature. Being an aficionado of things Swedish, including the language, I always listen to the first announcement made by Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and watch the reaction of the largely-Swedish crowd of reporters. Like most other literary types, I have my own list of who should win and who should have won, and express pleasure or bemusement or curiosity based on that. This year, however, when Englund made his announcement of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer as the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Literature, my cheer rivaled those of the reporters.

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I have just finished reading the novel, Home by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Orange Prize, and a retelling of the story of her previous novel, Gilead, set in a small midwestern town of that name in the late 1950s.  Both of these feature the prodigal son, Jack, in his relationship to two families, and more specifically, the father of those two families: his own and his father’s best friend, both of whom are ministers, Presbyterian and Congregationalist.  In Gilead, we learn about Jack from the point of view of Ames, the father’s best friend, neighbor, and Jack’s intended but weary and suspicious mentor; in Home, we see Jack from the point of view of his sister Glory, who has recently returned home after abandonment by a long time fiancé, to care for their dying father.

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View from Strip Road, Fort Kent: Maine's northern border is a landscape of rolling hills, fields, and lots of sky. Credit: Erik Jorgensen

by Kathryn Olmstead

What do borders mean? It is a provocative question that captured the imaginations of participants in two discussions sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council Sept. 16 and 17. Held in the border towns of Houlton and Frenchville, the discussions brought together residents of varied ages and walks of life from both Maine and Canada to examine and expand their views of a border’s significance.

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The tragic events of September 11, 2001 have evoked complicated responses from Americans and also the rest of the world. Now, ten years later, we are reflecting on how we at the Maine Humanities Council have responded. In summary, I think it is fair to say that we have tried to learn from the events of 9/11 and to promote understanding of how people in other parts of the world live, what they believe and want, and how they view the United States. 9/11 also caused us to reflect on how Americans see themselves, and we’ve created a number of programs and given grants that explore that as well.

In this post, we’ll present programs that look outward, towards the rest of the world, and in October focus on programs and activities that have encouraged us to reflect upon ourselves as Americans.

The Council’s immediate response to 9/11 was our quickly organized statewide reading and discussion program Let Freedom Ring! On October 11, 2001, nearly 1,000 Mainers came together in 63 libraries to share thoughts on W.H. Auden’s ”September 1, 1939” and Franklin Roosevelt’s speech, “The Four Freedoms”, and to reflect on the events of September 11. As one participant wrote afterwards, “There was freedom and respect in this circle – it models what we wish for in the larger world.”

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I recently read Islandport Press’ handsome 2003 edition of Mary Ellen Chase’s Silas Crockett, first published in 1935. A classic herself, Chase was born (in 1887) and raised in Blue Hill, educated there and at the University of Maine, and then, with a PhD from the University of Minnesota, spent most of her adult life teaching English at Smith College.

The granddaughter of a sea captain, Chase was probably only too familiar with the saga she traced in Silas Crockett: four generations of decline of a proud, prosperous and ambitious seafaring family against the backdrop of one hundred years of decline of a once bustling ship building and globally connected port town on the coast of Maine.  Although Chase’s family may have retained a professional status and attendant financial security, there were many other members of the community with similar family histories who were not so fortunate.

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On August 14, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Neal Gabler about how big ideas area disappearing from our society due to, among other things, the rise of social media.  Gabler makes many interesting points, but early on writes, “If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did.” This becomes a refrain to express concerns about the 140-character world of Twitter and the seemingly-unlimited unfiltered information available online.

Social media does indeed open up the world to conversations of tacos had for dinner, but it and the Internet also open up the world to so much more. No longer are only the Western Gods of Thought  sources of ideas, bestowed on high to grateful mortals. Ideas belong to everyone. The Internet is a democracy in the truest sense.

I feel this strongly. As a writer of historical fiction, I rely on the Internet and its amazing sources—from scholars to non-academic people who write about their memories—for excellent information. As a humanities person, I learn from my social media contacts. On Twitter, I follow fascinating individuals, from historians to PhD students to a London cab driver. They often share profound thoughts—through those 140-character bundles, or linked blog posts—that I not only retweet but discuss over the dinner table and muse about far into the night. A post by an independent scholar, for example, posed a fascinating historical perspective on the police’s reaction to the London riots.

And claiming that no profundity exists in 140 characters or less ignores the profundity that is present in so many other cultures, including, for instance, the entire tradition of Japanese haiku. I argue that Bashō‘s and Shiki‘s works can tell modern readers much about the human condition and a powerful way—and non-Western—way of thinking.

Maine Humanities Council programs celebrate the fact that everyone, from a young child to a low-literacy adult to a professor at a private college, has ideas worth hearing. To us, inherent in our mission, lies this powerful truth: that ideas are common currency for everyone.

—Diane Magras

Is there really any other theme in Maine literature than change? Whether it’s about traditional resource use, or changes in the corporate ownership of Northern Maine, or the invasion of people “from away” who buy up, fence off and make exclusive their properties, this has proven to be a surprisingly durable vein of literary inquiry, from the likes of Ruth Moore and Gladys Hasty Carroll, to Sandy Phippen, Carolyn Chute, Richard Russo, and any number of other contemporary writers.

Last week, I read two recent novels that focus on the clash of cultures surrounding the shift from “traditional” Maine, to contemporary Maine, between different ways of making a living in our state’s always challenging economy.  While I’d not planned it this way, the two books complement each other nicely.

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Bruce Spang

by Bruce Spang

Coming to language was not easy for me. As a boy, the written word eluded me most of elementary school. I took third grade twice since my teacher discovered that I read from right to left, not left to right; breaking words into syllables seemed by then, and is still now, an impossible task, so I memorized whole words, looking them up so I knew on sight like an old friend. I could not take words for granted. The mundane became mysterious. I was dyslectic before there was a term for it. Back then, I was labeled “slow” and, at worse, “dumb,” because I could not figure out how words worked. I struggled mightily. But I did love words. They seem filled with mystery—like little surprises in a box of Cracker Jacks.

As a young writer, I had as much difficulty putting my words down on the page as I did reading them. In English, I was a low C student. But my sophomore year in high school, a teacher—her name was Mrs. English, oddly enough—found that I had something to say and encouraged me to write: Forget the grammar, forget the spelling (both were atrocious), just write and I did. Later in college, I kept a journal about my trip around Europe with my brother. He noted that I tended to write like a poet, using images and telling stories with twists and turns in them.

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Installation View of the Leonard Gallery at the UMaine Museum of Art, credit: UMMA

On October 28, 2011, the MHC will hold a Picturing America training in partnership with the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor. Picturing America began as a National Endowment for the Humanities Initiative that encouraged educators to use American art as a tool for advancing learning in the classroom. The MHC’s Picturing America programs work with educators of all grades—from infant care to preschool and kindergarten up through high school—to introduce the same concepts of visual literacy, history, and content that can inspire conversation and critical thinking.

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by Erik Jorgensen, Executive Director

Update:

Thanks to Ron Bancroft for an excellent column (Tuesday May 10) about low civic awareness among American students.

I was saddened to read yesterday what has become a perennial story – the increasing lack of awareness of civic issues among American students. Saddened, yes, but surprised only by the sense of crisis in the report. For after what seems like decades of breathless accounts of high school students who don’t know what century World War Two happened in, or who wrote the Gettysburg Address, is it really a surprise to hear that eighth graders don’t know much about foreign policy, the Bill of Rights, or other civics topics?

What other outcome could be expected after a decade or more of educational priorities sidelining social studies and history as being nice but non-essential? This sort of knowledge is not gained by osmosis, and if our society does in fact think it’s important to understand the civic underpinnings of this country, there appears to be a reasonably simple solution: history and civics need to be treated as a core subject, rather than an add-on.

Almost every day, we at the Council interact with imaginative and thoughtful social studies teachers from around the state, experts who not only teach civics, but communicate their passion to their students. I don’t think the problem stems from a lack of good teachers as much as from curricular and assessment priorities that always seem to relegate history to elective status.

You show me a kid who’s been instructed by one of these teachers, and I’ll show you a citizen.