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. Winter Holidays from Born to Read

Each year, over half of Maine’s youngest population, from several weeks of age to five years, spends five days each week in child care. That most parents work outside the home these days makes this a necessity. Centers and homes that offer child care face similar pressures on staff members’ time, making quality educational offerings important. The Maine Humanities Council’s Born to Read program strives to ensure that the rooms where these children spend their days are filled with books. The program also holds training seminars that help early childhood professionals use these books to help children’s imagination, connection with and respect for each other, and interest in learning grow.

For the third year, Born to Read is offering some of its books to the general public in a fundraising appeal that will bring Born to Read and free books to child care facilities in need. By making a financial gift through this appeal, you can not only make the gift of a beautiful book to a child in your own family, but also share books and the power of reading with children all over Maine. We’ll happily wrap your book or books for you and also send you Born to Read’s tips on reading aloud to make the most of reading experiences. Many readers of this newsletter will receive a brochure in the mail, or you may click here for a PDF version. A portion of this gift is tax-deductible.

For more information, contact Diane Magras, Director of Development, at diane@mainehumanities.org. On behalf of Born to Read, thank you.

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2. News from the MHC

The year 2008 is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Given this, and the fact that the years of civil rights struggles seem to be ancient history for many, the Maine Humanities Council is organizing a one-day conference to explore the significance of King, look behind the sound bites, and situate him in the larger context of 20th century America. This conference is part of a wide variety of events celebrating King’s life and influence on American civil rights issues over the January 19-21, 2008 weekend, partnering with the Portland chapter of the NAACP, USM and Maine Historical Society.

The conference will take place at the Abromson Center at University of Southern Maine in Portland on January 19, 2008, from 9 AM to 3 PM. Speakers include Michael West from Holy Cross College and Patrick Rael from Bowdoin College. They will address topics such as Martin Luther King as a radical, whether or not King is honored for the “right” reasons, Hollywood’s depiction of the civil rights movement, and the role of photojournalism in shaping the response to the civil rights movement.

Pre-registration is required and is available online. The fee is $35 for the general public and $20 for students. A continental breakfast and lunch are included. Teachers may receive CEU’s.

The conference is supported in part by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Teaching American History, a program of the US Department of Education.

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The December book list from Born to Read features the theme of “Loving (and Losing) Grandparents.“ Books on this list help children remember grandparents they have lost and appreciate those they still have with them. Suggestions on this list came from education students at St. Joseph’s College who are studying child development this semester.

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Podcast Update—The MHC’s Humanities on Demand features Brown Bag Lunch lectures from the Portland Public Library. A reading by novelist Masha Hamilton is the most recent addition. Check out this link for some fascinating lectures, as well as archives from the MHC collection.

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3. Money Matters: Focus on Funding

Conference participants talk between sessions
credit: Diane Hudson

Often a mixed source of funding is the best way of making a program possible. The recent Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ conference, Caring for the Caregiver, was able to bring together a stellar group of speakers, engaging workshops, and a powerful immersion in the literature and medicine experience on November 9 and 10 in Manchester, New Hampshire, thanks to such a diverse group of funders. Conference sponsors included the Maine Medical Association, The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, The Bingham Program, Johnson & Johnson, and Literature & Medicine partners: the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Hawai’i Council for the Humanities, the Illinois Humanities Council, the Maryland Humanities Council, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, the New Hampshire Humanities Council, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ, the program, has received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More than 200 registrants came from 28 states, from as far as Hawai’i, California, and Washington. They included physicians, administrators, humanities scholars eager to learn to facilitate a Literature & Medicine group, and others involved in health care.

Participants wrote in conference evaluations:

Thanks to such funders as the group listed above, there is a future for Literature & Medicine.

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4. Spotlight On: Born to Read

Folksinger Jim Sherman shares his dulcimer with a family at the Merrill Library in Machias.

Born to Read has been active this fall with outreach work being performed in Washington County. A program that brings early literacy education to caregivers in the child care industry through training seminars and the distribution of powerful children’s books, Born to Read branched out from its usual activities to hold events for families. The Lubec Memorial Library and Merrill Library in Machias both hosted Saturday morning events in their children’s rooms for storytelling presentations. Allen Sockabasin, author of Thanks to the Animals, was in Lubec for one of the sessions. This series not only brought more families in contact with Born to Read directly, but also gave Born to Read’s partner, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, an opportunity to recruit new volunteers to read aloud in child care facilities in those areas. Born to Read also introduced a book bag lending program to local child cares in which families could borrow bags of books on different themes, along with activity guides full of ideas for sharing these books with children. More events like this are being planned for southern Maine in 2008. The Washington County events were made possible thanks to a grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust.

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5. Grants and Events

Events funded by MHC grants include a bilingual lecture and discussion in Lewiston before each film in a French film series; an exhibit and presentation about the Bodwell Granite Company Store in Vinalhaven; and a presentation in Portland about Joseph Nicolar’s The Life and Traditions of the Red Man.

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The recently funded grants list includes:

$1,000 to Bates College, Lewiston, for Franco-American Heritage Center and Bates College French Film and Lecture Series
A French film & lecture series which will include bilingual lectures and, it is hoped, involve college students and other participants in community revitalization.

$1,000 to the University of Southern Maine, Portland, for History as Told by Native Peoples: Joseph Nicolar’s “Life and Traditions of the Red Man”
Two speakers will discuss the new edition of a 19th century Penobscot book, Joseph Nicolar’s The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, an extraordinary work of Penobscot history and culture that sheds new light on Maine’s cultural and historical foundations.

$1,000 to the Vinalhaven Historical Society, Vinalhaven, for Bodwell Granite Company Store and Its Influence on Vinalhaven, 1858-1919
The project will build a database for web delivery to make records about the store accessible to the general public and to scholars.

$500 to the Maine Historical Society, Portland, for Responding to Longfellow: The Poet in American Culture
To mark the culmination of the year-long commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s birth, the Maine Historical Society hosted a two-day poetry festival and symposium on November 9 and 10, 2007. An evening event with readings by more than 15 Maine poets was followed by a day of lectures and discussions by prominent poets and scholars including Maxine Kumin, John Hollander, Longfellow biographer Charles Calhoun, and Dana Gioia (Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts).

$500 to the Odamogan Living History Project, Litchfield, for Living History Project
In November 2007, a small museum in Litchfield gathered local Boy Scouts for a session on Native American history. The focus was Abenaki life in the 1600s. Eventually, the project staff hope to provide similar sessions in the schools, to help teachers comply with LD 291, the state law that requires teaching of Maine’s Native American culture and history.

$500 to Mainely Girls, Rockport, for A Girl’s Point of View Book Club - Middle School
There has been a huge response to the book club program offered to middle schools around the state. There now are 34 clubs signed up, many with 15 girls or more participating. This grant will be used to provide books for participants.

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6. What We’re Reading

Scientists tell us that compassion and empathy are what make us human, are what distinguish us from all other animals. From infancy, we learn to see out of others’ eyes, to appreciate their difficulties and their needs.

What happens, though, when we are called to act upon what we perceive as our duty, especially when such action entails considerable sacrifice? We may be family members caring for partners, children, aging parents and siblings; we live in communities, cities, a nation; we are graduates, professionals, workers; we have both vocations and avocations; and we are, like it or not, members of the human race. Confronted with questions of duty, responsibility, service, we choose how best to demonstrate our humanity.

Manil Suri’s The Death of Vishnu is used in two Maine Humanities Council programs: Let’s Talk About It and Thoughtful Giving, a program dealing with giving and serving. Like the other texts in this series, it illustrates how different people—both real and imaginary—have demonstrated compassion in difficult situations. Each has found himself or herself expected to serve, in some capacity, a group either small or large, ranging from one other person to multitudes. Each has felt called to “make a difference”—and although each has tried, not all have succeeded.

In The Death of Vishnu, Vishnu is a homeless Indian man, living on the steps of an apartment building in Bombay. Suri’s novel alternates between Vishnu’s dreams and visions as he lays dying and the tenants’ lives that happen around him. In many ways, the apartment house is a very small community, housing families, a widower, Muslims and Hindus. Their experiences, their conflicts, their relationships with one another and with Vishnu form an unsentimental but enlightening picture of how a culture different from ours answers the question “What is my duty to others?”

(The description is from the scholar/facilitator of this Let’s Talk About It series, Margery Irvine.)

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7. Quote of the Month

“...it is often [the students] who struggle the hardest who touch me most. ... About a month or so after the History series was over, I received a call from a student, who while a faithful attendee, was not very participatory and never gave much of an impression of having read the books. On this day, however, Steven was anxious to know what series we would be doing this fall and insistent on finding out when we would get started again. I was stunned by his eagerness. Sitting in [the corner of] a vast cafeteria, having to divide my attention among thirty or more participants, I miss these individual stories in the course of a two-hour session. It is the long view of the long-term impact New Books, New Readers has on students that heartens me and keeps bringing me back to the program.”

—David Richards, who leads New Books, New Readers
programs in Skowhegan and Greenville

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