The MHC’s Born to Read program presented its third biennial “Early Literacy in a Changing World” conference on Saturday, May 5, 2007. It was hugely successful. Previous conferences have been held in Portland, but a new location-the University of Maine in Orono-drew close to 200 participants from all of Maine’s sixteen counties, double the attendance of this conference before.
For a full story, including details of the keynote and closing speakers, as well as lists of the workshops attended by conference participants who included child care providers, preschool teachers, librarians, elementary school teachers, volunteers, administrators, professors, and parents, click here.
This conference was made possible by support from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust and Bangor Savings Bank.
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The MHC’s national Literature and Medicine conference on November 9 through 10, 2007, focuses not only on the Council’s own Literature & Medicine program, but on similar programs nationwide. As a special feature of this newsletter, we are presenting a glimpse of the keynote speakers whose presence will make this conference so extraordinary, and how their work supports this field.
Rafael Campo, M.D., is an award-winning poet who teaches and practices at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is also on the faculty of Lesley University. In the spring 2004 issue of the MHC’s Literature & Medicine online journal Synapse, Campo said:
”Really my work as a doctor and poet are inextricably interrelated in my imagination. I can’t imagine doing one without the other. Empathy is so central to both types of work. Poetry really is a version of another voice, is the story or the narrative of another person or the speaker. Similarly, in medicine, you have to be able to enter into the stories of your patients and to listen carefully to what they tell you about their symptoms. So those two things to me are very parallel activities. I think poetry enriches my work as a doctor. I hope it improves my ability to listen to patients’ stories, but it also helps with related issues such as multicultural matters. And it helps with the frustration that at times, when like many doctors, I feel my time with patients is limited due to managed care.”
Future issues of this newsletter will highlight the other keynote speakers of this conference.
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On May 1, the MHC received an award from the Library of Congress Center for the Book for our innovative and wide-ranging community-based programs that promote the reading and discussion of books and ideas relating books to society.
This was the Boorstin Award for innovative reading promotion projects. The Boorstin Award recognizes and supports achievements of specific state centers for their contributions to the overall national program and objectives.
Other affiliated state centers for the book that won this award were from California, Georgia, Illinois, and Louisiana.
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Congratulations to Caroline George of Limington, Annie Fagan of Camden, and Jessica Staples of Auburn, the Levels I, II, and III winners of Letters About Literature this year. The MHC awarded Letters About Literature prizes to students from Bangor to Saco who wrote the most compelling letters of their age groups for this project. Readers in grades 4 through 12 write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre-fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic-explaining how that author’s work changed the student’s way of thinking about the world or themselves. There are three competition levels: Level I for children grades 4-6, Level II for grades 7 and 8, and Level III for students in grades 9-12.
Letters About Literature on a national level is sponsored by Target Stores, but on a local level in Maine it has a very special sponsor: The David Royte Fund. David Royte was a Board member of the MHC in the 1980s and played a valuable role in helping the MHC achieve its widespread reading and discussion programs for all educational levels. This fund was created in 2006 by Merle and Leonard Nelson and Dr. and Mrs. Paul Royte.
For excepts from the winning letters and a full list of all participants, click here.
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The June booklist from Born to Read is just in time for the spring peepers: “Ponds and Pond Life.”
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The MHC is funding events across the state this summer, including a seminar series at Washburn-Norlands Living History Center in Livermore, events around the town of Jefferson’s bicentennial, the “Teen Read” program at Merrill Memorial Library in Yarmouth, and the Historical Pavilion at the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle.
The Historical Pavilion (pictured above with Nylander Museum volunteer Herb Ketch) is a strong example of what MHC grants can do. This exhibit is the result of cooperation by two natural history museums in northern Maine‹the Nylander Museum and the Northern Maine Museum of Science. Such cooperation, where societies combine their exhibits in order to reduce staff needs, has been one of the benefits of the Historical Pavilion, which remains the only opportunity for many of the participating organizations to interact with one another.
For a complete list (by date), click here.
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In 2007, Lubec Historical Society volunteers are producing high-quality prints of historic photographs contributed by Lubec residents, including this view of Main Street, with Campobello Island in the distance, which can be dated approximately by the vehicles.[credit: courtesy of the Lubec Historical Society]
Many of the events listed above were grants funded in the most recent round. For a complete list, click here. Here is one example:
$125.25 to the Lubec Historical Society, Lubec, for Postcard Archival Project
In the old company store of the Columbian Packing Co. on Route 189 in Lubec, the Lubec Historical Society runs a tourist information center and small museum every summer. Visitors to the museum are particularly fond of flipping through an album of historic postcards and browsing the early merchandise, labeled with 1902 prices.
This grant will fund the efforts of volunteers who will reinvigorate these displays by replacing the torn pages in the postcard album and reprinting the store signs on new stock. They will also produce high-quality prints of the historic photographs contributed by Lubec residents and scanned last winter by high school students. Finally, a new sign and paint job will enhance the appearance of the visitor’s center, making it an even more popular attraction for tourists and residents alike.
If you’d like to visit the Lubec Historical Society and see what they’re up to, call (207) 733-4696.
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Carolyn Sloan, MHC staff member who works on Council programs for teachers, wrote this about a text currently being used in a major Teaching American History Initiative:
What comes to mind when someone mentions Abraham Lincoln? Stovepipe hat? Gettysburg address? Aw shucks jokes? Emancipation proclamation? Participants in “American Lives: Teaching American History through Biography” read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals for their spring colloquium. They agreed that if one were expecting yet another expose revealing the negative underbelly of an American hero, this was not the book to read. Goodwin’s research clearly led her to a greater appreciation of Lincoln.
Her lens for viewing Lincoln is the juxtaposition of his life with the lives and opinions of four of his competitors for the Presidency, all of whom were “better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life,” reasons for their subsequent inclusion in his cabinet and their eventual devotion to him and his policies. This approach highlights “the extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes.” Many successful politicians have been politically astute, but few have been able to inspire love and respect in the acrimony of political differences.
Her focus on this rivalry also highlights the tension between Lincoln’s earlier policies based on his need to keep the county unified and his growing understanding of the horrors of slavery and its negative effect on the nation as well as the slaves themselves.
Don’t be dismayed by the potentially daunting thickness of the book. Goodwin’s narrative abilities and the intricate connections she makes with the lives of the rivals in Lincoln’s cabinet contribute to an absorbing read.
Back to the Top“It was wonderfully entertaining. There were a lot of new ideas presented, and it was nice knowing that I am already doing a lot of things right. I also love that these lessons in diversity make it okay to teach children to respect and embrace their differences while keeping in mind that we are all very similar.”
—from an attendee of Born to Read’s “Early Literacy in a Changing World” conference
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Thank you to our current members. Your support helps to make Maine Humanities Council programs like the ones detailed in this newsletter possible. If you are not a member but would like to make a gift you may do so online or contact me, Diane Magras, for more information.
Notes from an Open Book welcomes feedback from its readers. Please contact Diane Magras by email at diane@mainehumanities.org or by phone at (207)773-5051 ext. 208 (toll-free 1-866-637-3233, ext. 208) to respond.