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• Literature & Medicine Plans Nationwide Conference

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• Born to Read Presents Maine Conference in Orono

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• Upcoming Events

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• News from the MHC

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• Recent Grants

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• What We’re Reading

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• Quote of the Month

“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

On November 9 through 10, 2007, the MHC’s Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care® will be holding a national conference in Manchester, New Hampshire. This MHC-created program has spread to 17 other states since its inception in 1997, and each year we aim to involve more states in its work.

This conference, “Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives on Literature and Medicine,” will survey the wide range of innovative programs that support health care professionals through the use of literature and writing. The MHC’s Literature & Medicine will be one of the programs featured, but this conference will also explore other proven successes, such as the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons run by Rita Charon, M.D.

The conference will focus on the literature and medicine movement’s ability to renew and energize health care professionals’ connection to their work. Literature and medicine initiatives have been shown to improve participants’ communication skills and increase their capacity for empathy; they also offer the opportunity to reflect upon and process the frustrations, discomfort, pain and grief that are an inevitable part of their work.

As Dr. Charon explains, writing helps health care professionals better understand not only what their patients are experiencing, but also “what they themselves endure in the care of the sick,” understanding that in order to provide good care, providers must find ways to process their own experiences. Otherwise, the risk is high that health care professionals will detach themselves from their patients and themselves, practicing, as she puts it, “from arm’s length.” She adds that “Unless we can attend to [their] interior life ... we will end up with doctors who flinch when things don’t go well, who abandon patients when they’re dying” and who may, ultimately, burn out and leave the profession.

This conference is open to all health care professionals in all departments. Funding for this conference is being provided by the Bingham Program of the Maine Community Foundation.

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The demand for humanities-rich early literacy programming in all parts of Maine is clear: on Saturday, May 5, nearly 200 preschool teachers, librarians, and other early childhood educators will travel from all of Maine’s 16 counties to attend “Early Literacy in a Changing World,” a Born to Read conference in Orono. The program’s two successful conferences in Portland, in 2003 and 2005, each drew audiences of around 125. This year, the conference is being held in Orono for the first time with the express goal of increased outreach to northern and eastern Maine.

With a keynote address by Massachusetts storyteller John Porcino and the closing session presented by Passamaquoddy storyteller and author Allen Sockabasin, “Early Literacy in a Changing World” promises a rich experience for early childhood educators. Eleven presenters with expertise in a wide array of early literacy topics will lead workshops on effective ways of using books and language with young children.

For an educator in a far-flung rural Maine town, it would be tempting to read an article by one of these skilled presenters rather than trekking to a conference. But as a previous conference participant has said, “NOTHING can replace listening to experienced, artistic people passionately present their work and its meaning in person. Videos and articles pale in comparison to having a real encounter with a gifted human being.” That’s the experience that Born to Read hopes to provide on May 5.

Other participants in previous Born to Read conferences have said that the experience was invaluable in helping them gain such practices and understandings as the following:

• “early literacy development and language acquisition”
• “how to turn any thoughts into a story of my own”
• “interpreting culture in a meaningful way”
• “importance of parent connection”
• “the relationship of voice to written word, through rhythm, onomatopoeia, emotion”
• “how to stand up for reading/storytelling—their true impact on children’s success”

This year’s conference will also recognize the tenth anniversary of the Born to Read program and introduce Peaceable Stories, a literature-based initiative dealing with issues of peace and conflict. “Early Literacy in a Changing World” is made possible by support from Bangor Savings Bank and the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust. There is no room for additional conference attendees, but a virtual glimpse of the offerings is available on the online registration page. Bookmark the page while you’re there, and check back next month for a conference recap.

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We have a rich offering of grant-funded events coming up, including film screenings and panel discussions about Maine history in Winter Harbor; the Bethel Historical Society’s 2007 Summer Lecture Series; and, in Portland, Susan Poulin’s one-woman show, “The Full Angel,” about how her mother’s illness and death from cancer reshaped her family.

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Annie Medeiros, a graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor’s in Women’s Studies, is the latest edition to the MHC staff. As an AmeriCorps volunteer, she created a diversity awareness curriculum for children. As a research assistant for UNH’s Political Science department, she edited drafts of a book and arranged speakers for a seminar series. She has handled sales for a natural baking company, worked in offices performing the many tasks that lead to their essential running, and was an advocate for crisis intervention of sexual assault.

Annie has joined the MHC as an adminstrative assistant. We are delighted to welcome another person who cares deeply about using humanities to effect social change.

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The May booklist from Born to Read is “Trash Treasures: Picture Books About Garbage, Recycling, and Composting.”

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$1,000 to Bates Dance Festival, Lewiston, for Building Informed Audiences for Contemporary Dance
In conjunction with the 25th Anniversary Bates Dance Festival, Dr. Suzanne Carbonneau will conduct a residency from July 20—August 12, 2007. She will contribute program notes and present scholarly “Inside Dance” lectures for public performances by David Dorfman Dance, Bridgman Packer Dance, and Pearson Widrig Theater. She will also design and moderate “Global Exchange,” a panel discussion with choreographers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, on July 26. For tickets and other details, please visit www.bates.edu/dancefest.

$620 to Peaks Island Children’s Workshop, Peaks Island, for Island Rovers Camp
Peaks Island Children’s Workshop, the only child care center on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, sees its school-age population double during the summer months. To accommodate these children, the Workshop runs a summer camp called Island Rovers. In 2007, the camp program will offer a different theme each week, including photography and Peaks Island history. To learn more, please call (207) 766-2854.

$500 to Southern Maine Agency on Aging, Scarborough, for The Full Angel
The public premiere of Susan Poulin’s new one-woman show, “The Full Angel,” will be held as the kick-off event to this year’s Active Aging Expo, presented by Southern Maine Agency on Aging. Poulin will perform a series of vignettes about how her family was reshaped during the illness and subsequent death of her mother from cancer. The performance will be interpreted in ASL and transcribed on a large screen for the hard-of-hearing. Following the performance, psychotherapist Heather Taylor Davis will facilitate a discussion. For more information, please call the Agency on Aging at (207) 396-6500.

$500 to the Maine Olmstead Alliance for Parks and Landscapes, Portland, for You CAN get there from here: Tourism and the Maine Landscape
The Maine Olmstead Alliance for Parks and Landscapes will host Dona Brown, Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont and author of Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the 19th Century. In her lecture, Professor Brown will revisit key locations in Maine—Old Orchard Beach, Katahdin, Old York—and reflect on the ways they have been used to shape Maine’s identity. The lecture is free and open to the public, beginning at 7 p.m. on May 10 at the Maine Historical Society. For further details, please call (207) 761-8081.

$500 to Literacy Volunteers of Greater Saco-Biddeford, Saco, for Maine Author Series: Wesley McNair Reading
Poet Wesley McNair will give a free public reading of his work on Thursday, May 3. He appears courtesy of the Literacy Volunteers of Greater Saco-Biddeford, who will host a raffle, refreshments, volunteer recognition, and sale of McNair’s books during the evening. McNair will read at Thornton Academy. For more information, please call the Literacy Volunteers at (207) 283-2954.

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Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle have turned many readers into devout mystery and detective fans. The questions underlying the mystery — of the tension between order and disorder, good and evil, and the process of logical deduction — generated an immense pleasure. But how does the reader navigate the proliferation of mystery and detective novels available now? Beginning with an introductory talk on the evolution of this genre from its origins with Edgar Allen Poe through classic writers and detectives/inquirers to the present, “Refreshing the Whodunit: Moving Beyond Christie and Doyle,” new from Let’s Talk About It, provides new and experienced mystery and detective fans with an opportunity for in-depth conversation about how this fiction has incorporated the contemporary world’s globalism; dilemmas of race, gender, ethnicity and class; religious conflict; historical revision; and more.

Elliott Pattison’s The Skull Mantra is one of many thrilling texts in this series. Set in a forced-labor camp in contemporary Tibet where many Buddhist monks are incarcerated, Shan Tao Yun, a Chinese former Public Security Investigator imprisoned for having uncovered a scandal, prepares to serve an indefinite prison term in this new brutal environment. When the inmates discover a decapitated body, the Colonel in charge of the camp decides that he needs Shan’s investigative skills. But the situation becomes more dangerous when the headless corpse is identified as a Chinese prosecutor. The monks prepare to endure torture or death rather than work on the road unless Buddhist rituals are performed, and tensions increase as Tibetans are suspected to have murdered the prosecutor.

Karen Waldron, MHC scholar and professor of literature at College of the Atlantic, will facilitate “Refreshing the Whodunit: Moving Beyond Christie and Doyle” in Belfast this summer.

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“I can’t tell you how much our class learned from The Giving Tree. Especially the highest group—they learned to recognize what a word, sentence, question was. They learned direct speech and why the verb tense changed. They began to understand the notion of a verb, and they did a lot of thinking, as did the middle group. What a marvelous teaching tool—and gift from MHC.”

—an adult education teacher about a New Books, New Readers
discussion for an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other languages) group

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