Maine Humanities Council
Notes from an Open Book: February, 2009
1. How to Make History “Cool”
On January 11, 2009, Ethel “Billie” Gammon, who was the founder of the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center in Livermore, Maine, died at age 92. Later that week, a funeral service was held at the North Livermore Baptist Church, where Erik Jorgensen, the MHC’s executive director, spoke about his own long friendship with a truly imaginative and determined person:
I’m going to miss Billie. Sunday marked the end of what was, by any measure, a remarkable life. But for those of us who work in the field of Maine history and culture, it’s also truly the end of an era. I started working in this business back in 1987. I was about 22 years old, and I don’t think I’d been on my job as a summer site manager for a historic house down in Brunswick for more than a couple of days, before someone mentioned Billie Gammon, the visionary founder of the Norlands Living History Center.
Like most everyone working in museums in this state, I had certainly heard of Norlands, a place my grandmother over in Buckfield had described as “that elegant Washburn house that they saved, up there on the Hill in Livermore” ...Or that which my museum friends thought of more technically as “a pioneering living history museum with an unusual residential element”. But probably the best description came from one of the elementary school kids who lived down the street from me, and, having been surprised at how fascinating his field trip visit had been, simply said that it was “cool”. That, in my mind is by far the most important estimation of the Norlands, and it’s the one assessment that Billie would surely have appreciated most. History is cool, though in so many cases and in so many museums, the coolness is boiled out and vaporized before it ever reaches the student. Billie knew how to prevent that from happening.
It would be interesting but probably impossible to quantify the number of careers that were affected directly or indirectly by Billie and the Norlands. I’ve met a lot of museum and history people who had internships there–who learned how to use a scythe or how to milk a cow, or who presented work at one of Billie’s signature history symposiums. For me, it was not long after hearing about Billie that I met her–she was, even then, what I thought of as an Old Lady, but of course looks can be deceiving. She may have been about 4 foot eight, with white hair and a few wrinkles, but there was, in fact, nothing old about Billie Gammon. We pretty soon found ourselves serving together on the board of what was then called the Maine Association of Museums. For me as a new professional in the field, that board experience was defined in many ways by Billie; by her advice, by her unflagging energy, by her sense of humor, and her can-do approach to everything. What a colleague she was!
In 1999, Maine Humanities Council awarded Billie The Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize, which is its lifetime achievement award. Surely there have been few people who have done more to further the fields of public and local history in this state than Billie, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a more appropriate honoree.
As I said at the outset, I am going to miss her. And of the many mental pictures I have of Billie, here’s the one that I am going to file away to keep:
It was a fall or winter evening, and after some sort of meeting, Billie had invited the board of the museum association to stay for dinner in the dining room of the Washburn house, up at Norlands. There was a fire in the fireplace, and the room was lit by oil lamps or candles, and we were packed in there, warm, happy to be with colleagues who were also friends, eating what I’m sure was some appropriate 19th century dish as the wind blew outside. And there was Billie, the always-gracious hostess, and all around her in the firelight, a little glimpse and feeling of what it actually might have been like to have dined in that same room a century earlier.
We all talk (in this field at least) about bringing history to life. That evening I had a look at how Billie actually was able to do just that. And just like the kid from Brunswick 20 years ago, I thought it was cool. And I know she was cool too.
Back to the Top2. MHC News
On Saturday, March 21, the MHC will be presenting “Leadership in a Time of Crisis: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Symposium.” From 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM at the Abromson Community Education Center, University of Southern Maine, in Portland, participants will have the chance to learn and discuss Lincoln’s life and legacy.
Presenters include Bruce Chadwick of New Jersey City University (“The Rise of Abraham Lincoln”), Elizabeth Leonard of Colby College (“In the Aftermath of the Lincoln Assassination”), Patrick Rael of Bowdoin College (“Lincoln’s High Wire Act”), and Thomas Brown of University of South Carolina (“The Afterlife of Abraham Lincoln”). Participants will also have the opportunity to be part of small group discussions with presenters as well as local historian Bob Greene and Tom Desjardin, Historic Sites Specialist with Maine’s Bureau of Parks and Land.
For more information or to register (registration is required), please visit this link. The cost, which includes refreshments, lunch, and parking, is $45 for the general public, $40 for teachers (CEUs available) and Maine Historical Society members, and $25 for students.
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“Hair” is the theme for Born to Read’s February book list. Books explore topics of hair-washing, hairstyling, hair loss, and cultural values connected with hair.
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Podcast Update
New podcasts include “flash readings” Part 1 and Part 2 by faculty from USM’s Stonecoast M.F.A. program. Please note the new layout and search function on the podcast page, which will help you find the types of recordings that interest you from the many—around one hundred!—now available.
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Bangor Savings Bank, which has a long tradition of community-based philanthropy, has begun a new program called Community Matters More. They are asking for help from Maine residents in determining where to distribute $100,000 of funding. This is an opportunity to support both three organizations from ones listed on that website (see the “Cast your vote” link, which we cannot link from here, on the Community Matters More page) and also ones not listed, like the MHC, by writing them in. You can vote for only one organization per region, and though the MHC has statewide activities, being based in Portland keeps it in the Greater Portland/Lewiston/Auburn category. With your help, we might receive a $1,000 grant. Thank you.
Back to the Top3. Grants and Events
Major Grants
$3,500 to the University of Maine, Orono, for Loyalism and the American Revolution in Maine
Funding for a series of lecture-workshops recognizing the importance of loyalism to the Revolution in Maine. This series of programs aim to bring recent scholarly work to the general public and to Maine students and to further encourage interested individuals to attend a June conference for a fuller academic experience.
$3,000 to Terra Moto, Inc., Portland, for Thin Blue Lines
This project partners local poets and photographers with Portland police officers and detectives to create poems and photographs that increase the department’s, municipal government’s and public’s knowledge and appreciation of the work the police do. The format of a calendar allows the poems and photographs to become an ongoing intimate part of daily life.
$3,000 to the Maine Jewish Film Festival, Portland, for 2009 Festival—The Diaspora Experience: What It Means to be From Away
The festival will explore the experience of the Jewish Diaspora through at least seven of our total 23 films. The films selected will encompass a diverse range of experience and help to fulfill the festival’s mission, which is to enrich, educate, and entertain a diverse community about the Jewish experience.
$2,000 to the Camden Conference, Camden, for Global Leadership and the U.S. Role in World Affairs
Conference will address major economic, environmental, and security challenges facing the next US President’s foreign policy leadership. Speakers will bring global perspectives, analysis, and opinions to an anticipated audience of over 1,000. A major goal will be to build a greater audience in the Portland area through video-conference technology.
Other Recent Grants
$1,000 to King Middle School, Portland, for Community Interaction with the Story of Unsung Civil Rights Hero Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin, an unsung Civil Rights hero who as a 14-year-old refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and served as a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that dealt a blow to Jim Crow, will visit Portland, Maine as part of the launch of her biography by award-winning Maine author, Phillip Hoose. Teenagers will access her story of courage through a book club reading of the book and will share their understanding of courage in a series of posters that will be displayed in city buses and visited by Claudette Colvin.
$1,000 to Westcott Junior High School, Westbrook, for Community Read Program
The Community Read project at Wescott Junior High School promotes literacy and the involvement of a wide range of people from the local area to encourage a true love of reading and literature in general.
$1,000 to Merriconeag Waldorf School, New Gloucester, for Second Annual Merriconeag Poetry Festival
Our aim is to build on the success of last year’s Festival by expanding the number of high school students participating in the poetry contest segment leading up to the Festival, to involve more local businesses in supporting the Festival, and to increase attendance at the Festival itself on May 3, 2009.
$700 to the University of Southern Maine, Portland, for Writing a Woman’s Life—A Public Lecture
Joan Hedrick, the 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, will present a lecture, “Writing a Woman’s Life” at USM on October 22, 2009. Drawing on the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, this talk will explore the challenges and choices involved in writing biography, specifically the way gender shapes those choices.
Grant-Funded Events
Events funded by MHC grants include a national pilot project in Portland, Thin Blue Lines, that connected local poets and photographers together with Portland police officers and detectives; lectures in Bangor and Portland on the American Revolution and Loyalism; the Camden Conference in Camden, Rockland, Belfast, and Portland; and more.
Back to the Top4. What We’re Reading
This list of book recommendations from MHC staff includes Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin; A River of Words; Woodbrook; Twilight; and Liberty.
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5. Quote of the Month
“The reading program has introduced me to new viewpoints in the struggles of war, personal and political, fictional and historical. The range of the selections has encouraged me to venture beyond my own experience and to have the audacity to re-consider ”the classics’. I would never have had the temerity to open Achilles in Vietnam but for the belief this program has in me! And that is perhaps the key to the whole program. The literature respects the reader. The literature clarifies our struggles with ourselves and with each other. We have an alternative to the paradigm of weakness vs. competence. We can see our failings within the warp and weave of life. With this assurance of our common humanity we are better physicians.”
—A participant in a Literature & Medicine Veterans Administration Hospital group reflects on the experience.
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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.