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. The Positive Aspects of Change

Notes from an Open Book is soon to change formats, keeping much of the same content but trying to better meet readers’ needs and, consequently, better serve our mission. Notes will soon exist as a blog with the content you generally find in this newsletter spaced out through each month. The Notes from an Open Book blog will allow readers to comment on individual articles, and with that in mind, we will be offering more kinds of articles that you might wish to respond to. This is one more way that the MHC will be facilitating discussions, one of the primary elements of our work. I’d love to know what you think. You’ll receive an update notice shortly when the first blog postings are made.

—Diane Magras, Editor

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2. MHC News

July’s Born to Read book list offers ways to celebrate the United States with stories about multicultural parades and picnics, visual interpretations of song lyrics, and even some scientific information about fireworks.

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Podcast Update

New podcasts include a talk by global development consultant Brad Babson on today’s challenges in Korea (part of the MHC’s Views of the East teacher program), Art Historian Donna Cassidy speaking about the influence of Québec and Atlantic Canada on American artists working in that region, and three children’s books read aloud by their illustrators: Not Norman, Love and Kisses, and Library Lion.

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3. Recent Grants and Grant-Funded Events

Major Grants

$4,050 to Portland Ovations, Portland, for Travel The World of Imagination, Inspiration, and Innovation
This project will use scholarly lectures, community collaborations for residencies, and study guides connected to Maine’s K-12 basic curricula to encourage multi-generational patrons to make cultural and historical connections to enhance their understanding of the world and art forms in general.

$4,039 to the Northern Forest Center, Bethel, for Ways of the Woods: People and the Land in the Northern Forest, Maine, 2009
Northern Forest Center will deliver place-based humanities education to more than 6,500 people in rural Maine communities by taking its mobile museum (housed in an 18-wheel tractor trailer) to six local community events in 2009. Ways of the Woods is designed to use the humanities to help people appreciate the past, understand the present, and plan for the future of the Maine woods and the broader Northern Forest region.

$4,000 to the Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, for Indians and Rusticators: Wabanakis and Summer Visitors on Mount Desert Island 1840s - 1920s
This project is based on a new 600-page National Park Service study of the history of Wabanaki Indians in the Mt. Desert Island area. This will be an exhibition highlighting the role the burgeoning 19th century tourism locations such as Mt. Desert Island played in the cultural and economic survival of Wabanaki Indians.

$1,000 to the Portland Conservatory of Music, Portland, for International Piano Festival Audience Enrichment and Development
This grant funded four lectures during the festival in Portland from June 22 to 27, 2009. With these audience enrichment events, the Conservatory aimed to increase audience knowledge about music, its meaning in the context of other art forms, and promote a deeper understanding of the world by way of music.

$1,000 to the Damariscotta River Association, Damariscotta
The Wabanaki Living Skills & Culture program for school groups and the public will allow participants to recreate a Wabanaki village, which will include wigwams, cooking areas, live traps, and a corn grinder.

Recent Grants

$1,000 to the Lubec Historical Society, Lubec, for A Bicentennial Mural for Lubec
An historical mural for Lubec’s Bicentennial (in 2011), depicting significant landmarks, events, people and scenes of Washington County life, will be created as a community work of art by Lubec residents and visiting artists. The mural will be a permanent installation on the exterior wall of the Lubec Historical Society, supervised by Natasha Mayers.

$500 to Long Creek Youth Development Center, South Portland, for Zaman Zab
Funds will provide food for a culinary/group program in which Long Creek residents (incarcerated youth aged 13-21) will purchase and prepare ethnic meals to share during discussions.

$450 to 19th Century Willowbrook Village, Newfield, for Newfield Old Home Days
Newfield Old Home Days will take place August 22 through 23, 2009. On the second day, a historical component will be presented at the Newfield Historical Society building to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, and to compare and contrast the issues and concerns of the Civil War era with those of today.

Grant-Funded Events

Talks associated with an exhibition of Federal-era clothing in Thomaston; a presentation by reenactors portraying President and Mary Todd Lincoln in Parsonsfield; and a symposium on the architecture of New England and the Atlantic provinces in Eastport.

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4. What We’re Reading

Elijah of Buxton (2007), Christopher Paul Curtis

Elijah of Buxton is a novel for children (ages ten and up, I would say), but like so many children’s books, the story and characters are compelling enough to hook readers of any age. Curtis set his Newbery Medal-winning book in the Buxton Mission of Raleigh, a Canadian settlement of refugees from slavery in the U.S. that was founded in 1849. Elijah, the first boy born free in Buxton, is 11 years old in 1860 and trying hard to understand “the secret language of being growned.” He has a reputation for being “fra-gile” and easily frightened, but when he crosses the border into Michigan, he proves himself a hero.

Elijah is clearly the protagonist of the book that bears his name, but it’s significant that Buxton is in the title, too, because the town becomes a character in its own right. Much of what Curtis describes about the settlement is based on fact, as he explains in his Author’s Note. There is a National Historic Site and Museum in Buxton today, and the town still hosts an annual reunion of thousands of descendants of former slaves. Still, without Elijah of Buxton, far fewer American children would know—or even think much about—what happened after the Underground Railroad left the U.S. (Brita Zitin)

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5. Quote of the Month

“One of our students has leaped ahead in reading this year—and it is because of NBNR: she finally sees the connection not just between words and sounds, but words and ideas.”

—An Oxford Hills adult education teacher muses about New Books, New Readers.

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