Diane Magras: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

List after list starts Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic: lists of what was carried, left, or reached by Japanese women immigrating to America early in the 20^th century. They came to marry men they had never seen, or had seen only through a photograph, often of someone else. They are forced: in field labor, in sex, in house labor as servants. They watch their infants die, or survive and grow ashamed of their parents’ foreign ways. They grow and try to find meaning, hope, or simple daily satisfaction in their lives. And then they disappear from their communities nearly all at once.

Otsuka’s narrative is of a collective person, told through the eyes of many. Her novel is lyrical and strikingly relevant today. In the final scenes, where the Japanese perspective shifts to the non-Japanese Americans left behind (who, after regretting the sudden disappearance of their quiet and neat Japanese neighbors, forget them), thereader must wonder: could such forced removals occur today to another ethnic group seen as “the enemy” with a huge war as a backdrop? Is our country vocal enough and informed enough to prevent that? I hope so.

Anne Schlitt: Zelda: A Biography by Nancy Milford

This biography, originally published in 1970, was Nancy Milford’s masters thesis, and paints a picture of a woman who exemplified the 1920s “modern woman” and all the pitfalls that entailed. Zelda Sayre, a belle from Alabama, had a highly unsettled relationship and marriage with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and their buoyant optimism and high hopes for a life lived unconventionally slowly degenerated into alcoholism, infidelity, and for Zelda, mental illness, ultimately leading to her institutionalization. It’s a train wreck of a read—fascinating and tragic—and based on personal interviews with many of the key players, including Zelda’s mother.

Trudy Hickey: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in American history — or politics. I chose the book last summer in preparation for the recently-released Steven Speilberg movie “Lincoln”, although I have to admit that I haven’t made my way completely through all 750 pages. It’s a big book (!) but a good read.

Karen Myrick: Shadowbrook: A Novel of Love, War, and the Birth of America by Beverly Swerling

I enjoy historical fiction; the combination of historical fact and a sweeping fictional story made this one hard to put down.  Swerling weaves a tale of passion and intrigue, faith and devotion, courage and betrayal. Written with a cast of unforgettable characters and historical figures, including a young George Washington, this novel vividly captures the conflict that opened the eighteenth century and ignited our nation’s quest for independence.

Julia Walkling: The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell

I always hope for  good writing and will explore other works by authors who provide that. One such is the Swedish author Henning Mankell. Beginning with a number of his Kurt Wallander mysteries, I most recently listened The Man From Beijing, a novel that meets all my prerequisites: fast-paced yet thoughtful, and long enough to keep anyone who can tolerate suspense and blood driving straight ahead happily all the way to Fort Kent and back. My only regret is that I must read them in translation and thus miss what I suspect would be the pleasure of hearing the original Swedish.

Annie Medeiros: Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

A tale of how the 1,238th richest man in Russia finds himself as the Minister of Multicultural Affairs for the nation of Absurdistan, an oil-rich nation embroiled in a civil war.

Lizz Sinclair: The Great Night by Chris Adrian

Chris Adrian is a wonderful writer. The New Yorker listed him as one of the best young writers in America, but that is not how I found this novel. A friend who knows I love A Midsummer Night’s Dream loaned it to me. On Midsummer’s eve in 2008, Titania, Oberon and their court now reside under a hill in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco. On that night, the faeries’ great night,  Puck (not merely a mischievous spirit but an awful, insatiable, ancient menace) is unleashed into the world by Titania in a fit of grief and anger at the break up of her marriage in the wake of the death of a human child whom she and Oberon had stolen and adopted. Three humans who are lost in the park stumble upon the chaos and the beautiful, ephemeral, self-interested and indifferent world of the faeries. But do not think that this novel is merely a clever revision of a classic play. It is much more than that. The Great Night combines Adrian’s skill as a writer, his humor, and peculiar vision with a deeply sensitive exploration of the human condition that I i think springs from what he has experienced as a pediatric oncologist. It is a wildly strange, fantastic, beautiful novel about deep suffering, grief and love. It is one of those novels that continues to reveal itself long after being read.

Charles Thaxton: Regeneration by Pat Barker

A very fine English novel. I’d been meaning to read this book for years, so when I spotted it in the Literature and Medicine library here at the offices I knew it was time. Clean, clipped and beautiful prose from Barker that limns the historical, literary, political and psychological dimensions of the Great War. I was happy to learn this was the first in a trilogy.

Gina Mitchell: Body and Soul by Alondra Nelson

Of the books I read in 2012, Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson’s extensive history of the Black Panther Party’s health care activism, is high on the list. Nelson’s portrait of the Party goes beyond the familiar story of its revolutionary ideology and political militancy; it explores the Party’s efforts to establish free health clinics, raise awareness about sickle cell anemia, and combat medical discrimination. It’s an engaging read, and of course, the issues raised are quite interesting to think about alongside today’s health care debates!

Hayden Anderson: The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

Meredith and I were married at the end of October. Though briefly tempted earlier in the fall to undertake a re-reading of Jane Austen in search of wedding ideas [spoiler alert!], ultimately I decided instead to do some reading in preparation for our wedding trip (Spain). Alain de Botton is among my favorite contemporary essayists, and his The Art of Travel put us in just the right frame of mind to contend with hurricane delays, elusive rental car counters, and the complications associated with finding a decent lunch in Las Alpujarras.

(Posted by Charles Thaxton)

This frontier was a dangerous place for European settlers, who dotted the landscape with forts to protect themselves against rival European factions and Native Americans. In Richmond, along the Kennebec River, there were likely two forts, one built around 1721 and the second built in the same location around 1740. Neither survived the 18th century. Students will get their hands dirty and help unearth the forts before a new bridge is built across the Kennebec.

Learn about the basics of conducting a dig, artifact conversation, and what goes on behind the scenes at a museum led by Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands Historian Tom Desjardin. And sign up soon; spots are filling fast.

Photo credit: Bangor Museum and History Center

It wasn’t always easy back at the homefront during any war, as residents of Bangor knew during the 1860s. Many aspects of the rough-and tumble-lumber capital disappeared in the fire of 1911. From June 25 through 29, 2012, 7th – 12th graders can learn what life in Bangor was really like during the Civil War at Life on the Homefront, a MHC History Camp.

Learn about daily life in the Civil War era, including medicine, funerals, cooking, and clothes; the logging industry and Irish immigrants in the region; and how and why urban environments change. Work with Maine Bureau of Parks and Land Historian Tom Desjardin and explore the Bangor Museum and History Center and Leonard’s Mills, a historic settlement in Bradley. Sign up soon to have a spot!

Because the humanities are all about exploring thought through a variety of media, the Maine Humanities Council will be doing precise this with a graphic novel in an upcoming program, Lost in a Graphic Novel in Maine: Recreating a Classic Book on May 12. The MHC is collaborating with Down East Books, which published Lost Trail, a graphic novel version of the 1939 classic Lost on a Mountain in Maine, to hold a half-day teacher program based on the graphic novel. We’ll be working with K-12 teachers in Bangor and will provide historical context for the book as well as feature conversations with Ben Bishop, the graphic artist; noted children’s writer Lynn Plourde, who adapted the original book to this new format; and Donn Fendler, on whose experience in the wilds of Mt. Katahdin both books are based. We’ll help teachers think of new ways to present this engaging piece of Maine history to their students, as well as come to a greater understanding of the graphic novel genre and its possibilities in the classroom.

Have you thought about Lost on a Mountain in Maine every time you’ve been hiking or in the woods? Please let us know how that book has stayed with you. The MHC is giving away five copies of Lost Trail to the first five comments we receive to this post on that topic. And then perhaps Lost Trail will inspire new thoughts while you’re outdoors this summer.

(Posted by Diane Magras)

Once a seasonal resident of Bristol, Sarah Jane Wolf-Wade has lived in that town year-round for fourteen years—long enough to develop the perspective she offers in today’s poem.

They All Come Back

By Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade

The girl who shone in Broadway shows

was born here in the village on Fourth of July

and a Rockette who danced in the chorus line

came back to raise babies ten miles away.

The clamdigger brothers, working two tides a day,

sculpted like statues, left town in their prime.

The doctor brother returned to build homes,

the recovering teacher now fishes the sea.

The stenos, hairdressers, building inspectors

now all snuggle into the arms of the village.

People who married, those who traveled abroad

nestle into the homesteads built by their fathers.

Some born in the town migrate south in the winter,

reappear with songbirds early in spring.

The city-based clerk breathes deep of Maine air

as she crosses the Kittery bridge heading North.

Up on the hill among all the gravestones

lie the man shot dead in a place far from home

and a faraway baby who lived only a day.

Aunt Emma says, as she picks up a stitch,

“Our folks, they all come back in the end.”

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2008 by Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade. Reprinted from Down the Bristol Road, Snow Drift Press, 2008, by permission of Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Miss May Sarton (1904-1995), 1936; oil on canvas, by Polly Thayer Starr. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Courtesy of the Polly Thayer Starr Revocable Trust and the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust

Commemorating the 100th birthday of the acclaimed poet, novelist, and memoirist who lived and worked in Maine for the last 22 years of her life, the May Sarton Centennial Symposium will take place May 3 – 6, 2012, in York. It will focus attention on May Sarton as a major literary voice, building awareness of Maine as a place where literature and the arts are supported and celebrated. This exemplary program by the May Sarton Centennial Committee is supported by a major grant from Maine Humanities Council.

May Sarton wrote 16 books of poetry, 19 novels, 12 published journals and memoirs, and two children’s books, as well as essays, articles, and thousands of letters to her friends and readers. She wrote about empathy and compassion, nature and spirituality; she engaged deeply with the ideas of the feminist struggle, of developing a sense of self, of marriage and friendship, and, later, of old age and the links between art and death. The Symposium will explore all of these facets of Sarton’s work.

Symposium presenters will include Lenora Blouin, her bibliographer; filmmakers Linda Thornburg and Martha Wheeler, who have explored her life; and Susan Kenney, creative writing professor, author and longtime friend of Sarton. Maine’s current poet laureate Wesley McNair, and past poet laureates Betsy Sholl and Roger Finch, will also take part. A New England clambake featuring readings of Sarton poetry and the announcement of the winner of the May Sarton poetry prize will conclude the symposium. Programs will take place at the York Library, the Parsons Center (formerly Remick Barn), and First Parish Church.

This event is for all Sarton fans, readers and writers, teachers and students. Many York County book groups and community organizations are reading Sarton’s works in preparation for this program. For example, York Reads,
a community-wide reading experience for residents of all ages, this year selected Sarton’s House By the Sea.

The Symposium is being developed and managed by the May Sarton Centennial Committee, a group of local readers and friends in partnership with the Museums of Old York (Old York Historical Society), the Maine
Writers & Publishers Alliance, and the York Public Library.

Registration and more information are available online.

(Guest Post by Victoria Simon, co-chair of the May Sarton Centennial Committee)

At the Maine Festival of the Book, one of Maine’s best-kept secrets!

Held on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus from March 29^th-April 1^st, this annual event grows bigger and more exciting each year. Most events are free and unticketed (with the exception of Opening Night), and available first-come, first-served. The Maine Humanities Council has been happy to provide support for the Maine Festival of the Book each year through grants to its organizer, Maine Reads.

Civil War historian and best selling author Tony Horwitz (pictured above) is the featured speaker for the festival’s official opening on March 30^th. He will speak about his new book on abolitionist John Brown titled Midnight Rising. Horwitz won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for reporting. He is the author of four other books: A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without A Map.

The Maine Festival of the Book continues Saturday, March 31 and April 1. On Saturday starting at 9 am at the Abromson Center, enjoy a day of free programs featuring more than 50 authors. Programs for all ages and interests!  The festival continues Saturday evening with the Poetry Party and all day Sunday with the Book Arts Bazaar at USM and a performance at Portland Stage Company.

In its five years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 300 authors, including five Pulitzer Prize winners and been attended by more than 12,000 people. Don’t miss it!

And please stop by the MHC’s booth at the festival to say hello. You can also take a chance on the book baskets that we have contributed to the  festival’s raffle!

For directions and a full schedule for the festival, visit http://www.mainereads.org/

For podcasts of past speakers, visit our website: http://mainehumanities.org/podcast/archives/category/book_festival

Phillip Booth

The late Philip Booth of Castine had his own way with free verse, creating his music from the repetition of words and their placement on the page. Today’s poem, about the realities of old age, provides a striking example.

Old

by Phillip Booth

Old, the old know cause to be bitter:

they’ve seen

their children (as if they could tell)

insist they are growing deaf:

they’ve found

old friends invent new friends

to prove the old don’t matter:

they have hardened

themselves to let memory rust out;

with only themselves to hold on to,

they have grown

beyond any surprise;

to get their way

they have aged again

to be children:

beyond control, they have gained

control

of every last life save their own.

They know it can get no better.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 1990 by Philip Booth. Reprinted from Selves, Penguin Publishing, 1990, by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Mekeel McBride lives in Kittery and teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. In her poem she shows us what we have missed in the winter trees we observe every day.

Where Inspiration Has Learned a Thing or Two

By Mekeel McBride

From the trees because they are the true intuitives.

Palm readers of sunlight and storm, calm interpreters

for any kind of wind, doing most of the detective work

on shooting stars and aurora borealis. Their easy come,

easy go romances with migrating birds scarcely bear

recording and not even the quick cinema jump cuts

from summer to snow bother them. Even if there is snow,

temperature in the minus numbers, something continues

to live, invisible, at the core. Looking at the trees, you might

see in the bare branches only the bones of Babayaga’s hand

or the possibility of kindling for your wood stove, owl haven,

or a kind of living elegy blessed on the highest branch

by one thin crow. Of course you could be wrong. What

inspiration looks like is never really what it is.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2006 by Mekeel McBride. Reprinted from Dog Star Delicatessen, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006, by permission of Mekeel McBride. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.

Margaret Chase Smith

by Jim Melcher

Margaret Chase Smith, who served Maine in Congress for 32 years, is still one of the most iconic figures in Maine political history over 15 years after her death in 1995. She remains a significant figure in American national political history as well. What can we still learn from “The Red Rose of Skowhegan”’s experience in politics almost three decades after she left the Senate in 1973? As a scholar of American politics, I tried my hand at this question at a conference titled “The Politics of Conscience: Margaret Chase Smith and Today’s Political Climate” hosted by the Maine Humanities Council at G.W.-Hinckley (formerly Good Will-Hinckley) this past September. (The podcast available here on the MHC website is from a later presentation on this topic I made in Professor Amy Fried’s class on Women and Politics at the University of Maine). I argued that not only are there ways in which we can learn from Margaret Chase Smith’s experience still holding valid today, but that there are other ways in which her experience offers a contrast to the way American politics works now.

What’s often mentioned about Smith is her courage and her “firsts” as a woman in politics. Her notable stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy in her first “Declaration of Conscience” speech and being the first woman to receive votes for a major party nomination for President (at the 1964 Republican convention) are among the most familiar examples.  But these events also point to a legacy somewhat more difficult to observe: a political career that proved that principled partisanship and civility can go together effectively. She was able to combine a career in which she was both a nationally noted spokeswoman for her party and a senator able to both work and enjoy civil relationships with political leaders from across the aisle. Her 1970 “Second Declaration of Conscience” speech, reacting largely to uncivil politics and behavior on college campuses, effectively made the point that civility in politics is not just something to be asked of political leaders, but of the public as well. Finally, an examination of Smith’s 1964 presidential campaign strategy and her suspicion of the role campaign contributions (and disdain for raising them) shows that even where the approaches she took might not work as well in today’s political world, they offer a contrast that shines light on how American elections work today. Even as much has changed in American politics since she first was elected to Congress in 1940, Smith continues to stand as an illuminating example of the possibilities of principle.

Jim Melcher is Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Maine at Farmington