April 23, 2008
Massilon, OH

As with umbrellas and rain, so with photographic equipment and spectacle. If you want to make something photogenic happen, just lose your camera. That’s how I found myself sitting Saturday night in the newly consecrated Fairless Middle School Auditorium in Western Stark County, Ohio, trying not to notice the astronomical adorability quotient of the father and son a couple of seats away. Since I got a voice-recognition device to do my blogging for me from Monroe, Michigan, last week, let’s see if I can do a camera’s work today:

Picture a small boy, too young to read but old enough to want to. He’s parked on his dad’s lap front row center, both of them listening to the Canton Symphony Orchestra String Quartet play, beautifully, a regrettably stingy three out of four movements of Dvorak’s American Quartet.

The kid and his dad have been sitting there since the program began an hour and a half ago with the same poised string quartet playing “Heliotrope Bouquet” as if Scott Joplin had arranged it for this very band. Some thought obviously went into both selections, since The Call of the Wild was written in 1903, three years before Joplin’s rag and ten years after the Dvorak.

Anyway, the pair then sat raptly through a cheerful welcome from Massillon Museum executive director Christine Fowler Shearer, who’s heroically shepherded this whole Big Read to the starting line, despite both staff turnover and the distraction of an ballot issue on which her budget depended. (The good guys won; did the Big Read help? Who can say?)

Next up onstage was me, drawing strenuous parallels between sled teams, string quarterts, four-partnered Big Reads and, so help me, quadrupeds in general. From the podium, I pointed out the kid as an example of the program’s indirect but maybe most important beneficiaries. Graciously, he didn’t squirm.

Then state representative Scott Oelslager stepped up to introduce the keynote speaker. Oelslager’s a jovial sort whose dad taught social studies thereabouts, and he still narrates with almost explicable pride the day he saw Roberto Clemente throw out Willie Mays trying to stretch a triple at Forbes Field. No fidgeting from the kid about that.

Then came Prof. Jeanne Campbell Reesman of the University of Texas San Antonio, author of several books about Jack London, with two more on the way later this year. She delivered a university-grade keynote about “The Call of the Wild as a Slave Narrative” that made believers of the whole crowd. Think about it: Buck is lured away from his idyllic life in California, made captive to a massive enterprise, but winds up free to tell the tale. If it isn’t impolitic to suggest, maybe The Call of the Wild isn’t the only such narrative here at the NEA.

The kid was politeness itself through Dr. Reesman’s talk. How much of the nuances he caught, I can’t vouch for, but he had manners to burn.

Then the string quartet came back for the Dvorak, and I got my Kodak moment, albeit — cursed be it — without my Kodak. This kid, his feet swaying gently to the music, his eye contact unrequired by musicians focused purely on each other, finally lets his attention stray to…the NEA’s Readers Guide to The Call of the Wild. Arms around him, his father is reading it too.

That’s how I want to remember them. Volunteer Margy Vogt snapped a nice picture of them afterward, but it doesn’t do the pair justice. The image of these two, dad reading about Jack London, his son looking at pictures of the Klondike Gold Rush and maps of the Yukon, is The Big Read I know, and only wish everybody could see. . . .

April 19, 2008
Washington, DC

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”

While scholars debate the historical veracity of the poem that begins with these lines, no one can deny the power of its galloping musicality, evocative imagery, and memorable lines. Since his death in 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have lost some of his appeal, but in the 19th century, he was undoubtedly America’s most popular poet. From ballads such as “A Psalm of Life” to sonnets such as “Mezzo Cammin” — and especially for his longer narrative poems Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha — Longfellow’s work remains a vital part of American literature and American history.

Inspired by the continued success of Poetry Out Loud, the NEA and the Poetry Foundation unite once again — this time in a pilot off-shoot of The Big Read, to celebrate great American poets and the nation’s historic poetry locales.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was chosen as the first poet in this newly expanding part of The Big Read. We created and produced educational materials on the poetry and life of Longfellow, which were given to all three Literary Landmarks that celebrate Longfellow’s legacy: Longfellow’s birthplace in Portland, Maine; Longfellow’s long-time residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn was the first grant recipient for these new poetry Big Reads. The public programming for The Big Read: The Poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began on Longfellow’s birthday, February 27, when NEA Chairman Dana Gioia gave an inspiring speech on Longfellow’s life and works at the Martha-Mary Chapel near the Wayside Inn. Steve Young, Program Director at the Poetry Foundation, attended this opening event, along with NEA staff — Felicia Knight, Shana Chase, and Erika Koss.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn is located on the Old Post Road in Sudbury, MA. Photo by Erika Koss

After dinner, Steve and I joined our fellow travelers Charles Calhoun (Longfellow biographer), Jane Wald (Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum), and Cindy Hall Kouré (Project Director for the Longfellow Big Read) in the oldest room of the Inn, where the Howe family’s tavern started in 1716. As the fire burned low and snow fell outside, we enjoyed a late night of camaraderie and poetry-reading. As we five had all travelled that day from four different parts of America –Maine, Illinois, Washington, DC, and Massachusetts — we inadvertently re-created the ambiance of Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn. (You can listen to the poems we read, as well as lectures by Chairman Gioia and Charles Calhoun, at http://longfellow.wayside.org/html/listen.htm.)

The next day, Charles and I spoke to several classes at Sudbury’s Lincoln High School, highlighting several poems by Longfellow — “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,” “The Cross of Snow,” and “The Children’s Hour” — and shedding light on several important moments in Longfellow’s life, especially the tragic death by fire of Fanny Appleton, the poet’s second wife. Charles and I were impressed by the many insightful comments made by students. We were grateful to the teachers who welcomed us into their classrooms and who included Longfellow as part of their curriculum because of The Big Read.

Through March and April, events were scheduled at the Wayside Inn as well as at the Goodnow Library, the Sudbury Public Schools, and the Sudbury Senior Center. Highlights included talks by Christopher Bing, who engraved and illustrated the children’s book The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere , and Colleen Boggs, a Dartmouth College professor who discussed how Longfellow’s work as a translator introduced modern European languages into American higher education. In addition, the thirteen singers of The Longfellow Chamber Chorus from Portland, Maine, presented an international selection of 19th, 20th, and 21st century vocal settings of Longfellow poems.

The Wayside Inn will conclude its Big Read programming on Patriot’s Day, April 19, by hosting a community read of “Paul Revere’s Ride.” During brunch at the Inn, members of the Sudbury Ancient Fyfe and Drum Companie will provide music.

It seems most fitting to end this blog with the words of Cindy Hall Kouré, whose dedication, creativity, and hard work made the Wayside Inn’s Big Read such a success. She summarized their experience with these words:

“The past six weeks have been wonderful, with friends and neighbors coming out not only to express their appreciation of Longfellow’s poetry but also their affection for the old Inn. The staff at the Wayside Inn have enjoyed the book discussions — our participants have shown that they are both literature and history enthusiasts. Longfellow lends himself well to discussions of topics important in New England history: the Transcendentalists, slavery and the Abolitionist movement, and maritime History — not to mention the history of people’s houses! Thanks to the NEA for a great community experience.”

April 16, 2008
Washington, DC

“Writing is power.” If I were a school teacher for a day, that’s the first thing I’d tell my students. “Don’t be afraid of a blank page of paper,” I’d declare. “With paper and a pen, you can create an entire universe. You might even change our world.” But would students believe me?

I got the chance to find out last week in Waukee, Iowa, when talking with middle and high school students. Seventh graders studying poetry at Waukee’s Middle School laughed at me when I claimed to be able to “control the space/time continuum.” That is, until I wrote two sentences on the board.

Dan went to bed at nine o’clock.

The next morning, he ate oatmeal for breakfast.

It’s a simplistic example but, between those two sentences we jump forward in time at least nine hours.

“Authors,” I told the students, “make time-travelers of us all.” Great writing can take us from the sublime garden of Mary Oliver’s poem, “Peonies,” to Ray Bradbury’s futuristic world of Fahrenheit 451, to Edith Wharton’s old New York in The Age of Innocence. What do these works of art have in common? They each began with a blank sheet of paper.

Cynthia Ozick transports us ahead three decades between the opening short story of The Shawl, which takes place during the Holocaust , and the book’s second section, set in the 1970s. As readers we accept this without reservation. The author has grasped us with her capable hand. We follow her without hesitation.

Waukee High School English teacher Ann Hanigan’s honors tenth graders stunned me with their insightful comments about the similarity between Rosa Lublin’s personality before the horrors of the Holocaust changed her life forever and that of her niece, Stella, thirty years later — after the pair had settled in the United States. They saw how each woman cared for the other, finding strength when the other was weak. In their eyes, The Shawl is as much a love story between these two women as it is “Holocaust fiction.”

I wish Cynthia Ozick could have been a fly on the wall of that classroom! The night before, she had graciously appeared at the Waukee Public Library via an internet conference, answering questions for more than an hour and a half. Charming and witty, Ozick immediately put everyone in the room at ease despite the book’s somber subject matter. The Big Read participants adored her.

The Waukee community benefited from the hard work of four fabulous women. Assistant Library Director Devon Murphy-Peterson and Rebecca Johnson, the President of the Waukee Library Board of Trustees, applied for The Big Read grant and plotted every aspect of programming. They recruited Ann Hanigan, the phenomenal high school English teacher, to encourage local middle and high school students to get involved. Jane Olson of the Waukee Area Arts Council added a wealth of knowledge about how to get local residents to attend events. “People come out to support their kids,” she told me. “Getting young people involved is so important.”

Perhaps nothing illustrates Waukee’s commitment to reaching young people better than The Big Read’s final event, a party at the library celebrating six weeks of reading and discussing The Shawl. Middle and high school students read their winning essays about the importance of literature in their lives. The Attic Door Theatre Company, a troop of teenage girls, performed a choral stage adaptation of the novel. Waukee High School culinary students baked truly tasty treats. Julie Kaufman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines surprised everyone by presenting the Waukee High School with funding for two teachers to travel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

During all of these festivities the music of Eastern Europe was performed with zest by a local klezmer band, the Java Jews. Small children (and some not-so-small adults) were dancing the polka between the stacks. By the end of the evening, I was so moved that I could barely speak. Literature came alive that night — changing, transporting, and empowering us all.

April 4, 2008
Staunton, VA

This is either the most revolutionary idea I’ve ever had, or the dumbest. But first let’s just throw up some eye candy, shall we? I always like to put some art up to leaven these otherwise indigestible lozenges of prose, so here is “The Big Read Blues,” courtesy of the Staunton, Va., Big Read — about which more in a minute. So cock an ear at this and then I will be right back.

Cindy’s Big Read Blues (mp3)

I’ve shown you that because I want to make a point about the viability of things other than the printed word as a way to draw attention to, and enthusiasm for, the printed word — because what you are reading right now is, with a little luck, my first-ever dictated post. That is to say, I am enlisting oral culture in the service of written culture. I am going to make this maiden bow slightly hasty, but my rationalization for it is that blogging — which I can now do out loud thanks to a new Web site that transcribes dictation — rewards haste. Blogs are supposed to be spontaneous, and my tendency to bloviate at great length about The Big Read is probably, at bottom, at odds with the medium. It’s like using oil paints to write a novel.

This Web site supposedly makes it possible for you to call a number and speak what’s on your mind, in the same way that Steve Allen used to do, carrying a tape recorder with him at all times to keep track of his stray ideas. Well, if it worked for the man who’s used it to compose “This Could Be the Start of Something Big,” then perhaps this is indeed the start of something big.

Because this is a shakedown cruise, I’m going to consume a little of it with a couple of links. I’ll be back in a second, but first I want to show you an example of just how spellbinding the spoken word can be as a means of encouraging folks to discover the written word. Here’s Dr. Edward Scott giving a keynote address on To Kill a Mockingbird in Staunton, Virginia:

http://www.newsleader.com/assets/mp3/AA102721311.MP3 [50 minutes]

Pretty powerful, eh? Now, so you shouldn’t think I’ve gone over to the dark, antitextual side completely, here’s Cindy Corell, community conversations editor at The News Leader in Staunton, Va., reacting in the paper to what you just heard:

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/NEWS01/
803160323/1002/rss01

The literary essay as a form of daily journalism lives! Cindy followed up the other day with this email:

“We are having a blast! Of course, [our book is] To Kill a Mockingbird, and book clubs have jumped in all over the place.

We even have one here at the newspaper! And it’s mostly made up of folks from other departments! Imagine - a newspaper and its people who love reading aren’t all bunched up in the newsroom!!! That has been an eye-opener for people! And a good one…That’s been my favorite part of this month-long exercise. I’ve made new friends and bonded more closely with close friends — all because of words on a page! Beautiful!

Please know that you and the rest of the NEA Big Read circle have many fans in Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County, Va. Harper Lee got it started, the NEA created the program and people — just regular people from all over — are making it happen.

To all — many thanks!

Cindy”

I’m back, if only for the moment, so that I can dash off to give a keynote address of my own — a situation that will find me speaking aloud in, I hope, far less self-conscious fashion. I will only sign off here by saying I apologize for the rather scattershot nature of this, my first dictated blog post. I assume one gets the hang of it after awhile, and stops starting every sentence with the first person singular. I can only think back to my hero Rob Serling’s flirtation with dictated television drama, about which he wrote a terrific Twilight Zone episode with, I believe, Phyllis Kirk or Phyllis Thaxter, I’m not sure which, as the wife of a writer whose Dictabelts take on a certain supernatural quality. Anyways, wish me luck on this. I hope it will lead not just to more disjointed posts, but also more frequent ones.

Simply put, this is a work-in-progress, and if anybody has any reactions to it, by all means, let me know how it’s shaping up from your end. I’ll leave my email address: bigreadblog@arts.gov. So that’s it for now, and more dictablogs down the big road…