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Volume 5, No. 2: February 2008, from Michael Bouman, Executive Director

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On Family Reading, monthly column from Julie Douglas
Julie photo Books Without Words This month I'll explain how a book with no words can help develop the intelligence of a toddler, and a toddler's parent!
"Smithsonian Exhibit Towns" Selected
Oh brother, were we ever deluged with community applications for the 2009 tour of "New Harmonies!" It's a community-participation exhibit about American "roots music." No, not stuff about carrots, beets, and parsnips. It's all about music born and bred here. We had more interest in Missouri than the Smithsonian has ever seen for this touring program in any year, anywhere. The upshot is (trumpet fanfare), we'll have "New Harmonies" in 2010 as well! We'll put out a call for applications next year. The winning towns for 2009 are listed on our New Harmonies page.
Matt Meacham to Advise "New Harmonies" Towns
Photo of Matt MeachamFolklorist Matt Meacham (Folklorist at the West Plains Council on the Arts) has signed on as program advisor to the towns that will host "New Harmonies." We've got a profile of him on the New Harmonies page now.
African American Baseball Exhibit Available - John Adams Exhibit Available
We've gathered up a variety of new program announcements for museums and libraries on the "Must-Do" Section of Missouri Passages.
Sac and Fox Program in St. Clair - March 9
Image of Sandra MasseySandra Massey, the Historic Preservation Officer from the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, served as the principal curator of the touring exhibit on Sac and Fox heritage. She will be present at the Opening Ceremonies at the St. Clair Historical Museum on Sunday, March 9 from 1 to 4 p.m. Our news release has full details.
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Hide and Seek (At the Library of Congress)
Image of an image at the Library of congress
There is some very interesting stuff going on in the art museum world, and now at the Library of Congress. People are trying to find good ways to involve the public in "tagging" the things in a collection. A "tag" is a descriptive word or phrase about an item in a collection. Different people may come up with different tags for the same thing. If a collection of items is on line, and if each item has a rich set of tags associated with it, then there are many chances that someone browsing the collection on line will find items of interest. Read more...
Smartening Up With Wordless Books
Image of Julie DouglasMy colleague, Julie Douglas, has outdone herself with a fabulous article about the joy of reading wordless books with a youngster. Her piece makes several pithy observations about the way "reading" a wordless book promotes the development of intelligence. I'll have to read a few of these after I finish with Dave Barry.
2009 Chautauqua Festival Seeks Host Communities

In two weeks we're opening the door for community applications to host the 2009 Chautauqua tour. We'll continue with the theme of “THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!” The show spotlights American innovators who helped open up the entertainment industry to mass audiences. In our 2008 tour, they are P.T. Barnum, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison and Margaret Mitchell.

We'll announce again next month, but if you want to get an early start on an application, please contact my colleague, Patricia Zahn patricia@mohumanities.org or 1.800.357.0909 for more information or an application.

If you want to have Chautauqua, but at a different time of the year, or with different characters, we invite grant applications to support such things. It's sure not easy to put a public festival together, but if you're up for that, we will try to help you find good people. Our National Directory of Chautauqua Performers is a great place to start a talent hunt. You can find it and some helpful tips on the Chautauqua page of our web site.

This coming June you can see our “THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!” Chautauqua in:

  • Carthage - June 5-8
  • Kirkwood - June 12-15
  • Osage Beach - June 19-23
  • Pike County - June  26-29
Dave Barry as Literature? Yes!

We're all going out this week to order Dave Barry's Starcatcher Trilogy. These three books are a "prequel" to the Peter Pan story, and if they are as funny as Dave's other books, we're going to have a very happy time of it.

We are doing this because the "ReadMOre" statewide book group is going to organize discussions on this three-book set, and we're big on one-book projects of any kind.

There's a new wrinkle to how we're promoting the programs this year, and I hope you'll help us give some online gadgets a good shakedown. If you go to the ReadMOre web site and poke around, you will notice that we have set up an online "Discussion" place, a Blog, and an online Calendar for events.

Although navigating this page is somewhat like an Easter Egg Hunt, if you persist, you may see a Facebook link and a photo-sharing place at Flickr.com. So...that's five "portals" for people to participate online in some way, and I've got to admit, the portals are empty right now. (I just set them up!) Why don't you take a look at these portals and see if you might want to become part of an online community, a "virtual circle of friends" who come together to chat about these books? I just jumped in and opened a Facebook account, and that was brave. I felt silly doing it, as if I'd walked into a place made for people of tender years. We'll see how it goes. Join in so I won't feel so lonely, OK?

A Schubert Song on You Tube
This week I wrote a piece about one of my favorite singers and a representative performance at the height of his powers. The singer is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the song is "Gute Nacht," the first of twenty-four songs in a cycle titled "Die Winterreise," and the video is of a live performance, perhaps on Japanese TV, in 1966. Fischer-Dieskau was forty-one at the time. His career began in 1947 and continued to his retirement in 1992. At the time of this video he was the most-recorded voice in history.
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