Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director
Missouri Humanities Council

Contents:

• Arrow Rock is One of "A Dozen Distinctive Destinations"
• Osage Tribal Speakers in Washington, Missouri
• Introducing Julie Douglas with "A Reason to Read"
• "Drop Everything and Read" Day
• ReadMOre Invites Family Memoirs
• More New Projects Encourage Best Practices
• Girl Riding into Town on a Pony, by Michael Bouman

Arrow Rock is One of "A Dozen Distinctive Destinations"

Color me happy.  I've just heard that Arrow Rock, Missouri has just been selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of its "Dozen Distinctive Destinations" for 2006.  If you've never visited Arrow Rock, you owe yourself a day trip or an overnight stay in one of the charming Bed & Breakfasts there.  It's a place of infinite charm, very camera-friendly, and very thought-provoking.  Kathy Borgman and the Friends of Arrow Rock are truly among Missouri's "culture heroes" for the work they do to make this place so delightful.

http://www.nationaltrust.org/dozen_distinctive_destinations/2006/arrowrock.html

Osage Tribal Speakers in Washington, Missouri

One of the brightest lights of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial is the participation of American Indians in reshaping our country's knowledge of Indians.  I don't know of a local organization that has done a better job of facilitating this work than the Washington Lewis and Clark Committee. 

On Saturday, March 25th and Sunday, March 26th, 2006 the Washington Lewis and Clark Committee will present their final symposium: "Legacy of the Expedition." The two-day program in the C.J. Burger Theatre will examine the effects of Bicentennial on our knowledge of the original expedition, American Indians, the Missouri River and its environs.

Kathryn Red Corn (right).  "Our I-Lon-Shka dances are the glue that hold us together."

Speakers will include Kathryn Red Corn, Director of the Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma; historian James M. Denny, author of Atlas of Lewis and Clark in Missouri; Charles Red Corn, author of the novel, A Pipe for February; anthropologist Carol Diaz-Granados on "American Indian Pictographs in the Missouri River Valley"; James Duncan, an archaeologist specializing in reconstructive archeology and former Director of the Missouri State Museum; Bob Block, author of Talkingstick, from Pawhuska, Oklahoma on artifacts of the Osage; and Mike Venso, photographer and author of Across the Snowy Ranges. Authors will be available for book signings.

Red Corn family at the 2004 I-Lon-Shka dances at Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

During the Saturday luncheon, the Osage textile collection of Danette Daniels will be modeled.

Tickets are $50.00 if purchased in advance and include attendance at both days of the event, the Saturday luncheon & clothing show, and a tour of Fort Charrette in Washington, Missouri. Tickets will be $60 if purchased that day and may not include a tour of Fort Charrette. Tickets may be purchased online at www.washingtonmo.us , at the Missourian Publishing Office at 14 West Main, or Gary Lucy Galleries at 231 West Main, both in Washington, Missouri. For more information e-mail lewisclark@washingtonmo.us or to purchase tickets by credit card (Discover, Visa, Mastercard) call 636-390-8257.

Julie Douglas with "A Reason to Read"

My colleague Julie Douglas, who started her new job here on March 1, is a former Kindergarten teacher and a published writer of children's literature.  She succeeds Kathryn Ballard as our Family Program Specialist, Kathryn having reduced her role here to focus on artistic direction of our Chautauqua program.

Julie becomes our fifth manager of READ from the START, the program that helps new families acquire their first children's books and techniques for using books as a springboard to conversation and playtime activities.  Julie will become a monthly contributor to E-Passages, I'm happy to say.  Her first piece is right here:

http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/March06/reasontoread.htm

"Drop Everything and Read" Day

April 12, 2006 has been proclaimed National "Drop Everything and Read Day" (D.E.A.R.). It is an initiative to encourage families to designate at least 30 minutes to put aside all distractions and enjoy books together......to make it a special time to "drop everything and read." The 90th birthday of Newbery Award-winning author Beverly Cleary is the official national D.E.A.R. day, and Cleary's most popular book character, Ramona Cumby, is the program's official spokesperson. Also, in celebration of D.E.A.R. Day, the National Education Association (NEA) and the NEA Foundation, with support from HarperCollinsChildren'sBooks, is offering a funding opportunity called the D.E.A.R. Bookshelf. This program awards $250 for classroom, school and public libraries to enrich book collections and offer titles that kids will want to drop everything for and read! The deadline for applications, available at http://www.neafoundation.org is March 24, 2006. National D.E.A.R. materials for programming in libraries are available now at dear"at"harpercollins.com.

ReadMOre Invites Family Memoirs

Missouri readers will have plenty of opportunities this Spring to get together and share stories of their parents' influence on how they see themselves and their place in the world.  The springboard to these discussions is the extremely amiable book about a Missouri childhood, Messages from My Father, by Kansas City native, Calvin Trillin.  Trillin's family came from St. Joseph.  His father's family came from Ukraine.

Trillin, though, feels that the family he grew up with was "Midwestern" in its values and outlook.  Though his father was not a man of many words with his children, Trillin's memoir teases out all the "messages" that came through during his upbringing.  It is a loving and lovely book.  I'm happy to tell you that Calvin Trillin will be in Missouri sometime in June as part of the ReadMOre project.

ReadMOre is not the only "one book" project in Missouri.  There are three or four others.  The Missouri Humanities Council has become a partner with the loose association that is ReadMOre because it aims to grow into a statewide opportunity. The vision is that people anywhere in Missouri can avail themselves, once a year, of an opportunity to read and discuss the same book that others are reading everywhere else.

My colleague, Beth Felice, just designed a web site for ReadMOre.  One of the parts I like the best is the portal that allows people to take inspiration from Messages from My Father and share their own brief family memoir.  The web site will be a form of community bulletin board.  We can all read each other's family memoirs.

http://www.readmoremissouri.org/

More New Projects Encourage Best Practices

I'm keeping a list of exciting new projects that upgrade our teaching and interpretive practices.  Our 21st by 21 initiative seeks to cover the state with upgraded institutions.  The slogan means "bring our museum practices into the 21st century by the statehood bicentennial in 2021."

http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/March06/projects.htm

Girl Riding into Town on a Pony

When my father died at the end of September in the year 2000, my mother continued to live independently (in a broad manner of speaking) in their house in the Lutheran Haven community between Orlando and Sanford, Florida, and my sister and brother-in-law made increasing and increasingly tiring trips from Sanford to mitigate her anxieties and her needs for a sense of controlling events around her. 

Ultimately, they bought a house five minutes away from Lutheran Haven, which allowed them easily to include Mom in the daily activities of their household.  Mom was losing her sight during the last decade of her life to macular degeneration, she the payer of the household bills and the avid reader of publications designed specifically to stoke the fears of the elderly.  I thought it a blessing and a bane that she could read less and less; a blessing because there was less access to material I thought unfit for human consumption.  But that is another essay...

When my wife and I visited her in March of 2001 there was less to do, and so I began to fill those visits with a form of "oral history."  I asked her about her childhood and made copious notes in a spiral notebook.  I had helped her organize her family's genealogy a few years earlier, but I was unclear about many of the family stories and was ignorant about the bulk of them.  This way of passing the time seemed good for Mom.  I enjoyed it very much.

Later that year, wondering what sort of Christmas gift to give to someone who couldn't read, who didn't want anything, and who was allergic to flowers, I decided to write a little piece about her childhood.

I've contributed that piece to the collection of family memoirs that we're soliciting for the ReadMOre web site this year.  After you read Calvin Trillin's Messages from my Father, why don't you work up your own family memory?  I would like to see dozens on that web site by June!

Here's the piece I submitted:

http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/March06/ponygirl.htm