Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director
Missouri Humanities Council
Contents:
- "Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature" (December 1 deadline for ALA grants)
- Books for Young Readers by Missouri Authors, by Julie Douglas
- Using Creative Talent in Local Museums
- 21st by 21 Museum Initiative
- Ben Franklin Touring Exhibit Available for Libraries
- A Memory of the Journalist, Ed Bradley
- National Archives in Kansas City Promotes History Education
- The Bluesy Literature of Spam
"Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature"
The American Library Association is currently accepting applications for $2,500 grants to support book discussions about Jewish Literature. The application deadline is December 1.
Applications and complete information are available at http://www.ala.org/publicprograms. Selected libraries will receive a $2,500 programming grant, inclusion in a national training workshop for project directors, and program and promotional materials.
Based on the "Let's Talk About It" reading and discussion model pioneered nationally by ALA in 1984, "Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature" features scholar-led, theme-based discussions that explore the best in contemporary and classic Jewish literature. Over the past three years, "Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature" grants have been awarded to 159 libraries nationwide. Participating libraries host a five-part discussion series featuring one of six themes.
The ALA is supporting several theme-based series on Jewish Literature through this program initiative. "Let's Talk About It" is now in its twenty-sixth year as a national program to encourage people to get together to discuss books with a humanities scholar serving as a discussion leader.
Books for Young Readers by Missouri Authors
Julie Douglas has some wonderful suggestions for those who will be adding books to Santa's shopping list. http://mohumanities.org/E-News/Nov06/moauthors.htm
Using Creative Talent in Local Museums
On the first day of November, I visited a remarkable group of museum trustees in Maryville. I thought I learned a great deal during my visit there, but when I viewed the DVD on "Opening Doors to Great Guest Experiences" from Conner Prairie Living History Museum, I realized that I was just discovering some things that are already known. If you're interested in improving a museum or historic house, I have a few things to say about my new friends in Maryville.
http://mohumanities.org/E-News/Nov06/potential.htm
The training materials from Conner Prairie are better than I had imagined. You don't have to be a living history institution to make use of the principles in their very instructive DVD and CD-ROM collection. You can buy the set for $39 at the Conner Prairie link below.
http://www.connerprairie.org/openingdoors/
The Missouri Humanities Council is intent upon a goal of helping local history institutions succeed. We want to help historic houses, museums, and historical societies secure their future by helping them learn the new practices of interpretation that distinguish the 21st century from the more passive past.
The idea is to bring our state's museum practices into the 21st century in time for our statehood bicentennial in 2021. Thus, "21st by 21." We'd like to support Fifty (or more!) exemplary projects by 2010, for starts.
In 2007 we plan to organize several regional one-day conferences for history organizations. I am meeting with a team of our best consultants next month to plan new services aimed at assistance for "interpretive planning" and "interpretive training." Our charette program remains the best way to start thinking about the future you want. The new services will help move toward making that future possible despite the problems and the many reasons why "it can't happen here."
Ben Franklin Touring Exhibit for Libraries
The ALA Public Programs Office, in collaboration with the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, Philadelphia, Pa., is now accepting grant applications from public, academic and special libraries wishing to host the traveling exhibition, "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World."
Applications are available online at http://www.ala.org/publicprograms and must be received by February 9, 2007.
One copy of the 1,000-square-foot traveling exhibit will circulate to 20 public and academic library sites beginning in November 2007. Libraries selected for the tour will host the exhibit for a six-week period. Participating libraries are expected to present at least two free public programs featuring a lecture or discussion by a qualified scholar on exhibition themes. All showings of the exhibition will be free and open to the public.
The exhibition will consist of six sections of colorful, freestanding photo-panels incorporating representations of artifacts from the original Franklin exhibition, and a new text written by the curator. Exhibition content is arranged in thematic sections showing Franklin in the Boston of his youth, Franklin's family and personal life, as well as the years when he built his business as Philadelphia's premier printer. The exhibit also looks at Franklin's commitment to public service, his interests in medicine and public health, and his work in science and philosophy. Franklin's political career in England, France and the United States, and his contributions to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other major documents are the subjects of the final two sections of the exhibit.
Please see www.ala.org/publicprograms for complete information, including guidelines and application. If you require a copy of the application by mail, please contact publicprograms@ala.org.
A Memory of the Journalist, Ed Bradley
My friend, Jim Quay, who directs the California Council for the Humanities, shared this memory the day after the death of Ed Bradley was announced on the evening news.
I never met Ed Bradley but I admired him very much. Here's why:
In the mid-1980s, "Sixty Minutes" did a report on Walter Capps' Vietnam class at UC Santa Barbara and Ed Bradley was the lead reporter. They filmed parts of the class, which by then was filling the 900 seats of the largest auditorium on campus. During his stay in Santa Barbara, Bradley listened to some of the veterans' testimony and talked to the class about his experiences as a reporter there. At the end of each quarter, Walter would take a group of students to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Bradley decided to film this, though Bradley himself had never visited the Memorial.
The camera crew was set up across the open field in front of the Memorial. Bradley found himself hesitant to approach the Wall, when he saw a student from the class struggling to reach her father's name to make a rubbing. Bradley strode across the field, came up to the young woman and made the rubbing for her. She was crying, of course, and the cameraman moved in to record the moment. Bradley, the consummate journalist, moved in front of the cameraman and blocked the shot. There were some moments, he felt, that were not for public consumption.
That's a kind of journalistic integrity you don't hear much about and a story I thought should be more widely known.
National Archives in Kansas City Promotes History Education
I just got an e-newsletter from Kimberlee Ried at the The National Archives, Kansas City, and it shows a government agency doing a great job to promote an interest in history.
- Details about a variety of Genealogy workshops taught by National Archives staff
- Recommended research topics for National History Day. This is a tri-fold brochure in PDF format that you can download or print on-line. It's at www.archives.gov/central-plains/kansas-city/education/history-day-06.pdf
- A free CD-ROM for teachers includes original documents with teacher notes, suggested activities, online & print sources, analysis worksheets, and state (MO, NE & KS) & national standard correlations. To order a free copy please send an email to: kansascity.educate@nara.gov
If you would like to subscribe to the National Archives e-news, contact kimberlee.ried@nara.gov
And speaking of e-mail....Like most people I know, my e-mail box is glutted with over a hundred spam messages every day, and I'm lucky to have such a low number. Spammers don't care about my gender, so I am invited to read all about any number of products or "services" that are of interest to males, females, people down on their luck or with money to burn. The subject lines of so many spam messages are non-rational nonsense. It's a time-tested advertising gimmick to get you to open the message. (I suppose there is such a thing as "rational nonsense," too. Unfortunately, you can't be vaccinated to protect you from that at the clinic!)
Two or three times a day I go into a spam folder and make sure it doesn't contain a "real" message from you to me. In the process I notice the potential for a warped kind of poetry in those non-rational subject lines.
I think the blues are appropriate for such annoying influxes of e-hail, so I collected four days' worth of subject headings and wrote a blues in the style of Bob Dylan. The hail metaphor comes from one of his new songs, "Nettie Moore." He wrote a line that goes, "Blues this mornin' comin' down like hail/Gonna leave a greasy trail."
The italicized words and phrases in my blues are direct quotes from the subject lines in my spam folder.
http://mohumanities.org/E-News/Nov06/found_poems.htm