Maine Poet Laureate ⎥Wesley McNair

Often referred to as “a poet of place,” Wesley McNair captures the ordinary lives of northern New Englanders while writing about family conflict and other autobiographical subjects. His poems often explore American dreams interwoven with family drama and public culture. A New Hampshire native who has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, McNair has authored more than half a dozen collections of poetry, including The Faces of Americans of 1853 (1983), The Town of No (1989), andLovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems (2010).  McNair’s memoir, The Words I Chose, is due out this spring.

Listen to Wesley McNair talk about the process behind his poetry.

Click to listen: Wes McNair

To learn more about and read the poetry of Wesley McNair, go to: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/152/3#20601649

Considering Gladwell’s ’10,000 Hour Rule’

Some interesting patterns are beginning to emerge as I meet and record people who have achieved a level of success that has distinguished them in their field of endeavor.  To date, and without exception, each has found and become involved in their particular life’s work before the age of twelve.  And, once found, they never looked back as their interest became their passion and the driving force in their life.   This calls to mind Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers.  In it he repeatedly mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule”, claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

Great memoirs and biographies

 

Much of my work day is spent researching.  Long before I am ready to sit down with someone and record their story, I need to know the person behind the     public image.  What was their childhood like?  How did they come to their craft?  Who inspired them?  What obstacles did they face along the way?

As part of my research, I’ve read many remarkable memoirs and biographies.

 

Here are a few, Self-Portrait with Turtles by David Carroll, Unpacking the Boxes by Donald Hall and The Roots of Things by Maxine Kumin.  Pictured above is Wolf Kahn by Justin Spring.  I just finished reading The Words I Chose by Wesley McNair in preparation

for an upcoming recording date.  Wesley’s book is due out in the early spring.

If you are a non-fiction reader and interested in memoir / biography, I highly recommend these books.  More recommendations to follow…

Artist  Eric Aho

Eric Aho has quickly become one of the nation’s top artists working today. Always fresh and vibrant, his paintings evoke familiarity with a heightened sense of atmosphere. Using dynamic brushwork and a memory-based approach, the artist strives to capture the essential equivalent of his natural experience. Each brushstroke reveals a keen understanding of sophistication through austerity. The artist resides in New England, but a Fulbright Scholarship took him to his ancestral land of Finland where he continues to visit yearly.

His work is represented in collections throughout the country including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY; the Fleming Museum; the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Boston Public Library; the New York Public Library; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I will be recording Eric on February 23, 2012.  I am very much looking forward to it.

The image for this post was taken from the artist’s website: ericaho.com, and the copy was taken from the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mary

Artist ⎪Wolf Kahn

I will be recording Wolf Kahn on February 24, 2012.

Wolf Kahn is a superb colorist who has created a successful career of sophisticated landscape paintings.  While the artist celebrates nature’s simple, quiet aspects in his paintings—a grove of trees, an old barn, a winding river, or a summer sunset—he conveys natural beauty and majesty through his remarkable use of light, color, space, and atmosphere.

Kahn is represented in most major museum and university collections in America including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Dana Dakin ⎪ Founder ⎪ WomensTrust

Dana Dakin subscribes to the belief that life is lived in thirds – first you learn, then you earn, and finally, you return.  In 2003, to officially celebrate her sixtieth birthday and the beginning of her “return” phase, Dana Dakin boarded a plane and headed to Ghana, West Africa.  On her first trip she went to Pokuase, within the outside northern perimeter of the capital Accra, where she pitched the concept of microlending to small groups of women.  She engendered enough interest to return in six months, with funding that came from the sale of her second car.

To listen to Dana talk about returning home to New Hampshire after her first trip to Pokuase, click here:  01 SPI-Dana Dakin

Today, WomensTrust in the village of Pokuase is thriving, with more than 1000 women in the loan program and repayment rates consistently above 90 percent.  Additional funding is directed toward such pressing needs as scholarships for girls and healthcare.  The 501c(3) organization (with NGO status in Ghana) has become a viable community-based partnership in the village and is a model that can be replicated.

Words and images  Getting to know The Hale Street Gang

I arranged for my Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth (ILEAD) class to  view the Hale Street Gang exhibit at the AVA Gallery on January 17, 2012.

It’s a marvelous exhibition combining wonderfully written memoir entries, presented in the spoken voice, along with photographs that capture not only an image, but a spirit.   This photo, taken at the opening of the exhibition, is by Jack Rowell of Braintree, VT – the same fellow who captured image and spirit of the Hale Street Gang members.

Some background:

Meet the Hale Street Gang, twelve senior citizens who gather once a week to read aloud from their memoirs-in-progress. Their clubhouse is the Greater Randolph Senior Center, an elderly mansion in a neighborhood south of the railroad tracks. Together they weave a “collective memoir” of life in twentieth-century America, with the village of Randolph, Vermont as its nexus.

The exhibit shows the work—in photographs, written text, and recorded voices—of a dozen Randolph-area seniors who have been writing down their life stories.

The project originated in October 2008, when the Senior Center offered a six-week memoir writing class. Almost two years later, the twelve members of the Hale Street Gang continued to gather in the Senior Center “craft room” to read aloud what they have written during the week. Most of the writers are in their eighties (the eldest is 99). They write about everything: learning to fish, skate, drive, and kiss. Falling in love. Getting old. They write about their lives as teachers, nurses, farmers, soldiers, and social workers. They write about their memories of World Wars I and II, the “Roaring Twenties,” the Depression. The towns they grew up in, the games they played as children, the regrets they still live with after many decades. They wonder, on paper, how they are supposed to conduct their lives at the age of ninety-something. They are scouting the territory for the next generation.

The exhibition will be at the AVA Gallery, 11 Bank Street, Lebanon, NH through February 10, 2012.

The War We Knew, RiverWoods residents remember

I spoke to a group of seniors at RiverWoods in Exeter, New Hampshire on Wednesday, October 26.

“The War We Knew,” is a book written by 75 RiverWoods residents.  It was released in March 2011.

Seven of the 75 authors were featured on the program 207, out of Portland, Maine.  To hear their stories, click on the link below.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid35031947001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAACC1lJjE~,eO0k1bjplev7hHfUUYFU18RDQIpJKzMJ&bclid=0&bctid=958007488001

Potatoes, poems, and sketches – oh my!

Following a recording session, a friend of mine asked, “So, how did it go?”   “It was great,” I replied.  ”She showed me her potatoes.”

The woman that I interviewed is an organic gardener, among other things – like being a Pulitzer Prize winning writer.  But just before I left, our conversation had turned to bringing in the late summer’s harvest, and she took me to into a room and showed me her potatoes.

Another time, same question – my response:  ”Great, she showed me her husband’s arrowhead collection.”

Then there was: “… pictures of his wife with Steven Tyler.” – Of Aerosmith fame.

This is not what I expected when going to meet and interview people.  I am reminded time and again just how much people have to share – and want to share.  Their passions, their life’s work, their treasured possessions. … Memories, stories, and, oh yes – the poems – written in long-hand on sheets of paper scattered on the floor, haphazardly, as it appeared – but probably not. Works in progress.  Great works I have no doubt.

And then there were the sketches. …

Another type of personal history keeping: The Ethical Will

Traditional wills transfer worldly possessions, while ethical wills are designed to pass values and beliefs from one generation to the next and to focus life purpose.
These documents have gained in popularity in recent years and are often incorporated into memoirs and other personal histories,  but the truth is – they are ancient in origin.

There is no formula to writing an ethical will, although most are written in the first-person in letter form.

An ethical will is a statement of:

• Personal and spiritual values
• Hopes, blessings and concerns for future generations
• Life lessons learned
• The importance of love and forgiveness in one’s life