The Big Read: What page are you on?
Published Saturday, February 3, 2007
Big Read
Looking back on the first weeks of The Big Read, Ann Lundeen says that she has been pleased. “We had over 500 people turn up for the opening event at Prairie Wetlands Learning Center. That’s amazing”. Lundeen sits on the Fergus Falls Reads Committee, which has advocated for literacy projects and events in the Fergus Falls community for over six years.
Lundeen noted that David Kipen, from the literary department of the National Endowment for the Arts, was present at the event at PWLC. With such a turnout, Lundeen hopes Kipen was impressed. National Endowment for the Arts co-sponsers The Big Read, and Lundeen hopes that Kipen’s experience will prompt generous funding from the national body next year.
Quotations for this week
“It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green.”
“But whenever my consciousness was quickened, all those early friends were quickened within it, and in some strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences.”
The Big Read was launched by the National Endowment for the Arts, which dubbed it the ‘nation’s largest book club’. It’s an incitiative designed to “restore reading to the center of American culture”. Communities across the country apply for NEA grants. The Fergus Falls Reads commitee has been the local facilitator for dispersement and activities funded by the grant.
Events for the Fergus Falls Big Read are all centered or informed by Willa Cather’s Book ‘My Antonia’. Cather’s novel was inspired by and struggled with life on the prairie, something that locals can identify with.
Each week, the Fergus Falls Reads Committee has chosen quotes from My Antonia. The book club, meeting Wednesday nights at the library, and local talent shows all hark back to the theme. See Lifestyles next week for the week’s quotations, and join your neighbors in reading, singing, or exploring the prairie.
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