| Ocean Park - Chatauqua By The Sea |
Ocean Park, Maine, is one of the few remaining cottage colonies on the East Coast. Similar colonies are still in place in Craigville on Cape Cod, Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and Ocean Grove, NJ. This unique spot in Maine incorporates the camp meeting spirit of non-demonimational inspiration with the Chatauqua spirit of inquiry and reflection. It is sited along one of the most beautiful streches of sandy beach in southern Maine.
For 17 years the Ocean Park Association has included Let's Talk About It in Maine reading and discussion programs as part of their summer activities. Jeff Aronson has been pleased to lead these 5-6 part programs every summer.
If you're interested in participating [it's free] in the 2011 series [TBA], click here for dates and times.
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| Summer '10 Reading and Discussion Program |
The theme for the 2010 series is Entering Nature: Contemporary Views of the Human Self in the Natural World.
These 20th century writings address in interesting and distinctive ways "the affinities that unite and the distances that separate the human and the non-human."
The books include:
The Tree by John Fowles
Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
Through these readings we'll explore our contemporary 21rst century views climate change and global environmental issues.
All programs are free, open to the public, and begin at 11:00 am. The dates for these programs are: July 15, 22, 29, August 5 and 12.
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| Summer '09 Reading and Discussion Program |
The series for the summer of 2009 was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today? As in past years, the series was made possible by the Ocean Park Association and the Maine Humanities Council.
Here's the series description and list of books from the Maine Humanities Council's website:
This series will examine one the most pivotal yet most neglected eras of United States history, one that began to define the parameters of the modern world in which we live. Rising out of the carnage of four years of civil war and a failed attempt both to reconstruct the South and reconcile race relations, Americans turned their attention during the last quarter of the nineteenth century from political debates over the nature of the nation and moral considerations of civil rights to economic projects of physical expansion and material wealth. The people of principle—of states rights versus federal union, of popular sovereignty versus free soil, of slave power versus abolition—became the people of progress—of railroad building, corporate trusts, street-car suburbs, and social and geographic mobility. In addition to industrialization, urbanization, and migration, the modernization of the United States brought with it the rise of a leisure class and a new therapeutic consumer culture.
The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age by David Richards
The first and last books are written by contemporary historians: Mark Twain, Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells return us to the late 19th century in their witty commentaries and entrancing novels.
All programs were held at Ocean Park, beginning at 11:00 am. The dates for the programs were:
Thursday, July 16
Thursday, July 23
Thursday, July 30
Thursday, August 6
Thursday, August 13
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