It was librarians all day long on Friday. First a meeting with the new region 3 librarians at the Old Town Library. Then to MIFF's opening film The Librarians. Waterville Public Library held a reception before the film and then we all walked together to the arts center for the film. Pretty empowering stuff. John Meader will have better pictures.
Book group discussed Morgan Talty's Fire Exit last week. Talty is a Maine Penobscot and the novel is narrated by a white man who was raised on the reservation but had to leave at age 18 because he had no native blood. The telling is simple, kind of Hemingwayesque, but he occasionally
drops a line like this: "the revered moment between the hunter and the hunted, the ascendancy of life itself spread its bright black wings over the horizon and over them both." Fire, even backyard trash fires, are ritual in the book as is dancing. Charles suffers as a Penobscot in a white skin: "This was something I had no claim to talk about—as in I had no Native blood—yet I knew and still know what it was like to both not belong and belong, what it was like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being. We’re all alike, even when we’re not." Another theme of the book is the way we know our identity: "We are made of stories, and if we don't know them—the ones that make us—how can we ever be fully realized? How can we ever be who we really are?"
Bowls getting painted for Empty Bowls Supper. Sugar snaps from the garden, tossed in sesame oil with slivered almonds, topped with sprinkle of crystalized ginger.
