Celebrated biographer and journalist Walter Isaacson delivered the keynote address at our 18th Annual Dinner on Tuesday, October 23 at the Center of New Hampshire in Manchester.
We also thank Keynote Sponsor Bank of America, Reception Sponsor Trans Canada, and Book Sponsor the University of New Hampshire, for their support for this gala event.
Walter Isaacson has had a long and distinguished career in American media. A former managing editor of Time magazine and former chairman and CEO of CNN, Isaacson is the President and CEO of The Aspen Institute, one of the world’s pre-eminent think-tanks, which is dedicated to informed dialogue and inquiry on issues of global concern.
Isaacson’s approach to leadership is influenced by his studies of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and some of the great American leaders of the Cold War. He is the author of best-selling biographies of Franklin and Kissinger and The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, a study of leaders who steered America through the Cold War. His newly-released biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe, has been met with universal praise. Booklist called Isaacson’s new book a “...penetrating and magnificently nuanced biography of Albert Einstein” and said that “...Isaacson elucidates Einstein’s nonconformist and philosophical temperament and the particular nature of his genius within a richly textured social context, and he precisely explains Einstein’s ‘astonishing, mysterious, and counterintuitive’ scientific achievements and their epic consequences.”
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Michael Newdow
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Michael Newdow , the lawyer, physician and First Amendment activist whose legal challenge to the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, and Chuck Douglas, a former NH Supreme Court Justice and former member of the U.S. House, addressed the legal issues surrounding the wording of the Pledge and other First Amendment questions on Saturday, August 18 at Colby-Sawyer College in New London.
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Newdow’s contention that the term “under God” in the Pledge violated the First Amendment was upheld by California’s 9 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He argued his case before the Supreme Court, however the case was dismissed on technical issues related to Newdow’s standing. The court did not rule on the central issue of the case.
This event is part of the New Hampshire Humanities Council’s Shifting Ground: Religion and Civic Life in America initiative exploring the intersections between religion and public life in our nation. The Humanities Council partnered with Adventures in Learning , an initiative of Colby-Sawyer College, to present this event. AIL is a community-based program of educational enrichment for adults in the Kearsarge-Lake Sunapee region celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
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The Humanities Council hosted its 17th Annual Dinner on Thursday, September 28 at the Center of New Hampshire in Manchester. The keynote speaker,
E.J. Dionne, Jr., an award-winning columnist and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, discussed America's culture wars around the issue of religion in public life. Hear his remarks, which were recorded by WKXL radio. Governor John Lynch and Dr. Susan Lynch attended the event and made welcoming remarks.
Dionne was a guest on NHPR's The Exchange on Tuesday, September 26. Listen to an archived version of the show.
Our thanks to Public Service of New Hampshire, lead sponsor of our Annual Dinner for the 16th year.
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We also extend our thanks to our other event sponsors including:
Reception Sponsor, Bank of America;
Book Sponsor,
The University of New Hampshire;
Dinner Sponsors,
Citizens Bank;
The Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire;
Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, LLP;
Ocean National Bank;
Sheehan, Phinney, Bass + Green, PA;
and
TD Banknorth
and Table Sponsors
Dayton & Dianne Duncan;
Harvest Capital Management;
Lincoln Financial Group;
Northeast Delta Dental;
Orr & Reno, PA;
Pleasant View Retirement;
Ransmeier & Spellman, PC;
Saint Anselm College;
University System of New Hampshire;
and Verizon-NH
Copies of E.J. Dionne's books were available at the dinner courtesy of
Gibson's Bookstore in Concord.
Dionne signed extra copies of the books, which are available for sale at Gibson's. |
GovernorJohn Lynch and Dr. Susan Lynch
Bishop Gene Robinson and E.J. Dionne, Jr.
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The Concord Public Library has received a Humanities Council grant for Concord Reads, a multi-facted series that will examine Julie Otsuka’s novel about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The series will address the moral, political, and social issues, past and present, raised by the policy of imprisoning Japanese-Americans in camps around the nation.
Otsuka’s book tells the story of one family among the many who suffered in the hysteria following Pearl Harbor. The author, whose grandparents were sent to an internment camp, was inspired to research her family history and write the novel by her family’s silence about that era. In the novel three family members - a mother and her young daughter and son - each describe the experience of internment and its effect on them.
The program’s organizers plan to challenge readers to think about the wider questions raised by internment and their implications in today’s world, the struggle over individual rights versus national security, and foreigners as “the other.”
The series will begin with “Lanterns and Cranes,” an event for children, on Tuesday, October 10 at 4:15 p.m. Readers of all ages are invited to a community book discussion on Sunday, October 15 at 2 p.m. with Bob Pingree and Jennifer Lee. Lee will also lead a Brown Bag Book Discussion on Tuesday, October 17 from 12:10 to 1 p.m. On Wednesday, October 18 at 7 p.m. Allen Koop, Darthmouth College, will present a program on Camp Stark, a World War II prisoner of war camp in New Hampshire. Dr. Koop has written a book about Camp Stark and he’ll examine the parallels between that camp and the internment camps for Japanese-Americans.
John Hutson, Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, will continue the series on Tuesday, October 24 at 7 p.m. with “What Does Winning Mean?”, a look at the purpose of war and what it means to “win.” Hutson will address the question of whether it is a Pyrrhic victory to win militarily but to give up or ignore some of the ideals we are fighting for in the first place. Richard Minear, University of Massachusetts/Amherst, will lead a slide lecture on Sunday, October 29 at 2 p.m. titled “Dr. Seuss Goes to War” using images from his book of the same name. Dr. Minear will discuss American attitudes twoard Japan before and after Pearl Harbor and the role of the media in shaping images of “the enemy” using slides of editorial cartoons about Japan.
The series wraps up on Wednesday, November 1 at 7 p.m. with Carl Watanabe discussing his experiences as a child in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. “Starting Life Behind Barbed Wire: Growing Up in an Internment Camp” will feature Watanabe’s recollections about the first years of his life, which were spent in a remote concentration camp in Arizona. Watanabe was among the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestery incarcerated during World War II. Two thirds of the people in the camps were American citizens and half were children.
For more information on Concord Reads, visit the Concord Public Library’s website or contact Robbin Bailey at 225-8590.
The Keene Public Library, the Friends of the Keene Public Library, the Historical Society of Cheshire County, and the Horatio Colony Museum co-sponsored a Young Chautauqua festival on July 12, 13 and 14 at the Keene Public Library and an adult Chautauqua event on Thursday, July 27 at the Horatio Colony Museum.
“People in Keene love Chautauqua,” says Anita Carroll Weldon, Director of the Horatio Colony Museum. “When we learned that the Humanities Council would not be conducting Chautauqua in the way they had in the past we got several organizations together to apply for a grant. We didn’t want to have a year go by without Chautauqua.”
The adult Chautauqua event was held on Thursday, July 27, at 6:30 p.m. under a tent on the grounds of the historic Horatio Colony Museum in Keene. The museum is housed in a stately Federal-style home built in 1806. The museum’s 200th anniversary served as inspiration for the adult Chautauqua’s theme, “1806: Exploring America.”
Award-winning author and filmmaker Dayton Duncan moderated the evening’s events which included music of the period and living history presentations by Bill Weldon as William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, and Marge Bruchac, who will portray Molly Ockett.
In 1806 the Lewis and Clark Expedition was heading home from their two-and-a-half year adventure. William Clark, as portrayed by Weldon, recounted tales of the expedition and explore its relevance to other events that were occurring in 1806. Weldon has many years of experience at Colonial Williamsburg and has portrayed William Clark at events across the nation.
Molly Ockett’s adventures took place closer to home. An Abenaki woman who became a servant to an English family, Molly Ockett was a respected healer who ministered to Native Americans and settlers alike. Ockett saved the life of baby Hannibal Hamlin who grew up to be Abraham Lincoln’s first Vice President.
Scholar Marge Bruchac, herself an Abenaki, helped audiences understand the difficulties and successes the Abenakis experienced in adapting to cultural changes while holding on to traditional values. Bruchac is an advisor to the Wampanoag Indian Program at Plimoth Plantation and has taught college courses on Native history at Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts.
Young Chautauqua performances took place Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, July 12, 13 and 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Keene Public Library. The theme for Young Chautauqua was “We the People: Becoming American.” The program offered students ages 12 to 18 the opportunity to bring history to life through their portrayals of people from the past. Throughout June and July, Young Chautauqua participants met at the Keene Public Library to conduct research, choose characters, write scripts, create costumes, and rehearse, culminating in public performances July 12, 13 and 14. Each Young Chautauquan performed a ten-minute monologue, then answered questions from the audience, first in character, then as him or herself.
Two experienced Young Chautauqua instructors guided the group: Gerald Kuhn and Paul Teitelman of Monadnock Regional High School.
Keene’s long and illustrious history with Chautauqua began in the early 1900s when Keene was a regular stop on the Chautauqua circuit of lectures and presentations that traveled throughout the Eastern seaboard.
When the Council reorganized Chautauqua this year, the Keene community joined forces to hold its own event. Organizers initally contemplated hosting only an adult Chautauqua event, says Gail Zachariah, head of Youth and Community Services at the Keene Public Library.
“But many members of the Friends of the Library had children who had participated in Young Chautauqua,” says Zachariah. “They knew the value of Young Chautauqua and how much it meant to their children and to the community.”
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Dan’s father, Richard Brown, a retired professor of mathematics and textbook author, introduced his famous son at the dinner.
Dan Brown delivered a keynote address on “Symbols, Secrets, Science & Scripture: Beyond The Da Vinci Code”
Eight hundred people gathered in Manchester on October 11th to celebrate the humanities and to support the New Hampshire Humanities Council at their 16th Annual Dinner. The dinner featured a rare public appearance by internationally-renowned author and New Hampshire native Dan Brown. The evening also featured the presentation of the Treat Award for Excellence in the Teaching of the Humanities to Patricia Hicks, an English teacher from Manchester High School Central.
During his address, Brown commented publicly for the first time on the closely-guarded film adaptation of his best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. He also spoke about the intersection of religion and science, and his exploration of those topics in The Da Vinci Code, saying, “I was not born with the luxury of absolute certainty or absolute faith. I have a lot of questions. I’ve written a novel in which fictional characters ask some of those questions and offer possible answers.”
Addressing the controversy the book has sparked, Brown advised readers to simply decide for themselves. “Readers are smart people, capable of deciding for themselves how much of this novel makes sense to them and how much they want to believe,” he said. “And as for whether or not we’re all getting a little too worked up over this book, a very wise British priest noted recently in the press ‘Christian theology has survived the writings of Galileo and the writings of Darwin, surely it will survive the writings of some novelist from New Hampshire.’”
The Annual Dinner received the generous support of many corporations, organizations, and individuals, including Public Service of New Hampshire, the lead sponsor for the 16th consecutive year; Bank of America, the University of New Hampshire, Ocean National Bank, Sulloway & Hollis PLLC, Citizens Bank, Squibnocket Partners, Hinckley Allen & Snyder LLP, National Grid, Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green, Stonyfield Farm, and TD Banknorth. |
Copyright © 2003-2006, New Hampshire Humanities Council, All Rights Reserved
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