“living
with awareness”
From Chautauqua to Today
In the mid-19th
century, as the American frontier became for many easterners a landscape
for a new type of life, the population-packed Atlantic coast moved
westward onto the sparse Midwest plains. Isolated yet in search of
education and culture, an adult education movement – Chautauqua –
arose. From this came the famous “Chautauqua Literary & Scientific
Circle”, a reading program predating “The Great Books Program”, spanning
the country and affecting millions of people starved for learning.
What happened to Chautauqua? With
competing means of entertainment, Chautauqua moved to a “Tent
Chautauqua” format in the early 20th century, focusing on
entertainment and lectures. The advent of movies and radios delivered
the death blow to what was once the greatest
educational movement the United States had ever seen.
“about town” seeks
to revitalize the spirit of Chautauqua – of educational
excellence for all!
But if mere movies and the radio
were the final blows to the Chautauqua movement, what need is there
today – in this era of instant global digital communication, where
practically everything is viewable instantly, where all data is
seemingly at our fingertips now, where we hurriedly rush to and fro -
for such a publication?
Because of all of these things.
How can it be, for example, with
all of these things, educational improvement is stagnant? How can it
be, not just kids but adults as well, can remain mathematically
“illiterate”? How can it be, with the war in Iraq waging for years, a
large part of the adult population cannot even find Iraq on the
map?
Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451,
provides a context with ominous parallels to our society of today.
Regarding the role of future firemen burning books instead of
putting out fires, Captain Beatty says to Montag:
“When did it all start, you
ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I'd
say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War.
Even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we
didn't get along well until photography came into its own. Then -
motion pictures in the early Twentieth Century. Radio. Television.
Things began to have mass.
"And because they had mass,
they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few
people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different.
The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and
mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios,
magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you
follow me?"
Beatty peered at the smoke
pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth century man
with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the Twentieth
Century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations.
Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap
ending." "Classics cut to fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to
fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or
twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The
dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole
knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is
probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole
knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that
claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your
neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to
the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five
centuries or more."
Ominous parallels indeed! What
are the implications for a democracy? What are the implications
for simply being the best we can be?
But is the answer a rigid course
of study? I think not.
“about town” simply
seeks to look at our surroundings – carefully. I turn the knob, and out
comes hot water. How? I see a coal train pass by. Where is it going –
and for what purpose? The leaves change in the fall. Why?
But what do I mean by “Why?” By
“How?” “For what Purpose?” Is it enough to say leaves change color
because of chlorophyll? How ridiculous it sounds
to say “if leaves contain chlorophyll, then leaves change color in the
fall?” Leaves have a story – as does coal, the rainbow, and a
streetlight. Everything has a story. A logical story, perhaps.
An entertaining one. A sad one. Whatever the case, everything has a
story to tell – a good one.
In addition to brief stories
seeking to understand “our town” will be the inclusion of a visual means
of checking our logic. Do we really understand what we’re talking
about? How can we check?
Where are more stories? A friend
owns a jewelry store. What’s his story? Another runs a pharmacy. One
has a dental office. A beautiful church opens down the street. What
are their stories?
This is a publication about brief
stories. But where do they come from? Louis L’Amour gives a wonderful
explanation in “Education of a Wandering Man”:
They are out there by the
thousands, wonderful stories. Many have never gotten into the
histories, although occasionally told by local newspapers or in
privately printed booklets. Stories of wagon-train massacres, buried
treasures, gun battles, cattle roundup, border bandit raids – no matter
where you go, east, west north, and south, there are stories. People
are forever asking me where I get my ideas, but one has only to listen,
to look, and to live with awareness. As I have said in several of my
stories, all men look, but so few can see. It is all there, waiting for
any passerby.
But in the process of trying to
understand something, do I run the risk of being wrong? Of course! Why
is it the case everything in print must be entirely right? Forget the
fact this would seemingly promote very active reading – it would. If I
say “leaves change color in the fall”, you might think, “most do – but
there are leaves that don’t”. Therefore, my statement was wrong – how
do I fix it? Active learning. I like that.
Do I need to travel around the
country to find these stories? I think not. As L’Amour said, one need
only look … about town!
