TALK

The TALK (Talk About Literature in Kansas) program is presented to us by the Kansas Humanities Council.  Each year, a theme and its books are selected by the Meade Friends of the Library who have been sponsoring this program since 1986. 

The 2011 theme for the TALK program is “The Great Plains Spirit.”  The books to be discussed are Touching the Fire by Roger Welsch, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Bones of Plenty by Lois Hudson and Great Plains by Ian Frazier.  

The Great Plains Spirit                 

Stretching from Texas north to the Dakotas, the vast Great Plains region has generated its share of myths and stereotypes, from the hardy pioneer farmer and the vanishing Indian to the Dust Bowl refugee.  It has also produced some of our best American writers and inspired a rich and varied literary tradition.  In this series, readers will explore the Great Plains Spirit as embodied in the pioneer Kansas of Laura Ingalls Wilder to the story of a North Dakota farm family in Lois Hudson’s Dust Bowl tale.  Writers Ian Frazier andRoger Welsch explore the historical and mythical legacies of the  Plains (especially those of the Plains Indians) and how they continue to shape perceptions of this region of America.              

(Photo:  Breeze by Muffet, Flickr)

 

Touching the Fire:  Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales by Roger Welsch           

The Turtle Creek band of the fictional Nehawka Indians wages a battle for the return of their sacred Sky Bundle, a medicine pouch containing powerful talismans. It is housed in an eastern museum at the beginning of Touching the Fire. Seven interlinked stories reveal the richness and depth of Indian cultural heritage, beginning with a court battle in the year 2001 and going far back in time to the origin of the Bundle and the first Nehawka village on the Great Plains.  Touching the Fire is multilayered—sad, humorous, and always informative.          

Discussion will be on Saturday – September 10, 2011 – at 2:00 pm at the Library Community Room.  The scholar will be Dr. Sara Jane Richter, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Oklahoma Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Oklahoma. 
http://www.opsu.edu/News/PressReleses/Others/PRRichter091406.htm        

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder           

Pa Ingalls decides to sell the little log house in the big woods, and the family sets out for the Indian territory.  They travel from Wisconsin to Kansas, where Pa builds their little house on the prairie. Sometimes farm life is difficult, even dangerous, but Laura and her family are kept busy and happy with the promise of their new life on the prairie.        

Discussion will be on Saturday – September 24, 2011 – at 2:00 pm at the Library Community Room.  The scholar will be Dr. Rachel Goossen, Associated Professor of History at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.
http://www.washburn.edu/reference/cks/profileGoossen.html    

The Bones of Plenty by Lois Phillips Hudson          

This powerful novel centers on a proud, determined, and independent North Dakota wheat farmer, his hardworking wife, and their family as they struggle during the Depression years of 1933 and 1934.        

Discussion will be Saturday – October 8, 2011 – at 2:00 pm at the Library Community Room.  The scholar will be Dr. Kim Stanley, Chair of Modern Languages at McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas.
http://www.mcpherson.edu/directory/bio/stanleyK.php

Great Plains by Ian Frazier

With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull’s cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.         

Discussion will be on Saturday – October 22, 2011 – at 2:00 pm at the Library Community Room.  The scholar will be Dr. Steve Foulke, Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas.