Summer of Money, Sex

This summer we will take a hiatus from the Great Conversations I anthology and explore both classic and contemporary writings on the themes of money and sex found in the "Vital Ideas" anthologies recently published as handsome paperbacks by the Great Books Foundation.  Meetings take place at 7 p.m. on July 23rd and August 27th at the Main Library.  Discussion questions will be posted on this blog approximately one week before we meet.

“Money” has short fictional and nonfictional writings by Harriet Jacobs, an American freed slave, Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx, Theodore Dreiser, African-American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston,  John Cheever, social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich, marketing consultant Paco Underhill, Amy Tan, and poet Katy Lederer. “Listening to them, we might just make sense out of that complicated concept we call money,” writes the book’s co-editor Dana Heller.

“Vital Ideas: Sex” comprises writings from the Book of Samuel, John Donne, Andrew Marvel, Sigmund Freud, Fay Weldon, Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Mark Doty, Susan Minot, Louann Brizenine, Mona Simpson, and Nathan Englander.  In the words of editor Regina Barreca, we hear from these authors “the perspectives of those who have dared to think about sex rather than chortle or blush.”

"Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle"

Gray Catbird

Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" relates a boy's discovery of a mockingbird nest and the perceived sorrow of the male partner upon losing his mate. Here is what the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior says about the breeding habits of the mimid family of birds, to which the mockingbird belongs:

"All North American mimids are essentially monogamous; the few reports of polygyny [one male with multiple partners] are mainly limited to the Northern Mockingbird.  Pair-bonding usually occurs at the onset of the breeding season, especially in migrant species such as the Gray Catbird, but can occur at any season in some of the resident [nonmigratory] thrashers. In some species, particularly Le Conte's and Curve-billed Thrashers, pairs can bond for several years."

The poem, like many of the others in Leaves of Grass, show Whitman's long and abiding connection to the natural world.

Photo by Matthew Petroff ( http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/2012/06/11/cats-and-catbirds).

Whitman Walked These Streets

I once asked our Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes what he considered to be the most significant event that ever took place in Huntington. His reply: "Walt Whitman was born here." Our June meeting will be about Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," from his signature work, Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman is a Favorite Son of Huntington. This spring we've read him in the company of Montaigne, Pascal, Emerson.

Whitman founded the Long Islander newspaper in Huntington Village. This is what the Long Islander building on Main Street looked like yesterday. The inscription at the top reads "Long Islander, 1836, 1884, 1889"

The Long Islander is an award-winning community newspaper that still publishes weekly.  The masthead of the paper displays Whitman's portrait.

Steel engraving of Walt Whitman that appeared in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.