Starting at 9:00 AM on Saturday, July 7th, and running until about 7:00 PM that evening, Salem Maritime National Historic Site will be hosting “Enduring Hawthorne: A Marathon Reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.”
With the help of many, many volunteers we will read The Scarlet Letter from beginning to end.
Join us from the beginning or stop by to listen as the novel progresses. Watch for special “Hawthorne’s Custom House” tour and the opportunity to make your own scarlet letter to publicly state your personal sins.
We ask everyone interested in helping to read to please email gavin_gardner@nps.gov. He will be pulling together the volunteer list and organizing a planning meeting later in June to brief all of the readers. Let us know by June 15 if you are interested in volunteering for a five minute reading slot.
The Monday Evening Conversations Group meets on the second Monday of the month at 7:00 PM. All members and other interested parties are invited.
It may be of interest to know that the The Social Library, predecessor of the Salem Athenæum, was founded by a similar discussion group, called the Monday Evening Club. Edward Augustus Holyoke, Rev. Thomas Barnard, Rev. Thomas Gilchrist, Benjamin Lynde, Nathaniel Ropes and others were among the Monday Evening Club founders, who gathered to discuss current events and topics of mutual interest.
Topics for discussion are wide open, but must be amenable to good conversation. Examples include:
- The long ranging effects of the Civil War
- The courage to be vulnerable
- European architecture
- The importance/non importance of art
- Why have friends
Meetings will start with something to help frame the discussion for the evening, such as a:
- brief talk
- podcast
- video
- reading of prose or poetry
- music
We look forward to talking with you!
The Summer Salon series kicks off with Crocker Snow Jr., who will be speaking about his latest book, Nantaska: The Minnow and the Whale.
An award-winning journalist, Crocker Snow, Jr., a native New Englander and veteran international journalist, spent 50 years as a foreign correspondent and editor. After serving as Managing Editor of The Boston Globe in the 1970s, he was founding editor of The World Paper from 1979 to 2001, a monthly report of original news and analysis that appeared in seven languages in twenty-seven countries. From 2002-14, Snow, Jr. was the director of Tufts University’s Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he specialized in Middle East media as well as on the global impact of climate change and the warming Arctic.
Snow has long observed Nantucket and Alaska through family, friends and as a matter of professional interest in his work. Author of the 2016 book, Muskeget: Raw, Restless, Relentless Island, in NANTASKA he unites the two—”Nan-Taska”—and compares Nantucket and Alaska in fresh ways that kindle imagination and insight. Brimming with lively stories, people and anecdotes, the book reveals startling parallels between these two seemingly diverse lands. Beginning with their shared whaling histories, NANTASKA invigorates a multitude of topics on cultural connections shaped through vital climate change issues—with deep ties to people, places, weather and environment—and highlights critical community involvement as well as the mutual relationship to the sea and its impact on human lives and legacies.
Lavishly and colorfully illustrated, NANTASKA comes alive with vivid photographs from celebrated Inupiat photographer Brian Adams from Gridwood, Alaska, author of the award-winning I Am Alaskan photo book. Adams works with the Anchorage Museum and has covered the peoples, resources and wilds of Alaska throughout his professional life. In November, 2017, he explored Nantucket with his Leica camera in pursuit of parallel photographic studies to accompany Crocker Snow’s NANTASKA.
John Kerry, former US Senator/Massachusetts, Secretary of State under the Obama Administration, and longtime Snow family friend, has enthusiastically endorsed NANTASKA.
Discussion group meets on the second Saturday of the month at 11:00 a.m.