Post #2: Introduction to the Blog

Conceived during our time of quarantine, the Village Reads program and this “blog” reflect the spirit of innovation mixed with necessity that fueled our collective late-spring and continued cultural pivoting. In this virtual space, through the summer months—and potentially beyond!—I, Sonja O’Donnell, will be facilitating, listening, writing, noting, referencing, prompting, responding, interrogating, linking, interviewing, imagining and thinking…with our 2020 authors and their texts and contexts, with you, fellow village readers. As Annex Arts first Reader-in Residence, I will be generating content in real time, as you and I read together.

All posts invite you to add your voice to a conversation I will begin (including this one!) and prompt for subsequent ones—see the “Comments” section below. You may choose to engage to the extent you feel comfortable, but I assure you, what you offer in your comments will make a difference. Registration is not required, but we’d certainly like to keep in touch and notify you when new content and events post.

A career educator (30+ years) in the literary, language, and storytelling arts, I am practiced in designing curricula, directing publications, and facilitating dialogue. My profound dedication to the arts and arts education stems from my belief in humanity, freedom of expression, and community.

“Art allows us to examine what it means to be human, to voice and express, and to bring people and ideas together,” a recent Artwork Archive post “Why We Need Arts in Times of Crisis” explains:

Muralist: Ryan Tova Katz. Image permission, Ryan Katz.

 “What we put our energy and efforts into now will affect what our future looks like. In campaigning for arts, the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts stated, The values we support today will determine what we have when this is over.”

Village Reads can and hopes to join the ongoing “movement.” Reading like writing and making, poet Gregory Orr explained recently in an interview, cultivates “active souls rather than passive victims.”

I am actively reading Lee Smith’s novella Blue Marlin, our first Village Read, and hope you are too! Once again, sign up to receive notifications of posts and other bonus content with no obligation or come back very soon for the next post on this blog which will explore what a few authors have had to say about the whys and hows of reading, what I hope will be for all readers inspiration to more fully enter, renew, or refine their art of reading.

And, if you wish to purchase your books, please order or reserve one from our local independent bookseller Compass Rose Books or from your “village” independent booksellers!

Books may be borrowed from your local library. And, we’ve added extra copies into circulation at Witherle Public Library in Castine and at Blue Hill Public Library.

 Audiobooks are available for two of the three titles through: Libro.fm