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Nature Dreaming
 Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes will be a two-part public radio series drawing on dramatic readings of California landscape writing and commentary by prominent humanities scholars. Featured will be award-winning writer and organic farmer David Mas Masumoto, whose books include Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, Epitaph for a Peach, and Wisdom of the Last Farmer.
 Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes borrows its title from lines of a lyric poem by Robinson Jeffers, "The Beauty of Things":
. . . man you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
(The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers. Ed. Albert Gelpi. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2003. p. 175)
And water and sky are constant—to feel Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural Beauty, is the sole business of poetry. Jeffers understood that humanity is a small part of a divine and astonishingly beautiful whole, a whole that in our individualized, sealed-off, post-industrial, digital landscapes often seems far removed from contemporary experience. To reconnect to the whole—the natural world that surrounds and sustains us—requires, as Jeffers well knew, first reconnecting to the particular, opening our senses to "rock and water and sky," wherever we should be.  "Hawk Tower, Tor House," built by Jeffers, photographed by Celeste Davison, 2008.  Nature Dreaming will explore this idea by focusing on California stories that are grounded in local experience, sensitive to the delicate ecological balance of the planet, suspicious of abstraction, and celebratory of the relationships human beings establish with the natural world, especially through deep experience of their home regions, through the work they do there, through their love of rock, water, and sky.
Production begins this fall. Return here for updates, pictures, audio and video clips, and profiles of featured writers and scholars. Nature Dreaming is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. 
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The Big Read: The Call of the Wild
The Santa Clara City Library today announced that it has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to host The Big Read in Santa Clara, California. The Santa Clara City Library Foundation is one of 75 not-for-profits—including arts and cultural organizations, libraries, and universities—to receive a grant to host a Big Read project between September 2010 and June 2011. The Big Read gives communities the opportunity to come together to read, discuss, and celebrate one of 31 selections from U.S. and world literature. The Big Read in Santa Clara, California will focus on The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Activities will take place March-April 2011.
"It is exciting that this grant will provide opportunities for the Santa Clara community to read and discuss a great American novel by a world famous author that opens in Santa Clara in a location that still can be visited today," notes Santa Clara's Local History Librarian Mary Hanel.  Fifiteen Santa Clara organizations partnered to apply for this grant. The major events will be hosted by the Santa Clara University's California Legacy Project, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and the de Saisset Museum; Mission College, the Santa Clara Unified School District, the Triton Museum, and the Santa Clara City Library. Activities, exhibits, book discussions, and other events also will be provided by Read Santa Clara, Mission City Memorial Park, the Santa Clara County Historical & Genealogical Society, South Bay Historical Railroad Society, the Anime Group of Santa Clara, the Santa Clara Arts & Historical Consortium, the City Council, and the City Youth Commission. The $6,000 grant was received from the NEA, and is being matched by $6,000 in local funding.
Santa Clara City Library Foundation Director Maria Daane has this to say: "We are very excited that the residents of the City of Santa Clara will have the opportunity to read and learn about The Call Of the Wild together. The themes of the book are classic themes, and a community like Santa Clara can celebrate them in many ways, from watching the anime version of The Call of the Wild to discussing the book's ethical themes at Santa Clara University's Center for Ethics." Maria Daane and library staff wrote the grant; they were amazed that every local group they contacted about participating in The Big Read was enthusiastic. This is the first time Santa Clara will have a city-wide reading program.  Activities will include: book discussions at various venues throughout the city, demonstrations by Canadian dog sled historian Jeff Dinsdale, an exhibition focused on Father Bernard Hubbard who led annual expeditions to explore the "wilds" of Alaska, a keynote speech by Jack London expert Dr. Daniel Dyer, and a kick-off and book giveaway at Mission College. The goal of the program is to get as many Santa Clarans as possible to read and discuss The Call of the Wild.
 "The arts in general—and literature, in particular—often serve as an expression of our shared values. This is exactly why they are so effective as a fulcrum for community engagement," said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. "Thanks to these 75 grants, communities nationwide will be inspired, delighted and challenged by a book they are discovering for the first time, or an old favorite to which they are returning."
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. Support for The Big Read has been provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Boeing Company, the Poetry Foundation, and the Ford Motor Company. For more information about The Big Read, please visit www.neabigread.org. |
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California Legacy Project, Santa Clara University English Department, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053. For more information: Terry Beers, 408 554 4335, or . 
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