Angelica, NY – Concerned
Citizens of Allegany County will wrap up its five-part "PLACE & STORY”
reading and discussion series developed and sponsored in part by Humanities New
York.
Participants are reading selected books in advance then
coming together at locations around Allegany County for a facilitated
discussion, delving into the themes of Americans’ relationships to wildlife and
the environment, from New York City to the Western wilderness.
The remaining two texts and the discussion locations are:
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, the 1972 Pulitzer Prize
winner for fiction. Thursday, May 9,
6:00 p.m. Fassett Greenspace, 55 Main
St., Wellsville
Based on the correspondence of the little-known 19th century
writer, Mary Hallock Foote, the novel’s heroes represent opposing but equally
strong strains of the American ideal.
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a
wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependant on others for his every
need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his ancestral home
of Grass Valley, California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an
elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer
husband, made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred
years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the
shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.
An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos,
Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas by Diane Wilson. Thursday, May 23,
6:00 p.m., Bolivar Free Library, 390 Main St., Bolivar.
When Diane Wilson, fourth-generation shrimp-boat captain and
mother of five, learns that she lives in the most polluted county in the United
States, she decides to fight back. She launches a campaign against a
multibillion-dollar corporation that has been covering up spills, silencing
workers, flouting the EPA, and dumping lethal ethylene dichloride and vinyl
chloride into the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast.
“PLACE & STORY” is facilitated by Emma Percy, an
eco-artist and visiting professor at Alfred University who states, “Reflecting
on the ecology of a place in my (artistic) material and content choices is a
way of recognizing and honoring my ongoing relationship with that environment.”
The program is free and open to the public. Fifteen copies
of each book are available to borrow on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information about the series dates,
locations, and acquiring books in advance, email contactusccac@gmail.com or
phone/text 585-466-4474.
CCAC is a 501c3 environmental advocacy group that meets
monthly in Angelica. Learn more at
ccallegany.org or follow us on FB. Email
contactusccac@gmail.com or call/text 585-466-4474.
