Affirming Aging
- Sponsored by
The Let's Talk About It Program scheduled for Sunday, February 7 has been postponed until Sunday, March 14.
Brighten up your January by participating in a stimulating reading and discussion series at the library. Let’s Talk About It, created by the North Carolina Humanities Council and the North Carolina Center for the Book and sponsored locally by the Iredell Friends of the Library.
Aging in our youth-dominated culture has become something to dread. Happily, the characters in the Affirming Aging series find that the past's intrusions into the present can offer life-renewing revelations. The characters' confrontations with memory and time recover personal histories as a surprising way to enrich the present and face the future.
Participants read five books based on a particular theme, and scholars from area universities and colleges lead discussions about the books. This year’s series, Affirming Aging, will begin on Sunday, January 10 at 2:30 PM and will meet every other Sunday afternoon through March 7. We provide the books, the scholars, and the meeting space. You provide your interest and your insights.
Enrollment is limited. For information, call 704-878-3098 or e-mail pcarter@co.iredell.nc.us.
| Date | Book | Scholar |
| January 10 2:30 pm- 4:30 pm |
On a fine September day in 1952, a 92-year-old retired farmer recalls both the triumphs and sorrows of his life. "The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana, eloquent testimony that 'it's not a tragedy when a man dies at the end of his life.'" - The New York Times Book Review | Roxanne Newton |
| January 24 2:30 pm- 4:30 pm |
Sadie, born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1889, and Bessie, born in 1891, were daughters of a black Episcopal bishop. They migrated to New York City’s Harlem in the 1910s and to the suburb of Mt. Vernon, New York in the 1950s. The reminiscences of these remarkable women illuminate the race and gender issues of 20th century America through the stories of their individual lives. | Sandra Govan |
| February 7 2:30 pm- 4:30 pm |
After the death of his parents, Jacob Jankowski walks out on his final exams at Cornell, where he had hoped to earn a veterinary degree. The country is in the depths of the Great Depression and Jacob feels lucky to find a job as an animal caretaker with a circus. The circus owner is treacherous, conditions are sometimes brutal, and Jacob is attracted to a beautiful horse-rider, Marlena, who is married to a jealous psychopath. This fast-paced, captivating story is told by the older Jacob, now in his nineties in a nursing home. | Joseph Bathanti |
| February 21 2:30 pm- 4:30 pm |
Hagar Shipley, age ninety, tells the story of her life, and in doing so tries to come to terms with how the very qualities which sustained her have deprived her of joy. Mingling past and present, she maintains pride in the face of senility, while recalling the life she led as a rebellious young bride, and later as a grieving mother. Laurence gives us in Hagar a woman who is funny, infuriating, and heartbreakingly poignant. | Jim_Burkhead |
| March 7 2:30 pm- 4:30 pm |
Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage. | Ron Oakley |
Having Our Say: The Delany Sister’s First 100 Years
Water for Elephants 
Visiting Scholars
Roxanne Newton is the daughter and granddaughter of mill workers. She grew up in a small NC textile town. Currently she is director of the Humanities and Fine Arts Division at Mitchell Community College in Statesville where she teaches English, women’s studies, and humanities courses. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations and Cultural Studies and a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from UNC Greensboro. The recipient of a number of academic and teaching awards, Dr. Newton has developed interdisciplinary courses including “American Women’s Studies,” “Working Lives: Multicultural Perspectives,” and “The Immigrant Experience in America.” Her humanities classes have created history quilts and have collected oral histories of immigrants and workers in Iredell County. The NC Women’s History Quilt, made by Dr. Newton and her women’s studies students, was acquired by the NC Museum of History. Her research interests include working-class studies, narrative research, and critical pedagogy. She is the author of Women Workers on Strike: Narratives of Southern Women Unionists, published by Routledge in 2006.
Sandra Govan is Professor Emeritus at the English Department at UNC Charlotte. For over twenty-five years Govan enjoyed a distinguished teaching career at UNCC; she also served as Director of the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program for nearly ten years. Govan is a founding member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective. She is also the Collective’s Historian. She has two essays in the Collective’s recently published (2009) SHAPING MEMORIES: Reflections of African American Women Writers. Prior to serving on the North Carolina Humanities Council Board, Govan successfully lectured for Let's Talk About It audiences; she looks forward to doing so again.
Joseph Bathanti was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He has BA and MA degrees in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Bathanti came to North Carolina as a VISTA Volunteer in 1976 to work with prison inmates. At present he is Professor of Creative Writing, and Co-Director of the Visiting Writers Series, at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. He is the author of four books of poems: Communion Partners , Anson County , The Feast of All Saints , and This Metal, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His first novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. He is the 2002 recipient of the Linda Flowers Prize, given annually by the North Carolina Humanities Council.
Jim Burkhead was born in San Antonio, Texas. He attended The University of Wisconsin in Madison and received his B.A. with a double major in English and Biological Sciences from that institution. He earned a Master’s degree in Humanities from the University of Iowa at Iowa City and qualified for an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Jim’s Ph.D. studies in English with a Minor in Philosophy were accomplished at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. He has taught English, philosophy, humanities, and speech at several colleges and universities in the Southwest, at NC Wesleyan in Rocky Mount, and is recently retired from Pitt Community College.
Ron Oakley was born in Mebane, NC. He received his A.B. and M.A. in History from UNC-Chapel Hill, and an Ed.D. from UNC-Greensboro. He was an instructor at Davidson County Community College for 37 years. He has written several books, including Baseball’s Golden Age, 1946-1960: the National Pastime in a Time of Glory and Change, and Davidson County Community College: the First Forty Years, 1963-2003, as well as many articles for newspapers and magazines. He and his wife of 34 years have recently moved back to the Mebane area.