Calendar of Events

Here are just a few of the exciting offerings planned for this year in conjunction with the 2006-07 theme of Navigating the Changing Terrain . More will be added shortly. Events will be held on the Lane Community College Main Campus unless otherwise noted.

If you need disability accommodations in order to attend or participate in any Reading Together event, please contact Disability Services (541) 463-5150 (voice) or 463-3079 (TTY) at least one week in advance.

People are welcome to come late or leave early as schedule permits. For additional information contact Ellen Cantor, 463-3660, cantore@lanecc.edu,

Fall Term

Stories, Stories, Stories
An Oral Storytelling Workshop
Presented by James Florendo

Tuesday October 24, 10-11:30
CML (Building 19) Rm 104

Stories, stories, stories. They capture us, entertain us, teach and socialize us. The mainstream American culture primarily uses the written word to remember and recount these stories, but some cultures practice the oral tradition to pass these stories down through the generations. James Florendo, Coordinator for Native American Student Programs here at Lane is an enrolled member of the Wasco Nation, one of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. James was fortunate to be brought up in an era where the traditions and stories that he learned were conveyed through the observation of, the participation with and by listening to family members. They were remembered through a continued conveyance of those traditions and stories through practice and application. James will introduce participants to the dynamics of one of these, the oral story telling tradition, through stories that he has created in the fashion of the traditional stories that he has learned. Workshop attendees will have the opportunity to try and learn one of his stories and to participate in an open dialogue addressing such issues as: How well do we listen? How do stories help sustain the values central to the health of a community? How do these stories help establish a sense of place and time to a community member? Why is it important to learn these stories in a correct and respectful manner? Please come listen and talk.

Poetry Reading
Barbara Ras and Eugene Gloria
Wed. Nov 8, 10-11:30
CML (Building 19) rm 226

Critically acclaimed poets, Barbara Ras and Eugene Gloria, will read from their work, followed by a Q&A.

Barbara Ras won the 1997 Walt Whitman Award for her book, Bite Every Sorrow. Reviewer Donna Seaman of Booklist states, " Ras plunges beneath the skin of consciousness . . .and sends her tidings in poems that surge across the page like waves on a beach. . . .she navigates life with her senses on full alert. Everything she witnesses, overhears, ingests, and touches is a catalyst for her penetrating imagination, which turns even the simplest things iridescent with myriad shades of meaning. Witty and ardent, Ras marvels at marriage, motherhood, and memory; compassionate and generous, she ponders loneliness, grief, and poverty, swinging readily from the private to the global, the everyday to the eternal." Barbara Ras' reading will include poems from her new book, One Hidden Stuff.

Eugene Gloria was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in San Francisco. His first collection of poems, Drivers at the Short-Time Motel, was a winner of the 1999 National Poetry Series. His new book, Hoodlum Birds, draws from his experience of retracing the famous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela on the Camino Real in Spain, during which he examines the intersecting territories of interior self, spirit, religion, and culture. Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky in The Washington Post, states that Gloria's poetry "demonstrates a central quality of poetry: depth of language...Gloria brings the historical and the contemporary into fresh, vivid relation."