Pine Nuts: Mark Twain Days and strengthening Community Connections with conversation
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 05/20/2024 - 1:00pm
Mark Twain Days (Year Two) was yet another triumph, particularly the group photo, where every kid and her grandmother sported humongous mustachios. I can’t wait to see the print. My personal favorite event was, “Connections.” A hundred folks gathered together upstairs in the Brewery Arts Center to share personal connections that improved their lives.
This is a unique, and much needed concept in our digitized-AI world. Just imagine a hundred strangers, without phones, focusing on relationship-building to strengthen community bonds. And it’s working! Not just that, but “Connections” combats social isolation, and overcomes social divisions. (Cymbal crash please.)
This throwback model is the brainchild of Don Kuhl, who champions the fact that positive relationships are a foremost factor in living longer, healthier and happier lives. Yes, this at a time when so many social dynamics are pushing us toward isolation, loneliness and dissension.
Don chose the most capable Debra Soul to spearhead this worthy endeavor, the same Debra Soule who gave us our Inaugural Mark Twain Days. Once again, Debra is pushing forward a noble idea and making a success of it.
To give you a specific example of the workings of “Connections,” a gentleman stood and presented an ode to mothers that was ever so touching. In closing, he bent down on one knee to emphasize his respect. Well, this crusty old Marine doesn’t tear up easily, but I think I did.
If “Connections” does not strengthen the fabric of a community, I don’t know what will. Gatherings are at the Brewery Arts Center on the third Thursday of each month, and their website is https://www.connectionscentral.org/.
For my small part in the Connections gathering during Mark Twain Days, I shared the fact that were it not for Sam Clemens’s loving wife, we would not be hosting Mark Twain Days, or even talking about Mark Twain. Olivia wanted Sam to be an American writer, more than the sagebrush humorist he was while living in Carson City and Virginia City.
She achieved that lofty goal by encouraging Sam to employ his wit like a telescope, to amplify our attentions on serious subjects, like slavery. So thanks to Livy, we have the wonderful satire Sam left for us to treasure in his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Person to person and eye to eye contact is more important to our wellbeing than we have ever known before, and I for one, congratulate Don and Debra for highlighting this reality, and providing a platform to test it, and prove that it works.
If we can discover a sense of belonging and relevance in our lives through “Connections,” well, who would ever need booze or drugs again.
I congratulate Don and Debra for their selfless dedication to this nation healing construct. Once “Connections” makes its way across this great land of ours, well, to cite just one upshot, November will look less ominous.
I hope you will join me in wishing Don & Debra every success in this noble endeavor called, “Connections.”
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American." Go here for the spoken word version of this and other columns.
