Wit and Wisdom: A Community Tradition in 19th Century New England Villages

Thursday, August 19, 2021 at 7 p.m.

Speaker: Jo Radner

Whatever did New England villagers do on long winter evenings before cable, satellite and the internet? Jo Radner will give some surprising answers to that question. Radner has been studying wintertime amusements in rural nineteenth-century Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.  It is not surprising that our ancestors warmed up those long, cold evenings with social entertainments from music and dancing to charades, sewing circles, and neighborhood suppers.

BIO: Before returning to her family home in Lovell as a writer, storyteller, and oral historian, Jo Radner was a professor at American University in Washington, DC, teaching literature, American studies, folklore, women’s studies, Celtic studies, and storytelling.  She has published books and articles in all those fields and has just completed a book manuscript titled “Wit and Wisdom in the New England Village Lyceum.”  She is past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network.