Word Hunger

This post is from an event that received funding through the Food for Thought partnership program titled Word Hunger: A Literary Conversation About Food.

Poets were assigned a barn in one of Indiana’s counties and they met with area residents to get public input on the community’s agricultural history, its current role in food production, and how food and its production impact their lives.  Each poet will then write a poem based on this information and a painter will place it on the barn.  This community discussion took place at the Putnam County Museum on August 5.

Putnam County farmers had interesting stories to tell about their experiences producing food over the years. The discussion was appropriately held at the Putnam County Museum, which depicts life and culture in the county since it was founded, including agriculture from its early days to the present. The discussion, titled Word Hunger, and the public art and poetry project that will result from it, are sponsored by Brick Street Poetry Inc. Word Hunger is also part of the Spirit and Place Festival. A presentation on the entire Word Hunger project will take place on Nov. 14 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds barn.

The following brief about the event was written by Reilly Kate Anderson, a 7th grader at Greencastle Middle School:

When I went to the museum with my friend Alexa and my grandma Gigi I thought we might be a little bored, but it was very interesting.  I learned a lot about farming.  I didn’t know that the average farm in our county is 200 acres and that we are second in the state for raising goats and making cheese.  According to Jeri Cummings, the very best fudge she ever tasted was made from goats milk. I would like to try that sometime!  Farming is a lot of hard work and from what I heard, you certainly cannot be lazy to do it.  After we heard all of this we even got to tour the museum.  I loved seeing all of the old stuff.  I saw an old typewriter, a replica log cabin, a gold cash register, and a cranking ice cream machine.  There was also a telephone that had a separate part for your ear, the part that you talked into was connected to the phone and then there was a spin around piece to dial the numbers.  We also saw a newspaper about John Dillinger when he robbed the Greencastle bank and it talked about him, his driver and other passengers.  It was a really fun time and I hope I can go there again soon!