online: www.rihumanities.org email: info@rihumanities.org phone: 401-273-2250
In our era of chain link fences and concrete barriers, stone walls strike us as charming and quaint features of South County's rural landscapes. In spite of their apparent simplicity, they are monuments to a dying tradition of craftsmanship. Their builders, many of them Native American or African American, worked like sculptors, assessing the attributes of each stone and using them to create unique structures. This presentation uses slides of stone walls and their makers, along with material from recent interviews, to tell the story of a craft that has left its mark upon the land.
Marc Joel Levitt is a storyteller, writer, radio show and educator. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Labor Relations, he taught nursery school in San Francisco, and in 1980 began performing as a New Vaudevillian in Rhode Island. Mr. Levitt has a long history of radio in Rhode Island, including ten years as the writer/director/producer of New England's only radio variety show, The New England Chowda' Hour and since 1995 as the host of the national award winning Action Speaks at AS 220. He also created and directed the Charles Fortes Elementary School Museum Project and currently travels throughout the United States and around the world as a storytelling/educational consultant. As co-creator of the South Kingston Neighborhood Congress, he has participated in a grassroots campaign against sprawl in his community of South Kingstown.
Needs: Slide projector and screen or Powerpoint projector and screen; water