Maine Humanities Council

By providing public humanities programs and opportunities throughout the state, the Maine Humanities Council (MHC) envisions the communities of Maine transformed by the power and pleasure of ideas. This article describes several different public humanities programs sponsored by the MHC—New Books, New Readers, Literature & Medicine, Veterans Book Group, and Let’s Talk About It—and the commission’s grant programs. According to Hayden Anderson, there is a key premise underlying everything the MHC does: gathering people together to read, share, talk, and think together makes a difference.

Historically the predominant models of programming have evolved from mid to large size employer settings. Yet the majority of employees in any given community work for organizations that employ fewer than 500 employees. These small employers also constitute a disproportionate majority of all employers. Wellness practitioners need to develop programming models and strategies that are designed specifically for these small employer organizations. This article establishes a perspective for bringing wellness to the small employer based on recent research and considering the implications of the differences between small and large employers from a programming perspective. Finally, several anticipated aspects of future programming are described along with summary conclusions.