Prairie Atheneum - EDGE

Our local weekly, the Eastend Edge, at times offers me space to write pretty much what I want. Here is an example from February 7th issue.

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Prairie Atheneums
The cultural makeup of any given prairie town is far more diverse than most people think. When we see the dotted towns along the highway we don’t think of what they may contain. We know there is a rink, perhaps a curling rink as well. There will be at least one bank, restaurant (support for at least one male-dominated ‘coffee row’), and one grocery store, all fronted by a discontinuous line of pick-up trucks. And that’s it. That is our perception of a typical prairie town. But this would be a lie. Hidden in the recesses of coffee row, or in the living room of some nightly venture, a gathering of sorts occurs. An atheneum of thoughts are on the table.
An atheneum is a place of discourse and knowledge. We could in fact re-name libraries, if they were used beyond the myopic sources for lending books, as an Atheneum. Maybe, by this action, a library wouldn’t be so pejorative to many a young mind. “Atheneum” resonates as something higher, or at least more than a “library”. Atheneum is an activity of intelligent discourse as well as a physical store house. Atheneum is something that each town should aspire to. Atheneum is an ideal.
In an atheneum, the formality, like a book club of sorts, would only be loosely structured for discussion. The source for topics would be endless, thanks to the flooding of information through the internet. For example, in the January 14th issue of Science, the leading scientific publication in the world next to Nature, a multi-authored report on identified trends in human thought over the last 200 years. For the first time these trends are measurable and go beyond the subjective, anecdotal or suggestive. This is thanks to the internet search-engine giant Google’s digitization of over 5 million books, representing only about 4% of books ever published (there are over 5 billion words in these books). We now know that in 1900 there were 544,000 words in the English language; 597,000 in 1950, and 1,022,000 in 2000. Also, by examining the trends in the English language we are now able, for the first time, to ask questions with tangible answers like the evolution of grammar. Or, in the same issue of Science, another study showed that by simply writing down one’s worries about a high pressure test, moments before writing a test, actually improved ones test score.
The discussion points of any loosely constructed atheneum can broaden ones expression of knowledge, beyond the simple trivia collecting. And, within the small communities that which are prevalent on the prairies, the influence of expanding perceptions and thoughts will certainly manifest itself in how the community operates and its perception of itself in the world. For, rather than fitting the stereotype or the community’s history into the mass culture of a group, even a small community can create its own period of Enlightenment.
The reason why I dilly-dally down this road of discussion is that my previously held assumptions are no more. I had thought that the idea of an atheneum was only to be seen as a big city phenomena. An atheneum-like structure of skeletonized pillars, supporting the foreboding book-lined walls of a cavernous room, instantly reducing a visitor to a bowed moment of humility. But no. For the past five years there has been an Atheneum Society in our own neighboring metropolis of Medicine Hat. As I am told, it is a casual affair: “On a quarterly basis, we meet for a very nice meal, and a guest speaker”, pulling from the professional resources in the area. It can be a simple as that.
Whether in an idea form, or a physical structure, atheneum’s have existed for centuries. The exchange and discourse that occurs has led to some of the greatest advancements of thought, whether in the form of material and technology, or in the expressions, through art and literature. A vehicle to which we can consider what it means to be human in this period of time and in this little dot on the map.