Join acclaimed poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf for a reading from Shale Play, illustrated by Steven Rubin’s photographs. Their book will be on sale for a discounted $20. See more details on the Penn State Press website, which describes the book as “a passionate work of witness.”
In the parlance of the oil and gas industry, “shale play” refers to a region exploited for its natural gas by means of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—transient industrial processes that often occur far from the populations that benefit from them. Amid polarized claims about fracking and pressure to develop these areas around the world, this project gathers evidence from everyday life in the Marcellus Shale Play. Kasdorf and Rubin follow in the footsteps of the documentarians of the 1930s, such as the artists and writers of the Works Progress Administration, taking a deliberate and thoughtful approach to gather the stories of workers on pipelines and well pads, landowners and leaseholders, waitresses, ministers, farmers, retired miners, teachers, and neighbors. The resulting collage of vivid oral and pictorial testimony reveals the natural beauty of rural places as well as the disturbance and spectacle fracking creates.
Dinner (6:00 PM): Pasta Bar with gluten-free option, meatballs, chicken, salad, rolls, apple pie bars and gluten-free cookies for dessert