The night of Thursday April 4th, 2013 a really good friend of mine and I went to dinner together at Sola Café on Kagy and 3rd. We discussed and debated the norm for us (mutual friends and their lot in life, moral issues of ours and others, personal life updates and the possibility of her joining me for class) in anticipation for the impending presentation provided to us by Frederick Turner in the Museum of the Rockies.
My friend that accompanied me to the presentation happily obliged to join me for this event for a few reasons: she's interested in my life and what's involved within it, she loves the museum (any museum, actually) and she would've have done anything more enlightening or meaningful with her Thursday night.
The dinner discussion wasn't incredibly lively by any means but she asked me about my class and what it's like and the writer himself, as she knew that I had read something that he published: "School of Night". At this time she revealed to me that she almost decided on attending the University of Montana instead of Montana State University because they have a good journalism program. This caught me a little by surprise because I heard she enjoyed writing but I didn't know that she ever considered a future in it (she's now a psychology major). Anyway, once dinner was over, we made our way up to the museum.
Walking into the room, we both make observations of general demographics that the room incorporated and conclude that opposite ends of the spectrum have made an appearance: 40/50 year-olds and over crowd, mixed with college students (people in their 20s). After about a 10 minute wait we finally get ushered into the auditorium to experience Frederick Turner. We quickly find seats and make even more observations about the activities around us, noting conversation topics that we rudely eavesdropped on.
Turner's introduction is made and we both turn our full attention on the speaker. I was surprised to hear such a strong British accent come from him even though I had no expectations. The way in which he presented was interesting to me because, though he is a published writer and poet, neither of us expected him to read verbatim from his book of poetry that's yet to be published. I did like a lot of the poems he read, like the poem about the relationship he has with his wife, which was mildly humorous. I think, however, that the best part of the night was the time allotted for questions from the audience. Specifically, when the gentleman on the far left side of the auditorium asked a question that began with, "So I know that you voted for Obama...". The two of us found that question entertaining because there seemed to be no necessity to include a political comment and because of the response from Turner which was simple and easy to understand. He said, in effect, in his response, "I believe there are people that make actions and people that react to those actions". Both my friend and I agreed that he handled the answer to the question perfectly.
We were eventually told to leave which then prompted more discussion between the two of us about reflection of the presentation and plans for the night which turned into meeting our mutual friend for frozen yogurt. In summation, the night was a relative success and she was the decidedly the best person to invite to an event such as that. This experience definitely made me feel much more open and willing to discover the things that visiting speakers have to offer an audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment