The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park

Wine Auction: Thank You!

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation held its annual wine auction benefit Oct. 4 at Pleasant Home in Oak Park. More than 75 people attended and bid on more than 100 bottles of wine to raise funds for the Foundation's educational and cultural programming. Thank you to all our participating organizations, donors, sponsors and friends for making this a successful event!

Auctioneer Jim Bohenstengel supervises the wine offerings prior to the auction.

EHFOP Board Member Lori McCarthy reads about the wines for bid.

Bidders watch the auction begin.  

EHFOP's Chuck Bednar Named Volunteer of the Year

Chuck Bednar, left, and Redd Griffin cut the ribbon on the Traveling Hemingway Exhibit at the Carl Sandburg Historic Site in Galesburg, Illinois.

Longtime EHFOP Volunteer Chuck Bednar has been honored by the Illinois Associaton of Museums with the Volunteer of the Year award for his work restoring and coordinating Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time. The traveling exhibit has been sent all over the Midwest to emphasize Hemingway's Oak Park story and his later life's work thanks to Bednar's efforts.

The IAM said in honoring him that his "unstinting donation of his time and skills has resulted in sharing Hemingway's history with the world ... the results are overwhelmingly positive and absolutely wonderful!"

The award will be presented at the IAM's annual conference awards luncheon Oct. 2.

EHFOP, Dominican Announce Partnership

A long-awaited partnership agreement to preserve and restore the Hemingway Boyhood Home was signed Friday between The Ernest Hemingway oundation of Oak Park and Dominican University.

Members of the EHFOP and Dominican, as well as State Sen. Don Harmon and Oak Park Village President David Pope, applauded as EHFOP chairman Allan Baldwin and Dominican President Donna Carroll signed the agreement. Dominican will take title and financial responsibility for the home following a two-year lease period, and will partner with the Foundation in "fostering cultural literacy and offering programming that explores Hemingway’s role as a global citizen and one of the 20th century’s most influential writers," according to the University.

Top: Baldwin and Carroll sign the partnership agreement with the Boyhood Home and their organizations behind them. Above: Oak Park Village President David Pope, Baldwin, Caroll and State Sen. Don Harmon toast the finalization of the partnership.

2009 Benefit Wine Auction Will Be Held October 4th

A chance to taste and buy “one of the most civilized things in the world” will occur Sunday, Oct. 4, from 3 to 6 p.m. at a wine auction in Historic Pleasant Home, 217 Home Ave., Oak Park. The event, a benefit for The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, will feature wine tasting, wines for bid, hors d’oeuvres and musical entertainment.

Proceeds from tickets and wine sales will support educational and cultural programs of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. Tickets for the benefit are $25. Send a check made out to The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park to:

2009 Benefit Wine Auction
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park
P. O. Box 2222, Oak Park, IL 60303-2222

Tickets are also on sale at the Hemingway Museum, 200 N. Oak Park Avenue, or by phone at (708) 848-2222, Ext. 1#.

“This is an opportunity to sample some fine wines, bid on ones that you like, support local merchants, enjoy a few hours with friendly people, and support a worthy hometown cultural organization,” said Allan Baldwin, president of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park.

“We see the wine auction as an event Hemingway would have approved of,” Baldwin added. “Good wines mattered to him.”

Author Mark Ott Reading at Hemingway Museum August 30th

 

A Sea of Change explores the importance of Hemingway's relationship to the waters of the Gulf Stream that transformed his imaginative work. Drawing primarily on Ernest Hemingway's handwritte and unpublished fishing logs and from published and unpublished correspondence and newspaper articles, Mark P. Ott structures this literary biography chronologically to tell the story of Hemingway's life as it becomes immersed in the Gulf Stream.

Ott will read from and sign copies of A Sea of Change on Sunday, August 30th at 2 p.m. at the Hemingway Museum, 200 N. Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL. For more information please call (708) 848-2222 or e-mail ehfop(at)sbcglocal(dot)net .

 

2009 Hemingway Birthday Lecture

 

Photo: Debby Preiser

A man who let his own insides get eaten out by the diseases of fame had dreamed new books on this boat. He'd taught his sons to reel in something that feels like Moby Dick on this boat. He'd accidentally shot himself in both legs on this boat. He'd fallen drunk from the flying bridge on this boat. He'd written achy, generous, uplifting, poetic letters on this boat. He'd propositioned women on this boat. He'd hunted German subs on this boat. He'd saved someone (several someones) from shark attack on this boat. He'd acted like a boor and a bully and an overly competitive jerk on this boat.

He'd owned her, fished her, worked her, rode her, from the waters of Key West to the Bahamas to the Dry Tortugas to the north coast and archipelagos of Cuba. She wasn't a figment or a dream or a literary theory or someone's psychosexual interpretation -- she was actual.

-- From Paul Hendrickson's 2009 Hemingway Birthday Lecture, Looking for Ernest Hemingway through the Prism of the Pilar

Read about the Birthday Lecture in The Wednesday Journal of Oak Park.