Join us every second Thursday at the Effingham Public Library from September 8 – November 10, 2016 for Talking Service.

Tom Caldwell, an Army/National Guard veteran and instructor of English and philosophy at Lake Land College, will lead this discussion group.

Registration is required. Reading materials will be supplied free of charge to registrants.

This discussion group and the evening with Brian Turner are part of Illinois Humanities Talking Service: A Veterans Discussion Group series.

If you require ASL interpretation or other assistance to fully participate in this program, please contact info@ilhumanities.org at least 72 hours prior to the program so that we can make accommodations. For more information, please call (312) 422-5580.

More on Talking Service

Talking Service, presented in partnership with the Great Books Foundation, will provide an opportunity for veterans to share their military and post-military experiences with one another through reading and discussion of literature. It is open to veterans of all ages, genders, and branches of the service, whether they served in war or in peacetime.

Discussions will draw upon brief readings selected from Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian (Great Books Foundation, 2013), a collection of literature that relates to military and post-military life. The selections will include a wide variety of writings by Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Estela Portillo Trambley, Leo Tolstoy, Siobhan Fallon, and other authors. The readings for each meeting will address a particular theme, such as “homecoming,” “caregiving,” or “moral judgments.”