The latest cold snap didn’t keep the reading public, including students from Joseph and Enterprise schools, from packing the Hurricane Creek Grange Hall for Fishtrap’s Big Read Kickoff on Jan. 5.
The Big Read is a nationwide community reading program initiated by the National Endowment of the Arts. This year, the county chose the Vietnam War classic “The Things they Carried,” a semi-autobiographical account of the war by former soldier Tim O’Brien.
The kickoff event featured a showing of the documentary film “Dick Cavett’s Vietnam.” Cavett hosted a nighttime talk show on ABC from 1969-1975, some of the most controversial years of the war. His shows often featured outspoken guests, including politicians, government officials, celebrities, veterans and others on both sides of the war. The documentary featured the most pertinent discussions on the war.
The audience sat in unusually rapt attention throughout the entire documentary, with discussion taking place between audience members afterward. Among the most impressed with the documentary were the high school students.
Joseph Charter School senior Haven Johnson found the discussion intriguing, even though her class is still preparing to study the war. The documentary also held great interest for JCS sisters Courtney and Maddie Bailey.
“It was really informational. Lots of it we didn’t know because we weren’t around then. It was probably more difficult for us to understand than (for older audience members), but I really liked it,” Courtney Bailey said.
“I liked that it was so much like today’s talk shows. It had views from both sides of
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