The following was originally published in the February 4th edition of  The Herald Dispatch. It is part of a regular series describing the activities of Create Huntington. For more information, go to www.herald-dispatch.com.

The idea of community is an interesting one. I use the word several times each week in my column, often as a way to describe the collection of homes, office buildings, streets and stores we call Huntington. I use it as synonym for “town.” While Webster’s Dictionary lists this as one of its meanings, I wonder if that doesn’t understate the essence of a community. After all, community shares a heritage with words such as “common”, “commune”, and “communion.” At its root, community speaks to people joining together to share time, ideas and resources towards a common purpose or goal.

For a little over 14 months, I’ve watched people come together at Create Huntington’s weekly Chat ‘n Chew to form small communities of doers who meet, talk, brainstorm and, in many cases, begin collaborating on projects they find meaningful and believe will improve the quality of life in Huntington. An unanticipated benefit of this has been that, as they start working together, volunteers are building friendships with others who share their individual hopes and aspirations.

Last week, David Pittenger, Dean of the Marshall University College of Liberal Arts, introduced an idea the College and the Cabell Country Public Library want to pursue that takes on the goal of cultivating communities of interest in a more direct way. They are creating forums of one or more reading groups that bring people together to read and talk about novels, short stores, poetry, nonfiction and movies.

 Their desire is for the individual groups to form the agenda for the reading, based on a common area of interest, themes they want to read and discuss, times when they can meet, etc. The reading groups will not be a lecture series where “faculty experts” tell the audience what the book means or how it should be interpreted. Rather, a reading group will be a time where people can come together, as a community, to talk about their reactions to the work and what they learned from the material. There are no requirements for being in the group, only an interest in reading, talking, and listening.

Various groups could focus on:

• Great Books: classic works of literature, philosophy, and poetry.
• Living in West Virginia: reflections on the experience of growing up and living in West Virginia.
• Civic Engagement: works that examine one’s role and responsibilities as an engaged citizen, the meaning of liberty, constitutional democracy, the history of the United States and its government, and contemporary matters.
• Pop Culture: using novels, short stories, graphic novels and movies to explore society.
• Potpourri: where members select contemporary fiction and nonfiction.
• Film: where members select from classic as well as contemporary movies to allow the group to discuss the film’s characters and theme.

You can learn more and share your ideas about reading groups by contacting David Pittenger at 304-696-2731 or pittengerd@marshall.edu, or by attending a Chat ‘n Chew.

In addition to the reading group, others met to work on efforts to create a Culture Center that brings together people from diverse cultures and backgrounds, spur downtown retail growth, better integrate Marshall students into the community, provide training and assistance to parents, and recruit volunteers for HARC, the team that maintains flower plantings all over town.

Create Huntington Chat ‘n Chews are held every Thursday, 5:30 – 7:00 pm in the lobby of the Frederick Building, 940 Fourth Avenue, downtown Huntington. Create Huntington Chat ‘n Chews are free and open to anyone. For more information, go to www.createhuntington.com.