{"id":22485,"date":"2001-10-12T16:05:48","date_gmt":"2001-10-12T21:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=22485"},"modified":"2024-07-08T15:47:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T19:47:06","slug":"helen-nearing-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2001\/10\/12\/helen-nearing-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Nearing documentary to be shown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2001\/10\/nearing-helen-now.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2001\/10\/nearing-helen-now-198x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignleft\" alt=\"Helen Nearing\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The documentary film <em>Helen Nearing &amp; The Good Life: Conscious Living and Conscious Dying<\/em> will be shown at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, in Skelton Lounge of Chase Hall at Bates College. The public is invited to attend the screening, followed by a discussion with its Portland producers Polly Bennell and Andrea Sarris, free of charge. The presentation is part of a series, &#8220;Spiritual Journeys: Stories of the Soul 2001-02,&#8221; sponsored by the chaplain&#8217;s office.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The film, first released in 2000, examines the lives and deaths of Maine authors Helen and Scott Nearing, best-known for their book about homesteading<em>,Living the Good Life: How To Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World.<\/em> More than a biography of Helen, this film explores the Nearings&#8217; commitment to self-sufficiency and voluntary simplicity. It also unveils the spiritual philosophy in which their lives and work were rooted.<\/p>\n<p>Arriving in the Maine village of Harborside in 1952, the Nearings eventually wrote more than 50 books and hosted a steady stream of visitors seeking to learn about their way of life. Producers Bennell and Sarris spent five years collecting photographs, interviews and archival footage to create this film portrait.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the film explores Helen Nearing&#8217;s eagerness to face death. &#8220;I have never taken the outside of life too seriously,&#8221; Nearing says in the film. &#8220;The real Life, with a capital L, is behind all this scenery. I&#8217;m anxious to get there and experience that, but I still have to live my day in school. So as long as the old body can continue, I&#8217;ll stay here \u2013 but I&#8217;m on my way somewhere else. In transition.&#8221; Scott Nearing died at the age of 100, in 1983, when he decided to stop eating solid foods. Helen died in 1995 when the car she was driving struck a tree.<\/p>\n<p>Following the screening of the film at Bates, Bennell and Sarris will answer questions and discuss how producing this documentary affected their own spiritual journeys.<\/p>\n<p>Next in the Spiritual Journeys series is Dr. David Loxterkamp, familiy practice physician of Belfast, Maine, who will discuss <em>Practicing Medicine as &#8216;Practicing the Presence of God<\/em> at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, in Skelton Lounge. Call 207-786-8272 for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The documentary film &#8220;Helen Nearing &amp; The Good Life: Conscious Living and Conscious Dying&#8221; will be shown Tuesday, Oct. 23, in Skelton Lounge of Chase Hall at Bates College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,32],"tags":[6135,11648,8087,9079],"class_list":["post-22485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-maine-and-new-england","tag-music-tag","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-spiritual-journeys-series","tag-visiting-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91169,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22485\/revisions\/91169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}