The Baker County Library will host an Oregon Chautauqua program titled

“Food for Thought” at 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 30, at Mad Matilda’s, 1917

Main St.

The event is free and open to the public.

The presenter is essayist and radio commentator Diana Coogle, who will discuss the many ways we view sustenance.

These various meanings of food – from the formation of communities to economics to religion to social status – are deeply rooted within the humanities. For example, “anthropologists explain how communities developed by tracing agriculture, linguists study idiomatic references to food, and ethicists explore the meaning of the biblical stricture against destroying the orchards of an enemy’s land.”

Coogle will cite examples from cinema, literature and history.

Oregon Chautauqua is a program of the Oregon Council of Humanities, an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for Humanities.

Future programs at the Baker County Library include the Chautauqua program “Frontier Justice” at the Sumpter Library at 7 p.m. Oct. 3 and at the Haines Library at 1 p.m. Oct. 4. “Frontier Justice” presents the history of public executions in Oregon from 1851 to 1905.

Also on Oct. 4, Oregon educator Bob Hamm will present “Becoming Oregon” at 7 p.m. at the Baker County Library, 2400 Resort St. His program will feature the war of words between the United States and Britain in the 1830s that nearly launched a battle between the two nations.