It is fun to occasionally talk and write about yourself in the third person.  As a literary technique, it has its merits.  The Charles Dickens Dombey and Son character, Major Bagstock, pompously talked about himself in the third person.   Often.

It was glorious and fun to read and Dickens didn’t overdo it.

I’ve tried not to write about myself in the third person at this internet venue.  From time to time, though, I have written press releases about myself in the third person.  After all, I am a freelance writer with no agent; just a speck of dust on the trash heap that is the literary world.

On Wednesday, March 28, I’ll be speaking about the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul at the Franco-American Collection at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College.  I wrote a press release about it and passed it along to the Collection for their own amendment and distribution.  Being predisposed by work on the presentation and at the counting house, I have no other words to offer up to the content gods today.

Julie-Ann Baumer will discuss her research on the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul on Wednesday, March 28, 2018 as part of Lewiston’s Francophone Month celebrations.

Her talk, “Great on Their Shoulders” will include a historical overview of the Basilica’s construction, its role as a focal point in Lewiston’s Franco American identity, and how the research and writing project she undertook — which appeared as weekly stories in the Sun Journal over a year’s time and will soon be released in book form — affected her personally.

“I always had a sense of being French,” Baumer says. “Maybe it was the distant memory of hearing the language and living in the traditions. But spending so much time at the Basilica and being immersed in 150 years of Lewiston’s French Catholic history increased my reverence for these ancestors who imagined a grand church on that hill. Their sustained vision and perseverance inspired my work as I dug up new information. It was a constant reminder of the importance of history and that we are only great on the shoulders of those who came before us.”

Baumer, a Lisbon Falls native and resident, is a freelance writer and blogger. She also works as an insurance analyst.  She is currently on the Gendron Franco Center’s board of directors, serves on the Moxie Festival Committee, and is involved in other local projects. She is a sustaining member of the Junior League of Boston.

Her talk will be held in Room 170, the Franco-American Collection at U.S.M.’s Lewiston-Auburn College, 51 Westminster Street in Lewiston.

The event is free and open to the public.

Doors open at 2:30 p.m.