Thoreau's Legacy

Politcs & Reform

160th Anniversary of
Henry D. Thoreau's

RESISTANCE TO
CIVIL GOVERNMENT

1849-2009

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."

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150th Anniversary of
Henry D. Thoreau's

A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN
JOHN BROWN

1859-2009

"I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of Slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown."

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Conservation

"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that
in Wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind." 

Henry D. Thoreau

WALKING, 1850

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Ecology

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Henry D. Thoreau

FAITH IN A SEED

Published Posthumously
1993

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Lifestyle

"Simplify, simplify."

Henry D. Thoreau

WALDEN, 1854

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Sense of Wonder

I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, — that my body might, — but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

Henry D. Thoreau

"Ktaadn"

THE MAINE WOODS, 1864

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Aesthetic Beauty of Language

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

Henry D. Thoreau

"Where I Lived,
and What I Lived for,"

WALDEN, 1854

July 8 – 11, 2010 Concord, Massachusetts

• Complete Printable - FINAL Program (pdf)
• Lodging Information
  
• Map
  
• AG10_Registration_Form (pdf)
  
• Official 2010 AG T-shirt
• Book Signing with 25 Authors

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Ongoing Gallery Exhibit: Natural Harmonies Emerson Umbrella

8:00-9:30 am Morning Reception Gallery Talk and Tea with the Artist Wild Harmonies, Gayle Moore, Photographer

8-9:30 am Walden Pond Walk with Walter Brain, Meet at the Shop at Walden Pond

9:30-3:30 am     Registration at the Masonic Temple

9:30-10:30 am   Coffee, Doughnuts, and Healthy Snacks

10:30-12:00 noon Workshop I Masonic Temple, 58 Monument Square, Concord, MA

Panel Discussion: Thinking and Perceiving (Main Floor)

• The Delegated Intellect of Transcendental New England: Then and Now, Albena Bakratcheva, Professor of American Literature and American Studies at New Bulgarian University of Sofia, Bulgaria
• Thoreau’s Late Thoughts on Perception: Lessons for 21st-Century Environmental Thinkers, Rochelle Johnson, Associate Professor of English and Environmental Studies, The College of Idaho
  

Presentation: Re-traveling Thoreau’s Walk to Wachusett Mountain (Downstairs)

• Walking to Wachusett – A Re-enactment of Thoreau’s “A Walk to Wachusett, Robert Young, Author

Noon Lunch on your own

1:30-3:00 pm Workshop II Masonic Temple

Presentation: 21st Century Environmental Challenges (Main Floor)

• What Would Henry Think of Today’s Environmental Challenges Here and Around The World, Peter Alden, naturalist, author of several Audubon Field Guides, and organizer of the first Biodiversity Day, will examine the idea of global “hot spots” that Edward O. Wilson outlines in The Future of Life. The talk addresses saving and protecting planetary biodiversity.
  

Panel Discussion: Transcendental Ethics (Downstairs)

• From Train Rails to Jail Tales: Relativity Justifies
  Transcendentalist Morality!, Paul J. Medeiros, Providence College
• “The Change Has All Been in Me”: My Life as a Transcendentalist, Audrey Raden, Educator

3:30-5 pm Workshop III Masonic Temple

Panel Discussion: Transcendentalism in Literature (Main Floor)

• Into the Thoreauvian Wild: John Krakauer’s Reimagining and Reconsideration of Thoreauvian Transcendentalism and American Masculinity in “Into the Wild, Tracey A. Cummings, Assistant Professor, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
• Thoreau’s Double Vision in Terry Tempest Williams, Shinji Iwamasa, Associate Professor of English at Shirayuri College, Japan
• Transcendental psychosemantics: Thoreau and Emerson on the meaning of Nature, Nikita Pokrovsky, Professor of Sociology at Moscow State University, Russia

Presentation: Thoreau Country (Downstairs)

• Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, Corrine Smith, Author and Librarian

5:00-7 pm Thoreau Farm Picnic 341 Virginia Road, Concord

• See the recently restored birth house of Henry D. Thoreau!
  Bring your own picnic.  Drinks provided.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Concord Excursions & Walking Tours Meet at Masonic Temple

6:45-9:15 am  Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon field guides, on an excursion to a giant, hidden Great Blue Heron colony near White Pond in south Concord. Meet at 6:30 am at Masonic Temple Parking Lot to Carpool.

8:30-10 am    Join historians Janet Beck, author of Creating the John Brown Legend, & Jayne Gordon, Director of Education and Public Programs at Massachusetts Historical Society, for a tour entitled: “A Transcendentalist Above All”: A Walking Tour of John Brown’s Concord. Meet at the front steps of the Masonic Temple.

9:30-3 pm      Registration Masonic Temple
Pick up you registration materials at the reception desk located in the front hallway of the Masonic Temple. There is a public bulletin board for gathering attendees to use for ride sharing and other requests. The Thoreau Society staff is available to assist you.

9:30-10:30 pm     Refreshments Masonic Temple
Coffee, Doughnuts, and Healthy Snacks
The Hospitality Area is open to Annual Gathering attendees throughout the day.

10:30-Noon   Workshop IV Masonic Temple

Panel: Thoreau and Humboldt: Then and Now (Main Floor)

• ‘A beautiful relation’: Rethinking Thoreau and Humboldt’s Cosmos, Laura Dassow Walls
• Laura Walls on Von Humboldt and Thoreau, Edward Mooney
• Pursuits of Cosmos, Pursuits of Truth, Rochelle Johnson, Associate Professor of English
  and Environmental Studies, The College of Idaho
• The Cosmos of Edwin Way Teale, Tom Potter, serves on The Thoreau Society Board of Directors as President
  

Panel: Thoreau on Surveying and Drawing (Downstairs)

• Surveying (in) Thoreau’s Walden, Iuliu E. Ratiu, PhD Candidate, SUNY, Albany, New York
• The Zen Drawings of H.D. Thoreau, Linda Brown Holt, Independent Scholar
  

Noon       Lunch provided by La Provence Hospitality Area, Masonic Temple

• Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket
  

1-2:30 pm     Workshop V Masonic Temple

Panel: The Environment: Thoreau as Transcendental Physician (Main Floor)

• Transcendentalism and the Environment: An Introduction to Thoreau’s Changing Stance, K. P. Van Anglen, Professor, Boston University
• A Physician not a Metaphysician: Thoreau’s Diagnoses of the Heart, James Engell, Professor, Harvard University
• The Native American Model: The Civic and Economic Virtues of a Healthy Relationship to Nature, Brent Ranalli, Cadmus Group, Inc

Presentation: Utopian Communities (Downstairs)

• A Bedlam Of Good Intentions: Modest Reflections on The Whys and Wherefores of Utopian Communes in The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Kit Bakke, Author
  

3-4:30 pm    Workshop VI Masonic Temple & CFPL

Panel Discussion: Thoreau’s A Week (Main Floor)

• Transcendental Quotation in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Robert Thomas Klevay, Assistant Professor of English, Auburn University at Montgomery
• Transcendentalism in “A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers,” Edward Mooney, Professor, Syracuse University
  

Presentation: Walden Pond (CFPL) Concord Free Public Library

• Space limited, pre-registration required. Underwater Walden, Kristina Joyce, Concord Artist

5:30-7 pm    Dinner provided by La Provence First Parish Church

• Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket

7:30-9:00 pm Reception for All the World is Seashore Concord Free Public Library

• Reception and beer and wine social for Kristina Joyce to mark the opening of her show All the World is Seashore, which will be on exhibit in the Concord Free Public Library art gallery throughout July, August, and September of 2010.  Private display viewing and a brief program will follow.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

6:45-9:15 am  Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon field guides, on an excursion to Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Concord. Meet at 6:30 a.m. at Masonic Temple Parking Lot to Car Pool.

7 am            Walter Harding Memorial Walk at Walden Pond, Led by Corinne H. Smith. Meet at House Replica

8-9 am          Refreshments First Parish Church

9-10:30 am         Annual Business Meeting of The Thoreau Society, Inc. First Parish Church

10:45-Noon   Dana S. Brigham Memorial Keynote Address First Parish Church

Women’s Work: The Female Transcendentalists and
How We Read Them Today

Megan Marshall, Professor, Emerson College

Megan Marshall is the author of two nonfiction books and has published numerous essays andreviews in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate Online, The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. Her biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) won the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians; the Mark Lynton History Prize, awarded by the Anthony Lukas Prize Project jointly sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation; the Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and memoir.

Noon  Lunch provided by La Provence First Parish Church

• Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket
  

1:00-2:15 pm      Dramatic Performance First Parish Church
A Visit from Henry David Thoreau, Kevin Radaker, Professor, Anderson University

2:45-4:00 pm Workshop VII Masonic Temple

Presentation: Exploring the Growth and Legacy of Transcendentalism (Main Floor)

• From Emerson to Obama: Transcendentalism Yesterday And Today, Reverend Dr. Barry M. Andrews, Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, New York

Presentation: Walden, the Place and the Book (Downstairs)

• Walden as the Fourth Derivative of Geology, Robert M. Thorson, Professor, University of Connecticut
  

7:30-9:00 pm Book Signing at Masonic Temple (Downstairs)

• Several Authors will be available during this event favorite. Refreshments served.
  
  Coming Soon:
• List of authors will be posted here
  

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Excursions and Walking Tours

6:45-9:15 am  Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon field guides, on a trip to Fairhaven Bay and cliffs and beaver pond beyond Walden (with special parking on Fairhaven Hill c/o Concord Land Conservation Trust). Meet at 6:30 am at Masonic Temple Parking Lot to Carpool.

7:30-10 am Randall Conrad & Richard Lenat, Exploring the Pencil Factory Dam Site in Acton Gather promptly at 7:30 am in Masonic Temple parking lot for car pool.

7:30-10 am Join Deborah Medenbach for Canoeing on the Concord River. Meet at 7:00 am at Masonic Temple Parking Lot to Carpool. Pre-registration required for canoe trip.

10:30-Noon Workshop VIII

Presentation: Spiritual Legacy of the Transcendentalists (Main Floor)

• Peter MacInerney, Transcending Ideologies: Thoreau’s Mather, Then and Now

Presentation: One Person’s Story (Downstairs)

• Debra Enzenbacher, Thoreau, Transcendentalism and One Woman’s Search for Meaning at the South Pole
  

Open House and Picnic at Thoreau Farm Noon-2 pm at 341 Virginia Road Visit the newly restored Birth House of Henry D. Thoreau! The Thoreau Society congratulates the Thoreau Farm for raising the money needed to save, preserve, and manage the site moving forward. The Society rents office space from the Thoreau Farm. Both organizations collaborate together on programming and look forward to a fruitful collaboration. Special tour for Annual Gathering attendees led by project architect, Larry Sorli   Photo Courtesy: Thoreau Farm