The British Romantics and Their Influence
on the American Transcendentalists

Sunday, February 12, 7:30 pm
First Parish in Concord, Parish Hall
20 Lexington Road, Concord, MA

The Transcendentalism Council of First Parish in Concord and The Thoreau Society are pleased to welcome Rev. Dr. Barry Andrews to discuss the relationships between the British Romantics, including Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, and the Transcendentalist movement in America.

These writers were key figures in a transnational movement in Europe, England, and America that affected almost every area of intellectual and creative activity. Romanticism was a reaction to many aspects of modern life then, and to some extent, even today: tyranny, materialism, industrialism, skepticism, conventionality, formalism, and the despoiling of the natural environment.

Dr. Andrews is Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, Long Island, NY, where he served for 18 years. Author and editor of five books on Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, Andrews has also lectured extensively and led workshops on these and other writers. Now living on Bainbridge Island, WA, he continues his interest in the literature and spirituality of the Transcendentalist movement in America. He currently serves on the board of The Thoreau Society.

This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by The Thoreau Society and The Transcendentalism Council of First Parish.

Meet Henry David Thoreau Winter Walk

Walden Pond State Reservation
INTERPRETIVE PROGRAM
915 Walden Street Concord, MA 0174
Rt. 126 (near Route 2), Concord, MA (978) 369-3254

Monday, February 20th1–2pm at the replica and 2-3pm walk out to the house site.
Celebrate school vacation week by joining Henry David Thoreau portrayed by historian Richard Smith on Monday, February 20th at Walden Pond. From 1pm to 2pm

Thoreau will be entertaining visitors at the house replica near the main parking lot. At 2pm, Mr. Thoreau will lead a walk to the original house site at the pond. Dress for winter weather, all children must be accompanied by an adult. After the hike join park staff for hot chocolate at park headquarters.

Sponsored by DCR and the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of The Thoreau Society.

Winter Crafts for Kids

Walden Pond State Reservation
INTERPRETIVE PROGRAM
915 Walden Street Concord, MA 0174
Rt. 126 (near Route 2), Concord, MA (978) 369-3254

Friday, February 24th 1–2pm Join a park interpreter at the Tsongas Gallery in Park Headquarters for a seasonal story book reading and a fun craft creation to make and take home. This program is for children ages 5-12, all children must be accompanied by an adult. All materials are provided.

For more information call (978) 369-3254. Pre-registration is not required. No dogs allowed, unless they are working guides.

Park programs are sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau Society www.thoreausociety.org
Walden Pond State Reservation

Sponsored by DCR and the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of The Thoreau Society.

The Thoreau Society and the Thoreau Farm Trust
Auction

February 20-March 16, 2012

Donate an Auction Item

American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, San Francisco
May 24-27, 2012
CFP for Roundtable Discussion sponsored by
the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers

Interdisciplinary Thoreau:

Recent scholarship in the fields of Environmental Science, Cartographic History, Political Science and Science Studies, to name only a few, have demonstrated that any adequate approach to Thoreau must take into account both the broad impact of his writings and their profound resistance to the hard-and-fast disciplinary boundaries, newly emerging in Thoreau’s day, that are so thoroughly enshrined in our own. For this roundtable discussion, we solicit papers that respond to the questions: how do Thoreau’s contributions to your discipline unsettle the assumptions of the discipline itself? How do interdisciplinary studies of Thoreau challenge established ways of understanding his life and work?  Can we, as twenty-first century scholars with necessarily discipline-bound perspectives, make sense of Thoreau? Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for a 5- to 8-minute presentation) by January 15, 2012, to: kristen.case@maine.edu.  This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, San Francisco
May 24-27, 2012
CFP for Panel Discussion sponsored by the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers

Feminist Thoreau? 

Thoreau’s central position within the pantheon of white male New England writers, a reputation solidified by F.O. Matthiessen’sinfluential American Renaissance, has made him a problematic figure for feminist scholars. Indeed, Walden would seem, at least on the surface, to champion the historically “masculine” values of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. In the light of the critique of canonical American literature launched by Nina Baym and others, are feminist readings of Thoreau’s work possible? How are contemporary feminist scholars engaging Thoreau? Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for an 18-minute presentation) by January 15, 2012, to: kristen.case@maine.edu.  This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

Call for Papers due December 7, 2011

2012 Thoreau Society Annual Gathering (July 12-15): Celebrating 150 Years of Thoreau's Life, Works, and Legacy.

Keynote Speaker: Edward O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Please submit proposals for walks talks, hikes, and other events to
The Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742 C/O Annual Gathering Committee or to info@thoreausociety.org.

127th MLA Annual Convention

The convention will begin on Thursday, 5 January, and end on Sunday, 8 January. All MLA members and others involved in the study or teaching of language and literature must register for the convention to participate in or attend meetings, visit the exhibit hall, take part in job interviews, or reserve hotel rooms at special MLA rates.

2012 MLA / Panel Sponsored by The Thoreau Society

446. Encounters with Race in the Age of American Transcendentalism
Saturday, 7 January, 10:15–11:30 a.m., 614, WSCC

Encounters with Race in the Age of American Transcendentalism
Chair, Rochelle Johnson, The College of Idaho

1.  Lance Newman, Westminster College
“Transcendental Historicism and Race in Lydia Maria Child’s The First Settlers of New England”

            In the years preceding the September 19, 1836 convocation of the Transcendental Club (which her brother and close correspondent, Convers Francis, attended), Lydia Maria Child published a trilogy of popular radical histories: The First Settlers of New England; or, Conquest of the Pequods, Narragansetts, and Pokanokets (1829), An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), and History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1835). In these three books, Child uses a transcendental historicist method to expose the roots of the oppression of Native Americans, African Americans, and women in the antebellum United States. Child was the second woman granted access to the Boston Atheneum; in these three books, she used the Athenuem’s rich trove of travel narratives and classical histories to build pastiches of anecdotes that destabilized contemporary racial and gender arrangements by putting them in comparative cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective. Child’s rhetorical goal in these three texts is to contrast transient, local, social realities with the eternal, natural, transcendent verities of a human nature that is identical across time and space.

            In this talk, I will focus on The First Settlers of New England, the first revisionist history of the colonization of the Atlantic seaboard. At a time when Andrew Jackson and others were deploying racist and paternalistic rhetoric in an aggressive campaign for removal of the remaining Eastern tribes, Child uses material from early colonial texts to construct a dialogue between a good republican mother and her two morally pristine daughters. In this closet drama for children, the Algonquin targets of Puritan genocide are represented as heroes martyred in an attempt to defend their homeland against tyrannical invaders. After hearing of the 1636 Puritan decision put all of the male inhabitants of Block Island to death, Caroline asks, “But, mother, was not this order extremely cruel and unjust, and was it in reality put in execution?”

            My main goal in this talk will be to showcase Child’s transcendental historicist attack on antebellum ideologies of race. Rather than appeal directly and in principle to a universal human nature, Child demonstrates its existence by releasing a flood of anecdotal evidence that demonstrates the fundamental likeness of Native Americans to their oppressors. Moreover, she dramatizes the identification of two young white girls with their “Red brethren,” a radicalizing process that leads to the girls’ political awakening and commitment to act in the present.

Child was a deeply influential member of the Transcendentalist milieu. She was the most prominent woman writer in Boston in the 1820s and 1830s. She attended Margaret Fuller’s first series of conversations at Elizabeth Peabody’s bookshop on West Street in Boston in 1839. Throughout this period, she presented an influential alternative to the Emersonian individualism and quietism that has since been isolated as the core impulse of the movement. The First Settlers of New England was an important antecedent not only for the Transcendentalisteducational reform tract, Record of a School, by Peabody andBronson Alcott (1835), but also for the Indian notebooks that Henry Thoreau left unedited at his death.

Sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

2.  Ryan Schneider, Purdue University, West Lafayette
“Race-as-Emotion: The Affective Dimensions of Black-White Relations in Emerson’s 1844 ‘Address on the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies’”

            This paper examines the emotional dimensions of race and social reform in Emerson’s 1844 “Address on the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies.” My readings focus on moments when Emerson probes and questions various institutions, traditions, and habits of thought that determine the material and political circumstances of blacks and whites and shape the felt quality of interracial relations. More specifically, it sheds light on his attempts to articulate the emotional dimensions of race and reform: the range of affective processes that attend moments of black-white interaction and how such processes may expand, limit, or reconfigure possibilities for social reform. Emerson does not provide a single, unambiguous notion of what race comprises, and he is immersed in contemporary currents of thought on the subject that are far from consistent.  I argue, however, that while he offers multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions of race, he ultimately turns to particular discourses of emotion to delineate racial differences, examine problems of black-white relations, and explore models for social reform.
The 1844 Address construes race not only as an innate biological characteristic or geo-political construct but also as an affective phenomenon: something that is best articulated as an emotional process and best apprehended in terms of the feelings that specters of miscegenation or racial extinction (to cite two examples) can provoke.  The paper goes on to draw more complex and vivid maps of the affective elements that shape the “Address” –which is a foundational text, in terms of ethical content, for Emerson’s future writings on race and reform.

Sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

3.  William Gleason, Princeton University
“Frederick Law Olmsted and the Environment of Race”

            As one of the most successful nineteenth-century practitioners of what environmental sociologist Dorceta E. Taylor has recently termed “pastoral Transcendentalism,” Frederick Law Olmsted helped weave one strain of Transcendentalist ideas about nature deep into the fabric of American urban life. But in the years immediately preceding his appointment as, for example, superintendent of New York’s Central Park, Olmsted was best known to Americans as the author of A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), the first of three volumes he would publish in the 1850s about his travels through the slaveholding South. Olmsted prepared these books for publication, moreover, while serving as managing editor of Putnam’s Monthly, an important venue for Transcendentalist writing and abolitionist editorializing. My talk proposes a reconsideration of Olmsted’s contribution to midcentury grapplings with “race” through fresh attention to this triple nexus of environmentalism, abolition, and Transcendentalism in his work of the mid to late 1850s. To what extent do Olmsted’s travel writings frame slavery in environmental terms? (Olmsted, for example, paid far more attention to the built and physical environment of slavery in his textual descriptions—and his illustrations—than did his mentor, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, in his own pattern books, even those that include chapters on southern plantation architecture.) How might Olmsted’s editorial work for Putnam’s—and his denunciation of chattel slavery—reframe our understanding of his pastoral Transcendentalism? Rather than remain marginal to newly burgeoning discussions of race and environment during the Transcendentalist era (he does not appear at all, for example, in Paul Outka’s otherwise excellent 2008 study, Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance), Olmsted’s engagement with these matters deserves sustained and serious attention.

Sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, San Francisco
May 24-27, 2012
CFP for Roundtable Discussion sponsored by the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers

Interdisciplinary Thoreau:

Recent scholarship in the fields of Environmental Science, Cartographic History, Political Science and Science Studies, to name only a few, have demonstrated that any adequate approach to Thoreau must take into account both the broad impact of his writings and their profound resistance to the hard-and-fast disciplinary boundaries, newly emerging in Thoreau’s day, that are so thoroughly enshrined in our own. For this roundtable discussion, we solicit papers that respond to the questions: how do Thoreau’s contributions to your discipline unsettle the assumptions of the discipline itself? How do interdisciplinary studies of Thoreau challenge established ways of understanding his life and work?  Can we, as twenty-first century scholars with necessarily discipline-bound perspectives, make sense of Thoreau? Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for a 5- to 8-minute presentation) by January 1, 2012, to: kristen.case@maine.edu. 

This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, San Francisco
May 24-27, 2012
CFP for Panel Discussion sponsored by the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers

Feminist Thoreau? 

Thoreau’s central position within the pantheon of white male New England writers, a reputation solidified by F.O. Matthiessen’sinfluential American Renaissance, has made him a problematic figure for feminist scholars. Indeed, Walden would seem, at least on the surface, to champion the historically “masculine” values of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. In the light of the critique of canonical American literature launched by Nina Baym and others, are feminist readings of Thoreau’s work possible? How are contemporary feminist scholars engaging Thoreau? Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for an 18-minute presentation) by January 1, 2012, to: kristen.case@maine.edu

This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

2012 Thoreau Society Annual Gathering

"Celebrating 150 Years of Thoreau's Life, Works, and Legacy"

Keynote Speaker:

Edward O. Wilson
University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology Harvard University
Museum of Comparative Zoology.

July 12 – 15, 2012 Concord, Massachusetts

All are welcome to register to attend community-wide events in Concord and Lincoln,
Massachusetts, and at the Walden Pond State Reservation.

Walden Pond State Reservation INTERPRETIVE PROGRAM

Previous Programs

Concord Historical Collaborative
2011 Program
Conscience of a Community:
Slavery and Anti-Slavery in Concord

Concord Historical Collaborative: Session 5

Sunday, March 27, 2:00-4:00 PM, Thoreau Farm

Exploring Conscience: Thoreau and Anti-Slavery

Three historians will examine Concord’s “native son” and his unique and sometimes misunderstood stance on slavery. Jeff Cramer, Curator of Collections at the Thoreau Institute; Michael Frederick, Executive Director of the Thoreau Society; and Jayne Gordon, Director of Education and Public Programs for the Massachusetts Historical Society and Thoreau Farm Advisor will discuss influences on Thoreau’s beliefs, his anti-slavery convictions, and how his story has been transmitted forward to today.

	SPECIAL EVENT - FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC This special event concludes the Concord Historical Collaborative's 2011 Program and is free & open to the public. New England Transcendentalism and the Election of Abraham Lincoln This popular talk was presented at The Thoreau Society Annual Gathering 2009. John Stauffer, Harvard University April 17, 2011 at 3-4:30 pm, French Hall, Concord Museum

John Stauffer writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and visual culture.  He is the author of seven books and more than 45 articles, including The Black Hearts of Men:  Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), which won four major awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Avery Craven Book Award, and the Lincoln Prize runner-up.  His essays have appeared in Time Magazine, Raritan, New York Post, 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography, and The Harvard Review; and he has appeared on national radio and television shows.  His new book, GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, was published in November 2008 by TWELVE. More information about his books can be found at http://www.johnstauffer.org.

Currently, John is completing a book with Sally Jenkins on radical interracialism and Unionism in Civil War era Mississippi.  The story, Free State of Jones, will appear as a major motion picture by the filmmaker Gary Ross, with whom John served as a scholarly consultant.

John received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999, began teaching at Harvard that year, and was tenured in 2004.  He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Deborah Cunningham, and their two-year-old son, Erik Isaiah Stauffer.

SPECIAL WEEKEND EVENT
 Free & Open to the Public 

Sponsored by The Thoreau Society, DCR, and the Friends of Walden Pond

Sunday - May 15 - 1:30-3pm

John Porcellino at the Shop at Walden Pond
915 Walden Street, Concord, Massachusetts
www.shopatwaldenpond.org
            978-287-5477 

       THOREAU AT WALDEN (CCS/Hyperion Books for Children, New York: 2008)

On Independence Day in 1845, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin, built by his own hands, on the shore of Walden Pond outside Concord Massachusetts. He lived there for two years, two months and two days, and wrote a book about his experience called Walden, which has gone on to become one of the most influential philosophical works in the world.

Walden's message of self-reliance, self-reflection, social criticism, and harmony with nature has resonated with readers for over 150 years. Thoreau at Walden is an impression of Thoreau's time at the pond, with text taken directly from Thoreau's own published writings. Henry David Thoreau is one of my biggest inspirations as an artist and human being, so this project was very near and dear to my heart.

110 page graphic novel by John Porcellino, from the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Introduction by author D.B. Johnson, coloring by JP Coovert; with endnotes and a quotational cross-reference. Printed in brown and black ink. Hardcover: $17.00.

JOHN PORCELLINO was born in Chicago, in 1968, and has been writing, drawing, and publishing minicomics, comics, and graphic novels for over twenty-five years. His celebrated self-published series King-Cat Comics, begun in 1989, has inspired a generation of cartoonists. Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, a collection of King-Cat stories about Porcellino's experiences as a pest control worker, won an Ignatz Award in 2005, and Perfect Example, first published in 2000, chronicles his struggles with depression as a teenager. King-Cat Classix and Map of My Heart, published in 2007/2009, offer a comprehensive overview of the zine's first sixty-one issues, while Thoreau at Walden (2008) is a poetic expression of the great philosopher's experience and ideals. According to cartoonist Chris Ware, "John Porcellino's comics distill, in just a few lines and words, the feeling of simply being alive."

Porcellino's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, and Korean. He currently lives in South Beloit, Illinois.

In Memory of: Maisie Kukoc Porcellino 1991-2007

http://www.king-cat.net/history.html

Celebrating 150th Anniversary of
Henry David Thoreau's Trip to Minnesota

Silverwood Park Gallery
commemorates
the 150th anniversary of Henry D. Thoreau’s 1861 trip to Minnesota
June 9 - July 31, 2011
“Wild Harmonies” - Gayle Moore, photographer
an exhibit of botanical images inspired by the writings of Henry Thoreau
Opening Reception: June 9, 2011, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
(Remarks by Gayle and Tom: 7:00 p.m.)

June 11 & 12, 2011
Discussions on Henry D. Thoreau - Tom Potter
Tom is the President of The Thoreau Society

Saturday, June 11 at 10:00 a.m. - Thoreau’s essay, “Walking”

Sunday, June 12 at 3:00 p.m. - “Thoreau and the Birds”
Sessions are free, to register: 763-694-7707

The Thoreau Society and the Bloomington Historical Society
Invite You To A Grand Pleasure Excursion on the Minnesota River

A living history cruise on the Jonathan Padelford riverboat
to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s
month long 1861 visit to Minnesota and his cruise up the Minnesota River

Saturday, June 18, 2011 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Check in at 11:00 a.m.
Padelford Riverboats. Harriet Island, St. Paul, MN 55107, (651) 227-1100

2011 MN River Cruise PDF

Art Exhibit at the Bloomington Civic Plaza

1800 West Old Shakopee Road
Bloomington, MN 55431

Sponsored by the Bloomington Historical Society

Through June 30

 Calligraphy and Art
 by
 Concord, Massachusetts Artist

 Kristina Joyce

Words of Henry David Thoreau
From His 
"Notes on the Journey West"

 (Thoreau's 1861 Minnesota Journey)

Saturday May 21 at 3-4:30pm

Laura Dassow Walls at Thoreau Farm

Humboldt & PASSAGE TO COSMOS

"The publication of this superbly written book is one of those rare events that changes an entire field of study. Not only does Laura Dassow Walls show that Alexander von Humboldt is inescapably central to an understanding of nineteenth-century American literature, she also shows how, despite C.P. Snow's contention and our own current assumptions, science and literature were for a time the most powerful of allies in America. For anyone interested in American thought and literature The Passage to Cosmos is a beautiful and necessary book."

- Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Emerson: The Mind on Fire, and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism

Henry David Thoreau's Environmental Ethos: Then and Now

July 7 – 10, 2011 Concord, Massachusetts

Program

Registration

Keynote Speaker: Laura Dassow Walls

All are welcome to register to attend community-wide events in Concord and Lincoln, Massachusetts, and at the Walden Pond State Reservation

Walden Pond State Reservation
INTERPRETIVE PROGRAM

Shop at Walden Pond, Tsungas Gallery
915 Walden Street
Concord, MA 01742
(978) 369-3254

Saturday, October 15
This Small House, 10 - Noon

Looking to reduce consumption and simplify your lifestyle? Ever wonder about living in a tiny house? Three people who heeded Henry David Thoreau's call to "Simplify. Simplify" and built tiny houses will share their experiences:

John Hanson Mitchell, acclaimed author of "Ceremonial Time" and "Living at the End of Time," will discuss building/living for two years in a one-room neo-Gothic home.

Derek "Deek" Diedricksen, profiled on NPR and in The New York Times for his micro-cottages and low-cost dwellings, will talk about techniques for building simple shelters and show off at least one of his creations.

Sage Radachowsky, a carpenter, small-guitar maker and Harvard evolutionary biologist, will discuss living in a moveable gypsy wagon in the heart of greater Boston.

This event is free and open to the public. Most appropriate for ages 12 and older. The daily parking fee is $5.00 per vehicle. For more information, please call (978) 369-3254.

Sponsored by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of The Thoreau Society.

Saturday, October 15, 7:30 pm
First Parish in Concord. Reenactor Kevin Radaker gives a dramatic portrayal of Henry David Thoreau delivering excerpts from his three major anti-slavery speeches: 

“On Resistance to Civil Government,” “Slavery in Massachusetts,” and “A Plea for Captain John Brown.” Discussion follows. Radaker is a Professor of English at Anderson University, Indiana. This event is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by The Thoreau Society, the Drinking Gourd Project, and the Transcendentalism Council of First Parish in Concord. Prof. Radaker’s travel courtesy of Anderson University.

Tom Potter, President of the Thoreau Society will be speaking on

Edwin Way Teale: A Quiet Voice with a Profound Influence
An Old Manse Program

When: Friday, October 21 at Noon
Where: The Old Manse, 269 Monument Street, Concord, MA 01742
Contact: the Thoreau Society: email: info@thoreausociety.org; tel.: 978-369-5310

Following the war years, Teale's writings created vicarious travel adventures for the nation, his words quietly creating an enlarged awareness of the natural world both close to home and afar. And although his work was not notably confrontational, his words made people aware of the wonders of their world and in turn the need for preservation and protection. As fourth president of the Thoreau Society Teale was able to use that platform to continue guiding others to a broader appreciation of the infinite mysteries of their world. Coming to Concord each year, he met with and influenced many of the leaders in the growing conservation movement.

Saturday, October 22: 8:30 am to 1:00 pm, First Parish in Concord. Light breakfast. Panel presentation, led by Rev. Jenny Rankin of First Parish, with Rev. Mark Harris of First Parish in Watertown, MA and Prof. Ronald Bosco, SUNY, Albany, New York. Followed by concurrent learning sessions on First Parish and its influences. Tom Potter, President of The Thoreau Society, and Mel Bernstein, Richard Lowitt, Lynn Hyde, Beth Norton, other historians will lead these engaging sessions.

Window on Walden
- Free and Open to the Public -

Stephen A. Cole, The Cranberry from Bog to Table
A Concord Festival of Authors Event

Saturday, October 29 at 1:30pm - Shop at Walden Pond

The Thoreau Society, the Friends of Walden Pond, and DCR present a talk by Stephen A. Cole, co-author of The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce.

The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce,
Visit Author's Website

Stephen Cole directs the natural resources and sustainable communities programs at Coastal Enterprises, Inc., a community development corporation. He is the author of The Rangeley and Its Region and co-author of I Was Content and Not Content: The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry. His new book, The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce, co-authored with Lindy Gifford, harvests stories, images, and observations to tell the unusual tale of an American subculture dominated by this tart little fruit.

Transformed from a wild fruit to a cultivated commodity, the American cranberry contains equal amounts of holiday symbolism and antioxidants. Its evolution over the past century is a surprising story of risk, enterprise, conflict, and the tension between tradition and innovation. The cranberry is characterized by the distinctive regions, from Cape Cod to the Pacific Northwest, where it is grown. But the diminutive fruit has also changed the life and landscape of these places. 

Friends of Walden Pond

Window on Walden author events take place on select Saturdays at the Tsongas Gallery, Walden Pond State Reservation. Sponsored by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau Society, in cooperation with DCR.

Window on Walden
- Free and Open to the Public -

Saturday, November 5 at 1:30pm - Shop at Walden Pond

Join us as we welcome acclaimed author and Thoreau Society member,
Wayne Thomas. He and his family have applied Thoreau's seven principles to their lives since 1994 and were able to answer one of life's most important questions:   

"How to make a living while having the freedom to do what we want?"  

Wayne Thomas’ breakout book Walden Today is about creating personal freedom and making a living in a time where there is less job security, fewer jobs, less trust in government and corporations--and more need to rely on yourself to survive. 

            Today the American Dream has become shattered and most Americans believe that it is now out of reach. 

            Walden Today provides an answer to: How To Change What We Do Into What We'd Rather Be Doing.  It can be done by "living deliberately."

Talking Points

We can live deliberately by applying Thoreau's seven principles of living and working:

• Be true to yourself
• Network to grow and survive
• Life is short, so enjoy it by living simply to stay free
• Become Self Reliant: Do it yourself
• Adapt to changes in life by continually learning and trying new ideas
• Take advantage of the conveniences and opportunities of the age
• Work deliberately 

Friends of Walden Pond

Window on Walden author events take place on select Saturdays at the Tsongas Gallery, Walden Pond State Reservation. Sponsored by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau Society, in cooperation with DCR.

Recipes for Living a Thoreauvian Life in the Modern Home
- Free and Open to the Public -

When: Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 1:30 PM
Where: Thoreau Farm, 341 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742
Contact: the Thoreau Society: email: info@thoreausociety.org; tel.: 978-369-5310

A reading from Joanna Greenfield’s book The Lion’s Eye: Seeing in the Wild, on the way wild animals in Africa taught her to see light, and the transcendentalists showed her how to understand what she had seen. Back in America, she had to use years of travel in other cultures to learn how to live a simple, pleasant life in the midst of a
complicated world. The author will show how healthy, cheap, easily found ingredients can be combined to replace household cleansers, soaps, pet care items, pest controls, toiletries, and building materials.

Joanna Greenfield, author of The Lion’s Eye: See in the Wild.

Born with flawed eyesight, author Joanna Greenfield learned to see by watching animals, in Africa. In addition to teaching her to see moments of lighted ecstasy, they showed her that life is meant to be lived with pleasure in simplicity. In the years of search and travel after she left East Africa, she accidentally accumulated a second book’s worth of recipes for a simple life. Using easy to fi nd, and cheap ingredients, Greenfi eld teaches free seminars on how to create a green home.

Joanna Greenfield talked a scientist into giving her a chimpanzee research site between her junior and senior years of college, in the Impenetrable Forest of Uganda. She lived in a tent there for six months, working with BaKiga tribesmen and a Mutwa pygmy. After graduating, she worked at a breeding center in Israel, where she was attacked by a hyena. Her account of the attack was published in The New Yorker in 1996 and has been reprinted in many anthologies. As well as winning Honorable Mention for Autobiography at the Green Book Festival in 2010, her book about living with the chimpanzees, “The Lion’s Eye: Seeing in the Wild, has been featured on Vanity Fair’s online author reading series, international and national radio shows, including “Here on Earth,” the Joe Donahue Show, and others. It has also been recommended by the Book List, the Sierra Club, Science online, and Publisher’s Weekly.

She lives in the mountains in America now, and is working on a pilot project to provide towns with a blueprint for going sustainable with renewable energy, recycling, public transportation, local farming, and more. Greenfi eld has started a second book, about the six years in which she traveled around America, looking for a clean place to live.

Although she never did fi nd a place free of chemical waste, she fi nally realized that she had accidentally learned how to live a simple life, making her own toiletries, cleaning supplies, and soaps, and eating from local farms. She teaches free seminars on green living recipes from her travel notes.

Department of Conservation a­nd Recreation
Commonwealth of Massachusetts 

Public Meeting
on the Preparation of a
Visitor Services Master Plan for
 Walden Pond State Reservation  

Thursday, November 17, 2011  
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.  
Harvey Wheeler Community Center Auditorium
1276 Main Street, Concord

At the meeting, DCR will present, and obtain public input on, various alternatives for a Visitor Center location and other visitor improvements at Walden Pond State Reservation. 

The presentation will be available after the meeting on DCR’s website at http://www.mass.gov/dcr/news/publicmeetings/rmppast.htm.

If you have questions about the public meeting, please contact DCR.Updates@state.ma.us or call (617) 626-4974.   

Civil Disobedience

Sunday, January 15, 2012 from 12:30pm-3:00pm Join local historians and park staff for this annual program to commemorate Martin Luther King Day at Walden Pond State Reservation.

12:30pm - 2:30pm Visit with Henry David Thoreau portrayed by historian Richard Smith. Discuss the issues of the day and ask Mr. Thoreau your questions about the night he spent in jail in 1846 for not paying his poll tax, an act which inspired his famous essay. This program is for visitors of all ages.

At 1:30pm Mr. Thoreau will lead visitors to the Tsongas Art Gallery at park headquarters where Thoreau Scholar, Thomas Blanding, will lead an engaging discussion on the writing of Thoreau’s essay, Civil Disobedience. Learn how Martin Luther King Jr., inspired by Thoreau’s essay used the concept of civil disobedience during the civil rights movement. Additional historic and present day examples of civil disobedience will be introduced during the discussion.

Sponsored by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau Society www.thoreausociety.org and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. This is a free program but there is a $5.00 daily parking fee. Pre-registration is not required. No dogs permitted, unless they are working guides. For more information call park staff at (978) 369-3254.

Henry Thoreau’s Independence Day

Sunday, July 3rd 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Visit and talk with author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, as portrayed by historian Richard Smith. On July 4th 1845 Henry moved into his cabin at Walden Pond to begin his experiment in living deliberately. Meet at the Thoreau house replica and celebrate with Henry as he prepares for his adventure. This is a program for visitors of all ages.

Sponsored by the Thoreau Society’s Friends of Walden Pond This is a free program but there is a $5 parking fee. No dogs permitted unless they are working guides. Park programs are sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. In order to protect the resource Walden Pond has a visitor capacity. When capacity is reached the reservation closes for several hours. For more information call park staff at (978) 369-3254. Reasonable accommodations upon request.

Henry D. Thoreau Interactive Programs at
Walden Pond State Reservations
Featuring Richard Smith

January 16th, 2011 Civil Disobedience

April 18th, 2011 Thoreau and the Two Revolutions

July 3rd, 2011 Henry's Independence Day

July 12th, 2011 Thoreau's Birthday and Junior Rangers Cubs

July 26th 2011 Junior Rangers Bears

September 3rd, 2011 Henry's Watermelon Party

September 17th, 2011 Where I lived and What I Lived For

Friends of Walden Pond

Window on Walden author events take place on select Saturdays at the Tsongas Gallery, Walden Pond State Reservation. Sponsored by the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau Society, in cooperation with DCR.