Fifty-three years after the first Earth Day on April 20, 1970, just over 60 years since publication of Rachel Carson’s pathbreaking 1962 book Silent Spring, President Joe Biden on April 21, 2023 issued an “Executive Order on Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All.” I lived through and came of age during the…Continue reading“Environmental Justice for All”: Every person is a part of nature, not apart from it
Category: Landscapes
NOTE: In a February 1, 2023 post, I introduced what I declared would be a three-post series titled “Earth Words: Varieties of American nature writing.” In that first post I wrote about writers Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bernard DeVoto, and Bill McKibben. I also indicated that the next post in the series would consider Rachel Carson,…Continue readingEarth Words: Varieties of American nature writing (Part 2: George Perkins Marsh)
When the MacArthur Foundation announced its 2022 annual “genius” fellowships, readers of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants weren’t surprised that the book’s author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, was among the 25 accomplished individuals who received the bolt-from-the-blue MacArthur recognition (and, of course, the accompanying $800,000 no-strings-attached grant). Since its publication…Continue readingEarth Words: Varieties of American nature writing (Part 1: Kimmerer, DeVoto, McKibben)
NOTE: The third (and the longest) of three posts in a series titled “A Drover’s Tale” A “most novel and interesting walk” Henry David Thoreau was an exemplar and prophet of American pedestrian exploration. In his classic essay “Walking,” published shortly after his death in 1862, he famously declared “that in Wildness is the preservation…Continue readingA Drover’s Tale: Along Great Road and Turnpike, from Meriam’s Corner to the Wapack Range (Part 3)
NOTE: The second of three posts in a series titled “A Drover’s Tale” Part 2: Stagecoach, Tavern, Turnpike After leaving Knops Pond, as Marion Davis later recalled, she and Frank Robbins would drive their herds through Groton, the relatively unsettled southern part of Pepperell, and the villages of Townsend Harbor and Townsend Center. “We’d .…Continue readingA Drover’s Tale: Along Great Road and Turnpike, from Meriam’s Corner to the Wapack Range (Part 2)