Daily Archives: January 16, 2013


Tuesday, January 22, 7:00 pm – Buying the Farm

“For today’s young, the economic future is far more bleak, and global warming an unprecedented threat. Out of necessity, many will be searching for meaningful forms of communal self-sufficiency, healthful food, and renewable energy. Tom Fels’ captivating and profound reflection on one earlier commune, Montague Farm, founded in the 1960s, offers hard-learned reflections, some practical, some eternal, from a time when communes were the chosen path of many. Elegantly written. An informative and worthwhile read.”
Tom Hayden, author of The Long Sixties.

Buying the Farm reads like an ancient Greek tragedy, written in gripping prose by a master storyteller. The story of Montague Farm is filled with important lessons for those establishing new ways of living and organizing in the twenty-first century. Raking through the ashes of this 1960s commune, Fels does us an immense service by revealing the glowing coals, bitter embers, and enduring lessons of the final years of the last century, and the beginning of this one.”
Anthony Seeger, Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology, Emeritus, UCLA.

Tom Fels, a museum curator and writer, has for many years researched, written, and lectured on the history of the 1960s. His Farm Friends: From the Late Sixties to the West Seventies and Beyond received honorable mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in independent publishing.  Tom will speak about his new book at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Tuesday, January 22, beginning at 7 pm, and will be available to sign copies as well.


Mark Richardson Becomes the New England Wild Flower Society’s Director of Horticulture

The New England Wild Flower Society welcomes Mark Richardson as its new Director of Horticulture. Mark has an intriguing combination of strategic vision, skills, and experience that impressed everyone who interviewed him. A native of Rhode Island, Mark worked for four years as the assistant manager of a 45-acre nursery while earning his degree in Urban Horticulture at the University of Rhode Island. He then received his Master of Science in Public Horticulture from the Longwood Graduate Program as part of the University of Delaware. New degree in hand, he was asked by Longwood Gardens to run the undergraduate programs, and he spent his five years on staff in roles that encompassed strategic program development, design and development of a new garden area, and even leading the entire Education Department (with its $2.6 million budget) for seven months during the search for a new director. He left Longwood for Brookside Gardens, a botanic garden that is part of the Parks Department of Montgomery County, Maryland, where he served as the manager of adult education programs and frequent horticulture instructor/lecturer/author (and he developed a strategic plan for technology in the garden!). While he has enjoyed his work in education, his passion is plants, and he is excited to be shifting back to horticulture and his roots in New England.