Daily Archives: September 13, 2018

Through September 30 – Breathing Room: Mapping Boston’s Green Spaces

by

Boston boasts some of the nation’s most recognizable and cherished green spaces, from Boston Common, to the Emerald Necklace, to hundreds of neighborhood parks, playgrounds, tot lots, community gardens, playing fields, cemeteries, and urban wilds. In this Boston Public Library exhibition, you will learn how the country’s oldest public park grew from a grazing pasture to an iconic recreational and social center, how 19th-century reformers came to view parks as environmental remedies for ill health, how innovative landscape architects fashioned green oases in the midst of a booming metropolis, and what the future holds for Boston’s open spaces. As you explore three centuries of open space in Boston, perhaps you will feel inspired to go outside and discover the green spaces in your own backyard. See the exhibit at the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the BPL’s Central Library in Copley Square through September 30. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 – 7, Friday & Saturday, 10 – 5, and Sunday, 1 – 5. For more information visit www.bpl.org.

Image result for Breathing Room: Mapping Boston's Green Spaces

Monday, September 24, 7:00 pm – Tales from an Uncertain World

by

On Monday, September 24, at 7 pm, author L.S. Gardiner will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on her latest book, Tales From an Uncertain World: What Other Assorted Disasters Can Teach Us about Climate Change. So far, humanity hasn’t done very well in addressing the ongoing climate catastrophe. Veteran science educator L. S. Gardiner believes we can learn to do better by understanding how we’ve dealt with other types of environmental risks in the past and why we are dragging our feet in addressing this most urgent emergency. Weaving scientific facts and research together with humor and emotion, Gardiner explores human responses to erosion, earthquakes, fires, invasive species, marine degradation, volcanic eruptions, and floods in order to illuminate why we find it so challenging to deal with climate change. Insight emerges from unexpected places—a mermaid exhibit, a Magic 8 Ball, and midcentury cartoons about a future that never came to be.

Instead of focusing on the economics and geopolitics of the debate over climate change, this book brings large-scale disaster to a human scale, emphasizing the role of the individual. We humans do have the capacity to deal with disasters. When we face threatening changes, we don’t just stand there pretending it isn’t so, we do something. But because we’re human, our responses aren’t always the right ones the first time—yet we can learn to do better. This book is essential reading for all who want to know how we can draw on our strengths to survive the climate catastrophe and forge a new relationship with nature.

L. S. Gardiner is the author of two and illustrator of nine children’s books about science. She works at the UCAR Center for Science Education, and resides in Boulder, Colorado. The talk is free. More information may be found at https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/ls-gardiner-tales-uncertain-world

Image result for tales from an uncertain world what other assorted disasters can teach us about climate change