Daily Archives: October 30, 2024


Sunday, November 10, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm – Rooted in Place

Rooted in Place will take place on Sunday, November 10 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Berkshire Botanical Garden. In collaboration with Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT), Berkshire Botanical Garden presents Rooted in Place, our annual ecological symposium. This year we will inspire participants with insights into our ecological past, present and future. We will explore the impact of pollutants in the Berkshires and beyond and reflect on what are classically known as the Four Elements of Nature: earth, water, air, and fire.

Mohican herbalist and author Misty Cook of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community on plants as medicine: the use of land when there were only indigenous in the region.  She works with plant medicines. Misty continues to pass on traditional knowledge by teaching, giving presentations, and through her book Medicine Generations. On November 18, 2023, Misty visits the Sanctuary for Mohican Medicine for the Winter Months, part of a workshop series related to the establishment and growth of a Medicine Garden in the NATURE Lab yard at the Sanctuary. During this event, participants will learn from Misty about history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans Medicines and how her people preserved them. Misty will focus on the Medicines used throughout the Winter months, discussing gathering, preserving, usage and questions.

Eloise Gayer of the Morris Arboretum will speak on her practice of integrating native plant ecological horticulture into the land and how this practice reverses some of the destruction caused by both invasive plants and herbicides. Brittany Ebeling of BEAT will go further into herbicides and how the composition of this pollutant affects our plants, ground and surface water, earth, and more. 

As the interconnectedness of nature reveals, light pollution is also ecologically destructive. Tim Brothers, an MIT astronomer and manager of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, will discuss the unexpected loss in plant life resulting from light pollution. Some examples of lights and guidance on lighting for a better future will be included in the presentation. Tim Brothers teaches students how to observe the night sky with robotic telescopes.  He also co-founded the Massachusetts chapter of DarkSky International, where he is primarily focused on outdoor lighting policy for communities in the region.  Tim was recently awarded a minor planet designation, asteroid (28992) Timbrothers, for his work on asteroid detection. He and his wife are also quite busy raising their two kids (and quite a few chickens) on their rural homestead where they can just barely still see the Milky Way.

Wilding the land and restoring natural processes has potential in the management of extreme fires and the smoke pollution that goes along with them, something that will be further considered by Sam Gilvarg, PhD student at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, using the “One-Health” approach: human, animal and environmental systems all working together for a more just and free ecology. Sam is exploring how wildland fire can be utilized to promote the regeneration and survival of pyrophytic— or, fire adapted— plant species and ecosystems, while simultaneously mitigating the threat posed by ticks to human communities through the creation and maintenance of abiotic environmental conditions that are unsuitable to tick survival.

As land, air and fire all end up in water, the reciprocity of the elemental interconnectedness calls for a review of water pollutants. Jane Winn will discuss the clean up of our region’s freshwater resources and how that impacts the Berkshire ecology. Jane Winn was selected to be the Berkshire Environmental Action Team’s Executive Director in 2006. Jane has a Bachelor’s Degree in biology and her Master’s Degree in Zoology. Her science background and passion for the environment brought her together with a small band of outraged environmentalists who saw environmental destruction continuing with regulators allowing the illegal destruction. This group believed that the law was supposed to prevent this sort of destruction and took action to make that happen. That is how the Berkshire Environmental Action Team started back in 2002.

To close the conference, participate in Rooting: a meditative closing, guided by community mindfulness-in-nature facilitator, Sandrine Harris. Sandrine Harris (SEP, GCFP, RSMT/E) is a community facilitator offering public programs and private sessions in healing trauma and remembering our belonging within the natural world. With long term training in the neurobiology of trauma and chronic pain, she collaborates in an embodiment and meditative process to foster adaptive resilience, with folks all over the world. Locally, she collaborates with organizations devoted to earth stewardship, climate awareness, and mutual care, including: Berkshire Botanical Garden, The Trustees, Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC), and VIM (Volunteers in Medicine) Berkshires. She stewards unceded Stockbridge Munsee Mohican land in the southern Berkshires, where she continues her own healing alongside her cat companion, Willow.

BBG members $85, nonmembers $100. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/10th-annual-ecological-gardening-symposium-rooted-place


Thursday, November 14 – Friday, November 15 – Historic New England Summit 2024, Live and Online

Historic New England is delighted to announce Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. as the recipient of our second Preservation Leadership Award for his lifelong dedication to promoting and protecting Maine’s history and architecture. 

A native of Portland, Maine, Shettleworth attended Deering High School, Colby College, and Boston University. He has received honorary degrees from Bowdoin College, Colby College, and the Maine College of Art. His storied career includes a forty-year tenure as director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, from which he retired in 2015, and six terms (and counting) as Maine’s State Historian.  Shettleworth’s visionary leadership stands as an inspiration not only to Mainers, but to all New Englanders who share his passion for and commitment to preserving the built environment, cultural landscapes, and our region’s history.

Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. will accept the Preservation Leadership Award at the 2024 Historic New England Summit in Portland, Maine. The Summit will take place November 14 and 15 at The Westin Portland Harborview in Portland, Maine, and will be livestreamed. There is a stellar list of presenters over two days, from Maurice Cox of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, to Jim Schachter, President and CEO of New Hampshire Public Radio, to composer Tod Machover of MIT Media Lab – there are too many to list here. For the complete schedule visit www.summit.historicnewengland.org