Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Sunday, November 3, 12:45 pm – 3:45 pm – Bark: Get to Know Your Trees

    Tower Hill Botanic Garden will host a lecture on November 3 from 12:45 – 3:45 with Michael Wojtech. Tower Hill members $42, nonmembers $56. Register at www.towerhillbg.org

    The traits typically used to describe trees-leaves, twigs, and buds-are often hard to see or seasonally absent. Join Michael for this indoor presentation and outdoor exploration of bark, which is always visible, in any season. As you hone your perceptive abilities you will learn about a system for identifying tree species by their bark, and discover why such a variety of bark characteristics exist. Why do some species have smooth bark, while on others it is thick and broken? Why does bark peel?

    Michael Wojtech is the author of Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast. As a naturalist and educator, Michael strives to share the science and wonder of trees in an accessible and compelling fashion. He writes, photographs, illustrates, and presents programs about the structure, growth processes, and ecology of trees-including their bark, buds, leaves, roots, and wood-for audiences at all levels of experience. He is especially interested in the process of discovery and engagement, and draws his greatest inspiration from sharing the sense of wonder, awe, and the recognition of beauty that result from these investigations.

     

  • Wednesday, October 30, 7:00 pm – The Atlas of Boston History

    Local historian and volume editor Nancy Seasholes presents The Atlas of Boston History: The Making of a City, a unique addition to works about Boston history.​​​​​​​ The talk and book signing will take place October 30 at 7 pm at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge. Visit https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/nancy-seasholes-atlas-boston-history to pre-order book, and for additional information.

    Few American cities possess a history as long, rich, and fascinating as Boston’s. A site of momentous national political events from the Revolutionary War through the civil rights movement, Boston has also been an influential literary and cultural capital. From ancient glaciers to landmaking schemes and modern infrastructure projects, the city’s terrain has been transformed almost constantly over the centuries. The Atlas of Boston History traces the city’s history and geography from the last ice age to the present with beautifully rendered maps.
     
    Edited by historian Nancy S. Seasholes, this landmark volume captures all aspects of Boston’s past in a series of fifty-seven stunning full-color spreads. Each section features newly created thematic maps that focus on moments and topics in that history. These maps are accompanied by hundreds of historical and contemporary illustrations and explanatory text from historians and other expert contributors. They illuminate a wide range of topics including Boston’s physical and economic development, changing demography, and social and cultural life. In lavishly produced detail, The Atlas of Boston History offers a vivid, refreshing perspective on the development of this iconic American city.

    Nancy S. Seasholes is a historian and historical archaeologist who works as an independent scholar. Her books include Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston and Walking Tours of Boston’s Made Land.

  • Thursday, November 7, 6:00 pm – Food in the American Gilded Age

    Food was incredibly diverse in post-Civil War America. The era was one of gross income inequality, and differences in diet reflected the deep disparities between upper and lower classes, as well as the expansion of a flourishing middle class, at a time when technology and industrialization were transforming how and what people ate. Dr. Helen Zoe Veit, Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University, will speak on November 7 at Rosecliff in Newport. The lecture begins at 6 pm, and a book signing follows at 7 pm. $10 for members of The Preservation Society of Newport County, $15 for the General Public. Register at http://newportmansions.org/learn.

  • Saturday, October 19, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm – The Vegan Roadie

    The KITCHEN at the Boston Public Market is excited to welcome Dustin Harder, the host and creator of the original vegan travel culinary series, The Vegan Roadie. In this hands-on class, attendees will learn Dustin’s secrets to creating delicious (and beautiful) plant-based meals from his new cookbook, Epic Vegan. Guided by Dustin, you’ll create a three course-menu and become more comfortable with plant-based cooking through new skills, techniques, and flavors!

    Come ready to roll up your sleeves and get cooking! We will also have copies of Epic Vegan for purchase at the class – or bring your own copy and get it signed by Dustin.

    Menu:

    • Unicorn French Bread Pizza with beet marinara, cashew mozzarella, and edible flowers
    • Creamy shells with the cheesiest ‘cheese’ sauce
    • ‘Kale Me Crazy’ ice cream sundaes with cherries, fudge sauce, and sunflower caramel sauce

    This menu is 100% vegetarian and vegan. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate gluten or nut allergies with this menu. Please email kitcheninfo@thetrustees.org to alert us to any other food allergies. Please note that The KITCHEN is not a certified allergy-free kitchen and cross contamination is possible.

    Our hands-on cooking classes are structured as a group learning experience; you’ll work with other students to create a seasonal meal led by our professional chef instructors. We focus on learning new cooking styles and techniques to increase your confidence and enjoyment in your own kitchen. Here are a few things to know before booking a class with us:

    • Each class is centered on the local, seasonal farmers and artisans of the Boston Public Market.
    • During each class, you’ll learn 2 or 3 recipes, you’ll work with between 2 and 4 other students to create each one, and you’ll enjoy a plentiful taste of each.
    • Classes are usually between 2 and 2.5 hours long, unless otherwise noted.
    • Please be prepared to be on your feet, standing at a table, and cooking for the duration of class.
    • We recommend comfortable, non-slip, and closed-toe shoes.

    Tickets: $60 for Trustees member and $75 for Non-Trustees Members. Members must bring their current member card and number. Join The Trustees and save! Members save between 20-40% off all classes in The KITCHEN.

    Dustin Harder is the host and creator of the original vegan travel culinary series The Vegan Roadie. When not traveling, he works as a personal chef, recipe developer, and culinary instructor in New York City. As a graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute, Dustin has been featured in such publications as Eating Well, VegNews, Vegan Lifestyle Magazine, and Paste Magazine.

  • Friday, October 18, 11:00 am – 12:15 pm – Winterizing Your Roses

    On October 18 at 11 am at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Teresa Mosher will provide tips for choosing hardy roses, fertilizing, rose dormancy, fall rose care, and winter protection. Photos from her locally revered Zone 5 garden in Methuen are incorporated into the Powerpoint presentation. Each participant will take home a signed copy of Teresa’s book/ journal A Year in My Rose Garden, filled with very helpful rose caring information, photos, information on ordering roses, a list of tools and supplies, her favorite books to read, rose terms, favorite roses and much more. $25 for Tower Hill members. $39 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

    Teresa Mosher is one of the leading garden and rose consultants in New England. She has over 30 years of experience as an avid gardener and cares for forty flower beds, 250+ roses, and over 2000 perennials, shrubs and trees in her garden. She is currently president of the New England Rose Society, a Horticulture Rose Judge, and Consulting Rosarian for the American Rose Society.

  • Thursday, October 10, 6:00 pm – Meat Planet

    In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger, and since then the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread through the media like wildfire. Racing against population growth and climate change, researchers have dedicated their efforts to making sustainable protein. Meat Planet, by historian and University of California, Berkeley PhD Benjamin Wurgaft, explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called “cultured meat”—and asks what it means if this new creation might be the future of food. The free lecture will take place October 10 at 6 pm at 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston University College of General Studies, Room 505. To be sure you’ll have a seat, visit www.bu.edu/foodandwine

  • Thursday, October 3, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Plants Go To War

    Join the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on October 3 at The Gardens at Elm Bank for a special presentation and book signing with author Judith Sumner. Drawing from her book, Plants Go to War, Sumner will examine the plants that provided wartime food, pharmaceutical drugs, timber, rubber, canvas, and other essential goods and survival techniques that helped to win the war. Join us for a fascinating story of the convergence of history and horticulture! Join us for a reception at 6 p.m. copies of Plants Go to War will be available for purchasing and signing. Presentation to begin at 7 p.m. $30 for Mass Hort members, $45 general admission. Register at https://masshort.org/garden-event/plants-go-to-war/

    Judith Sumner is a botanist who specializes in ethnobotany, flowering plants, plant adaptations, and garden history. She has taught extensively both at the college level and at botanical gardens, including the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Garden in the Woods. Judith graduated from Vassar College and completed graduate studies in botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  She studied at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and at the British Museum (Natural History) and did extensive field work in the Pacific region on the genus Pittosporum.  

  • Tuesday, September 24, 7:00 pm – The City-State of Boston

    On September 24 at 7 pm at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Yale professor Mark Peterson reads from his book The City-State of Boston, a groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States.

    In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired cliches, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston’s development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain’s Stuart monarchs and how — through its bargain with slavery and ratification of the Constitution — it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States.

    Drawing from vast archives, and featuring unfamiliar figures alongside well-known ones, such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and John Adams, Peterson explores Boston’s origins in sixteenth-century utopian ideals, its founding and expansion into the hinterland of New England, and the growth of its distinctive political economy, with ties to the West Indies and southern Europe. By the 1700s, Boston was at full strength, with wide Atlantic trading circuits and cultural ties, both within and beyond Britain’s empire. After the cataclysmic Revolutionary War, “Bostoners” aimed to negotiate a relationship with the American confederation, but through the next century, the new United States unraveled Boston’s regional reign. The fateful decision to ratify the Constitution undercut its power, as Southern planters and slave owners dominated national politics and corroded the city-state’s vision of a common good for all.

    Peeling away the layers of myth surrounding a revered city, The City-State of Boston offers a startlingly fresh understanding of America’s history. Books may be purchased in advance at the event, but the lecture is free. Register at https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/mark-peterson-city-state-boston

    Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.

  • Wednesday, September 18, 7:00 pm – We Are The Weather

    Join Porter Square Books at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School’s Fitzgerald Theater, 459 Broadway in Cambridge on September 18 at 7 pm to hear bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer in conversation with renowned author and environmental advocate Frances Moore Lappé, discussing Safran Foer’s newest book, We are The Weather. A signing will follow the talk.

    Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response?

    In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves—with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat—and don’t eat—for breakfast.

    Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the novels Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Here I Am, and of the nonfiction book Eating Animals. His work has received numerous awards and has been translated into thirty-six languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

    Frances Moore Lappé is the co-founder of Food First, the Institute for Food and Development Policy, and the Small Planet Institute. She is the author of nineteen books, including the three-million-copy Diet for a Small Planet and, most recently, World Hunger: 10 Myths, co-authored with Joseph Collins. Lappé has received eighteen honorary doctorates, as well as the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “Alternative Nobel,” and the James Beard Foundation’s “Humanitarian of the Year” award. Gourmet Magazine chose her among twenty-five people whose work has changed the way America eats. Lappé has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.

    Tickets are $25, and you may register at https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/jonathan-safran-foer-frances-moore-lapp%C3%A9-we-are-weather

  • Wednesday, July 24, 7:30 pm – Climate Resilience in Your Own Backyard

    Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester continues its 2019 Speaker Series on July 24 with Allison Houghton speaking on Climate Resilience in Your Own Backyard. Soil is alive with more microbes in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on this planet. Only in recent years have we come to fully understand the extent to which a thriving soil also has the potential to rapidly sequester carbon, store and filter water, buffer extremes, break down toxins, and support biodiverse ecosystems. This talk is a call for gardeners to learn to become stewards of the immense thriving world beneath our feet. Learning these skills not only has benefits for our gardens and the food we grow, but also for our local ecosystems, watersheds, communities, and for the planet. Free, but registration required at www.wlfarm.org

    Allison Houghton is a soil, plant and natural world enthusiast. She recently wrote The Carbon Sequestering Garden: Gardening for the Planet While Growing Some of the Best Food Possible. She has played many roles over the past few years as a gardener, farmer, teacher, writer, mother, and naturalist, including as former Director of Horticulture at Green City Growers in Somerville where she wrote the gardening guide, The Urban Bounty: How To Grow Fresh Food, Anywhere. She currently works at the Northeast Organic Farming Association with their soil technical assistance program.