The Athol Bird & Nature Club plans an interesting winter evening presentation on February 10 at 7 as we join Elizabeth Bradley of the Emily Dickinson Museum for a look at Birding in 19th Century Massachusetts: Emily Dickinson & Birds. She will follow up with poems that feature observations of native birds. Register HERE. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
On Saturday, August 20, join a growing group of landscape volunteers in weeding and cultivating the garden beds at the Emily Dickinson Museum, 280 Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts for the second session of “Mornings in our Garden.” Become a part of a new generation of caretakers for this precious piece of land in the heart of Amherst. You do not need to be an expert gardener for this “all levels” program. Interested individuals and groups can visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org to register. Please telephone 413-542-8161 to confirm times, or email info@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.
Take part in one of Emily Dickinson’s favorite pastimes – gardening. Join the staff of The Emily Dickinson Museum June 4-8 for Garden Days, an annual effort to prepare the Museum’s historic grounds for summer. Volunteers with all levels of experience are welcome to plant, weed, and beautify under the direction of landscape historian Marta McDowell, author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardens.
Garden Days begins on Thursday, June 4, during the monthly Amherst Art Walk. A Garden Days volunteer meet-up and orientation starts at 5 pm, followed by an “art in the garden” session until 7 pm. At 6:45 pm, a poetry reading by Amherst-area poets Seth Landman and Kelin Loe will be held in the Homestead parlor.
On Saturday, June 6, at 3 pm, Marta McDowell will lead a free tour of the museum grounds. This event is open to the public, and begins in the Homestead garden.
As a special thank you, Garden Days volunteers are invited to tour the Museum at no charge on Sunday, June 7. Tours will be held at 12:30 pm, 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm, and 3:30 pm. For more information, or to sign up for a Volunteer Shift below, visit http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/node/473?utm_source=Garden+Days+2015&utm_campaign=Garden+Days+2015&utm_medium=email
VOLUNTEER SHIFTS
Friday, June 5
9 am – noon and 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Saturday, June 6
9 am – noon and 4 pm – 6 pm
Sunday, June 7
9 am – noon
Monday, June 8
9 am – noon
Marta McDowell lives, gardens and writes in Chatham, New Jersey. She teaches landscape history and gardening at the New York Botanical Garden, where she was named “Instructor of the Year” in 2011. Her book, Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2005, and she was an advisor for the New York Botanical Garden’s 2010 show.
Her latest book, Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, was published by Timber Press in 2013. Marta is active in the Chatham Community Garden and is on the board of the NJ Historical Foundation at the Cross Estate in Bernardsville. Her husband, Kirke Bent, summarizes her biography as “I am therefore I dig.”
Seth Landman is the author of four chapbooks and the full-length poetry collections Confidence (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2015) and Sign You Were Mistaken (Factory Hollow Press, 2013). His work can be found in Boston Review, iO, Jellyfish, Lit, and elsewhere. He received his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Denver (2013) and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts (2008) where he is currently an Academic Advisor in Humanities and Fine Arts.
Kelin Loe is the author of These Are The Gloria Stories (Factory Hollow Press 2014) and the chapbook The Motorist (minutesBOOKS 2010). She lives in Northampton, MA, and is working towards a PhD in Rhetoric at UMass Amherst.
The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens, opens for 2015 on Wednesday, March 4. Museum hours are 11 am to 4 pm, Wednesday through Sunday. Find out more about visiting here.
The Emily Dickinson Museum is dedicated to educating diverse audiences about the poet’s life, family, creative work, times, and enduring relevance, and to preserving and interpreting the Homestead and The Evergreens as historical resources for public and academic enrichment.
The Emily Dickinson Museum is owned by the Trustees of Amherst College and overseen by a separate Board of Governors. The Museum is responsible for raising its own operating and capital funds.
The Emily Dickinson Museum is a member of Museums10, a collaboration of ten museums linked to the Five Colleges in the Pioneer Valley–Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Every now and then we post an event which has little to do with horticulture, but everything to do with Boston. On Wednesday, April 11, beginning at 7 pm, Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, will speak at Boston College as part of the Lowell Humanities Series and Forgotten Chapters Project. Her topic will be On the Brink of War: Literary Boston in 1860, and the lecture will take place in Devlin Hall, Room 101. Ms. Wineapple was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, a winner of the Washington Arts Club National Award for arts writing, and her work was named a New York Times Notable Book. For more information, call 617-552-2203, or visit www.bc.edu/arts.
The final weekend of The New York Botanical Garden’s exhibit Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers will take place Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13. On Saturday, from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, in the Perennial Garden, there will be an all day program entitled Death, Bees, and Roses. Participate in a thematic reading of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Select some of your favorite Dickinson poems relating to death, bees, or roses and join in celebrating the life and works of this great American poet. Or, also in the Perennial Garden on Sunday from 10 – 6, the same program will be held, but with the title and topics Flowers, Birds, and Trees.
Then, on Sunday, from 4 – 5 in the Ross Lecture Hall, Judith Farr, professor of English Emerita at Georgetown University and author of The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, presents a lecture and slide show that delves into the topic of Dickinson’s habit of referring to her own two acre garden as “my Eden” or “Eden in Amherst” and how this image of Eden that prevails in her poems and letters corresponds to the images of Eden that appear in the works of the American Hudson River School and Impressionist painters.
For complete information, log on to www.nybg.org. $20 adult ticket price, $18 seniors and students with valid ID, and $8 children 2 – 12. Co-presented with The Poetry Society of America.
Visit the hallowed halls of Stonehurst, an icon of American architecture, on Friday, October 30, from 6:30 – 9:00 pm. Enjoy food, brew, and a bit of magic, too!
Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, Stonehurst, the Robert Treat Paine Estate, is the only museum devoted to these two pioneering figures in American architectural and landscape design history. At Stonehurst, these close friends and collaborators forged a uniquely American architecture by focusing on the intimate, almost seamless integration of the natural and man-made worlds. Richardson and Olmsted, like Winslow Homer, Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, were among the great artists of the post-Civil War era who asserted cultural independence from Europe by cultivating an aesthetic deeply rooted in the American landscape.
The 109 acre Stonehurst estate is located nearby at 100 Robert Treat Paine Drive in Waltham, Massachusetts. Tickets are $150 each, and sponsorship opportunities at higher levels are available. For more information, log on to www.stonehurstwaltham.org, or telephone 781-314-3290. You may also make a check payable to Friends of Stonehurst and mail it to Stonehurst, 100 Robert Treat Paine Drive, Waltham, MA 02452.
