Boston Flora

Tag: Massachusetts Historical Society

  • Monday, March 17, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm – The Lodge Women, Their Men and Their Times

    On Monday, March 17, from 12 – 1, the Massachusetts Historical Society will present a free talk by Emily Lodge entitled The Lodge Women, Their Men and Their Times. Like a Whitman poem, the saga of the Lodge family has unfolded in tandem with the history of the great American experiment itself. Yet while the biographies of the Lodge patriarchs have been well-documented, the stories of the influential Lodge women have never been authoritatively chronicled. From the earliest days of the American colonies, through the Gilded Age, and into the first years of the 21st century, The Lodge Women Their Men, and Their Times traces her family’s remarkable history through its female figures, constructing a narrative that is at once intensely personal, political, and wholly universal.

    Based on archival research, interviews, and personal memoirs, Emily Lodge presents her ancestors’ stories largely through their own voices, heard in a rich collection of personal letters exchanged with the luminaries of their times, whose lives were linked with the Lodges by politics, art, and family: Henry Adams, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Elizabeth Cameron and Edith Wharton, some of whose letters are published here for the first time.From her unique descendant’s view on a long line of prominent Lodge women, the author recalls their grace, dash, and political influence through a sweep of history that illuminates the pages with the incandescent human truths of a distinguished family’s life and times.

    Over the last thirty years a fascination with public policy has taken Emily into government, journalism, business and academia. As a print journalist, she focused on law and the courts. As a speech-writer for a US Congressman and a US Ambassador to France, her domain was foreign policy. As an award-winning television documentary researcher for 60 Minutes, she helped prove someone innocent. Emily won an Emmy Award for a CBS News Special Report about education. On moving to Europe, she became a correspondent for Brussel’s leading monthly business magazine. Her Paris Voice features column were known for their witty and perceptive observations about public figures. She has written brochures for companies and helped create a major fund-raising drive for INSEAD, Europe’s premier business school. A graduate of Georgetown University in diplomatic history, she is currently writing news analysis from the Middle East.

    The talk will take place at 1154 Boylston Street in Boston.  For more information, visit www.masshist.org.

    http://static.squarespace.com/static/527d87dce4b04258782d9bef/528021a2e4b09c1d9bf16bce/528021a5e4b0213a91549d95/1384128935474/Family-photo-at-Cabot%27s-birth-.jpg

  • Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Brooklyn’s Resilient Edge: The Transformation of Industrial Waterfront into Brooklyn Bridge Park

    Brooklyn’s Resilient Edge: The Transformation of Industrial Waterfront into Brooklyn Bridge Park, is a lecture by Nate Trevethan, Senior Associate at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and senior design team member for Brooklyn Bridge Park, sponsored by the Friends of Fairsted, to take place March 14, 2013, with reception at 6:00 pm, lecture at 7:00 pm, at Wheelock College, 43 Hawes Street, Brookline. Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Reservations are requested: e-mail friendsoffairsted@gmail.com or leave a message at 617-566-1689, ext. 265.

    Ambitious and visionary goals guide the creative team in their transformation of Brooklyn’s former industrial waterfront into a new public landscape of diverse recreational, economic, ecological and social possibilities: to preserve the historic urban context and the way it is experienced in this dramatic waterfront site. The award-winning design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates gives voice to physical history, geography, industry, urbanity and evolving recreational needs as it transforms a challenging waterfront into a sustainable public park of monumental vistas and diverse landscape experiences.

    Friends of Fairsted gratefully acknowledges the support of the following co-sponsors: National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site; Wheelock College; Arnold Arboretum; Boston Society of Landscape Architects; Brookline GreenSpace Alliance; Brookline Historical Society; Charles River Conservancy; Emerald Necklace Conservancy; The Fenway Alliance; Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery; Friends of the Muddy River; Friends of the Public Garden; High Street Hill Association; Historic New England; The Landscape Institute of the Boston Architectural College; Library of American Landscape History; Massachusetts Historical Society; Muddy River Restoration Project Maintenance and Management Oversight Committee; National Association for Olmsted Parks; New England Landscape Design and History Association; Society of Architectural Historians, New England Chapter; The Trustees of Reservations.

    http://brooklynbridgepark.com/wp/media/2010/05/brooklyn-bridge-park-600x400.jpg

  • Anne Brooke Begins Presidency of Friends of the Public Garden

    The board of directors of the Friends of the Public Garden has elected Anne Brooke as president. Brooke has been on the Friends board for more than six years, serving as co-chair of the Development and Membership Committees and as a member of the Executive Committee. She and her husband, Peter, live in the Back Bay.

    The Friends of the Public Garden, founded in 1970, works with the City of Boston to protect and enhance Boston’s first public parks–-the Boston Common, Public Garden, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Brooke is only its second president, succeeding founder Henry Lee.

    President Emeritus Henry Lee said, “The Friends is enormously fortunate to have someone of the intelligence, nonprofit experience, and sound judgment as Anne Brooke assuming the presidency at this important time in the organization’s life. Under her leadership I know the Friends will continue to prosper.”

    Anne Brooke said, “It is an honor for me to serve as the president of the Friends of the Public Garden. We all at the Friends look forward to continuing our work with the Parks Department. This wonderful organization has done so much for the Boston community by providing hundreds of thousands of dollars, each year, to assist the city in the care of our parks. I sincerely encourage all of our friends and neighbors here in the city to join the Friends in supporting the Boston Common, Public Garden and Commonwealth Avenue Mall so that we are able to continue to maintain, preserve and improve the quality of care for our three historic green spaces.”

    Brooke has long and varied experience as a leader in nonprofit organizations. She is active with the Massachusetts Audubon Society, where she served as a board member for twenty years and as vice-president for ten of those years. She was instrumental in establishing the Boston Nature Center in Mattapan, at the end of the Emerald Necklace. Currently she is an Overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and of the Museum of Fine Arts, a Visitor to the Harvard Art Museums, and a member of the Council of Overseers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.  While living in Concord, Massachusetts, where she and her husband raised three sons, Brooke served as president of the Concord Garden Club, chairman of the Historic Districts Commission, and president of the board of the Concord Museum.

    Brooke takes the helm at an exciting time for the Friends. Last spring, the organization completed the first phase of the most ambitious project in its 42 year history, renovation of Brewer Fountain Plaza and its adjacent landscape at the southeast corner of the Common. Last year, thousands of park users enjoyed the revitalized space animated with a food truck, tables and chairs, a reading room and piano music at lunchtime. The Friends will complete this $4 million revitalization effort over the next year. Its campaign to raise funds for the project is well underway, attracting gifts of all sizes from across the community. The final project phase includes more landscaping and restoration of the historic iron fence along Tremont Street.

    The Friends continues its primary mission of funding the expert care of trees and sculpture in all three parks. This month a first phase of new tree labels in the Garden is being installed. A second major turf restoration project will be implemented on the Mall in 2013, and planning for landscape improvements to the Boylston Street boundary of the Garden has begun.

  • Wednesday, May 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens

    In her new book, Chasing Venus, Andrea Wulf tells the extraordinary story of the first global scientific collaboration, set amid warring armies, hurricanes, scientific endeavors, and personal tragedy. On June 6, 1761 and June 3, 1769, the planet Venus passed between Earth and Sun – each time visible as a small black dot against the burning face of the Sun for six hours. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs – eight years apart – but then it takes more than a century before they are seen again. In the 1760s the world’s scientific community was electrified because the transit would allow them for the first time to calculate the distance between the planets in our solar system. This would require triangulated data to be compiled from various exact points around the globe – all taken simultaneously during the short period of the actual Transit. Join us for an intriguing glimpse at the spirit of the Enlightenment and the collaborative race to measure the heavens. Chasing Venus will be published in May 2012 in conjunction of the Transit of Venus on June 5/6, 2012.  Andrea Wulf will speak on Wednesday, May 30, from 7 – 8:30 at the Weld Hill Research Building at the Arnold Arboretum.  Register at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Fee $10 sponsor organization member, $20 nonmember.  Offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

    The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is holding a special Observatory Night for viewing the Venus transit. Learn more. In 2004 we were treated to a sunrise view of Venus crossing the disk of the sun. On June 5th, we will enjoy a sunset Venus transit. If you miss this one, you won’t get another chance to see it until 2117 – and that’s a very long time to wait. The Center for Astrophysics will hold a special rooftop viewing of the Venus transit beginning at 6:00 pm. The transit will be visible from 6:03 until the sun sets at 8:19. Viewing is weather-dependent so call 617-495-7461 to check for cancellation.

  • Thursday, May 26, 5:30 pm – Founding Gardeners: How the Revolutionary Generation Created an American Eden

    Andrea Wulf’s new book Founding Gardeners. How the Revolutionary Created an American Eden will be published in  late March 2011 by Knopf.  Ms. Wulf will travel to Boston and speak on Thursday, May 26, in a program co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.  The talk will take place at the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street in Boston, with a reception at 5:30 pm and the lecture at 6:00 pm. The program is free but registration is required :  log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu for more information.

    The Founding Gardeners offers a fascinating look at the revolutionary generation from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen and farmers.

    For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. Andrea Wulf reveals for the first time this aspect of the revolutionary generation. She describes how, even as British ships gathered off Staten Island, George Washington wrote his estate manager about the garden at Mount Vernon; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; how a trip to the great botanist John Bartram’s garden helped the delegates of the Constitutional Congress to break their deadlock; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of American environmentalism. Taken together, these and other stories are a revelation of a guiding, but previously overlooked ideology of the American Revolution.

    The Founding Gardeners adds depth and nuance to our understanding of the American experiment, and provides us with a portrait of the founding fathers as they’ve never been seen before.

  • Monday, June 7, 11:00 am – 2:00 pm – Making History on the Common

    The Friends of the Public Garden host a day to celebrate the importance and enduring story of the Boston Common, on Monday, June 7, from 11 – 2, at The Boston Common, 147 Tremont Street in Boston.

    Children will experience 7500 years of history through Native American Fishweirs, grazing livestock, colonial games, stocks, Freedom Trail interpreters, Civil War re-enactors, and a Victorian carousel. The Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers perform from 12:30-1:30 p.m.  This event is on the same day the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company holds its drumhead election.

    Co-sponsoring this free event are The Freedom Trail Foundation, Frog Pond Foundation, Hammond Residential Real Estate, The Massachusetts Historical Society, and Whole Foods Market.  For more information, log on to www.friendsofthepublicgarden.org, or email marjorie@harronandassociates.com.

    http://milblogging.com/popups/images/civil-war-reenactors.jpg

  • Tuesday, April 13, 5:15 pm – Cold Comfort: The Biogeography of Northern British America

    The Massachusetts Historical Society annually sponsors the Boston Environmental History Seminar, an academic forum for scholars as well as interested members of the public, to discuss aspects of American environmental history.  On Tuesday, April 13, beginning at 5:15 pm, Anya Zilberstein of Concordia University in Montreal will speak on “Cold Comfort: The Biogeography of Northern British America.”  Brian Donahue of Brandeis University will also comment.  The Massachusetts Historical Society is located at  1154 Boylston Street in Boston.  For information on the 2009-2010 series, and to register, log on to www.masshist.org, or call 617-536-1608.  If you wish to receive a copy of the paper in advance, you may subscribe on-line for the modest fee of $15, or you may receive the paper by mail for $25.

    http://jackiewhiting.net/HonorsUS/images/DelawareCross.jpg

  • Tuesday, November 10, 5:15 pm – Pines, Profits, and Popular Politics: The Timber and Lumber Trade of the Colonial Connecticut River Valley

    The Massachusetts Historical Society annually sponsors the Boston Environmental History Seminar, an academic forum for scholars as well as interested members of the public, to discuss aspects of American environmental history.  On Tuesday, November 10, beginning at 5:15 pm, Strother Roberts of Northwestern University will speak on “Pines, Profits, and Popular Politics: The Timber and Lumber Trade of the Colonial Connecticut River Valley.”  Harvey Green of Northeastern University will also comment.  The Massachusetts Historical Society is located at  1154 Boylston Street in Boston.  For information on the 2009-2010 series, and to register, log on to www.masshist.org, or call 617-536-1608.  If you wish to receive a copy of the paper in advance, you may subscribe on-line for the modest fee of $15, or you may receive the paper by mail for $25.

    http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/30/travel/30frugal533.jpg