Arnold Arboretum Staff and Volunteers
1:00pm-3:00pm
Tuesday, April 16 2019
Location: Linden Path & North Woods
Visit the Arnold Arboretum and venture through the North Woods. Be on the lookout for the wild inhabitants. Use your explorer senses to spot things that normally go unseen. Develop your observation skills and be prepared to make discoveries that might be surprising. One adult may bring a maximum of three children; suitable for children ages five and up.
Rapid ecological change, and climate change in particular, poses challenges to traditional conservation paradigms and strategies. It has also led some conservationists to endorse novel conservation techniques, such as assisted colonization, gene drives and even de-extinction. This talk will explore the values and philosophies that underlie species conservation under conditions of rapid change. It will ask us to think about what is valuable about species and why we ought to try to conserve them. Ronald Sandler is the author of the following books: Environmental Ethics (2017, Oxford University Press), Food Ethics (2014, Routledge), The Ethics of Species (2012, Cambridge University Press), Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2013, Palgrave Macmillan), and Character and Environment (2007, Columbia University Press).
Maria Finkelmeier and the Kadence Ensemble will perform “Flow Through”, Finkelmeier’s 15 minute composition for large ensemble to be played in an outdoor setting. Featuring thirty performers (brass players, singers, and percussionists), the work is inspired by the fluidity and importance of water to living organisms. The musicians will mingle their music with Nakaya’s fog as both descend the hillside and flow among the trees and the audience
Share nature with children! The Arnold Arboretum is recruiting volunteers to lead life science programs for Boston school groups. Fall training starts on August 30. Attend an open house on August 2 to learn more about this exciting opportunity. Come to the Visitor Center at 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain 02130 from 10-11am. If you are friendly, enjoy the outdoors, and have some teaching experience, we want to talk to you!
As we approach the summer solstice, how do we relate to the rhythms of morning and night, the seasons, the way that heat and cold and rain and dryness affect our bodies and spirits? How is the Earth dreaming and speaking to each of us? How can we bring more awareness to our relationship and connection with the Earth? What might we hear? Observe?
Attend an enchanting evening of Tree Myths, Songs and Summer Solstice Legends. Diane Edgecomb and Margot Chamberlain spin tales of the human connection with trees and the deep meaning we have assigned to them through the ages. This unique performance travels through the Arnold Arboretum with story and music. Each story is told under a different tree or among a unique collection of Arboretum plants. Appropriate for adults and for children twelve years and above.
Robin Wall Kimmerer , PhD, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment
Location: Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum
Drawing on her life as an indigenous plant scientist, a teacher, a writer and a mother, Robin Wall Kimmerer will share ideas found in her award-winning book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, in which she shows how plants—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In traditional ecological knowledge, plants are regarded not only as persons, but as among our oldest teachers. If plants are our teachers, what are they teaching us and how can we be better students? In a rich braid of ecological science, indigenous philosophy and literary reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she explores and celebrates the material and cultural gifts of plants and our responsibilities for reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment
Location: Hunnewell Building Arnold Arboretum
This workshop with Robin Wall Kimmerer, indigenous plant scientist and distinguished teacher, engages participants in exploring the material and cultural gifts of the plants, from ecosystem services, to food, medicine and lessons on how we might live. Through guided observations, readings, and writing, together we will explore how we might reciprocate those gifts, with gifts of our own. Robin is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
Make a difference volunteering as an Arnold Arboretum Field Study Guide. We will train you to lead science programs in our landscape with elementary school groups. Contact the Manager of Children’s Education at 617-384-5239 or email childrensed@arnarb.harvard.edu by August 19 for an interview for fall training. For more information go to:
Bees, bumblebees, and hover flies are clambering all over the flowers in July. Here’s a great opportunity to get a closer look at these fascinating and hardworking insects that benefit us all. We will have nets and bug boxes available to examine our pollinator friends! One adult may bring a maximum of three children; suitable for children ages four through eight. Meet in the Visitor Center.
