Conservation Café -- Greenburgh (NY) Public Library

Conservation Café

Preserving our Community Forests during ”Stormy” Times Friday, March 23, 8:45 a.m. – 10 a.m. (Registration begins at 8:30 a.m.) Greenburgh Public Library in Elmsford, NY With all the recent harsh weather wreaking havoc on our local tree population, what does it take to protect the trees that are left behind? Find out how you can help protect and preserve the trees in your local community. The program will feature:• Rick Harper, from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester, who will discuss the importance of urban forests and their value to the ecosystem; • Mark Gilliland, from the Village of Irvington’s Green Policy Board and Chairman of the Tree Board, who will discuss the results of the recent tree inventory and present analysis of the data collected during the study; • Frank DiMarco, Commissioner of Tuckahoe Department of Public Works, who will discuss the town’s newly revised tree ordinance. A panel discussion with a question-and-answer session will follow with:• Brendan Murphy, Forester with the Watershed Agricultural Council, who will discuss helpful information about choosing and planting native trees for reforestation efforts on public land as well as in your own backyard; • Allan Douglas, Field Operations Planner for Con Edison, will give a brief overview of their Vegetation Management Program and respond to any inquiries. Pre-registration is requested. Register online or by calling (914) 422.4053. Coffee provided by Coffee Roaster Labs – please bring your own mug and carpool if possible. The Greenburgh Public Library is located at 300 Tarrytown Road in Elmsford, NY.

Wendell E. Berry named 41st Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities -- NEH

Wendell E. Berry, noted poet, essayist, novelist, farmer, and conservationist, will deliver the 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. The annual lecture, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.


"Berry will present the 41st Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Monday, April 23, 2012 at 7:30 PM at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In the lecture, “It All Turns on Affection,” Berry will discuss man’s interaction with nature, as depicted in history, philosophy, and literature.

From the press release:


"In his writing and activism, Berry has spent his career meditating on our relationship and responsibilities to the land and community. He is the author of more than forty books of poems, essays, short stories, and novels, many of which draw on the traditional rural values of Berry’s native Kentucky.

From his first book of poetry, The Broken Ground (1964), Berry has explored themes of living in harmony with nature, and the bonds of marriage, family, and community. One of the most widely read poets in America, his collections of poetry include: There is Singing Around Me (1976), Clearing (1977), Entries: Poems (1994), A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (1998), and Given (2005). A New York Times review of Berry’s Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (1985) described Berry’s style as “resonant with the authentic. The lyricism is not forced, but clearly grows out of a deep bond with the earth and its generosity, with all of nature…he can be said to have returned American poetry to a Wordsworthian clarity of purpose.”


In novels and short story collections such as Nathan Coulter (1960), A Place on Earth (1967), The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership (1986), and Jayber Crow (2000), Berry has chronicled generations of farming families in the changing landscape of a fictional small Kentucky town of Port William.

Berry’s influential volumes of essays such as The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1977), Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (1993), and Another Turn of the Crank (1995) have argued that American culture is rooted in its agrarian communities, and warned against abuse of the land and its resources."