[Sci-tech-public] Modern Times, Rural Places, FRIDAY, March 10, 2006

[Margo Collett]

Modern Times, Rural Places:
Seminar Series at MIT

"The Husbandry of John Muir"

Donald Worster
Hall Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Kansas


John Muir the solitary mountaineer, the devoted worshipper who found 
in nature a divine and perfect wholeness, has inspired many readers, 
but we have missed the significance of his career as a farmer, a 
thrifty manager of the earth's resources.  Much of his life was 
devoted to making the earth yield crops. Muir said little about that 
agricultural side of his life, about the satisfactions or pains it 
brought.  Hints in his letters or unpublished journals are all we 
have to reveal what husbandry meant to him: a few glimpses of how he 
used the land, how he regarded the results, and how his practices 
compared to those of other farmers.  Scanty though they are, those 
glimpses are enough to make Muir a more complicated figure in the 
landscape than a simple lover of the wild.

Friday, March 10, 2006
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095

Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science, 
Technology, and Society
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact 
Margo Collett at <mailto:mcollet at mit.edu>mcollett at mit.edu
For location visit http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg
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