Then & Now
As the millennium turned, I was invited to help the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences celebrate its 200th aniversary. The medium was the Connecticut Towns Project,” headquartered at Yale University, which culminated in a two-volume edited work titled: Voices of the New Republic : Connecticut Towns 1800-1832, Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Volume XXVII. It won three book awards (see my vitae for details).
My essay, titled “The Physical Environment of Connecticut Towns: Processes, Attitudes, and Perceptions Then and Now,” was contained in a collection of essays published as Volume II, subtitled: What We Think. Based on original historic documents, it interprets how Americans of the New Republic viewed their landscape, with specific attention to geological observations made in the late-Colonial years and in the first decade of the 19th century. Though I cover archaeology, agriculture terrain, transportation, hydrology, climatology, non-renewable resources, and remarkable occurrences separately, the main point of the essay is that geology was a favorite subject of the intelligencia during the years of the New Republic.
If you’re interested enough to contact me, I’ll mail you a pdf file of my essay.
Photo: Lovely pink quartzite boulder in Woodstock Connecticut surrounded by autumn foliage. Such boulders are especially beautiful in winter snow.