BOOKPATHS

New England; United States

Emily Dickinson biographer, Lyndall Gordon, considers the poet’s “secret life.”

Emily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. I think she was unafraid of her own passions and talent; that her brother's sexual betrayal and subsequent family feud had a profound effect on the Dickinson legend that has come down to us; and perhaps most significantly, I believe that Emily had an illness – a secret that explains much. – from “A Bomb in Her Bosom: Emily Dickinson’s Secret Life,” by Lyndall Gordon, The Guardian

New England, U.S.

Roger Mummert visits The Providence Athenaeum and the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Rhode Island, the Salem Athenaeum in Massachusetts, and the Portsmouth Athenaeum in New Hampshire, four of “about 20 historic membership libraries around the nation that continue to play a vibrant role in the cultural lives of their communities – and welcome the curious.”

“The New England athenaeums I visited on a recent trip maintain not only active memberships, but also some peculiar terminology. Members are commonly called proprietors; some athenaeums distinguish share-holding proprietors from a second tier of members, called subscribers. At the Portsmouth Athenaeum, the director is called the keeper.” – from “Where Greek Ideals Meet New England Charm,” by Roger Mummert, The New York Times

New England

Angus Clarke follows in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau.

“Having practised our thousand-yard stare across Walden Pond – and having pondered a while at the spot where Thoreau’s cabin once stood – we set off in Thoreau’s footsteps. His writings make an engaging and offbeat guide to an attractive side of New England and its spectacular natural beauties.” – from “A Literary Guide to New England,” by Angus Clarke, The Times

Bookpath: The Connecticut River Watershed, New England

Confluence: a River, the Environment, Politics, and the Fate of All Humanity, by Nathaniel Tripp (Hanover, NH : Steerforth Press, 2005)

The Connecticut River Watershed encompasses four states -- Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It’s “New England’s largest river ecosystem,” according to the Connecticut River Watershed Council, and one of the fourteen American Heritage Rivers. In Confluence: a River, the Environment, Politics, and the Fate of All Humanity, Nathaniel Tripp introduces readers to the Connecticut River Watershed, a watershed he knows well as both landowner and activist. As Tripp writes about people, place, threats to the ecosystem, and occasional environmental successes, he also connects local concerns with those faced by watersheds worldwide.

Related Websites

Steerforth Press

Connecticut River Watershed Council : The River Connects Us Website

American Heritage Rivers

Sometimes when I’m feeling morose I go down to the stream that lies at the foot of our farm. With a watershed of about twelve square miles, it has a pretty good flow in the last reach before merging with the Connecticut, and while there was once a road alongside it, at least six mills of various sorts, a covered bridge, and several small farms, that all went out in the great flood of 1927; the valley has lain largely deserted since then. The stream itself has resumed its timeless writhing through the flood plain, seeming undecided which way to go in a perfect miniature of what the flood plain valley of the great Connecticut once was like. It has reverted to what seems like chaos to many, but is in fact order of the highest sort: life in its greatest diversity and independence.” – from Confluence: a River, the Environment, Politics, and the Fate of All Humanity, by Nathaniel Tripp