Lauret Edith Savoy’s life and work draw from her need to put the eroded world into language, to remember fragmented pasts into present. A woman of African American, Euro-American, and Native American heritage, she explores the stories we tell of the American land’s origins and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. For her, writing of the complex intertwinings of natural and cultural histories is a way of seeking home among the ruins and shards that surround us all. For Savoy, this work is as necessary as breathing.

Drawing on her life as an indigenous plant scientist, a teacher, a writer, and a mother, Robin 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.

Falling Asleep to Gunfire: Violence in Chicago, a Country’s Slumbering Response, and How Gang Members Become Peacekeepers

David Hajdu, author and professor at Columbia University, joins activist songwriter Jill Sobule in a program on the role of music in political resistance in America.

Internationally recognized concert pianist Virginia Eskin will present a talk and musical performance focusing on three artistic women who came to Cheshire County and lived here during important parts of their creative years. World-renowned novelist Willa Cather (1873-1949), summered in Jaffrey and is buried there; painter Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933), settled in Hancock; and important composer Amy Beach (1867-1944), was born in Henniker and spent many summers at the MacDowell Colony.

What we think of as traditional New England contra dance music is influenced by many sources, including the musical traditions of Scotland, Cape Breton, French Canada, and Ireland, as well as tunes composed right here in New England.

Renowned contra-dance musicians Skip Gorman (fiddle) and Gordon Peery (piano) will trace the evolution of New England contra-dance music by discussing and performing examples of different genres that contribute to the New England style.

New England is a kelpy wonderland. Along our local shores, we have rolling meadows of kelp full of crabs, lobsters and more. Kelp beds, kelp meadows, and kelp forests are also found in one quarter of the world’s coastal areas. They provide food for humans and fish alike, alter shorelines, and shape the temperate reefs around them. Unfortunately these big beautiful cold-water algae have started to respond to changes in water temperature and wave action. Dr. Byrnes will address why kelp is important and what changes may be in store for the future.

Drawing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's concept of "cheap grace," Andrew Bacevich exposes the chronic defects in the current U. S. approach to waging war.  He explains why the world's most powerful military doesn't win and why the nation's reliance on professional soldiers has turned out to be such a bad bargain. When American soldiers deploy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, what is the cause for which they fight?  The patriotic answer is this:  they fight for freedom.  Challenge that proposition and you’ll likely pick a quarrel.

Climate changes. It always has and always will. An extensive body of scientific evidence shows that human activities are the primary forces driving present changes in the Earth’s climate system. Over the past six decades, New England’s climate has been getting warmer and wetter, extreme precipitation events have increased, sea levels continue to rise, and summertime drought has become more frequent. These trends are very likely to continue.

Dr. Alan Hirshfield will share with us the story of how a cadre of amateur and professional astronomers turned away from their traditional study of celestial navigation. Instead, at the end of the nineteenth-century they brought two promising high-tech instruments — the camera and the spectroscope — into the observatory, imaging never-before-seen celestial landscapes and revealing the physical nature of stars and nebulae.