Dear Mill River Lovers,
Forgive my barging into your homes this holiday season. I was talking with several MRGI members lately, who told me that they would like to know about reading events for our Mill River book, Devil’s Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape and History. I hope they’re right about your interest in the book. If not, please just click this off. Here’s the lineup:
January 9, 7:00 at the Leeds School. We’ll focus on Native American perspectives and Mill River industrial history featuring all the mill villages, especially Leeds.
February 21, 7:00 at Northampton Community Arts Trust on Hawley St. This will be a repeat of the December 1 talk at Historic Northampton when we had to turn away so many people. The focus will be on the Mill River and the creation of Nonotuck and Northampton. We will feature the two river diversions and dozens of flood events (not the 1874 Williamsburg Disaster), which gave citizens a very different experience of the Connecticut and Mill Rivers prior to 1940.
March 13, 6:30 at Meekins Library, Williamsburg. This presentation will be similar to the one in Leeds in February with greater attention paid to the town of Williamsburg.
April? Date and time to be determined. I will give a lecture on Devil’s Den at Smith College, sponsored by the Landscapes Studies Program. Focus of the talk will be decided shortly.
October 8, evening at Mass Audubon’s Arcadia Refuge. This time the focus will be on the environmental history of the region, including ecological transformations, alien and native plants, fish, and animals, and deforestation.
Two other readings are also being considered, one at Forbes Library and one at Hitchcock Nature Center.
Thanks for your patience, and I really look forward to seeing you at one of the readings. After all, the River Runs Through Us!
Happy New Year,
John
