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Fall 2003

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Experiencing Jeff Corwin

Drawing on the past

Clean-up at the old Davis Mine

Books

From Lot 12 to the Pyrenees to the beach by the rock
Explorations with UMass authors

Faye Wolfe

ANNE REARICK'S EYE, MIRESICOLETEA, FROM the French publishing house Atlantica ($29.35), offers an armchair tour of a unique rural culture, that of the land of the Basques. Perched in the Pyrenees and along the northwest coast of Spain, it’s an ancient country of ambiguous political status (it has been admitted into the United Nations, but the French and Spanish governments between them control its six provinces), but unequivocally rich culture, as Rearick’s black-and-white photographs make clear. In this 152-page coffee-table book, Rearick’s gentle, naturalistic portraits feature a range of subjects: elderly farmers, clear-eyed children, a soulful musician (and their dogs, cats, horses, pigs, sheep and other farm animals). Unpeopled landscape photographs reveal the rugged, picturesque beauty of the French Basque region. The recent winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rearick ’82 is still on the move, but her focus is now on amateur boxers in the United States, Cuba and Kazakhstan.

BEFORE FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED designed New York’s Central Park and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” of parks, he was a clerk and a sailor, then became interested in progressive agricultural methods. It was in his role as farmer that, at age 28, he joined his brother and a friend on a walking tour of southwestern England and Wales in 1850. A true Victorian, he wrote many letters, kept a journal, made sketches and took note of everything, from the price of butter in Chester to the technique by which the wattle and mud walls of half-timbered houses were made. After his return, he fashioned these observations into a delightful volume, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, first published in 1852 and just reprinted by Amherst’s Library of American Landscape History and the University of Massachusetts Press ($50, hardcover, $24.95, paper). In this edition, Charles C. McLaughlin’s introduction and annotations provide enlightening background and put the original text in context.
Olmsted’s account is perceptive, high-spirited and conversational, and would be entertaining and worthwhile reading even if he hadn’t gone on to become a preeminent American landscape architect. That he did makes this memoir, and the reactions and insights recorded in it, all the more fascinating. Perhaps that famous pastoral sanctuary ringed by urban clamor, Central Park, had its origins in his experience of the grounds of Birkenhead Abbey, near Liverpool: “By listening, we could still hear the roar of wheels, rumbling of rail-cars, clanging of steamboat bells, and the shouts of jovial sea-captains, drinking gin and water in a neighbouring tea garden, over which the American flag was flying. But within the walls there was no sound but the chirps of a wren, looking for her nest in a dark cranny; the hum of bees about an old hawthorn bush, the piping of a cricket under a gravestone, and our own footsteps echoed from mysterious crypts.”

THOSE WHO HARKEN TO THE chirps of wrens will find Bird Finding Guide to Western Massachusetts, published by the UMass Extension ($29.95), invaluable. The combined efforts of nine editors and 57 authors have produced a comprehensive survey of birding sites in the Connecticut River, Berkshire, Quabbin and western Worcester regions. Right on campus you might catch sight of a Northern Pintail duck on the pond or pine siskins near Lot 12. Farther afield, you can find more exotic species, by following the directions in write-ups on state parks and forests, conservation areas and sanctuaries, as well as less obvious sites like the lagoon near a Big E parking lot in West Springfield.

The book’s clear and detailed summaries are businesslike: “If the roads are muddy, explore this area on foot.” “The southern end of the swamp is an open wetland with scattered scraggly tamaracks, dead snags, and lush undergrowth of shrubs and grasses. North of South Otis Road the vegetation is thick and visibility is minimal.” (You can almost see the seasoned birders behind these voices, forging ahead in sturdy boots, dark windbreakers, and squashy hats, binoculars slung around their necks.) Black-and-white maps by Bill and Mary Alice Wilson spell out routes and landmarks, natural and manmade; the lyrical illustrations of such avian specimens as belted kingfishers and black vultures by the aptly named Andrew Finch Magee remind the reader why birds are worth tramping the swamps for. And the book as a whole makes a powerful case for fighting to preserve the habitats that birds depend on.

A BIRD OF A DIFFERENT COLOR – of many different and fantastic colors – is the subject of Bill Cosby’s latest literary effort, Friends of a Feather, One of Life’s Little Fables (HarperCollins, $16.95). Slippers, a bird with a voice that reads a lot like the comic maestro’s, narrates this children’s book, illustrated by Bill’s daughter, Erika Cosby. He tells the tale of Feathers, whose every aerial move dazzles human onlookers, and Hog, with much duller plumage but equally brilliant maneuvers, whose hunger for similar adulation is frustrated at every turn. The story has its highs and lows before landing on firm moral ground. Its message: Accomplishment should be sought for rewards other than the ephemeral and elusive pleasures of the limelight.

MAD YANKEES, LAWRENCE B. GOODHEART'S narrative of the first 75 years of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, now the Institute of Living, is also a moral tale of sorts. It charts the course of the 19th-century therapeutic approach to mental illness known as “moral treatment.” The approach originated in France in the 1790’s; the Hartford Retreat was one of the first institutions in this country to implement it. The Retreat was intended to provide an alternative to home care – an asylum – where the mentally ill could benefit from, and ideally be cured by such healthful influences as peace and quiet, regular regimens, medical supervision and country air. Respect, rather than physical restraints, was employed as much as possible to control aberrant behavior. The approach was a radical departure from earlier methods of treating mental illness, and one that still exerts influence. Goodheart has written a compelling history of the Retreat, which, is in many ways, a history of the treatment of mental illness since the early 19th century. (University of Massachusetts Press, $34.95).

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From Lot 12 to the Pyrenees to the beach by the rock

From Lot 12: more images