Friday, October 26
6pm
At Thoreau Farm
$10/person.
Reception and book-signing to follow.
Registration required.
Dr. Barbara Mossberg recently celebrated her 75th birthday swimming Walden Pond as a tribute to the radiant power of Thoreau’s writing in her own life. Join her for an evening of reflection on Walden as a Transformational Guide to personal heroism and resilience, Thoreau’s inspiration, and on the power of memoir.
Mossberg explores Thoreau’s memoir as his own lifesaving writer’s struggle and triumph, as he writes himself out of the woods and into new lives of lifesaving purpose. Grieving his own brother’s death, Thoreau makes his own life immortal and transcendent, and in the process, gives his readers a way to align their lives with the sun, to see the morning star out of darkness, and to imagine new lives that must be led.
Dr. Mossberg also shares how Thoreau has guided her own journey— through the death of her parents and of her 39 year-old-son, and multiple lives as a higher education leader, radio host, dramaturg, actor, playwright, puppeteer, restaurant reviewer, scholar, lyricist, memoir writer of “ecstatic prose” and Sit-Down Stand Up, writing workshop leader, and community poet.
This presentation is punctuated with music and dance, including by Dr. Mossberg (who imagines Walden as a musical), and dances Emily Dickinson’s “I cannot dance upon my toes.”
