Montclair Bird Club. Wednesday, November 13, 7:30 pm. Union Congregational Church, 176 Cooper Avenue, Upper Montclair. “Birds, Witches, and Bloomfield” The life of the Father of American Ornithology is being quietly commemorated this fall in lectures, exhibitions, and field trips in Europe and in the US. Most of those events focus on the last decade of Alexander Wilsons life, the years in which he worked himself literally to death in the writing, painting, and publication of his American Ornithology . Far less attention, however, has been paid to Wilsons other careers -- first as a weaver and peddler, then as a teacher. It was his activity as a schoolmaster that brought him to our area: fleeing Philadelphia and an ill-starred love affair, Wilson wound up a schoolmaster in Bloomfield, where he lived and taught for the latter half of the year 1801. He didnt like it. Join Rick Wright for a look at the life and times of this countrys first great naturalist and the often very strange events he witnessed during his stay here in northern New Jersey. Rick Wright lives in Bloomfield, NJ, with his wife, Alison Beringer, and their chocolate lab, Gellert. A native of southeast Nebraska, Rick studied French, German, Philosophy, and Life Sciences at the University of Nebraska before making a detour to Harvard Law School. He took the Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University in 1990, then spent a dozen years as an academic, holding successive appointments as Assistant Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Reader in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and Associate Professor of Medieval Studies at Fordham University. His scholarly publications include two books on the Latin school literature of the Middle Ages . Rick served as a department editor at Birding magazine from 2004 to 2008 and as the editor of Winging It from 2005 to 2008; he is currently the book review editor for Birding and The ABA Blog. His own forthcoming publications include the ABA Guide to New Jersey Birds and the sparrows volume in the Peterson Reference Guide series. The Managing Director of WINGS from 2008 to 2010, Rick is a widely published writer, a popular lecturer at birding events, and an enthusiastic tour leader in Europe and North America.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 17:16:27 +0000
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