Join Delaware Humanities and the National Park Service for our first ever Trek and (Virtual) Talk.
First, register for the discussion which will take place virtually on Thursday, October 29 at 6 PM.
After you register, you will be emailed readings related to nature and the environment. The readings will focus on topics such as bats, shad, invasive species, Piedmont geology, pollinators, wetlands, waterbirds/migration, and amphibians and reptiles. We encourage you to take these readings on the trail with you prior to the virtual event on October 29th. The readings were inspired by the scenic trails and Brandywine Creek vistas in the Brandywine Valley unit of the First State National Historical Park; however, if you can’t make it to these trails, you can hike and read on any trail or in any green space closest to you, or anywhere that you enjoy nature.
On Thursday, October 29 at 6 PM, we will discuss 3-4 of the readings and your reflections with Environmental Humanities professor Lisa Dill and park staff.
“You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”
George F. Babbitt has it all–a perfect house, a nice car, a doting wife, three kids, a thriving business, and the admiration of his community. But Babbitt is unhappy. His discontent leads him to question everything he has been taught to believe is important and to rebel, without fully realizing what his rebellion may cost him. Taking place during the roaring 20s, Sinclair Lewis’ satirical Babbitt (1922), explores consumerism, conformity, politics, and what it means to be middle class in such a way that his almost 100 year old novel is still extremely relevant today.
Babbitt is now in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.
In a future society where reading books is illegal and firemen start fires instead of putting them out, fireman Guy Montag has a secret. After an evening when Montag’s duties do not go as planned, Montag must make a decision which will impact his life forever, and he must make it while he still has the ability to decide. Ray Bradbury’s banned classic Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a book of warning, which discusses important topics that happen to be in focus currently–the quality of information, the ability to digest and analyze information, and the lengths people will go to defend what they believe to be right.
Sethe was born a slave and through a perilous journey escaped to Ohio. Eighteen years later, living in her own home with her daughter Denver in a post-Civil War America, Sethe is still not free. She is haunted, figuratively and literally, by her past. Just when things begin to change, potentially for the better, a mysterious teenager shows up on Sethe’s porch, calling herself by the one word Sethe could afford to put on her dead daughter’s tombstone…Beloved. Toni Morrison’s banned magic realism classic, Beloved (1987), is a powerful look at love, loss, freedom, good, and evil.
