Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert D Richardson

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2024 is: palaver • puh-LAV-er • noun Palaver is an informal word that usually refers to unimportant or meaningless talk. It can also refer to misleading or deceptive speech, or to a conference or discussion. In British English the word is sometimes used as a synonym of fuss to refer to unnecessary excitement about something. // Enough of this palaver. We have more important things to discuss. See the entry > Examples: "Henry [Thoreau] was working at his journal, as he usually did for a part of each day. He was reading Chaucer and liking it. A couple of days later, on Monday, January 3, he made popcorn, which he playfully called 'cerealious blossoms' because they were 'only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a greater than July heat.' On Wednesday, January 5, as early clouds gave way to midday sun, he praised manual labor as 'the best method to remove palaver from one's style.' Maybe he took his own advice about palaver. We hear no more from him about cerealious blossoms." — Robert D. Richardson, Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, 2023 Did you know? Let's talk about palaver. Though the word comes from Portuguese, it likely entered English by way of the West African coast in the 18th century. Portuguese sailors there used their word palavra, which in general use means "speech" or "word," as a term for discussions with the native people they encountered. English sailors applied palaver for the same, and then brought the word back to their own shores. The Portuguese word comes ultimately from the Late Latin noun parabola, meaning "speech" or "parable." If Portuguese isn't in your wheelhouse, perhaps you'll recognize the influence of Latin parabola on other tongues: the Spanish palabra, for instance, means "word," and the French parler means "to speak."

Happy National Poetry Month! We kick off this episode with Emily reading Lucille Clifton's poem, “Climbing,” and end with an in-depth conversation with poet Shuly Cawood about her poem, “Starter Marriage.” [The full text of Shuly's poem is at the end of this description if you'd like to read it before or while listening to the episode.] Both of us have Writing and Creativity on our minds. Emily started Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY, and Chris is listening to WRITING FOR IMPACT by Bill Birchard. And we have some reading/writing synchronicity going on with Natalie Goldberg. Emily is reading & listening to her classic, WRITING DOWN THE BONES, and when visiting McNally Jackson at Rockefeller Center in NYC Chris picked up WRITING DOWN THE BONES DECK. More recently read books include WHY AM I SO ANXIOUS by Tracey Marks, MY DEAREST DARLING by Lisa Franco, BOOKSELLING IN AMERICA AND THE WORLD, ed. by Charles B. Anderson. And thanks to listener Colleen's birthday book club tradition, we revisited a childhood favorite, Judy Blume's ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. There's another #buddyread on our horizon: TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA. We're reading this for the Vintage Book Club which is sponsored by Book Club on the Go and will meet on Thursday, April 20, 1 pm at the Wood Memorial Library and Museum in South Windsor, CT. All are welcome. We had a fantastic biblioadventure together in Boston. After spending the day working in Simmons University's Beatley Library, we visited the amazing independent bookstore, Brookline Booksmith. Emily is going to be moderating two author sessions at the Newburyport Literary Festival, April 28-30: — The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us about Love, Life, and Mortality by Karen Fine, DVM —Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives by Robert D. Richardson with a foreword by Megan Marshall (Emily's conversation will be with Megan). Chris is bummed that she won't be able to attend the Newburyport Literary Festival or either of the two Willa Cather conferences this June. She is, however, planning to attend a series of four virtual events with author Benjamin Taylor that the National Willa Cather Center is offering beginning on April 27th. Taylor's new book, CHASING BRIGHT MEDUSAS: A LIFE OF WILLA CATHER, is to be published in November. Visit the episode show notes for more details and links to the books, places, and events listed above.https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2023/episode179 Happy Reading! Chris & Emily ______ Starter Marriage by Shuly Cawood after Erin Adair-Hodges* First there was the word and the word was trying. Trying the apartment with white walls, popcorn ceilings, footsteps heavy above, thudding over our days. Trying the job I took filing papers into squeaking cabinets, the one you took answering phones for dentists. Trying the brown bag lunches with limp sandwiches and sliced cheese, the softening apple, the room-temperature soda. Consuming it all on church steps, hunched below the overhang as it rained. Trying the cold pool after work with dead insects needing to be netted. Unraveling towels, TJ Maxx suits, the walk back on the no-car driveway. All heat evaporated. Empty stomachs. No one wanted what the other craved. Trying the red Chevrolet with the bad battery, no parking without pay, the bus rides to and from work, your stop, my stop, the sun hitting hard, us squinting at the sky. Your last day, the blue electric toothbrush they gave you as goodbye. Buzzing in your mouth with all those trapped words. Trying the new queen mattress we could not afford but bought anyway. Trying the laundry we toted to the next building, plastic hampers in our arms full of every day's dirt. Coffee but no creamer, bread but no toaster, sugar hardened in the bag. Day-old everything bagels, buy-one, get-one veggie burritos, dollar theater on Sundays. New job but less pay, new boss but no promotion. Saving for tickets for never vacations. Trying the places we gave up for each other: city salted by an ocean, all those fish and ferry rides; town with three stoplights, two policemen, a forest to get lost in. Your dreams, my dreams, weeds by the parking lot. Trying your face a broken banister, my hands an unused map. *The first nine words are borrowed from “Portrait of Mother: 1985” by Erin Adair-Hodges ______

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1803 Birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist, essayist, philosopher, and poet. After graduating from Harvard, Ralph decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. He was beloved by his fellow Harvard classmates, and many became his lifelong friends. Waldo served as his class poet.  Waldo met his first wife, Ellen, on Christmas Day six years later. Two years later, he lost her to tuberculosis. Her death eventually made him a wealthy man — although Waldo had to sue his inlaws to get his inheritance. After losing Ellen, Waldo traveled to Europe and visited the Royal Botanical Garden while he was in Paris. The experience was a revelation to him. There Waldo began to see connections between different plant species thanks to Jussieu's natural way of organizing the garden. The American historian and biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote about this period of heightened awareness for Waldo. He wrote, Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science.   When he returned to the states, Waldo became friends with other forward thinkers and writers of his time: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. In 1835, Waldo married again. His second wife was named Lydia Jackson. Waldo changed her name to Lidian, and he also had many pet names for her, like Queenie and Asia - but she always called him "Mr. Emerson." Around that time, Waldo began to think differently about the world and his perspective on life. As the son of a minister, his move away from religion and societal beliefs was quite impressive. In 1836, Waldo published his philosophy of transcendentalism in an essay he titled "Nature." He wrote: Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word;  but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but [a] language put together into a most significant and universal sense.  I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue.   Waldo also advised, Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.   As Waldo grew older, he immensely enjoyed gardening. His time in the garden also proved revelatory. Waldo had hired workers to help him in the landscape as a younger man. As a mature man, he recognized the benefits of exercise and a feeling of satisfaction from doing garden work all by himself. Waldo wrote, When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and [good] health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.   He also quipped, All my hurts my garden spade can heal. In the twilight of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson was invited to join a group of nine intellectuals on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. The trip had one mission: to connect with nature. Waldo's traveling companions included Harvard's naturalist Louis Agassiz, the great botanist James Russell Lowell, and the American naturalist Jeffries Wyman. They had a marvelous time. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.   And another Waldo quote is a personal favorite, The Earth laughs in flowers.   Finally, here's a little prayer Waldo wrote to thank God for the gifts of nature. For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!   1909 On this day, Miss Amanda Palmer, a teacher at Wilmington Normal School in Wilmington, North Carolina, shared her experience of taking her students on nature-based field trips. Her report was published in the Atlantic Educational Journal. Amanda wrote, On a field trip, a pupil... gains more of life's lessons than could possibly be learned in the schoolroom. These trips lead the children to ask questions, which the teacher must answer.  My class is composed of children in the fourth year primary. On one trip, trees of the neighborhood were studied. The flowers commanded our attention on still another trip. [Flowers like] the wild carrot, the yarrow, and wild mustard were examined. On one occasion a great mullein, or velvet dock, was brought into school. It was greatly admired by the children. On the next field trip no child had to be told what a mullein was. They, themselves, each saw and knew the mullein. On our trips, we sometimes catch glimpses of shy, wild creatures-a water-snake or, perhaps, a prairie hen. Again we may see only tracks here, the tiny footprints of a field-mouse; there, the path of a snake. On one trip we looked for birds especially, using field glasses. After hearing and seeing many birds, we sat down, about six o'clock in the evening, to listen to the concert--not one for which we were forced to give a silver offering, but a concert free to all. It was the sweetest music ever heard.  On May 25, 1909, we either saw or heard these birds: A phoebe, a pewee, a flicker, a cuckoo, a black and white warbler, a magnolia warbler, a chestnut-sided warbler, a water thrush, a Maryland yellow-throat, a red-start, a catbird, a brown thrasher, a Carolina wren and a hermit thrush. I think it is very instructive to show children the various birds' nests. They have observed, with keenest wonder, the blackbird's nest, the swinging nest of the oriole, the mud-lined nest of the robin, the feather-lined nest of the plain English sparrow, and the horsehair-lined nest of the red-eyed vireo ("vir-ē-ˌō").  I have [recently] added... a catbird's nest and a barn swallow's nest. [And when I was] in Haddonfield, N. J., I learned where a hummingbird's nest was. It will be [added to] the school's collection.   And then Amanda ends with this recommendation. [The following nature books are] helpful and interesting: The Audubon Leaflets, The Home Nature Study Library, and Julia Rogers' Among Green Trees.   Wilmington Normal School (where Amanda taught) was the first school in Wilmington, North Carolina, to admit African-American students. The school operated from 1868 to 1921.   1939 On this day, George Orwell, English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic, wrote that his hens had laid two hundred eggs in the previous two weeks. When George returned to his home in Wallington after the Spanish Civil War, he recorded the activity of his chickens as he recovered from his war injuries and another bout of lung issues. George noted everything about his chickens: their daily egg production, their behavior, and what they ate and required in terms of care. George's diary begins in April, three years after arriving at Wallington, We have now twenty-six hens, the youngest about eleven months. Yesterday seven eggs (the hens have only recently started laying again.)  Everything greatly neglected, full of weeds, etc., ground very hard & dry, attributed to heavy falls of rain, then no rain at all for some weeks. . . .  Flowers now in bloom in the garden: polyanthus, aubretia, scilla, grape hyacinth, oxalis, a few narcissi.  Many daffodils in the field...These are very double & evidently not real wild daffodil but bulbs dropped there by accident. Bullaces & plums coming into blossom.  Apple trees budding but no blossom yet.  Pears in full blossom.  Roses sprouting fairly strongly.   Well, there you go - a little update from George Orwell about his garden over 90 years ago. And before I forget, there's a fabulous book from 2021 called Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit, and when it debuted, it received all kinds of critical acclaim. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction, and the writer, Margaret Atwood, raved that it was an exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times — and also the life and times of roses. And Harper's said that it was "A captivating account of Orwell as a gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker." And then the publisher wrote this, In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit's new book, a reflection on George Orwell's passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power.   1988 On this day, the Ripley Garden at the Smithsonian was dedicated. Tucked in between the Arts and Industries Building and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Ripley Garden is home to rare and unusual trees and shrubs as well as annuals and perennials - many in elevated beds, Which is terrific for folks of all different abilities and also for little children, it gets the garden up to eye level. And it's lovely for people like me with rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis in general because you don't have to stoop Over to see the flowers, It's all brought up to at least waist level, and you can examine Many of the specimens very closely. And also just want to say that this garden is immaculately maintained. The garden was the inspiration of Mary Livingston Ripley. She was a lifelong plant scholar, collector, gardener, and wife of the Smithsonian's eighth Secretary. Mary came up with the idea for a "fragrant garden" in a location slated to become a parking lot. In 1978, she rallied the Women's Committee of the Smithsonian Associates to support the garden. That group was an organization Mary founded in 1966 to raise money for Smithsonian projects. Ten years later, on this day in 1988, the Women's Committee recognized their founder and friend, Mary Livingston Ripley, by naming the garden after her. In 1996, Mary Livingston Ripley's obituary shared some fascinating details about her life. During the twenty years her husband worked at the Smithsonian, [Mary] frequently accompanied him on scientific expeditions to exotic reaches throughout the Far East.  She volunteered her time to fundraising and gardening exhibits at the museum. Mary was an avid gardener at her homes in Washington and in Litchfield. She was the person behind the Smithsonian's huge collection of orchids. She was also adept at skinning birds and turning over rocks in search of insects. Today, a lovely woman named Janet Draper is the horticulturist for the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden - a position she has relished since 1997. You can see her work on the Smithsonian Gardens Twitter feed. It's one of my favorite feeds on Twitter to follow. So check that out. And also, I'm a friend of Janet's on Facebook. So I get to see all her posts about the incredible flowers and rare specimens planted in that garden. The garden posts are just absolutely astounding. Janet is a wonderful person, and I met her during the Garden Bloggers Fling in DC several years ago. So I would be remiss not to mention the wonderful and dedicated Janet Draper in conjunction with the Ripley Garden.   Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Potted History by Catherine Horwood  This book came out in 2021. It's one of my favorites. This is a revised edition, and the subtitle is: How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes. This is a great little garden history book, and it's all about houseplants. Now houseplants are crazy popular, and that's one of the reasons why Catherine revised this book. It was over a decade ago when the first edition came out, and so this is the second edition. As Catherine mentions, a surprising amount has changed in the story of plants in the home since this book first appeared. Now, what has caused this massive expansion in popularity? Well, in addition to the pandemic, which turned so many people toward gardening and growing houseplants. That trend had already started but was definitely nudged along by the pandemic. Catherine believes three factors have contributed to this overwhelming demand for houseplants. First, improved propagation techniques lead to increased availability and lower prices, which is fantastic. For me, our local Hy-Vee grocery store has a beautiful floral section. I find it quite interesting that the houseplant area is right at the east entrance of my store - that's the side that I always like to go in, of course, because the houseplants are there. But I am entirely fascinated that houseplants are impulse buys these days and are positioned at the front of the store. And while cut flowers are offered, they are not as close to the entrance as houseplants - they're a little further in the store.  Another factor behind the houseplant craze is changing lifestyles - particularly of millennials. Millennials are definitely into houseplants. When I took my daughter to college this past fall, her roommate took up half of the windowsill with her houseplants, and then my daughter's houseplants took up the other half of the windowsill. But as a wise gardener - and knowing that my daughter's room was facing north plus knowing Emma would forget about plant care - 99.9% of the houseplants I sent along with Emma were permanent stems or fake. That said, I did have two super tough live plants in the mix. One of them was moss in a closed terrarium environment. Yes, I am a gardener, and yes, I love houseplants — but I'm also a realist. The other factor causing the phenomenal growth of houseplants is social media. Just the other day. I saw someone post a picture of their living room on Twitter, and it was filled with houseplants. Somewhere in the back of this jungle, you could just see one lone chair, and the caption was, "Is this too many houseplants?" Even I was like, yes - that is too many houseplants. So crazy. There is no doubt that social media has encouraged this trend of houseplants, bringing plants indoors and turning your home into a conservatory. In the introduction, Catherine tells of a man named Sir Hugh Platt. He was a garden writer, and he published one of the first books on gardening techniques. He was also the first person to write a little section about having a garden within doors. Sir Hugh Platt would have loved an idea house that I saw a couple of years ago. Sponsored by one of our local nurseries, the home is updated in the spring and fall with all of these wonderful decor ideas. One particular year, they took one of the bedrooms upstairs and turned it into an indoor potting shed. Fantastic idea. The upstairs bath doubled as a place to wash your hands or water some plants. The little potting bench in the middle of the room was so cute. They also repurposed a bookshelf to serve as their system for organizing all their garden paraphernalia, their garden books, and their garden supplies. A beautiful display of different containers and pots - and tons of terracotta - made me go wild for this room idea. So, if you love this craze of indoor houseplants, you will love Catherine's book of houseplant history and the fascinating stories behind some of our most beloved houseplants. And what better time of year to read about houseplants than right now? This week, most gardeners are starting to move their houseplants back outside for summer, where there'll be deliriously happy before they have to come back in for the winter. And if you are giving someone the gift of a houseplant, then, by all means, order a few copies of Catherine's book to include that along with the present. Talk about amping up a houseplant gift! Sizewise, this is a little book. I love it by the chair in my garden library. And the cover is so pleasant. It's beautifully illustrated with just a single little houseplant. It is just so stinking cute. It's 176 pages of houseplant history. So who wouldn't love that? You can get a copy of Potted History by Catherine Horwood and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for around $8.   Botanic Spark 1905 On this day, Louisa Yeomans King wrote in her diary recorded in the book The Flower Garden Day by Day: MAY 25. Species lilacs are wonderfully interesting. If there is room, get a few of these;  if there is no room, get one or two,  and if there is room for but one, get Syringa sweginzowi superba, or Syringa oblata for its crimson leaves in October, the only lilac to color so.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.  

Fr. Bill's guest is Paul S., author of a new book on William James, known as the Father of American psychology and twice referenced in the Big Book. This episode explores the underlying feeling state of most addicts as we first discover the mystical elements of drugs and alcohol only to be thrown into the dark places, they ultimately lead us. Step One comes alive in the discussion and gives listeners a deeper appreciation of how the seeds of recovery are present within the pain. The series will examine James in reference to each of the 12-Steps. Paul's new book Titled “We Agnostics: William James…” is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Agnostics-Psychology-Spiritual-Addiction-Venerated/dp/B09JRD6VX2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=46V4YIM5PRWM&keywords=we+agnostics+how+william+james&qid=1639860009&s=books&sprefix=we+agnostics%2Cstripbooks%2C90&sr=1-1/ The original Varieties of Religious Experience is available free in pdf form: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621 An excellent biography of William James is by Robert D. Richardson. His section covering James' delivery of the lectures that formed the book VRE is helpful in putting James' work in clear context. It's available here: https://www.amazon.com/William-James-Maelstrom-American-Modernism/dp/0618919899 Fr. Bill referenced a set of quotes from the Big Book related to HOPELESSNESS. If you would like a copy, please write to him at: TwoWayPrayer@gmail.com If this has been helpful to you, please like, subscribe, and share. To support Father Bill W. and Two Way Prayer with a donation, please visit: https://www.twowayprayer.org/donate-1 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/fatherbillw/support

In Dana Spiotta's new novel, “Wayward,” a woman named Sam buys a dilapidated house in a neglected neighborhood in Syracuse, leaving her husband and her daughter in order to face down big midlife questions.“She is what we used to call a housewife, a stay-at-home mom,” Spiotta says on this week's podcast, describing her protagonist. “She has one daughter, she's married to a lawyer. It's not an unhappy marriage. I wanted to avoid a lot of clichés with her. I didn't want it to be an unhappy marriage that was the problem. And I didn't want him to leave her for a younger woman. I didn't want her to be worried about her looks. She never thinks about wrinkles or her looks very much in the book. She doesn't even look in the mirror anymore. She's not concerned about that.”What she's concerned about is living a more honest and purposeful life, and the novel follows her efforts to do that.Ash Davidson visits the podcast to discuss her debut novel, “Damnation Spring,” set in a tightknit logging community in Northern California in the late 1970s. Davidson describes how the book was partly inspired by her parents' memories of living in the area.“I grew up listening to my parents' stories of this place, and it is the most beautiful place they have ever lived, and that beauty is also the source of its own destruction,” she says. “So those stories became almost like a mythology of my childhood, and I think I always kept a folder of them in my head, where I was filing them away. I used a lot of them as scaffolding for the novel, in the early years of writing it. Gradually, as time went on and the story got strong enough to stand on its own, I was able to strip away that scaffolding of their stories and let the fictional narrative shine through.”Also on this week's episode, Tina Jordan looks back at Book Review history as it celebrates its 125th anniversary; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Elisabeth Egan and John Williams talk about what they're reading. Pamela Paul is the host.Here are the books discussed in this week's “What We're Reading”:“Emerson” by Robert D. Richardson Jr.“Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi“The Post-Birthday World” by Lionel Shriver

Today we celebrate a man who changed his personal beliefs and life philosophy after studying nature. We'll also learn about a woman who writes about her lifelong relationship with the garden. We hear an excerpt about the spring garden with a bit of empathy for what it is like to be a weed. We Grow That Garden Library™ with a fabulous reference for plant identification. And then we’ll wrap things up with the son of a gardener who grew to love plants and nature and became one of America’s best-loved poets.   Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart To listen to the show while you're at home, just ask Alexa or Google to “Play the latest episode of The Daily Gardener Podcast.” And she will. It's just that easy.   The Daily Gardener Friday Newsletter Sign up for the FREE Friday Newsletter featuring: A personal update from me Garden-related items for your calendar The Grow That Garden Library™ featured books for the week Gardener gift ideas Garden-inspired recipes Exclusive updates regarding the show Plus, each week, one lucky subscriber wins a book from the Grow That Garden Library™ bookshelf.   Gardener Greetings Send your garden pics, stories, birthday wishes, and so forth to Jennifer@theDailyGardener.org   Curated News DIY Strawberry Rocks | Washington Gardener | Kathy Jentz   Facebook Group If you'd like to check out my curated news articles and original blog posts for yourself, you're in luck. I share all of it with the Listener Community in the Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener Community. So, there’s no need to take notes or search for links. The next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community, where you’d search for a friend... and request to join. I'd love to meet you in the group.   Important Events May 25, 1803 Today is the birthday of the American transcendentalist, essayist, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a son of Boston. By the time he finished his schooling at Harvard, he had decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. He was his class poet, and he wrote an original poem for his graduation. Six years later, on Christmas Day, he would meet his first wife, Ellen. Two years later, he lost her to tuberculosis. Her death eventually made him a wealthy man — although he had to sue his inlaws to acquire the inheritance. Deeply grieved after losing Ellen, Waldo eventually traveled to Europe, where he visited the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. The experience was a revelation to him. At the Paris Garden, Waldo sees plants organized according to Jussieu's system of classification. Suddenly he can see connections between different species. The American historian and biographer. Robert D. Richardson wrote, "Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science". Upon his return to the states, Waldo befriended other forward thinkers and writers of his time: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. In 1835, Waldo married his second wife, Lydia Jackson. Waldo changed her name from Lydia to Lidian, and he calls her by other names like Queenie and Asia. She always calls him “Mr. Emerson.” Around this time, Waldo began to think differently about the world and his perspective on life. Waldo was also the son of a minister, which makes his move away from religion and societal beliefs all the more impressive. By 1836, Waldo published his philosophy of transcendentalism in an essay he titled "Nature." He wrote: "Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue." The next year, Waldo gave a speech called "The American Scholar." It so moved Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. that he called Waldo’s oration text America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence." After his Nature essay, Waldo befriended Henry David Thoreau. In late September of 1838, the Salem Massachusetts Unitarian minister and American botanist John Lewis Russell visited Waldo, and they spent some time botanizing together. Waldo wrote about the visit in his journal: "A good woodland day or two with John Lewis Russell who came here, & showed me mushrooms, lichens, & mosses. A man in whose mind things stand in the order of cause & effect & not in the order of a shop or even of a cabinet." In 1855, when Walt Whitman published his Leaves of Grass, he sent a copy to Emerson. Waldo sent Whitman a five-page letter of praise. With Emerson’s support, Whitman issues a second edition that, unbeknownst to Waldo, quoted a passage from his letter that was printed in gold leaf on the cover, "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career." Waldo was displeased by this; he had wanted the letter to remain private. In the twilight of his life, the man who once advised, “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience,” Ralph Waldo Emerson was invited to join a group of nine intellectuals on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. The goal was simple: to connect with nature. The experience included Harvard’s naturalist Louis Agassiz, the great botanist James Russell Lowell, and the American naturalist Jeffries Wyman. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, "The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it."   "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."   And “The Earth laughs in flowers.”   Finally, here’s a little prayer Waldo wrote - giving thanks for the gifts of nature. “For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!”   May 25, 1949 Today is the birthday of the Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer Jamaica Kincaid born Elaine Potter Richardson. Jamaica Kincaid is a gardener and popular garden writer. Her book Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya offers many wonderful excerpts. And here, she discusses the dreams of gardeners - and how they form from our desire and curiosity. She writes, “Something that never escapes me as I putter about the garden, physically and mentally: desire and curiosity inform the inevitable boundaries of the garden, and boundaries, especially when they are an outgrowth of something as profound as the garden with all its holy restrictions and admonitions, must be violated.” Jamaica’s book My Garden offers an intimate look at her relationship with her garden. She writes, "I shall never have the garden I have in my mind, but that for me is the joy of it; certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them." Here she talks about time and the destruction of a garden: “In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture—it won’t accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy’ time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.” "The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not." She also wrote, “I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don’t like tidying up the garden afterwards.” During the pandemic in August of 2020, Jamaica wrote an essay for the New Yorker called, The Disturbances of the Garden. She wrote about learning to garden from her mother: “My mother was a gardener, and in her garden it was as if Vertumnus and Pomona had become one: she would find something growing in the wilds of her native island (Dominica) or the island on which she lived and gave birth to me (Antigua), and if it pleased her, or if it was in fruit and the taste of the fruit delighted her, she took a cutting of it (really she just broke off a shoot with her bare hands) or the seed (separating it from its pulpy substance and collecting it in her beautiful pink mouth) and brought it into her own garden and tended to it in a careless, everyday way, as if it were in the wild forest, or in the garden of a regal palace. The woods: The garden. For her, the wild and the cultivated were equal and yet separate, together and apart.” Later she writes about her own relationship with the garden. “But where is the garden and where am I in it? This memory of growing things, anything, outside not inside, remained in my memory… in New York City in particular, I planted: marigolds, portulaca, herbs for cooking, petunias, and other things that were familiar to me, all reminding me of my mother, the place I came from. Those first plants were in pots and lived on the roof of a diner that served only breakfast and lunch, in a dilapidated building at 284 Hudson Street, whose ownership was uncertain, which is the fate of us all. Ownership of ourselves and of the ground on which we walk, ...and ownership of the vegetable kingdom are all uncertain, too. Nevertheless, in the garden, we perform the act of possessing. To name is to possess…” “I began to refer to plants by their Latin names, and this so irritated my editor at this magazine (Veronica Geng) that she made me promise that I would never learn the Latin name of another plant. I loved her very much, and so I promised that I would never do such a thing, but I did continue to learn the Latin names of plants and never told her. Betrayal, another feature of any garden.”   Unearthed Words After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her. The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made. ― Stephen M. Irwin, Australian screenwriter, producer, and novelist, The Dead Path   Grow That Garden Library Plant Identification Terminology by James G. Harrison   This book came out in 2001, and the subtitle is An Illustrated Glossary. Well, to me, this book is an oldie, but goodie; I first bought my copy of this book back in 2013. This book aims to help you understand the terms used in plant identification, keys, and descriptions - and it also provides definitions for almost 3,000 words. Now, if you're looking to improve your grasp of plant identification terminology, this book will be an invaluable reference.   And just as a heads up. there are around 30 used copies that are reasonably priced on Amazon. But of course, they're not going to last forever, so if you're interested in this book, don't wait to get a copy. (After those used copies are gone, then the next lowest price is around $200.) This book is 216 pages of exactly what it says it is: plant identification, terminology - and I should mention that there are also helpful illustrations. You can get a copy of Plant Identification Terminology by James G. Harrison  and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show Notes for around $12   Today’s Botanic Spark Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart May 25, 1908 Today is the birthday of the Michigan-born poet, gardener, and the 1954 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Theodore Roethke (“RETH-key”). Ted wrote about nature and the American Northwest. He enjoyed focusing on “the little things in life.” His father was a gardener, a greenhouse grower, a rose-lover, and a drinker. As a result, many of Ted’s pieces are about new life springing from rot and decay. His best poem is often considered to be “The Rose.” The poem reminded him of his father, and he could barely speak the poem without crying. Today, garden signs and social media posts quote Ted’s verse, “Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.”   Ted battled bipolar depression most of his life, and his darkness can be seen in his poem called The Geranium. When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail, She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, Or a wizened aster in late September, I brought her back in again For a new routine - Vitamins, water, and whatever Sustenance seemed sensible At the time: she'd lived So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, Her shriveled petals falling On the faded carpet, the stale Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves. (Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.) The things she endured!- The dumb dames shrieking half the night Or the two of us, alone, both seedy, Me breathing booze at her, She leaning out of her pot toward the window. Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me- And that was scary- So when that snuffling cretin of a maid Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,I said nothing. But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, I was that lonely.   A sunnier and more tender poem was called Transplanting. Ted wrote the poem from the perspective of "a very small child: all interior drama; no comment; no interpretation.” Watching hands transplanting, Turning and tamping, Lifting the young plants with two fingers, Sifting in a palm-full of fresh loam,-- One swift movement,-- Then plumping in the bunched roots, A single twist of the thumbs, a tamping, and turning, All in one, Quick on the wooden bench, A shaking down, while the stem stays straight, Once, twice, and a faint third thump,-- Into the flat-box, it goes, Ready for the long days under the sloped glass: The sun warming the fine loam, The young horns winding and unwinding, Creaking their thin spines, The underleaves, the smallest buds Breaking into nakedness, The blossoms extending  Out into the sweet air, The whole flower extending outward, Stretching and reaching.   Theodore Roethke died in 1963. He was visiting friends on Bainbridge Island. One afternoon he was fixing mint juleps by the pool. The friends went to the main house to get something. When they returned, three perfect mint juleps sat on a table by the edge of the pool, and Ted was floating face down in the water. He’d suffered a brain aneurysm. After his death, the family honored their friend by filling in the pool. They installed a beautiful zen garden in the pool's footprint that is framed by conifers and features raked sand and a handful of moss-covered stones. There is no plaque. Today, we’ll end the podcast with Theodore’s ode to spring - called Vernal Sentiment. Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places, The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green, And boys moon at girls with last year's fatuous faces, I never am bored, however familiar the scene. When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter,— Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between,— Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter: I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

In this episode, recorded over a decade ago, Jeff Carreira speaks with the biographer Robert Richardson, who died last month. In this conversation he discusses his writings on Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James. Richardson devoted 10 years to researching and writing each of these three biographies and each presents a detailed picture that brings the personalities of these men and their achievements vividly to life. In the wake of his recent passing, we want to honor Robert D. Richardson by offering this interview for you to listen to and enjoy.