By Dan Hinchen

Our map exhibition just closed and we are awaiting the arrival of The Private Jefferson which comes later this month. In the meantime, we still have a couple of free programs to tide you over this week:

– On Tuesday, 12 January, 5:15PM, there is an Environmental History seminar. “Airplanes and Postwar America: An Environmental History of the Jet Age” is presented by Thomas Robertson of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and assesses the environmental consequences of aviation. Sonja Duempelmann of Harvard University provides comment. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

– On Wednesday, 13 January, there is a Brown Bag lunch talk beginning at noon. This week, Jennifer Chuong, Harvard University, speaks about “‘Chargeable Ground’ and ‘Shaking Meadows’: New Models of Land Cultivation in Eighteenth-Century New England.” Part of her dissertation research, Chuong’s talk examines Connecticut minister Jared Eliot’s An Essay Upon Field-Husbandry in New England as It Is or May Be Ordered (1748), with a particular focus on Eliot’s identification of different landscapes as entailing different proportions of effort, investment, and delay in their cultivation. This talk is free and open to the public. Pack a lunch and stopy by!

Please note that the MHS is CLOSED on Monday, 18 January, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Normal hours resume on Tuesday, 19 January.