In 1833 a UK Government Select Committee formed to look at the idea of 'Public Walks'. In this new post I’ve taken the long view of what they were, why they were considered important for public health & how they relate to today’s RoW #FestiveFootsteps #envhist #hstm #parks @histodons @histstm

https://www.allourfootsteps.uk/newwriting/public-walks

Hi #histodons, especially of the #EnvHist #HistSTM persuasion, there's a postdoc opening in Geneva with @brunostrasser and Jerome Baudry for someone working on the
history of technologies for living in toxic environments (19th - 20th centuries).

It's a 1-3 year position in the SNF-funded project "Breathing Modernities: Masks, Industry, and Toxic Environments (1830s-1970s)."

Feel free to get in touch with Bruno directly for more info.

Each fall, I teach a large group of students about environmental disasters in history and how we can learn from Minamata and Grassy Narrows, Giant Mine, Chornobyl, Bhopal, DTT, the Dust Bowl, wildfires, London's Great Smog, Love Canal, the Sydney Tar Ponds and the history of climate change. I'm always drawn back to Wendell Berry's Poem on Hope as the term ends:

"It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of the future, which surely will surprise us,
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
anymore than by wishing."

I hope my efforts to teach them environmental history give them a little hope that the future might surprise us.

#histodons #WendellBerry #envhist
#climate #hope #teaching
https://youtu.be/2j_r4jb9AYw

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting author and ecologist Lisa Schneidau for an online talk looking at folk tales connected with rivers and the environment.

You can now watch this talk back for free online for the next two weeks on this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tO--daiu4

#folklore #FolkTale #storytelling #rivers @folklore #histodons @histodons