LARRY SULLIVAN
Larry Sullivan is a researcher and a history buff. He and his wife, artist Mimi Wiggin live in the Mink Hills of Warner. Larry enjoys local history - especially the forgotten stories and events that aren’t found in our history books. For nearly a decade he has delved into the history of Warner and the Mount Kearsarge region and has worked with the Warner Historical Society to bring back some of the forgotten stories, a few of which have been presented as public programs.
He wrote Nineteenth Century Libraries of Warner, New Hampshire, published jointly in 2011 by the Pillsbury Free Library and the Warner Historical Society. He also penned a booklet entitled 19th Century U.S. Patents Associated with Warner, New Hampshire, and he and Mimi published Poems of Old Warner and Mount Kearsarge, a tiny little book of local 19th and early 20th century poetry in 2012.
Larry’s ongoing research of Warner authors resulted in the publication of Educators and Agitators: Selected works of 19th Century Women Writers from a Small New Hampshire Town in 2013. That book looked at the lives and the written works of fifteen 19th century Warner women authors. It was the first book selected for publication by the Warner Historical Society’s Publication Fund. He expects to complete the larger resource work entitled A Community of Writers this summer. It will contain photos, brief biographies and bibliographies of almost 100 Warner poets, authors and editors, as well as photographs of their homes and samples of over 150 of their writings. It will be a local reference book, and only a few copies will be printed.
Larry’s current book about Mount Kearsarge goes beyond the town of Warner. Mount Kearsarge - History, Stories, Legends and Folktales is the product of research and data collection from the Kearsarge region and beyond. The book starts with an historical overview of Mount Kearsarge, to provide the “back story” for over thirty stories and several folktales related to the mountain. Also included are many “Recollections” of the mountain, from an early account by Henry David Thoreau about his grandmother’s visit to the Kearsarge Gore, to excerpts of writings by local people who looked up one day and saw a huge, unwelcome tower on their mountain.
Mount Kearsarge - History, Stories, Legends and Folktales has been selected as the second book to be published by the Warner Historical Society’s Publication Fund. It is richly illustrated with over 150 photographs and paintings, many in color. Mimi Wiggin painted the beautiful cover and has painted several original oil paintings of Mount Kearsarge, specifically for this book. Mount Kearsarge is currently undergoing a final prepublication edit, and is expected to be available in June.
He wrote Nineteenth Century Libraries of Warner, New Hampshire, published jointly in 2011 by the Pillsbury Free Library and the Warner Historical Society. He also penned a booklet entitled 19th Century U.S. Patents Associated with Warner, New Hampshire, and he and Mimi published Poems of Old Warner and Mount Kearsarge, a tiny little book of local 19th and early 20th century poetry in 2012.
Larry’s ongoing research of Warner authors resulted in the publication of Educators and Agitators: Selected works of 19th Century Women Writers from a Small New Hampshire Town in 2013. That book looked at the lives and the written works of fifteen 19th century Warner women authors. It was the first book selected for publication by the Warner Historical Society’s Publication Fund. He expects to complete the larger resource work entitled A Community of Writers this summer. It will contain photos, brief biographies and bibliographies of almost 100 Warner poets, authors and editors, as well as photographs of their homes and samples of over 150 of their writings. It will be a local reference book, and only a few copies will be printed.
Larry’s current book about Mount Kearsarge goes beyond the town of Warner. Mount Kearsarge - History, Stories, Legends and Folktales is the product of research and data collection from the Kearsarge region and beyond. The book starts with an historical overview of Mount Kearsarge, to provide the “back story” for over thirty stories and several folktales related to the mountain. Also included are many “Recollections” of the mountain, from an early account by Henry David Thoreau about his grandmother’s visit to the Kearsarge Gore, to excerpts of writings by local people who looked up one day and saw a huge, unwelcome tower on their mountain.
Mount Kearsarge - History, Stories, Legends and Folktales has been selected as the second book to be published by the Warner Historical Society’s Publication Fund. It is richly illustrated with over 150 photographs and paintings, many in color. Mimi Wiggin painted the beautiful cover and has painted several original oil paintings of Mount Kearsarge, specifically for this book. Mount Kearsarge is currently undergoing a final prepublication edit, and is expected to be available in June.
BEN HEWITT
I was born and raised in northern Vermont, in a two-room cabin situated on the 160-acre homestead my father purchased in the late 60’s. At 16, the legal age of “school leaving” in my home state, I dropped out of high school to pursue a self-designed study program in excessively loud heavy metal music and extreme partying. I began writing for magazines in my early 20’s; within two years, freelance magazine writing became my sole means of supporting myself and later, my family.
In 1997, my then-girlfriend (now wife) Penny and I purchased 40 acres in the town of Cabot, Vermont, where we now run a small-scale, diversified hill farm with our two sons, Finlay and Rye. We live in a self-built home that is powered by a windmill and solar photovoltaic panels, and tend a menagerie of animals, including cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens. We also have copious gardens, a small orchard, and a pick-your-own blueberry patch. Our focus is producing nutrient dense foods from vibrant, mineralized soils for ourselves and the immediate community.
Both of our sons are educated at home in the context of a life-learning process known colloquially as unschooling. It is our belief that contemporary, institutionalized American educational expectations create “childhood deficit disorder” and do not allow for full maturity of mind and spirit. For both our boys and ourselves, we place a strong emphasis on connection to and appreciation of nature, and allow for as much unstructured time as possible. We do not own a television.
I have written three books, am currently working on a fourth, and I still write the occasional magazine story. I am tremendously grateful to be so privileged. Thank you for your support.
In 1997, my then-girlfriend (now wife) Penny and I purchased 40 acres in the town of Cabot, Vermont, where we now run a small-scale, diversified hill farm with our two sons, Finlay and Rye. We live in a self-built home that is powered by a windmill and solar photovoltaic panels, and tend a menagerie of animals, including cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens. We also have copious gardens, a small orchard, and a pick-your-own blueberry patch. Our focus is producing nutrient dense foods from vibrant, mineralized soils for ourselves and the immediate community.
Both of our sons are educated at home in the context of a life-learning process known colloquially as unschooling. It is our belief that contemporary, institutionalized American educational expectations create “childhood deficit disorder” and do not allow for full maturity of mind and spirit. For both our boys and ourselves, we place a strong emphasis on connection to and appreciation of nature, and allow for as much unstructured time as possible. We do not own a television.
I have written three books, am currently working on a fourth, and I still write the occasional magazine story. I am tremendously grateful to be so privileged. Thank you for your support.
ROBERT D. PUTNAM
Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. Professor Putnam is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. In 2006, Putnam received the Skytte Prize, the world's highest accolade for a political scientist, and in 2012, he received the National Humanities Medal, the nation’s highest honor for contributions to the humanities. Raised in a small town in the Midwest and educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale, he has served as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government. The London Sunday Times has called him “the most influential academic in the world today.”
He has written fourteen books, translated into twenty languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. His previous book, Making Democracy Work, was praised by the Economist as "a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber." Both Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone are among the most cited publications in the social sciences worldwide in the last half century.
He consults widely with national leaders, including the last three American presidents, the last three British prime ministers, and the last French president. He co-founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal. His earlier work included research on comparative political elites, Italian politics, and globalization. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, he taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council.
Putnam's 2010 book, American Grace, co-authored with David Campbell of Notre Dame, focuses on the role of religion in American public life. Based on data from two of the most comprehensive national surveys on religion and civic engagement ever conducted, American Grace is the winner of the American Political Science Association's 2011 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs.
Since 2010, he has been focused on one major empirical project: Inequality and opportunity: the growing class gap among American young people and the implications for social mobility. His book on this subject, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis was published in March 2015.
He has written fourteen books, translated into twenty languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. His previous book, Making Democracy Work, was praised by the Economist as "a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber." Both Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone are among the most cited publications in the social sciences worldwide in the last half century.
He consults widely with national leaders, including the last three American presidents, the last three British prime ministers, and the last French president. He co-founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal. His earlier work included research on comparative political elites, Italian politics, and globalization. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, he taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council.
Putnam's 2010 book, American Grace, co-authored with David Campbell of Notre Dame, focuses on the role of religion in American public life. Based on data from two of the most comprehensive national surveys on religion and civic engagement ever conducted, American Grace is the winner of the American Political Science Association's 2011 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs.
Since 2010, he has been focused on one major empirical project: Inequality and opportunity: the growing class gap among American young people and the implications for social mobility. His book on this subject, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis was published in March 2015.
ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is the author of 11 books, most recently her autobiography A Million Years With You.
Her first book, The Harmless People, arose while she was in college at Radcliffe, after her father organized a series of expeditions to the Kalahari interior in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) to study Bushmen, also called “San,” in an area which then was unexplored. The Bushmen lived by hunting and gathering in what she calls “The Old Way” (that’s the title of another of her books), some of their encampments had been occupied continuously for at least 35,000 years, and this, she says, was the way in which all human kind had lived since our species came out of the trees. The experience, she says, became the lens through which she views the world.
She later studied wolves in the interior of Baffin Island where she lived alone in a little cave near a wolf den, then studied elephants in southern Africa with Katherine Payne, the woman who discovered that elephants make infrasound. She also studied dogs, which gave rise to two books,The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Social Lives of Dogs, and she studied cats, which gave rise to her book Tribe of Tiger.
She taught English Composition at U Mass Boston, at the Walpole Prison, at the Harvard Extension (that’s night school) and at George Washington University. She also worked as a student advisor for the Embassy of the State of Kuwait.
Her home is in Peterborough on land conserved by her father since 1935. She lives with her husband, Stephen, also their friend, Nancy Folsom, Nancy’s dog and cat plus her own two dogs and four cats, and one mouse whom she found unconscious under her refrigerator, but helped to recover and now provides with a home. She is committed to the Town of Peterborough and has served on most boards and committees, including 15 years on the Peterborough Board of Selectmen.
Her first book, The Harmless People, arose while she was in college at Radcliffe, after her father organized a series of expeditions to the Kalahari interior in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) to study Bushmen, also called “San,” in an area which then was unexplored. The Bushmen lived by hunting and gathering in what she calls “The Old Way” (that’s the title of another of her books), some of their encampments had been occupied continuously for at least 35,000 years, and this, she says, was the way in which all human kind had lived since our species came out of the trees. The experience, she says, became the lens through which she views the world.
She later studied wolves in the interior of Baffin Island where she lived alone in a little cave near a wolf den, then studied elephants in southern Africa with Katherine Payne, the woman who discovered that elephants make infrasound. She also studied dogs, which gave rise to two books,The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Social Lives of Dogs, and she studied cats, which gave rise to her book Tribe of Tiger.
She taught English Composition at U Mass Boston, at the Walpole Prison, at the Harvard Extension (that’s night school) and at George Washington University. She also worked as a student advisor for the Embassy of the State of Kuwait.
Her home is in Peterborough on land conserved by her father since 1935. She lives with her husband, Stephen, also their friend, Nancy Folsom, Nancy’s dog and cat plus her own two dogs and four cats, and one mouse whom she found unconscious under her refrigerator, but helped to recover and now provides with a home. She is committed to the Town of Peterborough and has served on most boards and committees, including 15 years on the Peterborough Board of Selectmen.
