My Green Manifesto (27 page)

2
Charles D. Elliot, “Somerville History,” in
Somerville Past and Present: An Illustrated Historical Souvenir
, eds. Edward A. Samuels and Henry H. Kimball (Boston: Samuels and Kimball, 1897), 25.

3
“A Backyard Wilds” is dedicated to Amy, as promised.

4
William Manchester,
The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874–1932
(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1983), 6.

5
Ibid.

6
Jack Turner,
The Abstract Wild
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 25.

7
Samuel Johnson,
The Works of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D.
, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1825), 165.

8
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Essays and Lectures
(New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1983), 515.

9
In those days, McKibben seemed to me a powerful and slightly remote figure, tall and thin and archetypal, someone who, as another classmate recently put it, always looked a little like Abe Lincoln. The one time we actually interacted in college was when he supported me during the controversy that followed the publication of my cartoon,
The Trickle Down Theory,
which was a picture of Ronald Reagan urinating on an unemployed black man in the gutter.

10
Wallace Stegner, “Variations on a theme by Crèvecoeur,” in
New West Reader: Essays on an Ever-Evolving
Frontier
, ed. Philip Connors (New York: Nation Books, 2005), 105–124.

11
Wendell Berry,
The Long-Legged House
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), 150.

12
Duane Hamilton Hurd,
History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts
(Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1884), 42.

13
Henry David Thoreau,
The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau
, ed. Lewis Hyde (New York: North Point Press, 2002), xii.

14
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, interview by Amanda Little, “An interview with the authors of the controversial essay, ‘The Death of Environmentalism,'” Grist, January 13, 2005.
http://grist.org/article/little-doe/

15
William Broyles Jr.,
Castaway
, DVD, directed by Robert Zemeckis (Universal City, CA: DreamWorks, 2000).

16
James C. O'Connell, “How Metropolitan Parks Shaped Greater Boston, 1893–1945,” in
Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and its Surroundings
, eds. Anthony N. Penna and Conrad Edick Wright (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 168–197.

17
To confuse things more, the MDC has recently morphed into the DCR, or “Department of Conservation and Recreation.”

18
Richard Higgins, “Gradually, MDC gets back land along Charles,”
Boston Globe
, August 10, 1997.

19
Joel Myerson,
The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 96.

20
Jack Turner,
Abstract Wild
, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 99.

21
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The American Scholar: Self Reliance and Compensation
(New York: American Book Company, 1893), 40.

22
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden and Other Writings
(New York: Elibron Classics, 2006), 624.

23
Robert D. Richardson,
Henry Thoreau: a Life of the Mind
(London: University of California Press, 1986), 376.

24
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden: an Annotated Edition
, ed. Walter Harding (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), 94.

25
Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1909): 88.

26
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden: a Fully Annotated Edition
, ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer (New Haven: Yale University, 2004), 17.

27
Stephen Jay Gould,
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1977), 25.

28
Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1909), 527.

29
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden: a Fully Annotated Edition
, ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer (New Haven: Yale University, 2004), 12.

30
Stephen Jay Gould,
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1992), 257.

31
Michel de Montaigne,
The Complete Essays of Montaigne,
tr. Donald M. Frame (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1958), 856.

32
Wendell Berry,
The Long-Legged House
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), 150.

33
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden
(New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950), 440.

34
Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1909): 529.

35
Wallace Stegner, “Wilderness Letter” in
Wilderness Reader
, ed. Frank Bergon (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980), 315–333.

David Gessner is the author of several books of literary nonfiction. His writing has been recognized with numerous awards, including the John Burroughs Award for Best Natural History Essay, and has been selected as Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the award-winning journal,
Ecotone
.

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© 2011, Text by David Gessner

 

Parts of
My Green Manifesto
were published in a different form in
Ecotone, OnEarth,
and
Orion
magazine.

 

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher:

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Published 2011 by Milkweed Editions

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Gessner, David, 1961–

eISBN : 978-1-571-31836-7

This book is printed on acid-free paper.