My Nonprofit Reviews

I first met Jeffrey Cramer on the page while reading his wonderful annotated editions of Thoreau’s Walden and his one volume edition of Thoreau’s journal I to Me. Those two books were essential preparation for my first Annual Thoreau Conference where I was on a panel with Alireza Taghdarreh, an Iranian scholar who was working on the first translation of Walden into Farsi, the Persian language of Iran. Jeff Cramer and the Walden Woods Project were instrumental in bringing Ali to Concord and, through Taghdarreh’s translation, bringing Thoreau to Farsi readers and scholars. The Walden Woods Project/ Thoreau Institute has an international reach as well as a dedicated and deep local audience. Walk through the old wood forest, take a step into the light filled library, search the archive, marvel at the hand-written pages from Thoreau’s journal and you will understand why this non-profit is so vital to the community. In the difficult days of the pandemic, their programming has been sustaining. Recently I had the chance to read my Thoreau poems for The Walden Woods Project with three other poets inspired by Henry David Thoreau. All of us shared our poetry, then asked each other questions about craft. It was a marvelous evening and we had a generous and enthusiastic crowd who filled the chat box well past our allotted end time. The zoom webinar was as close an approximation of a live poetry reading as was possible thanks to the efforts of Sarah Walker and Jeff Cramer and my fellow poets!
Catherine Staples https://www.walden.org/education/stewardship_lectures/