Mary Oliver to deliver Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture December 16, 2011

The Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education at Florida Gulf Coast University is excited to announce that its Annual Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture Weekend will be held Feb. 17-18, 2012. This year's guest lecturer will be the celebrated winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and the National Book Award for poetry- Mary Oliver.

The Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture is a signature event of the Center that brings public intellectuals to discuss issues such as sustainability, ethics, democracy, and literature. This year's Lecture will be a poetry reading with commentary, and will be held at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at Saint Michael and All Angels Church on Sanibel Island.

Mary Oliver is widely recognized for her lyrical poems that use vivid imagery to portray the natural world. The Center has chosen Mary Oliver for this year's Lecture because her poetry renders the gravity, grace, and beauty of the ordinary world and inspires a universal sense of wonder. Much like Rachel Carson's unparalleled contributions to human understanding of our environment, Mary Oliver's work has inspired deep appreciation for the wildness and beauty of the nature.

The Eighth Annual Fundraising Celebration will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Sanibel Island beachfront home of Peter and Mallory Haffenreffer. This is the major fundraising event for the Center and helps to further its sustainability initiatives locally and globally.

The lecture will be free and open to the public. Seats will be reserved for contributors to the Eighth Annual Fundraising Celebration. Invitations to the Lecture and Fundraising Celebration will be mailed out in early January to the Center's mailing list. Contact the Center by email at cese@fgcu.edu or by phone at 239-590-7166 if you would like to be added to the mailing list.

The Sense of Wonder

Posted by Diane Kinney on July 31, 2009, 12:25 pm
Bowker Reads - http://www.bowkerreads.com/

The Sense of Wonder

http://www.bowkerreads.com/reviews/non-fiction/family/the-sense-of-wonder/

• Author(s): Rachel Carson
• Contributor(s): Kaiulani Lee
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
• ISBN: 9781433207235
• Release Date: c. 1956; 2007

This lovely reading of Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder serves to reinforce the knowledge that having the capacity to appreciate the beauty of nature affects our lives in countless positive ways. I listened to this half-hour-long CD on at least five separate occasions and each time came away with something new. Renowned for her influential work Silent Spring and credited widely as the founder of the modern environmental movement, Carson is no less of an inspiring force nearly a half century after her death. The Sense of Wonder relates her experiences of sharing the joy of outdoor discovery with her young nephew, Roger, and is part homage to the wild landscape of Maine and part parenting manual.

Contending that the importance of adult encouragement of natural discovery to a child’s development cannot be overstated, the author feels that all too often mothers and fathers are discouraged from doing so either due to the “inconvenience” of these adventures and/or a feeling of ignorance about how to teach things they themselves do not know. Carson strongly believes that whether or not a particular star, animal, or plant is correctly identified by name misses the point entirely—the true appreciation of nature stems from perception rather than knowledge. The struggle to combat materialism and indifference is centuries-old, of course, but I still found it hard to believe that The Sense of Wonder wasn’t written recently. Though a short work, it is extremely powerful, and I highly recommend it for all.