News & Events, April 2012 
In this issue
Friends of Mount Auburn April 2012 Calendar
Horticultural Highlight: Magnoliaceae
Early Risers' Horticulture Club
Wildlife at Mount Auburn: The Blue-headed Vireo
Bird Photography Workshop
Person of the Month: Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton
April History Highlight: Titanic Centennial
All Aboard for the Titanic!
Stories of Life in the Records of Death: Mount Auburn's Lot Correspondence
Beyond Our Gates: Programs of Interest to the Community

 

Spring 2010Friends of Mount Auburn April Calendar

 

This month we have a very exciting mix of programming at the Cemetery.  Join us for Book Club, one of our Discover walking tours, a performance by the Futura String Quartet, a Coffeehouse & Open Mic Night, or an Author Talk with Matthew Pearl.

 

Visit our April programs calendar to explore these and other opportunities for fun and learning at the Cemetery. 

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Magnolia 

Horticultural Highlight: Magnoliaceae     

 

Magnolias are descendants of some of the earliest flowering plants - fossil remains indicate members of the botanical family Magnoliaceae to have grown during the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago). Before that time, the earth's surface was primarily dominated with conifers, cycads, ferns, and equisetums (horsetails). Today, the genus Magnolia, includes 85 to 120, deciduous and evergreen species (depending on taxonomic interpretation), primarily native to east and southeast Asia, and eastern North America. This genus...read more

 

Early Risers' Horticulture Club  

  

Join Dennis Collins and Jim Gorman at 7AM for Early Riser's Horticultural Club - an hour-long early morning excursion to discover what's in bloom and any other items of horticulture interest. From early bulbs to magnificent flowering trees, we will try to catch them all!

 

7AM on Fridays April 13 & 27, May 11 & 25, June 8 

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Blue-headed Vireo
The Blue-headed Vireo by Bob Stymeist

Wildlife at Mount Auburn: 
The Blue-headed Vireo 
  

The Blue-headed Vireo is one of the first truly song bird migrants in the month of April at Mount Auburn, arriving one to two weeks before any other vireo.

 

Once known as the Solitary Vireo, the Blue-headed Vireo, like all vireos, is a slow-moving and methodical feeder tending to feed on limbs and stronger branches and rarely feeding on the outer branches like the warblers tend to do.  The Blue-headed Vireo has a call that has been described as...read more  

 

Bird Photography Workshop
 
Avian photography is a wonderful way to enhance our experiences studying and observing birds. Join us for a three-session Bird Photography Workshop with Brooks Mathewson to discover the basics of bird photography.  Preregistration required.  Ticket covers fee for the entire workshop: the class session, Monday, April 30 at 7 PM; the field session, Saturday, May 5 at 6:30 AM; and the work review session, Monday, May 7 at 7 PM.
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Edgerton Monument

 

Person of the MonthHarold E. "Doc" Edgerton (1903-1990)   

 

A pioneer in stroboscopic photography, Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton bought his first camera at the age of fifteen and set up a dark room in his parent's house. His experiments with flash tubes as a graduate student at MIT led to the invention of the stroboscope in 1931.

 

Edgerton used the stroboscope to capture images that eluded the perceptive abilities of the human eye - a hummingbird in flight and the corona of a drop of milk.  He later became interested in underwater photography, working closely with Jacques Cousteau.  Surprisingly, he did not however, see his photography as art...read more

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John Cummings MonumentHistory Highlight: Titanic Centennial

 

On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. Touted as one of the most technologically advanced and safest ships in the world, it carried 2,224 passengers and crewmembers.  

 

Only 710 people survived when the 'unsinkable' ship collided with an iceberg in the cold waters near Newfoundland. Many Boston-area residents were aboard the ship, several of whom - survivors and victims - are now buried at Mount Auburn... read more

 

All Aboard for the Titanic!

 

One hundred years ago, on April 15th, the Titanic, the grandest passenger liner in the world, sank after hitting an iceberg. Join Ted Zalewski at 1PM on Sunday, April 29th for All Aboard the Titanic and hear the unforgettable story once again. Following a presentation in Story Chapel, we will visit the gravesite of a Titanic survivor.

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Lot Correspondence Files

Work order cards detailing the history of family requests for monument care and commemorative plantings.

 

 

Stories of Life in the Records of Death:

Mount Auburn's Lot Correspondence

 

Ever mindful of its heritage, Mount Auburn has kept and preserved the record of correspondence between the Cemetery and its lot owners from the founding of the Cemetery in 1831 to the present day.

 

From beautifully illustrated planting plans to death certificates, the contents of more than 11,000 files are brimming with documents that chronicle the creation and care of... read more  

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Beyond Our Gates: Events of Interest to the Community

 

Thursday, April 5:  The Poet and the Blacksmith | 7:00 pm | $10

Blacksmith House, 56 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 

Rob Velella, researcher at Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, talks about celebrated 19th century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his poem "The Village Blacksmith."  

 

Thursday, April 10:  Civil War Lecture Series - Drew Gilpin Faust | 6:00 PM | Free   

Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Public Library 

 

Drew Gilpin Faust is the 28th president of Harvard University and the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. A historian of the Civil War and the American South, Faust was the founding Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and the author of six books, her most recent, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008). 

   

March 7 - June 3, 2012:  At Home and Abroad: Anne Whitney in Rome

Exhibit at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College

 

This selection of materials from the Davis collections and the Wellesley College Archives focuses on the American sculptor Anne Whitney (1821-1915) and her life in Rome during the late 19th century.  

 

 
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Think green.
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phone: 617-547-7105  web: http://www.mountauburn.org  
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