BRISTOL — Bristol nature writer and environmental activist John Elder will read from his new book, “Picking Up the Flute: A Memoir Through Music,” this coming Thursday, Aug. 25, at Lawrence Memorial Library. The free reading will begin at 7 p.m. and is co-sponsored by the Bristol Gateway Players and by Vermont Family Forests.
“Picking Up the Flute”is a memoir framed by Elder’s experience of learning to play traditional Irish music on the wooden flute after retiring from nearly four decades teaching at Middlebury College. The book sets to music Elder’s contemplations on retirement, marriage, literature and the natural world.
Fittingly for a book centered around music, each chapter is associated with an Irish flute tune, which can be accessed at http://johnelderauthor.squarespace.com/themusic/.
“Picking Up the Flute” is Elder’s sixth book, following such titles as “Pilgrimate to Vallombrosa: From Vermont to Italy in the Footsteps of George Perkins Marsh” (2008) and “The Frog Run: Words and Wildness in the Vermont Woods” (2002).
Elder is the recipient of numerous honors including, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Guggenheim fellowships and the 2001 Eco-Spirit Award from Spirit in Nature. He was named Vermont Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation in 2008. Elder has also been awarded the James Bruce Engle Award from Vermont Coverts, for promoting Coverts mission of forest stewardship in the public arena, and a Vermont Land Trust Award for contributions to conservation at the statewide level.
To learn more about “Picking Up the Flute” go online to greenwriterspress.com/books/spring-2016/picking-up-the-flute/ or to johnelderauthor.squarespace.com.