Transcripts For CSPAN2 Naturalist 20240704

Speaker, who is going to be telling us about John Burroughs who as a young man came to capitol hill during the civil war and then introduced the nation to the Natural Beauty of washington and became one of the countrys leading and wellknown nature essayists. I suspect that burroughs would have appreciated the career part of our speaker. He started with a ba in Political Science from duke and masters in International Affairs from columbia and those led steve to almost 20 years for a reporter and editor for leading newspapers here and abroad. For his second act, steve has focused on the very local, including the song birds, which is a Habitat Restoration project and many years for the director of pierce mill. Edition deeper into the history and Natural Resources of the very area that John Burroughs knew and moved 150 years ago. Theres a second reason im slighted to be introducing the speaker and his topic, for almost 20 years now the lecture group headed by john francine at the time, has been looking for someone to give a lecture on the one time hill resident John Burroughs. Once i asked the late steve cimarron, the owner of a bookstore on the hill, if he would give a lecture anyone who named his bookstore after a burroughs book would probably know a lot about John Burroughs. Steve said he was an appreciator, but not a lecturer. So, this topic stayed on our list as something we want to do for many, many years until the spring when the washington history magazine published an article by steve dryden titled no ignoble stream, the creek of piney branch within that article was a section that began, quote, the first recorded explorer of piney branch was John Burroughs. Bingo, maybe, i thought, somebody who knew that about John Burroughs would also know a lot more and might just be willing to give a lecture. If not that, he might know somebody who would. So its only taken us almost 20 years to get to this lecture tonight in the Old Naval Hospital that John Burroughs might have seen when he was here in washington. [applause] thank you. Thank you, nancy. And thank you for the opportunity to talk tonight to its not on . Is that better . Should i maybe i should just shout from here because i it is on . So i have to get really close . Yes. Okay. How is that . That sounds a little bit better. I will shout. Well, its great to be back here on capitol hill. I actually lived here way back longer than 20 years ago on third street and pennsylvania near the hawk and dove. Im sure a few of you remember that, at the row house i was living in, actually had a gas lamp in the front of it, i thought was very cool and very 19th century. I would have stayed there except i had an appointment in egypt and thats another story and i went away and never came back to capitol hill. My father worked on capitol hill and i spent a lot of time and its old home place for me. Im happy to have a chance to talk about John Burroughs and walt whitman and buried streams of washington d. C. Im not nancy im not any kind of an expert on burroughs, but certainly theres a lot of material available on him which is pretty easy to find and i used to work at the Autobahn Society in chevy chase and they had a biography of him by a guy named edward ran aand who is lives in new york. I want to start with one clarification because i know these things get confusing and i get confused all the time by the names. Lets see if we can get to the next slide. Very important distinction here. John burroughs is not related to william f burroughs. William burroughs is a famous writer in certain scene, a member of the beat generation and more. And wrote naked lunch, one of the best names put together. He was an adventurer, as far as i know he was born in st. Louis and i dont think they were related in any close way, but i just want today get that out of the way because i sometimes it does get confusing with he is thoo these names, you know . The real John Burroughs, here he is as a young man, handsome young man with his flowing locks and he is forgotten today, its a fact. Nancy remembers him and a few others i know do, but between the confusion with William Burroughs and other nature writers, hes very much a man of the past, unfortunately. However, i dont think theres going to be a campaign to rename the school that is named after him, which is on monroe street northeast, i think thats pretty safe name. I dont think hes guilty of anything particularly egregious and he has no link with the drug adventurer william s. Burroughs and its a handsome tool, too. If you have a book by John Burroughs in your library, raise your hand. Im not surprised and dont be embarrassed because i didnt have one until five years ago myself when i found one in a used bookstore for about two bucks. You know, its curious, these writers go through periods of fame, not riot and then disappear. Believe it or not, it seems that John Burroughs was actually more famous than walt whitman back in the 19th century and early 20th century. Its kind of hard to measure that, but burroughs was very, very famous and he was so famous that people like henry ford were seeking him out for his wisdom, which is kind of ironic, given the disparate between their pursuits, but nevertheless, roosevelt, all of the big shots at the turn of the century wanted to be photographed with John Burroughs and he lived until 1920, but when you think about it, 1920, well, thats 100 years ago. Whitman on the other hand, who also lived late well, i dont have the exact date of his death, i think late in the 19th century. Whitman of course grew in fame and now is probably americas most beloved poet. But its interesting, they were literary comrades and well talk a little about that. And both of them were exiled from new york, who came to washington during the civil war. Whitman came here because he was looking for his brother who he thought had been wounded in a battle, i think at fredericksburg and then he stayed and he got a job, whitman did as a government clerk or Something Like that, and made enough money to get by. At that point whitman was actually had already published a version of leave the grass and somewhat known in intellectual class and readers, but it wasnt he wasnt a superstar in the 19th century. Nevertheless, he was here and people like burroughs who was 20 years younger knew about him. Burroughs was born and he was raised on a farm in the catskill mountains and he benefitted from that, of course, because he was outdoors and he got to love nature, we think, via his upbringing, however, he was also a studious and very curious young man and so he did not want to become a farmer like his father, and he asked when he was 17 and hed finished schooling if his father could give him money for college or pursue his education and he said no, im sorry, i dont want to support you in that and you dont want to be doing that kind of thing. So, mr. Burroughs senior had to say goodbye to his son who left home as boys tend to do, and went off to seek his passions, which at that point was learning how to be a teacher. He thought maybe he could earn some money. He went to a Seminary School for a while. He started writing. In was in the late 1850s, and of course, as i said, whitman was getting to be known. They were sort of in the same local, so to speak. Burroughs was writing and actually published in the atlantic monthly. It was a philosophical text, and it was so like emmerson they thought hed plague rised. It was an original. And he had a chance to become a writer. As the civil war began, he found that he, burroughs, could not really make a living teaching and writing in rural new york, which is where he was living. He got married at age 20 and he also had that responsibility. So he decided because he had some friends who were already in washington. They said come on down, we can give you a place, you can stay with us. He went down ahead of his wife in the fall of 1863 and lived in the back of a store that his friend was running somewhere downtown and who would he bump into, but walt whitman although he did not bump into him downtown. He actually bumped into him the first time their encounter evidently was a serious encounter was actually on capitol hill. That is under the trees on what is called a lonely path. Burroughs came upon whitman. Whitman was on his way as he tended to do in washington when he wasnt working to visit hospital. Whitman would bring fruit, candy, anything he could afford to give to soldiers in the hospital in washington, the wounded soldiers. This was his mission outside of writing. And burroughs was, of course, just thrilled to meet his, you know, frankly, a hero at that point and the two then became good friends. You know, at that point in time washington city, what they called it, which was the plan, the grid of washington, was still the city which people thought of when they thought of as washington. Outside of the grid was Washington County, which was undeveloped and mostly farming land. And that was not too far from anywhere you were in washington. So the two of them could take these walks out into the wilds, so to speak, of Washington County, which is what they did. Now, when burroughs first got to washington, as i said, he had wanted to be a teacher and wanting to write and he had no particular marketable skills. The first job that he found, the only thing that he could find, the measure of his desperation was actually he was a member of a burial detail run by the u. S. The quartermasters unit of the u. S. Army, burying black soldiers who had been killed in the fighting. And according to the records which the biographer found, these bodies were taken to the outskirts of washington to the border with maryland where they were buried in mass graves. And as you can imagine, this was horrible, horrible work and he didnt last burroughs didnt last very long with that. I actually was struck by it, of course, from such a horrible, just unbelievable kind of job for someone to come into there at the age of 20 who was writing, you know, in new york comes down here and its very hard to pin down precisely where all of that was taking place. So thats a topic for another researchers to find that Burial Ground because there doesnt seem to be any on the border of silver spring. I assume it was, the references for that. In any event burroughs didnt last more than a few weeks, luckily, he had a connection. This is very washington. He had a connection back home with a congressman who got him a job. Sound familiar. Got him a job at the Treasury Department clerking. The first months of 1864, burroughs was working and earning a pretty good salary, more than 1,000 a year which in these days was a nice sum to have equal to what whitman was getting. So he burroughs then because he had an income was able to move out of the back store room of his friends store there downtown, and actually find a house for him and his wife, which was right in the neighborhood where the Russell Office Senate Office building is today. He was in a red brick row house there and moved in and not only did he have a house, but he had an acre of land according to the reports, where he had a cow, chickens, grew potatoes and could then, you know, support his wife and also feed walt whitman. According to what theyre saying about whitman, he didnt really pay much attention to eating on a regular schedule and taking care of himself and so burroughs would invite whitman over for breakfast on sunday morning, sort of like a standing date to come over and whitman was down on m street near the navy yard, i believe. Staying with his sister and probably some sort of tenement or something, and he would trudge up to burroughs house and have a big sunday breakfast. That was great tore whitman and great for burroughs who loved his company. Not great for burroughs wife ursela, who just was not happy, frankly, with a lot of things, but she wasnt happy with walt whitman hanging out and his sort of blase manner and everything that whitman was all about, who knows. So that was a point of contention between burroughs and his wife and it did happen and that developed a friendship. So here we have a map from the civil war period. The Capitol Building here. I can actually point. The Capitol Building here. And hes over here near where the russell building would be, a little bit further up, perhaps. Now, this actually is a creek, a little squiggle. Were not precisely where they were, but there is tiber creek, which started and flowed down and emptied into the potomac and then channelized into the mall. But it started up north of here and so that was one place that burroughs and whitman could take their walks. Here we have a very fanciful portrayal. I mean, this was just in 2009 and i just came upon it on the White House Historical website of tiber creek in front of the white house. I dont think it looked this beautiful, but, you know. [laughter] whatever. Its a lovely, lovely painting. All right, the i shouldnt have advanced like this, but i will. Whitman, of course, being whitman and being quite a, lets just a visionary writer had certain ideas about writing and was very happy to pose as sort of act as sort of a father figure with burroughs and he encouraged burroughs to go beyond purery scientific observation in his nature writing and mix this with a poetic language. Burroughs, of course, had to have some kind of talent to do this, but it was a major influence on him and one of the reasons his writing is so beautiful. And whitman believed only a personal vision could do justice to Natural History and this is very much in keeping with those times and the writers of that period. You inject yourself into the Natural World in order to give a compelling portrait and to move the reader. And burroughs actually had a bit of an influence on whitman, too, according to scholars who studied them because burroughs with his eye for the scientific detail influenced whitman, too, and encouraged him to pay more attention to the details of nature. These two guys were becoming quite good friends and burroughs wrote to another friend of his and he said, i have been very much with walt. I love him very much. The more i see and talk with him, the greater he becomes to me. And on and on and on. And the way, the flowery language that men wrote about and wrote with in those days. Now, obviously, youre probably thinking, okay, whats going on . Walt whitman was famously bisexual, or gay, kind of unclear what call of his activities were, but nevertheless, definitely a man who liked men. Burroughs though never was seen as gay or bisexual and it seems that they had, quote, the platonic friendship and burroughs, in fact, was chastised by whitman later, a few years later because burroughs marriage was very unhappy from the getgo and he was a bit of a with womanizing and whitman didnt approve of that. Whitman was a single relationship guy and burroughs was kind of acting out and whitman wrote him these letters saying, you know, this is really not the way to do it. Youre not going to succeed in your marriage by doing this. And so that was the, i think the extent of their relationship. They were both here for 10 years and had different ideas about a lot of things, but they were certainly united in their appreciation and their understanding of this need for the personal vision. Burroughs came back from a visit to new york in the summer of 1865, just a few months after lincoln was assassinated. Whitman was excuse me, yeah, whitman was devastated by lincolns death and was writing a poem about that. And burroughs was very excited about the fact that he had seen and heard a hermit thrush, which is this bird on the screen back in new york. And he got so carried away and so excited about this bird that whitman used the bird in his famous poem, when lilacs last in the door yard bloom. And i have the relevant part of the poem here its easy to read so ill read it to you. Solitary the thrush, the hermit withdrawn to himself avoiding the settlements. Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat. Now, thats a long poem, i wont read anymore of it, but the influence is very obvious and its interesting that the hermit thrush was this bird that was the inspiration or the one of the keystones for whitman. In fact, the official bird of washington d. C. Is also a thrush, but its not the hermit thrush. Does anybody know what the official bird of washington d. C. Is. Wood thrush. Wood thrush, yes. Another bird that looks a little bit like this, more of a speckled breast, but its a migrant bird, also. In any event, burroughs would write about that later. So this is a map also of that period, civil war period and this shows you where burroughs moved because burroughs, as i said, was making a good salary at the Treasury Department and i dont know if he got some money from his wifes family or what they got. But he evidently had enough money to actually build a house there at 1332v street, between 13th and 14th street in the late 1860s. And as you can see he is right on the edge this is boundary street, later became florida avenue. So hes right on the edge of the escarpment, the rise in the land there that marks the end of the flood plane of the potomac and he was well positioned to take walks, which is what he d n this case, he would be walking up into what would become mt. Pleasant, along what was actually the 7th street turnpike, later georgia avenue, and reaching rock creek and the tributary piney branch. So he could do that easily and that led to a number of essays that he wrote and his fishes nature book. Its interesting because its about whitman and his first nature book, and he in this book had an essay about springtime in the capital and his observations and he talked about piney branch and this is what struck me when i was doing some research into the history of piney branch. Burroughs was quite taken about it. He said its a small noisy brook, flowing through a great valley of beauty and picturesqueness with oak, chestnut and beech and abounding in Dark Recesses and hidden retreats. He says thats the creek is where he goes every spring to hear the distinctive song of the rereturning wood thrush. The wood thrush, by the way, is a kind of iconic bird in the world of birders, ornithology, not ornithology, but those who appreciate birds. Starting with audubon and Going Forward everybody rapsdizes about its song, and sounds like a wood instrument, somehow does it with his throat and miracle of nature and audubon and everybody why just enthralled with this bird and remains today considered one of the most beautiful songs of birds in the United States, in the eastern United States and is the official bird of washington d. C. , which came about in 1967 when d. C. Got home rule and the d. C. Commissioners actually felt like they could appoint an official bird. Believe it or not, before then they were confused as to whether or not they had the power to declare an official bird. Im not kidding you, this was in the record. And so in 67 when home rule was on the horizon they finally thought, this is the time. And the washington post, to its ever lasting disgrace wrote an editorial against it and said nobody had ever seen a wood thrush and led to a lot of back and forth in the letters page with the Audubon Society and luckily, the post did not prevail. So burroughs is out in early seasons. Hes out there in february, march, poking around in piney branch and finding these, what theyre called ephemeral plants, which is a whole group of wildflowers mostly that come up very early before the rest of the forest leafs out and they flower and go through the reproductive cycle at that point, taking advantage of the sun and then after that, theyre gone for the most part, for the rest of the summer. So theyre, you know, a dozen of these beauties which are out there peek being out of the oak leaves and from the leaf litter. And its something that, you know, its available and very easy to find if you take a walk in rock creek and so burroughs wrote about this, that he saw all of these, he knew where to go to see each species and he would walk up these streams and walk up the subtributaries and find various species, including the birds foot violet he said was the most beautiful and showy of all the violet and cause for raptuous applause. Ive never seen it. Cause for rapturous applause from all persons who visit the woods. So burroughs publishes wakerobin, and thats in 1871, and a few years later he both he and whitman leave, but thats 10 years together in washington. So it made quite an impression on burroughs and that friendship, of course, was lifelong with whitman. Burroughs decided to move back up to new york and build a rust particular cabin on an estate well, on a piece of land somewhere out there, i think in the catskills again. Whitman had a stroke, actually, and was living with his i think his sister no, his brother in camden, new jersey. He had a stroke in the 1870s, but he did survive. So they left and that time period then, where looking at the 1870s, the gilded age and the beginning of big money and industrialization in the United States. Rather good, perhaps, that both whitman and burroughs left at that time because their beloved Washington County, the undeveloped part of washington was soon to be no more. But first, this is the cabin that burroughs built. And there is mr. Burroughs growing a walt whitman beard which he did very deliberately and got whiter and whiter, as he aged. Okay. So they leave, new people arrive in washington who are looking at plants and thinking about them. A little bit more scientifically than poetly, but this is very important. This man, frank word, i think he was born in illinois and came to washington and went to law school at what was the George Washington university back then, it was called Columbia School which was actually near mt. Pleasant, but very smart fan. He ditched his legal career for cataloging and finding plants which i think it was a very wise choice and he never practiced law again, and ward was an amazing kind of renaissance, whatever you want to say, he works for the u. S. Geologic service, trained himself in paleontology and later became a socialologist, and professor of socialology. And before he did all that he was crawling around in washington looking at plants and found a very interesting sight, which he named well, ill get to this in a second, but he actually took the civil war maps on went on what he called extensive rambles around Washington County and he would name them names that he made up for himself and he offers no apology. So he was Walking Around piney branch and he found this wetland which he called the whole mead flaunt. And that was a family, and theres still a holemead street there. And this was different from anything hed ever seen before, however, he didnt pursue this, as i was saying he had a lot of other interests in life so he noted this and its interesting that he called it a swamp because a swamp is a wetland that is forested, its not clear it was like that at that time, but nevertheless, that was kind of the word they used in those days for any wetlands. And then go back to the b street maps here. So here you go, thats 14th street extended, piney branch, which is coming off of rock creek to the right, and here is the holemead swamp which is a tributary, a wetland currently on spring road near georgia. Between georgia and 14th street. So those who started studying this particular site found a lot of plans that just were not in washington elsewhere. And there were orchids, a rare red milk weed, a grass called an umbrella sage and westland flowers like the cardinal flower and also found a sun dew. A common sun dew, which is a carniverous plant and sun dew is a plant that survives in a nutrient poor soil, which this particular site was. And it provided a clue to later scientists as to what was going on at this particular place and why these plants were flourishing there and nowhere else. So the next fellow who was investigating and writing about this was mr. Mcatee, waldo lee mcatee, another man from the midwest who came to washington and started working for the department of agriculture where he actually spent his entire career and he wrote about the flora of washington d. C. In a publication that came out in 1918 which is still used by botanists and he was able to actually define this area of the holemead swamp and they call it, the term of art is magnolia bog. The reason for that, the sweet bay magnolia which is a relative of the southern magnolia that we know and love. The sweet bay magnolia grows in this bog. And here it is, and it smells nicer than a regular magnolia. It didnt grow anywhere else except in these bogs. And i have to read this in detail and its off my laptop and i dont want to blow it with a misstep. These bogs are situated on whats known as the fall line where the piedmont meets the coastal planes plains and you have the falls, and et cetera. The sand from the coastal plain is sometimes exposed at these fall line areas and sand and gravel storm a substrate and as i said, its nutrient poor and this allows a certain kind of plant, plants, species to grow there. Thats whats going and at his bogs. Theres one there, one at ingram and smith street. And there are several in Prince Georges County and arlington and theyre all based on mack mcatees discoveries. Theres also at the magnolia bog, the swamp azalea, it has a nice fragrance and a whitish pink and i include a latin, greece lesson here. Rhododendren is a name for azaleas. And the rhodo is rose in greek and thats where you got the name rhododendren viscosum. Mack atee was living and working in that period then. In the 20th century when development was proceeding quickly in piney branch and the eastern part of the rock creek watershed and he saw this and he saw the destruction that was taking place and was very upset about it, but there was not much he could do. He had a way of characterizing it. He talked about the antiquity of the little waifs, the plants, and entitles them to our respect and a slender thread upon which their continued existence depends. Commends them to our most considerate care. So he was very feeling about these plants, but there was not much that could be done at that point. This is the early 20th century, this is the piney Branch Valley near arkansas and 14th street. I like to describe this as a moon scape. They basically just carved everything away, scraped everything away and buried the stream in a pipe. And this took place, then this took place during the first couple of decade of the 20th century when there was a great demand for housing so this area of the piney branch watershed which basically extends mt. Pleasant up to tacoma park d. C. , includes petworth, brightwood, all of the neighborhoods. That was prime territory for development. One reason it was so completely developed, it was relatively flat land. On the western side you had the great valley, and the other ravines couldnt be built on as easily. On the eastern said it wasnt as hilly and there was a great demand so they built. And this was where Harry Wardman of the famous wardman buildings built a lot. The kayfritz, morris kayfritz, and the holemead swamp which turned into spring road. Because they had basically paved over what was almost 2500 acres of a stream valley, that meant that, you know, a stream valley or watershed is like a bowl and all of the water is going to come down because of the topography and go to one place, which is the storm sewer, so youve got all of this water now coming off of the streets and roofs and going into these storm sewers. Theyve got to its got to come out somewhere. This is where they come out. This is the, i like to call them the gates of hell or something, but theyre the garage doors actually on the opens to keep people from going in there and hanging out. Doors. These are perhaps 15 or 20 feet high and this is at the corner of piney branch Piney Branch Parkway and you dont see them is to get out of her car and let down. It is a torrent of waterways in the storm. Adding insult and then to add insult to injury it is a combined sewer outfall which means that raw sewage from the area also mixes in with his water when theres a great storm here because of the way this particular storm sewer was engineered back in the day. This was an advance over what they used it it was just letting everything sort of flow in the streets, so i to speak. But it is extremely antiquated. Its late 19th Century Technology which they are getting ready tog deal with per they dated, made an entire new underground holding tank for the water but here they couldnt do that they have been working on green infrastructure, various gardens and bio gardens, that sort of thing further up in the water shifter i think they have to build a take underground, just not a big one thats the way theyre going to deal with that. And this was built probably in the first one on the right side waswa built in the 1930s and the other one was built in the 1950s because the water comes so fast and deep. May be the one good thing about the parkway and the construction of that area is that it did preserve native american site whichh is one of the unknown partsar for rock creek park. Action on the hills that are leading up todi crestwood if youre down on the parkway, there is a quarry site that was used by native americans for stonework. Whats left is actually just piles of stones which were rubble from the stone fashioning tools made from these stones. This is a diorama from the smithsonian when they did an exhibit on this t particular discovery. This was discovered in thehe lae 1800s. Theres no trail because the park service doesnt want you going inle there and collecting stones, understandably, but it was preserved. So that was that. That was the end of piney branch is a real stream, only left about a quartermile of a flowing stream that goes down into rock rock creek alonge parkway. Its all very sad and very distressing this had to happen and it still hasnt been remedied completely. The water that rushes out of those enormous outfalls close down into rock creek and scours out the creek even more, and contributes to sediment pollution. So its an Ongoing Technical problem the district iss trying to deal with. However, my work, just as a footnote to this, is actually centered in piney branch i started this project in 2013, to actually improve the habitat and what was left of the stream valley which isre about 65 acre. We have been planting trees and we contract with casey trees we also do outreach to the community on migratory birds and have a lot of students coming down and watch what were doing and even participating. Thisis is a funny photograph because this is what one of the wetlands which are still existing next tods the parkway looked like before we begin the work. That foros the most part is cald porcelain barry peer its an asian vine which just covers everything and destroys everything in its path there nothing can grow underneath it. We had to deal with that. We got a lot of volunteers. We had to work with, this is a picnic to particularly rightd which had been vandalized and was really just a shadow of itself. There was no fireplacece left. And there was a basketball court, believe it or not, which had been put there next to the picnic pavilion and the water, was spring in the vicinity which in thert 1990s supposedly started really pumping out water and it basically lighted the basketball court. We got a tobacco in there and dug this out. Backhoe now have a fireplace in defense at the wetland and people can have picnics and birthday parties which is what theyre doing they are. And watch the wetland which is in back of this fence. So thats all happening and good heres some students from the Sacred Heart School in Mount Pleasant who were helping plant some plants in the wetland. Its one of our projects. And to conclude, heres my favorite young lady from the Environmental School on 16th street. They have since moved, but s shs holding a northern red oak, which she helped plant there in the piney branch watershed, and it is now 20 feet high. So with that i will end and be y to take your questions or comments. Thank you. An [applause] yes . Do you know the name of the quarry. Asking with the name of the quarry is. Well, i dont think it, never really seen any. Theres a soapstone quarry for example, in soapstone valley. You could call this the holmes board because there was a famous archaeologist made wayne henry holmes who is the guy who actuallyct described it and, in fact, described it to such an extent that he revolutionized the whole series about the longevity of native americans, how long native americans have actually been in north america along strike im kind of complicated but it was very important in that respect so was well known to archaeologists and others. Otherr questions . Thank you. Yes . They successfully destroyed piney branch creek, but you said there still theres a remnant of. It because the screen valley or watershed was five or six miles in length, and the final part of it was actually in rock creek park. They couldnt really take that and also that is, there is quite a ravine there. Can you tell me more specifically where i would have to walk up there and see it. Where is that . Its right next come northwest of Mount Pleasant just to the west of columbia heights. And if you drive down 16th street, for example, or up 16th street, and you reach arkansas avenue which if youre coming from the south goes to the east, you can park along the arkansas avenue there. There Street Parking and you can walk down the valley there. Thats one way of doing it. Thank you. I am wondering if i you could talk first of all about why burroughs was a famous and what happened to that, why it was popular and did not . As i have said he was a prolific writer he was a beautiful writer. That was the period, 19th century was a period of great weight loss thats a great, great loss of Natural Beauty and the credit industrialization took its toll in such a horrible way. Thats one of the reasons why you had the first attempts by the government to make parks, for example, First National parks because they saw what was going on and they knew they had to stop it some out and they couldnt exactly stop business because as i think coolidge said, the business of america is business. But nevertheless, its a big country. Any event, people like burroughs who could so wonderfully describe what was being lost and talk about why we need to care were going to be very appealing and he had a good publisher. He just cranked them out. He was very active with as i said a number of i guess you could call the celebrities at the time who sought him out. There were others who were equally but not as famous. John near it was the founder of the sierra club was not up there at that level. Burroughs was truly one of these oddities there i couldnt really, you have to really look i think were closely at the whole movement of why a particular person such a superstar. Nevertheless, van he dies in 1920. Think about it, t in 1920 is beginning of the roaring 20s, beginning of thehe new deal, wod war ii, a time of incredible change in the United States. And i think that those who read nature writers scholars and others would certainly remember burroughs, but at that point in time there wasnt the kind of audience from nature writers. The writer succeeded late on a people like rachel carson, for example, it was very focused on one threat, silent spring picture she became quite famous in that respect because she had a cause for some of these underwriters indeed were associate with causes like john muir and the sierra club here burroughs had no cause. It was not the founder of an organization. He was just frankly not a recluse but he built his cabin upstate new york and lived out his life there, and faded away. Thats the best i could put it. Are there any other questions . Me add one thing as a footnote, im sorry. But again, in the 19th century if youre thinking about people like thoreau, for example, a wonderful writer but hes associate with of course some very, very important intellectual traditions and advocacy, and his support of civil disobedience and his famous life on walden pond, these kinds of m things which me him more of the presents for the age, forever, you know, in that respect whereas burroughs again didnt have that kind of input. Im sorry. Please, go ahead. I certainly know the name for we all do, John Burroughs but i confess im not familiar with his writing. Did he write specifically about geographical areas . He wrote species or just general nature . All kinds of things. He traveled around the United States. He was out in the west so he is writing about that. You wrote about birds in particular. He wrote about reverse. He was just rivers. He was a generalist when it came right down to it. Yes. So you said in the 1870s that washington kindd of started to lose the farmland and stuff surrounding the area. What was the reason for that . Was at just the expansion of the city, and winter that really reach its kind zenith . It seemed like an extent forever now. Yeah, right, it does. During the civil war a lot of people came to washington of all typese for various reasons. The population exploded and a lot of those folks stayed for various reasons. The government expanded so that meant there was more employment, families were being f started here. So in that time you had this sort of natural growth of washington and the government, and a link to a demand for housing. The housing those built in much of this area was rather inexpensive. It was moderate income will housing, for the government clerks and workers and others row housing. So thats what led to that. Meant of course i dont know the government gets bigger andan bigger, not to sound like conservative something but it does get bigger and bigger. In the 20th century hadnt the new deal, or government programs, more government workers so the demand for housing grows, the lobbyists, et cetera. So thats a story that is still unfolding. Not seeing other hands, thank you very much, steve, for your lecture. Thank you spirit i hope everybody remembers or when the e blast goes out you will sign up to see the film, the premier. [applause] weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History to the documents americas stories, and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more including charter communications. 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Hello, everybody and welcome to our Virtual Program tonight. My name is morgan byrn, under programs manager at the tennessee stage museum and we are thrle