This Week @ MHS

As preparations for our upcoming exhibit continue, it is a pretty quiet week at the Society as far as programs go. Here is what we have on tap:

- Tuesday, 24 April, 5:15PM : The seminar this week is "Creepy Crawling in Los Angeles: The Manson Family and Cultural Mixing as Apocalypse." In this paper, Jeffrey Melnick of UMass-Boston explores the cultural fluidity that allowed Los Angeles's hip aristocracy to mingle with marginal figures like Charles Manson, but also the backlash which turned the Manson Family into a warning for the dangers of migration and the promiscuous cultural mixing that could follow. Gretchen Heefner of Northeastern University provides comment. This seminar is part of the Modern American Society and Culture series.

Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers. To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

- Wednesday, 25 April, 6:00PM : Join us for the second installment of an ongoing series of programs relating to land use in Massachusetts over the years. This Land is Your Land: Public Land looks at large-scale preservation of open space by government entities, like the Boston Public Garden, the Emerald Necklace, a network of state forests, and more, that were all significant contributions to keeping open land available to the public. Were these projects pioneering? Have they shaped national discussions? Are similar projects possible today? This talk is a conversation with Ethan Carr, UMass Amherst; Alan Banks, National Parks Service; Sean Fisher and Karl Haglund, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation; moderated by Keith Morgan.

The program is open to the public and registration is requried with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders). A pre-talk reception will start at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM.

MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming. This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.

There are no public building tours during the month of April.