Author Susan Stranahan To Speak On Sense Of Place On The Susquehanna River

Chestertown, MD, February 14, 2002 — The Washington College Center for the Environment and Society and the Journeys Home Eastern Shore Lecture Series present "A RIVER JOURNEY: THOUGHTS ALONG THE WAY," a lecture by Susan Q. Stranahan, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of "Susquehanna: River of Dreams" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). The talk will be held Thursday, February 21, at 5 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge.

Stranahan will explore how the Chesapeake Bay region's sense of place migratedup the Susquehanna River and finally took root there. "The result," she writes, "has been an awakened fondness for and protectiveness toward the river and its watershed. It was my good fortune to watch it happen."

Until recently, Stranahan was a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered regional and national environmental and conservation issues for more than two decades. In 1979, she covered the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident, and her articles were the major component in the entry that won The Inquirer the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. She has received several state and national journalism awards, including the Pennsylvania Wildlife Federation's Conservation Communicator of the Year, and has written articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Audubon, Time, Fortune, and Mother Jones. She is working on a second book and freelances articles for several national publications.

Stranahan also will appear Wednesday, February 20, 2002, at 7:30 p.m. in the Historic Avalon Theatre in Easton, MD, as part of the Spring 2002 Journeys Home Eastern Shore Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Center for the Environment and Society, the Adkins Arboretum, the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, the North American Wildfowl Trust, and the Maryland Center for Agro-ecology. Her February 20th lecture, titled "Finding the Way Home," will address her early recognition of the tremendous sense of place that exists on the Chesapeake and the benefits of such deep-rooted identity with a region. She will be introduced by Frances Flanigan, former Executive Director of the Alliance for Chesapeake Bay. Ticket prices for Journeys Home are $10 per individual lecture. Student tickets are half-priced.

To learn more about this or other events sponsored by the Center for the Environment and Society, visit the center online at http://ces.washcoll.edu or call 410-810-7151.