THE ANNUAL GOOD LIFE LECTURE
Each year we invite an esteemed thinker to give a lecture inspired by one simple prompt: “Tell me, how do I go about living the good life?” The lecture is attended by students and alums of Seguinland Institute, members of the local community and invited guests. We hope that meaningful conversations about wide-angle questions are inspired by these lectures across generations.
Fall 2023 Speaker: Tamsin Jones, PhD
Tamsin Jones is the Ellsworth Mortin Tracy Lecturer and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Trinity College. Her scholarship bridges the disciplines of philosophy, religion and gender studies. She has published and lectured widely on topics ranging from political theology, phenomenology and trauma theory. Her favorite drink is Chartreuse, a beverage made by Carthusian monks since 1737, using 130 herbs and plant extracts.
Fall 2022 Speaker: Kristen Case, PhD
Kristen Case is an award-winning poet, widely published scholar and professor of English at UMaine Farmington. She has published works on Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James. She is the recipient of the Maine Literary Award in Poetry (2016 and 2020), the 2018 Gatewood Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship, and the UMF Trustee Professorship. She is the Director of Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau.
“One of the most common pieces of advice to young people in our culture is “ find yourself”... but I wonder if better advice might be “lose yourself”— not forever and not completely and not in the sense of self-abandonment—lose yourself lightly, temporarily, because the enormity and beauty of the sky or the interest of the problem or the depth of the suffering is so totally absorbing that you put yourself down for a minute and wander into a bigger life, a life where different kinds of work and different kinds of being and different kinds of perception are possible for you because you aren’t really you, you are bigger than you. You are part of the world. Part of life. Turn towards the kind of experience that pull us into collaborative action with something beyond ourselves…” - Kristen Case, PhD, Seguinland Institute Good Life Lecture 2022
Bi-Annual Foraged Feast
Our students work with expert foragers to study, harvest, and prepare a sumptuous repast. Each student develops a dish centered on a different foraged ingredient. At the feast, students present their edible creations along with an original ode-to-a-plant. Odes and dishes are shared with members of the community at the Foraged Feast.
Annual Mad Farmer Award Ceremony
May Term students, Abby and Elie performing an original musical rendering of Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer poem
The Mad-Farmer Award is inspired by Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry and is awarded annually to a Maine Farmer. The ceremony is designed and led by students in our May Term program and includes original music and poetry (along with the Berry’s words). Our 2023 recipient was Rich Lee of Tender Soles farm—a horse-powered farm based in Richmond, ME.
“So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute…
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.”
-Wendell Berry
Our wonderful alum, Shay Mahoney, composed the following piece riffing on Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer poem after a visit to Tender Soles Farm. Shay read this poem aloud during the inaugural Mad Farmer’s Award Ceremony.
