John A. Weeks, one of Central New York’s most widely known and admired naturalists, will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 10th at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark in Peterboro, NY. Weeks is widely recognized as a biologist, botanist, environmental educator, artist, author, and commentator -- and has been called “Central New York's own modern-day John Burroughs.”
Mr. Week’s remarks, entitled “Keep It Natural: A Naturalist’s Calling and His Call to Citizen-Scientists” will reflect Weeks’ decades as a professional scientist and dedicated educator. Sponsored by the Greene Smith Society, an informal auxiliary of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark in Peterboro, NY, this presentation honors Greene Smith and celebrates the crucial role of the citizen-scientist throughout American history. Greene, son of the famous 19th-century abolitionist and philanthropist Gerrit Smith, was an avid sportsman and early conservationist who established a distinguished legacy of his own as a self-taught expert ornithologist and taxidermist.

During his admired career, John Weeks served as Conservation Biologist for the NYS Conservation Department, Associate Professor of Biology at Oswego State, Founding Director of The Rogers Environmental Education Center at Sherburne, NY and Director of Onondaga Nature Centers/Centers for Nature Education originally headquartered at Beaver Lake. During his years at Oswego he concentrated on the development of Rice Creek Field Station. He also oversaw development of programming for Beaver Lake, Baltimore Woods, and the Cayuga Nature Center. Remaining active after official retirement in 1982, Weeks helped to design and program many environmental exhibits and to develop additional Nature Centers throughout New York, including the Sterling Nature Center in Cayuga County.
Renowned for his weekly WRVO radio commentary, “On the Nature of Things,” which aired from 1984 until mid-2006, Weeks enjoys a broad following of both amateur and professional naturalists originally captivated by this down-to-earth exposition of science informed by a passion for wildlife, the natural rhythms of biological and botanical life, and environmental conservation.
Weeks’ remarks will resonate deeply in Peterboro, home of pioneering citizen-scientist Greene Smith. Leaving Harvard as a sophomore, Greene Smith devoted his inherited wealth and the rest of his short life contributing to the exciting, expanding global science of 19th-century ornithology. Prior to an untimely death at the age of 39, Smith traveled extensively to personally collect birds, nests, and egg specimens, and used his fortune to purchase from around the world those species he could not acquire in person. He became an expert taxidermist [including work with the Smithsonian Institution], lectured at then-new Cornell University, and in 1869 donated hundreds of specimens to help establish Cornell’s ornithological collections. After his death, his widow made major donations to both Harvard and Colgate universities as well.
Smith’s personal collection of more than 3000 items was housed in “The Bird House,” an exquisite two-story museum Greene designed with a state-of-the-art taxidermy laboratory on its basement level.  Although the structure itself is no longer standing, volunteers have cleared much of the original foundation so that the basement level, site of Smith’s taxidermy lab, can now be viewed for the first time in decades.
An exhibit of more than two dozen bird species on loan from Colgate University will also be open to the public during weekend events this summer at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark. These birds, some still bearing original tags from the “Greene Smith Museum,” testify to the scope of Smith’s passionate citizen-science: a reach from North America to the Arctic and Antarctic, through South America and Africa, to the Caribbean, the South Seas, and beyond.
Featured speaker John Weeks is part of the 2010 special events schedule at the Gerrit Smith Estate. The program  is open to the public with a requested donation of $2. Sales of signed copies of John Weeks’ acclaimed book of essays, Nature’s Quiet Conversations, will benefit both the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and Baltimore Woods Nature Center, which Weeks helped to establish. 
 


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