sanctuary audio

The Laffinbrook Sanctuary in Hamden, Massachusetts, is named after a mythical brook from a children's book by Thornton Burgess. Burgess donated his homestead to the town of Hamden, and after his death, the sanctuary was established. It grew to 356 acres and had an education center. Many people visited, including third graders on field trips. Burgess was an author who wrote over 70 books and had a radio show on nature. The sanctuary had animal cages and staff members, but it downsized in the 1990s and suffered from a flood and arson. Now, only the trails remain active, and the museum is off-limits. Volunteers have tried to restart teaching programs, but there have been no decisions. The narrator is interested in the natural habitat and suggests using the sanctuary's setting for educational purposes. Laffinbrook Sanctuary. The sanctuary is located in Hamden, Massachusetts, and is named after a mythical brook found in a children's book by Thornton Burgess, who not only lived where the sanctuary is located, but who also donated, in his will, his homestead to the town of Hamden. Following his death, Laffinbrook has been preserved as a sanctuary beginning in 1966, one year after Burgess' death. From the original 18 acres, after the Mass. Auburn Society, which eventually purchased the property from the town of Hamden, it swelled to about 356 acres over those years. A large education center was built in 1980. The place thrived for decades, and for those who grew up in the Springfield area, chances are they likely visited Laffinbrook. Indeed, through a city program, all third graders in the Springfield public school system visited the Laffinbrook nature on field trips in the late 1980s. The same can be said for many of the neighboring towns. One can say that the natural eastern New England mountains habitat provided a great teaching opportunity for future environmentalists, as well as urbanite youngsters who were getting their first exposure to nature. But the story behind the sanctuary revolves about the author Thornton Burgess. He was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts in 1874, in the Cape Cod, and it's fair to say that his humble beginnings left him with an intimate appreciation of farming and the harvesting of various native plants. He learned about the various animals that, native animals, that shared his surroundings. Later, as a young man, he tried and failed in the business world when he moved to Boston for a couple of years. Following that, he moved to Springfield in 1894 to work as an editor for the Phelps Publishing Company. His calling was the book world. His author career began first by telling bedtime stories to his orphan son, whose mother died during childbirth, using stories that had character animals associated with his own youth back in Sandwich. A compilation of such stories was published in 1910 under the title of Old Mother West Wind. He published more than 70 books during his life. He also had a radio show on WBZ, a station in Springfield, with nature talks programming until 1930, bespeaking his environmentalist tilt. He purchased the Hampton House, the future museum, in 1925, but only moved there permanently in 1957. His house and writing studio, cabin on the hill as it was, were already visited by fans of his books before his death, and eventually became museums and incorporated into the sanctuary that the Albarn Society would operate. During the 1980s, animal cages were added to the sanctuary. Rescued animals from the area were brought in, and those that were unfit for release to the wild were kept for teaching purposes. During its heyday, the sanctuary had over 30 staff members who would work at various jobs, such as teaching, selling in the gift shop, lending books from its library, and caretaking of the animals in the facilities. Those included three bridges over the East Brook, also known as the Laughing Brook, an artificial beaver pond, teaching shacks or stations, gazebos, and a wooden pathway over the wetlands, basically pressure-treated decks over the wetlands, as well as keeping the food paths cleared and marked for all to use. Growing in the 80s, the Society began to downsize the operation in the early 1990s, first by closing the caged animals area and cutting the staff numbers in half, and then in the late 1980s, the teaching jobs were further eliminated and practically stopped after a devastating flood on the East Brook that damaged two of the three bridges and some of the teaching bungalows in the area. In 2004, an arsonist burned down the main building almost to the ground because he wasn't sure the remains were demolished and never rebuilt. Since then, besides two gazebos on the artificial pond's edge, only the trails remain active along with one bridge over the Brook that connects the parking lot to the trails. The Berghuis Museum is now off-limits to visitors, as it is the home of the sanctuary's caretaker. There are four marked full trails, no bikes or pets allowed on them. There have been several groups of volunteers that tried to get the Auburn Society to restart the teaching programs or return the museum to the town, but so far no decisions have been made in those directions. Now, my personal interest in the sanctuary is mainly the open trails and the natural habitat. I'm not indifferent to the pleas of those who would like a return to the previous conditions, especially invoking the consideration of the intent of the original donor, that of the right of wishing for the teaching of children on the site about nature. But also, I recognize that there are more ways to accomplish that, in ways that are more budget-friendly for a non-profit organization such as the Society. Now, one such way is using the natural setting of the sanctuary without meant tagging and pictorial overviews, explaining ecosystems at the various points on the trails within the site, all of which do not require in-person interaction, reducing, therefore, the need for staffing. This format, by the way, could also be repeated in web pages and be added to the sanctuary's website, which, in my opinion, is currently not very informative of its richness and flora and fauna in the sanctuary. Thank you.