~ A WARM WELCOME ~
Welcome home, might it be, to the Concordium, the Circle of Friends & Colleagues of The Center for American Studies at Concord, Massachusetts.
The first offering (program), which set the foundation stone for the Center’s work, was held forty years ago at The Concord School of Philosophy & Literature’s “Hillside Chapel” on the ground of Orchard House, the home of the Alcotts. That weekend offering was entitled, “The Grail & America: A Journey of Peace.” The speaker was L. Francis Edmunds, founder of Emerson College in Sussex, England.
Seven years of preparatory work followed, tilling the transcendentalist “soil” of Concord. During this time the magazine, dialogue: a journal of insights, was born, which took up Emerson and Margaret Fuller’s magazine, The Dial — that charted the courses of the sun — and added to that name the logue/logos. The purpose of the dialogue: a journal of insightswas to “build community through-the-word.” The breadth of richness of that community, beginning in Concord and reaching out to the larger world, was celebrated in the theme of our last edition: “From Salvador Dali to Peanut Macone,” Concord’s beloved, by the youth above all, bicycle repairman. Around the outer “signature” of the journal was an inner journal (printed on barely discernible lighter paper) which spoke to the Spirit of the word, our words.
On October 6, 1986, the journal, dialogue: a journal of insights was (like a glove) turned inside out. The written word became the spoken word with the founding back at The Concord School of Philosophy & Literature of The Center for American Studies at Concord. Bradford Morse, former Massachusetts Congressman, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, and President of the Salzburg Seminars in American Studies, offered the keynote words and passed on the torch. In the audience were Fulbright Scholars and leaders from 21 nations, guests from around the country and state, and friends and fellow citizens of Concord. Glowing candles lit the cobblestone pathway up to the “Hillside Chapel.” Mary Rose Maybank, the head of the Boston Fulbright Organization, summed up the weekend:
“The October weekend was a rare experience. Historic settings, with which Concord is so richly endowed, gave a special dimension to a beautifully conceived and vivid program. The Fulbright Scholars were unanimously enthusiastic about the speakers and the way they conveyed the reach of American history, that is so intimately entwined with Concord’s past. We look forward to the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between our two programs.”
On the threshold of our fortieth year, we take up the work, ever and anew.
A heartfelt welcome to all people of good will to unite your spirits with that of
The Center for American Studies at Concord and its
~ Concordium, Circle of Friends & Colleagues ~
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~ IN MEMORIAM ~
Former Center Trustees, Honorary Trustees, & Valued/Invaluable Advisors
“With the [illumined] shades of the great and good for company.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
* L. Francis Edmunds, Founder, Emerson College, Sussex, England, Concordium
* John Chateauneuf, Director, Concord School of Philosophy, Concord Advisory Circle
* Bradford Morse, Former Undersecretary General, UN; Honorary Circle of Trustee
* Clement Smith, Founder, The Center for Shared Leadership
* Kenneth Walter Camerson, Father of Emerson Studies, Honorary Circle of Trustee
* Bill Bottum, Founder: Townsend & Bottum Companies, Ann Arbor, MI; Trustee, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Captain John Burke, Concord, MA; Trustee
* Muff & Bill Barnes, Inaugurator: The Senior League & Prof. Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Cambridge, MA; Participants in the Concordium & Trustee
* Leo Marx, author of The Machine in the Garden and father of American Studies, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Carl Rieser, Author, Former Senior Editor, Businessweek, National Advisory Board
* Robert Swan, Founder, E.F. Schumacher Society, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Ida Lee Mei, Educator, Author, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Slow Turtle, the Supreme Medicine Man of the Wampanoag Nation, Honorary Circle of Trustee
* David Little, Director, Essex Institute, Concord Historian, Concord Advisory Circle & Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Clement Smith, Dir. Shared Leadership Center, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Betty Plimpton, Consultant, Concord, MA; Trustee
* Paul Platt, Independent Scholar, Great Barrington, MA; National Advisory Circle
* Ed Schofield, Biologist & Thoreauvian, Worcester, MA; Concord Advisory Circle
* Joseph Weizenbaum, Prof. Computer Sciences, MIT, Concord, MA, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Howard Zinn, Educator, Author, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Father Reiner Johannes Moll, Concordium
* Gunter Aschoff, Independent Scholar, Concordium
* Dr. Leen Mees, Concordium
* William Bento, Concordium
* Saul Bellow, Author, Honorary Circle of Trustees
* Hrand Saxenian, Founder Hypothesis II Practices, Trustee
* John Moses, Founder, The Arimathea Group, Trustee
* Richard Kotlarz, Founder of the Institute for the Redemption of Money, Trustee
* Brian Lynch, Founder, Sirius Research, Trustee
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Circle of Trustees
Patch Adams
Andrew Alcon
Jay Amaran
Bernice Atchison
Arnold Gordon-Bray
Susan Chapman
Susan Clarke
Marcia Ann Coppertino
Patricia Ann Davis
Jakobus DeBeer
Huda Hassen Durri
Rob Frabone
Doug George-Kanentiio
Carmine Gorga
Benoit Lamontagne
Marin Lutz
Ronald McDowell
Corin Smith
Willard Sunstein
Von Scott
Patrick Wallace
Andrew Williams Jr.
Stuart-Sinclair Weeks, Founder
For information on the Center Trustees, feel free to contact us at: info@concord-ium.us
Center Scholar
Dr. Carmine Gorga
Honorary Circle of Trustees
Dr. Patch Adams
Erline Belton
Gabor Boritt
Chief Caring Hands
William Ferris
Arun Gandhi
Hazel Henderson
Bernard Lafayette
Robert Richardson
Sakokwenionkwas
Joanne Shenandoah
Mangalam Sri Nivasan
Advisory Circle
John Amaral
Bryan Anthony
Rubye Braye
Truus Geraets
Bruce Kirchoff
Sophia Christine Murphy
Vestine N.Ngwabije
Lou Niles
Treasa O’Driscoll
Davey Ozahowski
Allen Pittman
Nancy Poer
Miha Pogacnik
David Skewes
Ian Trousdell
Patrick Wallace
Founder & Director
Stuart-Sinclair Weeks
Consultants
Bryan Anthony
Oneil LeBlanc
Willard Sunstein
The Collegium: Those who are working together to carry on the pioneering labors of Concord’s Authors: Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller and their fellow Transcendentalists, in articulating a full-realized spiritual science or science of the spirit — in Emerson’s words “a reasoned faith and a faithful reason.” We speak of an illumined common sense.
Kindred Spirits Glimpses of those shoulders on which we gratefully stand, the work we are taking up. (Scroll down to the “Presenters/Actors in the Drama.”)
The Donors and Supporters (See “Contact / Donate) have been many, beginning with nearly 300 businesses and organizations in Concord itself, along with a gracious circle of fellow Concord citizens, who have not only enriched the Center through their financial contributions, but who have opened their homes, hearts, and hearths to the Center’s “Thomas Whitney Surette Concert Series: For the Love of Music,” as well as to its “Village University Week,” and to guests, including over 500 international leaders from over 60 nations.
Note: The Center has put aside its non-profit status, as it is committed to working with funds that are consecrated (so to speak), that is to working with donors who are not seeking tax deductions alone, but kindred spirits who have grasped the vision of the work and wish to contribute toward its real-ization, fulfillment. Out of a recognition of not just the quantitative but the qualitative side of money, we have — rightly and respectfully understood — turned the table on our donors, who we interview to invite their support for aspects of our work that, through our research, we believe are related, significantly, to the donors’ own life and labors.
The question we take up together in such “interviews,” heart-to-heart, is if/how prospective donors are able to relate to the proposition — being introduced through “The Concord Trust” — that “our” fortunes are not ours in any but the most narrow, legalistic, and acquisitive sense of the word. That is, in a healthy social order, money, we suggest, is not only the “life-blood” of the nation but the “common wealth.” As such, our fortunes must flow unimpeded, freely (i.e. through no other dictates than that of the individual conscience) to where such “life-blood” is most needed, in order to enrich every cell in the organism. This is in contrast to how our fortunes are largely “managed” today, that is pooled in privileged and selective organs (accounts), where they become in effect, their effects, a “blood clot” that undermines the organism, our social order. Without a vision, the people indeed perish. This approach which we refer to as Spiritually Responsible Investing is, we further suggest, nothing more, or less, than that common/uncommon sense/cents, which Tom Paine and old Ben Franklin gave spirited voice to over three centuries ago at the founding of our nation… a realization that we are still catching up to?
“America, America, may God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.”
The Concordium: The Center’s Concordium itself (Circle of Friends) embraces those noted in the foregoing and expands out to encompass approximately 5,000 friends and colleagues in total, from former prime ministers to janitors working no less decisively along the inner corridors of power. These are men and women, young and old, of all races and nationalities, who have taken part in the Center’s work over its four decades. Participants in the “Concordium” are kindred spirits, colleagues for whom Concord is a precious “touch-stone” for their worldly labors. As the Center has developed its own work: research, publications, educational programs and initiatives, and as we have welcomed the kindred work of others, the participants in the “Concordium” — those with an interest and expertise in the areas of the work being brought forth — are invited to form an ad hoc circle of support, short or longer term, around such emerging labors. Which brings us to the youth, the generations to come, who bear the very future in their hearts and minds…..
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Internships & Student Projects with the Center for American Studies at Concord:
For over three decades, college and high school students — from as near as Concord’s three high schools: Concord-Carlisle High School, Concord Academy, and Middlesex and as far as overseas — have served as interns at the Center for American Studies at Concord. The internships and student projects involve research, publications, and educational program in the areas of Transcendentalism, history, philosophy, literature, science, and the arts, as well as local-state national and international initiatives in the field of what we refer to as applied American Studies. That is: How do we apply the ideals and principles of the past to very real contemporary issues — from monetary policy and Concordian Economics to the establishment of Dream Teams in our nations schools and new models for Gender Relations.
The initiatives include the staging of The New World Drama: And Crown Thy Good with Sister- and Brotherhood, the inauguration of the movement, Spiritually Responsible Investing, new directions in the Peace, Environ-mental, and Conflict Resolution arenas, as well as the introduction of the Concord Resolution toward the redemption of our financial system and restitution of our common wealth. The internships offer interested students substantial, cutting-edge projects, including research, writing, and interview possibilities. They have been a feather in the interns’ caps with respect to their applications for both college and the job market, life thereafter.
The internships are not paid, though students have received credit and funding has been raised for cutting-edge projects. The internships are tailored to both the interns’ schedules and interests.
For more information, contact info@concord-ium.us