Skip to footer

A literary road trip through New England

Take a trip through historic New England and visit the homesteads of famous literary figures. 

5. Emily Dickinson Museum

Josephine Massey

From Arrowhead to Amherst is about a 90-minute drive east on I-90 and then north on I-91. The Emily Dickinson Museum can be found in the center of town and includes the Dickinson homestead and Emily's brother Austin's house, the Evergreens. Dickinson was born in the Homestead in 1830 and except for a 14-year stint in which the family lived down the street, resided there until her death in 1886. Although Emily is famous for secluding herself in the house and writing hundreds of poems, she was devoted to the people around her, especially her father who made sure that she had an excellent education.

On the tour you will learn about Emily's life and the poetry which was such an integral part of her existence. If you have time after the tour, Amherst is a small but bustling college town, housing both Amherst College and University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The influx of students means the town has a great selection of eateries. Try 30Boltwood at the Lord Jeffrey Inn if you want excellent food and don't mind the price, or stop by Antonio's for cheap but delicious pizza. Also of note is Amherst College's Museum of Natural History, which contains a mammoth skeleton found by Frederick Loomis in 1913.

5 of 13
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.