Welcome to Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now, an audio production of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College.

For centuries, pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Nowadays, they can offer common sense, and practical advice to slow down and attend the here and now, wherever you are.

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Using the language and metaphors of Thoreau’s famous essay, Aisha Thapaliya transplants Thoreau’s saunterer in search of Wildness to an urban landscape.

“I wish to make an extreme statement, if only to make an emphatic one: we can all be champions of the city as civilization—workers, keepers of cultures, stewards of Nature. But who will speak for the city as Wildness? Who will say that to walk its streets is to move through a living landscape, where we are not just citizens but also creatures, attuned to the tides, the hush of night?”

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.30676505 to read this pamphlet and learn more about the author.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org for more information.

Excerpts from Thomas Paine's Common Sense framed by questions and observations in light of the present day by Bill Vitek. Read by Lindsay Pontius, Craig Maravich, and Bill Vitek.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense is celebrating its 250th birthday and it's as relevant now as it was then.

Paine’s well-tempered words and arguments invite readers in any age to consider whether they are more loyalist than patriot, or of “passive tempers,” hoping to avoid revolutionary changes by embracing a “fallacious reconciliation” with the very powers and systems that oppress them. Have they, have we, ceded the language and logic of revolution to those who prefer to work inside the system, to those who are akin to colonial loyalists calling their beliefs about conformity to the Crown “revolutionary”? Bill Vitek (Philosopher, educator, and director of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College.)

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.32909471 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org for more information.

Written and read by Middlebury College student Mary Nagy-Benson urging her classmates, and all young people who spend four years on a college/university campus, to acknowledge and engage with the town or city in which it and they are situated.

In Nagy-Benson's words: "Too often, attending college can be made to feel like a necessary four-year detour through a quaint small town on the way to a career. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can turn a detour into a destination when we experience the joy and peace that comes with being together in this time and place."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27661389 to read this pamphlet.

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Inspired by John Dewey and Henry David Thoreau, Matt Schlein, outdoor educator and founder of The Willowell Foundation and the Walden Project in Monkton, Vermont, calls out the many ways the indoor classroom-model of education fails all who participate in it, particularly students, and calls for alternatives that are alive with hope, compassion, wisdom, and respect for integrity of all who engage the educational enterprise.

In Schlein's words, "We need young people to feel hope, instead of the quiet desperation that pervades their daily experience. We need systems that go eyeball to eyeball with the challenges of this moment, responding with compassion and wisdom. We need to delight in this creation, to ask why, to dream, to create, and to envision a future replete with possibilities and hope."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27655089 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Written and read by actor, director, and educator Lindsay Pontius about an experience on her farm with a cross-species teaching and learning activity involving a veteran teacher and a horse.

In Pontius' words: "For more than 40 years, I have had horses in my life. Mostly, my horses are pets and partners. But I have always wanted to share with other humans the wisdom and gifts the horses offer, day by day and year by year. Now, I use my herd to give workshops to groups, such as veterans and educators, about the profound experience of linking nurturing with nature."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27661587 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Imagine a group of plants getting together and figuring out how to communicate their displeasure with and to their human neighbors. What would they say? Listen in here to find out. They begin with this: "Dear Neighbor - The irony is not lost on the authors of this pamphlet that it is printed on the pulped remains of our kin. But as it is still a durable format for conveying information in your language, we have chosen it reluctantly. We may be anonymous to you as individuals, but our extended family feeds, fuels, clothes, heals, houses, beautifies, entertains, and allows you to live at all thanks to a long line of our ancestors and elders who preceded your ancestors by 460 million years."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27643983 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Written and read by Middlebury College student Kylie King on the importance of slowing down and taking more time with what she calls long-form content, and less time with social media sites that thrive on shortness and speed. As King explains, "deep understanding and insight are a result of being fully absorbed by what you are learning and opening yourself up to it. Spending an extended amount of time with one topic opens one to the possibility of being changed. Therefore, slowing down and being intentional about where you direct your attention is necessary for change in self and society."

Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27655086 to read this pamphlet.

Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.