while examining remnants of a circumscribed 19th century life lived almost completely in one town: amherstssachusetts. the only known painting of dickinson as a child with her siblings, a daguerreotype of her as a young woman-- the only authenticated photo of the poet. there's also a lock of her auburn hair; a replica of cut and pressed botanical specimens; and another of the rose wallpaper in the bedroom to which she retreated in her later years. this exhibition, with some 100 rarely-seen items, is eager to present a different, fresh take on dickinson. curator carolyn vega: >> the stereotype that was attached to her very early on of this total recluse, of this woman in white who never left her bedroom, who penned these amazing verses, like in a vacuum almost, in total seclusion, has really stuck to her. >> reporter: you're fighting that? >> yes, we're just bringing it into context a little bit. >> reporter: this emily dickinson engaged with her times-- including the civil war years-- through her reading and a constant correspondence with friends, leading thinkers, and others. often, she s

also from the amherst survival center. i thank god for the food pantry because most of my income goes towards bills. the food pantry really relieves the anxiety of not having enough to go around. thank you. also from the center, i am in bad health. i can't work. the food pantry really helps my family. thanks to the food pantry. thanks to the survival center. also from the amherst survival center, it means there is food every night. .his is from loaves and a person has toly. also from loaves and first, it is very important that i get the food stamps. please don't take them away. they help me out a lot. this is also from loaves and first, a client, snap helps supplement my disability from cancers. but my benefit level has been cut. also from the marine ann center, a client writes, it is important to keep food stamps because other poor families don't have money. and the food stamps help them. also i think you should keep snap because if you take it away, that's basically saying that other people won't eat. this is also from t

inches across most of the it in boston the national weather service predicting eight to twelve inches, amherst and springfield as much as 18 inches. the bottom line, the blizzard is nasty but the blizzard isn't going to happen. the weather's nasty but you see it moving faster than they thought it would. new york out to be out of the woods in four or five hours, boston a different story but look over here, rob schmidt is in it union square at 14th street. rob, sleet, snow, what are you getting? >> this is so miserable. it's sleet right now but along with a 30 mile-an-hour wind gust and feels like you're getting stabbed by whatever's coming down at the moment and sleet and snow a little bit but the storm has changed enormously and you're getting sleet on top of it it's turning this stuff hard and it's also going to make a real mess on the roads. you can see the sidewalk. it's all going to turn to ice especially once it gets packed down by tires by people driving on it and the city is a little bit awake. it feels like 6:00 am on a sunday morning instead of a tuesday. here's times square this is a

in the west, amherst, 12 to 18. up in worthington, 18 to 24 inches. worst of it all is inland. let's see how much more it s coming. d.c., almost over. another inch main. philly one to three, new york another two to four before sun set tonight. 6 to 10 more in boston. inland 12 to 18 more in poconos. for most airports they're open and operating. rob smith down in union square in new york city. how is this there rob? >> reporter: it's still that sample of winter weather that we're getting here. it's kind of little bit of snow kind of sleet. it's just small little pellets. they were blowing harder little bit ago. it was miserable here for about an hour. the city is shut down mode. people weren't expecting the storm to be this light. you got five to six inches of snow. normally people will be going to work. i think they were scared off by the predictions of the storm from new york city. it moved a little bit away from us. that is spared millions of people. they stayed home. that's the way it is. lot of the resources that we using here no new york have been moved to up central new y

he tried to save the job of an amherst college president, alexander mikel john.then justice holmes gave these some real ammunition in 1923 with a majority opinion in a supreme court case that few people have heard of. it's called moore versus dempsey and it was about some black arkansas sharecroppers, and it remanded the case for a new trial and for the first time it found that a state criminal conviction violated the due process of law. said those black sharecroppers trial for murder and other things during what were known as the rights were so mob dominate that they violated the due process clause. i think that really put fair criminal trials on the liberal agenda. they didn't give up party politics either. in 19 who for frankfurter but not litman who became conservative, but frankfurter supporters of third-party candidate for president he supported -- you could kind of think sort of bernie sanders like candidate for president. frankfurter and litman wrote duly editors and "the new republic" about this presidential election, and frankfurter really had it out wi

i have a law degree and phd in history, a couple years at amherst college before coming to the federal judiciary center. my current job has me doing a lot of the same kinds of work i was doing before in substance and also in the nature of the kind i am doing, american legal history. on the other hand, the move from academia to being a government historian involves a lot of self-conscious reflection about the role of a historian and about what the job is. i think the public service dimension of being a government historian requires you to think much more on a day-to-day basis about how you are helping the public with your work, and what your appropriate role is, than i had ever experienced before. so you are catching me at a moment of reflection on this particular issue. but what i want i think to talk about, opening up some questions here, is about the specific relationship or the orientation of different government historians to the realm of policymaking. so when many of us think about government historians, we think about some of the agencies represented here. we tend to think about

am vanessa walker from amherst college. something came up on the periphery of most of your papers. i was wondering if you could elaborate on this, the role of congress. i know for my own work on human rights, congress is particularly important in shaping and prodding the reagan administration in directions on human rights different than it would like. has been largely absent so far in our conversation of reagan's international role. the first half of the administration, congress is playing a particularly active role. or makeike to comment anything about these transition points you are talking about. is congress keeping human rights on the front burners for the administration? where does that fit in? mike had this great point i would like to hear more on about this democratization in nicaragua in 1986 creating , cold war consensus consensus. i would like to hear you elaborate on that. >> georgetown. there was something about the right in the office of public diplomacy. they made a conscious decision to shift the focus of public opinion from u.s. policy toward el salvador where they

in amherst, massachusetts-- because i taught most of my adult life as a professor at the university of massachusetts-- there's a little copy shop that was seet up 2525 years ago calld collective copies--hint--and they are a worker co-op and they've been wonderfully successful, and one of the reasons is they appeal to the university. they use lots of students as part-time jobs, and they cultivated a reputation, and they're willing to go an extra mile for a student who's jammed up and needs something at 3:00 in the morn--they do some things that cultivate a relationship with the community, and they out-t-competed kinko, things like that, and they were able to do that. and, again, i understand these are isolated, small examples, but i want to remind you capitalism comes into the world, beginning with isolated, small examples, and those have to be struggled over and reproduced and grown, and then something else is possible. another waway to put this, and t goes back to your question about the unions, i like to use a parallel l with slavery. there e two ways to react to slavery, and you alw