Join us as we celebrate the release of J. Dirk Nies’s book, Floriescence. A signing will follow. In honor of Peace Day (September 21), Dirk and his wife, Carmen, will be discussing how you can use Floriescence to contribute to and promote peace. This event will be free and open to the public.
Floriescence is a groundbreaking, visionary synthesis of science, ethics, and aesthetics crafted to promote well-being in the 21st century. Its robust, comprehensive, multidimensional framework of fact and value—the Floriescent SEAview—affords a vantage point from which we can see where we ought to go, illumining ways of human flourishing that are in harmony with the ecological economy of the natural world. Simultaneously engaging the universal hopes and aspirations of the human spirit while nourishing the soul’s love of the personal and the particular, Floriescence creates a civil conversational space that invites both creativity and reverence as together we address the complex and often vexing problems of modern life.
J. Dirk Nies, PhD, is an environmental chemist, independent scholar, newspaper columnist, philosopher, farmhand, and the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Floriescence Institute. Dirk enjoys composing music, and he delights in creating meandering paths through the woods at Sweet Blue Farm in western Albemarle County.
Carmen Morales Nies, his wife of forty-five years, holds degrees in mental health and consumer economics. Carmen is the Institute’s director of educational and public outreach programs. She brought her childhood Puerto Rican “jíbara” experiences, her broad multicultural perspectives, and her practical sensibilities to bear on all facets of this, our first book project.