Divide in Concord

Concord is a small town in Massachusetts with a glorious history. It was here, in fact, that in 1775 the "shot heard round the world" was fired, officially marking the start of the American Revolution. And it was in this same town that Henry David Thoreau was born, nearly two centuries later, the writer whose novel Walden can rightly be considered the forerunner of the modern environmental movement. This undiminished revolutionary spirit is embodied today in Jean Hill, an eighty-four-year-old widow determined to win by any means necessary the battle to ban plastic bottles from the town, guilty of disastrous effects on the environment and the local wildlife.