Memoirous

  On weekends I have more time to read. Good thing because I began a doorstopper of a biography about Henry David Thoreau by Laura Dassow Walls. It might be more Thoreau than I bargained for. There has always been something compelling about Walden and “On Civil Disobedience” that reminds me of my 20s. It was a good time to drop out or become a rebel. I’ve come back to Walden again and again and each time I feel anxious—there’s got to be more to this story. But, there isn’t. He lived by himself for a few years “off the grid” and then that was it. I guess I wanted it to be about something other than simplicity. Anyway, the opening chapters of the biography explains that Thoreau’s parents, though modestly middleclass, made their money from—wait!: pencils. I know, random. In today’s economy I cannot imagine someone making a fortune from the humble pencil. But that’s the beauty of it! It isn’t humble—the manufacturing of pencils revolutionized the worker, the intel...

The Transcendentalists would turn over in their graves Emerson at Harvard today Thoreau on the Merrimack and Concord, gliding past glitzy waterfront casinos Alcott would have a fit over No Child Left Behind They would not recognize 21 st C. Boston, their New England Emerson would likely snatch a blackberry From a passerby and Thoreau it into the Charles River. Where would Thoreau walk, there are no wild paths anymore leading to Walden Pond. Can you imagine Bronson Alcott ranting on Facebook? He’d be as bad as me quitting and starting, several times a year. Where would Thoreau shop for building supplies—Loews’s? Where would the Transcendentalists source groceries? Buy a book? Who buys books? Veterans of the Civil War and civil disobedience, Would they recognize today’s wars? Would they occupy?