Thoreau Society Bulletin, Fall 2012, Number 279

Transcription

Thoreau
Society
Bulletin
ISSN 0040-6406
Fall 2012
Number 279
Remembering Thoreau in 1962 at
Dumbarton Oaks
Joseph C. Wheeler
CELEBRATING
THOREAU'S
LEGACY
This year, Thoreauvians are remembering Thoreau 150 years
after his death. I had the privilege of attending a Washington,
D.C. event on May 11, 1962-on the hundredth anniversary. This
remembrance event was held in the sylvan glade at Dumbarton
Oaks Park. It was cosponsored by Secretary ofthe Interior Stewart
L. Udall, and The Wilderness Society represented by Howard C.
Zahniser. The idea for the ceremony came from William Monis
Meredith, Jr., who later became United States Poet Laureate.
Walter Harding, the Thoreau Society's Executive Director, was
asked for a list of Thoreau Society members who should be invited.
According to Marjorie Harding, everyone on the list was invited,
but alas, the list maker himself was omitted, and he missed the
occasion. However, my mother, Ruth Wheeler, got her invitation
and sent it on to me, since I was at the time working for the Peace
Corps in Washington.
The attached picture that I took that day shows from left to right
Howard C. Zahniser, Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall,
Robert Frost, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O.
Douglas, and Chief Justice Earl Warren (The Chief Justice was not
a speaker; he attended as a "friend" of Justice Douglas).
A search for a copy of remarks made revealed that Secretary
Udall had had a court reporter transcribe the short speeches.
Jeff Cramer, curator of collections at The Thoreau Institute, has
provided me a copy of the transcript which he found in Walter
Harding's papers in The Thoreau Society's collection. I
Zahniser had been president of The Thoreau Society in 1956/57.
As Executive Director of The Wilderness Society, he worked with
Congress on The Wilderness Act that was passed in 1964 shortly
after his death.
Howard Zahniser, in introducing Secretary of the Interior
Stewart L. Udall, called him "a Thoreauvian who hirnselfis aware
of the importance of the quality of wildness and the importance of
the preservation of areas where it can be experienced." He referred
to Udall as "the captain of our own hucklebeny party."
Secretary Udall, in introducing the speakers, quoted a
communication from the author E. B. White, who said, "For a dead
man, Thoreau manages to keep surprisingly abreast of the news. I
find him assaying calm in all weathers and all ideas. I hope he and
his friends enjoy a pleasant noontime."
Udall also quoted Paul Brinks of The Atlantic who said,
"Someone once said of Henry Thoreau that he could get more in
ten minutes with a woodchuck than most men could get out of a
night with Cleopatra."
Udall said, when introducing Robert Frost, who was then 88
years old, that he had "the SaJ11equalities of mind, the SaJ11efeeling
for this land. He has the same regard for the need of being versed in
country things, as he has put it. I think: he has the SaJ11eawareness
that Thoreau had of the elusiveness of truth .... "
In his brief remarks, Robert Frost noted that there were four
great Americans: Washington, AdaJ11s,Jefferson, and in particular,
Madison. "There is nothing to measure beside those statesmen but
the names of Thoreau and Emerson." Continuing, Frost discussed
Walden.
More than anything else, Thoreau wrote that
wonderful, beautiful story book: character; incidents;
adventure; adventure in thought; adventure in
housekeeping; everything; and whenever I am weary
Contents
Thoreau in 1962 at Dumbarton
Remembering
Oaks
1
Call for Papers:
Thoreau Society Bulletin
2
Thoreau
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
3
Spring
Young Thoreauvian
Thoreau
Christopher
s Importance
Roof
for Philosophy: A Review
Call for Papers: Thoreau and American
Pages from a Thoreau
Bryan
Rubenau's
Additions
Country
Sentence-ing Thoreau:
from
Notes
& Queries.
President's
Philosophy
Journal
7
9
Bibliography
10
The Game
13
Concord
Column
5
7
Wall of Walden
to the Thoreau
Notes
5
13
.
14
. . . . .
. . . . ..
15
2
I Thoreau
Society Bulletin
of considerations-there
is a line of my poetry
somewhere-when
I am weary of my considerations,
and I cannot stand it any longer, J always say, "Me
for the woods." Somebody said I talk wood too much.
The word "woods" means mad, you know, too. But
that is it. I want to go wild in the woods. I have been
telling this story a long time. The first poem in my
first book is the wish for wilderness where I can get
really lost. I never got lost. Like Daniel Boone said,
he never was lost. He had been bewildered; but I have
not even been bewildered. I want to be bewilderedlost-not be able to find my way home. That is what
the wilderness is.
When Udall introduced William O. Douglas, then Supreme
Court Associate Justice (who became the longest serving justice
in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, completing his service
in 1975), he noted that "Thoreau called himself 'Inspector of
Snowstorms' ....
I think if he has any successor as 'Inspector
of Wilderness,' it is our next speaker, a man who shares his scorn
for modem transportation. He is a 'shank's mare' man. He has
still today, as lively and as keen as Thoreau's, a concern for the
estrangement of man from his natural surroundings, and I think he
would share one ofthe things that Thoreau wrote or said in his last
years ... 'The earth has higher uses than we put her to.'"
Justice Douglas decried the lack of respect visitors have for our
Call for Papers
Thoreau as a Mystic, Transcendentalist,
Natural Philosopher, Writer,
and Citizen/Activist.
The Thoreau Society seeks to include in The Thoreau Society
Bulletin over the next several numbers a variety of short
pieces celebrating Thoreau's legacy, in recognition of the
sesquicentennial of Thoreau's death in 1862.
Short articles by scholars and enthusiasts are welcome on
five themes encompassing the main fields of thought and
action in which Thoreau's legacy is widely perceived. Three
of those come from his famous self-definition: "The fact is
I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher
to boot." In addition, most readers would acknowledge
Thoreau's importance as writer and as citizen. Other broad
themes and definitions may be important, but these are
a handy bunch on which to hang an array of celebratory
reflections.
Submissions on the order of 400-1,000 words are invitedwe are looking for personal "takes" on Thoreau, overviews,
and pithy summaries rather than detailed excursions
supported with secondary sources. Should initial efforts
inspire longer treatment (citations allowed but not required
here), longer submissions on these themes are welcome for
The Concord Saunterer.
Number 279
Fall 2012
national parks. They were leaving enormous quantities of their
trash behind them. He then said:
We are all grateful to the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts for its 1960 decision in the Nickols
case.' Plans had been made to build concrete ramps
for the beaches of Walden Pond, to widen the beach,
which meant cutting down the embankment, cutting
many trees to provide access roads for fishermen
who no more cml walk, and to put up a 100-foot
concrete bath house. But for the intervention of the
Massachusetts Court, Walden Pond would be today a
highly modernized amusement park.
This man Thoreau did not know the world because
he never traveled much. He said, "It is not worth
the while to go round the world to count the cats in
Zanzibar,"? to which comment Mr. Tomlinson once
replied that, while Thoreau was right about Zanzibar,
we wish he had visited it because he would have
counted more than cats. We miss the book he would
have made."
Thoreau's curiosity and active mind would have
indeed produced an exciting calm on Zanzibar,
bringing to light things that its miserable people and
the slave traders of that day never knew about the
earth and [its] beauty.
I have traveled with Thoreau everywhere he went.
In New England, he did not penetrate as far north in
the Maine woods as I had imagined. He saw some of
the head water of the Allagash, but not the wild river
itself, the one which, like Walden Pond, is now being
threatened by bulldozers and roads and motels and
civilization.
Wherever Thoreau went, he was the explorer who
was excited, who was stumped and baffled by new
discoveries, and that is a great comfort to all of us
amateurs, who, no matter how frequent our hiking of
old trails, always find something new that sends us
scurrying to the libraries for research.
I do not believe Thoreau ever did identify the night
warbler which he talked about in Walden, and which
I believe was the oven bird in flight. Once he saw
three birds and he said they were sandpipers, tell tails,
or plovers. Then he added, "Or maybe they are just
tumstones."
Thoreau's curiosity was about the wonders of
creation, including man, but mostly about those
wonders which are at our feet and yet which we
seldom see. "Is not the midnight," Thoreau asks, "like
Central Africa to most of us?"?
The answer in 1962 is still in the affirmative. Yet
even here, along the Potomac, great events often
transpire at midnight.
I wonder how many have heard on wild March
nights the armada of whistling swans over Georgetown
and the Palisades, heading for northern nesting.
grounds. We do not have the whippoorwill Thoreau
knew from the North Woods, mld it ushers in, as you
know, the darkness; and when the first gray streaks of
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Fall 2012
dawn are visible, it announces that the time for sleep is
almost over. The haunting sound of that wondrous bird
has strong appeal to Thoreau, whose wish was that he
would hear it some night, hear it sing in his dreams.
Thoreau, an individualist, was the spiritual kin
to Gandhi, although they were separated by many,
many decades; and he inspired some of the things that
Gandhi did.
Thoreau would, I think, be alarmed at America's
present trend to conformity. Thoreau, the individual,
did not walk with the crowd nor bend to society's
prejudices, and the Bill of Rights was not written for
his time; for a nation of conformists, civil rights would
not be very consequential.
Emerson said Thoreau was in his own person
practical, and almost a refutation to the theories of
the Socialists. He lived extemporaneously from hour
to hour, like the birds and the angels, the only man
of leisure in his town, and his independence made all
others look like slaves.s
Thoreau found his sanctuary, his cathedral, in
the woods. The endless wonders of nature were his
excitement. A swamp was not a spot to drain, but a
place for reflection. He discovered there the symbiotic
relation of plant to plant, of animal to animal. These
were his excitements.
If we could all say to him, the heaven and the earth
are one flower, we would be as anxious to clean up our
rivers and preserve our islands of wilderness as we are
to put a man on the moon.
On June 17, 1853, Thoreau notes in his journal, "If
a man walks in the woods for love of them and [to] see
his fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days,
he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole
day as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he is
esteemed industrious and enterprising-making
earth
bald before its time.'?
Thoreau lived when. men were appraising trees in
terms only of board feet, not in terms of water shed
protection and birds and music. His protests against
that narrow outlook were among the first to be heard
on this continent, and they still plague the conscience
of all those whose voice is the voice of conservation,
but whose deeds are destructive of wilderness value.
Thoreau lived long before the insecticides and
pesticides appeared to upset our ecological balance
and to poison the fields and gardens where we grow
our food and the waters that carry the poisonous
solubles into our farms and rivers and lakes.
Thoreau lived when the symbol of destruction of
the wilderness was the ax and gun powder. He never
knew the bulldozer and the reckless, ruinous logging
practices in which we now indulge.
Thoreau did, however, know the quiet desperation
in which most people led their lives, and man's
capabilities to destroy the earth and its goodness, and
his warnings are relevant and timely in the 1960s,
more relevant and timely, I think, than when they were
uttered, and that is the occasion for the meeting here
13
today.
I feel privileged to have attended remembrance events
celebrating Henry David Thoreau's life, both 100 years and 150
years after his death. As Ireflect on this Dumbarton Oaks ceremony
honoring Henry Thoreau, I note that the emphasis was on the
preservation of wilderness. This is even more appropriate today.
The 1962 event anticipated the passage of The Wilderness Act,
drafted by former Thoreau Society president, Howard Zahniser.
The act created the National Wilderness Preservation System. At
the time of its passage, some nine million acres were preserved,
and today, according to The Wilderness Society website, nearly
110 million acres are protected. Clearly, E. B. White was right in
saying Thoreau is still talking to us.
• Joseph C. Wheeler was born and brought up on Thoreau Farm in
Concord and worked for forty years in international development.After
returningto Concord in 1992,he led the campaign to preserve the house in
which Thoreau was born; he is a member of The Thoreau Society Board.
Acknowledgements
Iam grateful to Doris M. Audette, who discovered the existence
of the transcript ofthe Dumbarton Oaks event, and helped with the
preparation of this article.
Notes
I Commemoration
of hundredth anniversary of Henry David Thoreau:
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C, Friday, May 11, 1962. Washington,
D.C.: Miller Columbian Reporting Service, 1962.
2 This refers to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case Nickols v.
Commissioners of Middlesex County, 341 Mass. 13, 17-18, 166 N.E.2d
911 b (1960). This case was the culmination of The Thoreau Society's
Save Walden Campaign. See Joseph Wheeler, "Saving Walden," The
Concord Saunterer, N.S. Volume 12/13, 2004/2005.
3 Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David
Walden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 322.
Thoreau:
4 H. M. Tomlinson, "A Mingled Yarn," Outward Bound (New York:
Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1953),30.
5
Thoreau, "Night and Moonlight."
The Atlantic Monthly, November
1863.
6 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau." The Atlantic
Monthly, October
1883.
7 Thoreau, Journal,
vol. 5. (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press,
Houghton Mifflin, 1949),267.
Thoreau Spring
Jensen Bissell
In 1846, Henry David Thoreau ascended from a nearby
campsite on the West Branch of the Penobscot toward what is
now known as Baxter Peak. It seems clear that Thoreau climbed a
significant part of the way toward the peak and almost assuredly
above treeline, most likely ascending near the current Abol Slide
or somewhere between Baxter Peak and South Peak, but poor
weather prevented Thoreau from reaching the summit. Thoreau's
subsequent writings about his experience on Katahdin and in the
Maine Woods had a great and lasting effect on people's view
of the region. Fannie Hardy Eckstrom wrote of the influence of
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Number 279
Fall 2012
Thoreau Spring Tablet, installed August 22, 2012
Courtesy of Jensen Bissell
Thoreau's writing, "So, though, he was neither woodsman nor
scientist, Thoreau stood at the gateway of the woods and opened
them to all future comers with the key of poetic insight. And after
the woods shall have passed away, the vision of them as he saw
them will remain .... Indeed, this whole description of Katahdin
is unequaled.'?
Nearly eighty years later in 1924, Percival P. Baxter concluded
his political career after failing to win the Republican party's
nomination over Owen Brewster of Dexter, Maine. Brewster
went on to become Governor of Maine and in 1925 he climbed
Katahdin with great fanfare as the first sitting Governor to do so.
The site of the spring at the junction of the Abol and Hunt Trails
was christened "Governor's Spring" in 1925 and commemorated
by an engraving on a rock near the spring that read:
Governor's
Spring
Named in honor of Gov. Ralph O. Brewster,
the first sitting Governor to climb
Katahdin while in office.
Willis D. Parsons, Comr.
Later in his career, Brewster used photos of his climb to help
promote his proposal to create a national park centered on Katahdin.
Brewster's national park proposal arose during Baxter's work to
create the Park, and Baxter worked ceaselessly for two years to
defeat the proposal. In 1933 Baxter completed the purchase ofthe
first parcel of what would eventually become Baxter State Park.
Baxter directed that "Governor's Spring" be renamed "Thoreau
Spring," and he directed that a plaque be installed in a location
near the spring. This was installed and a photo of the plaque exists
in the Park's archives. It can be assumed that the original chiseled
commemoration of Governor's Spring was removed at this time
for it is no longer extant at the site.
Sometime over the years, the original 1933 plaque was stolen
or removed. On August 22, 2012, almost eighty years again from
the date of the installation of the original plaque and more than
160 years from Thoreau's ascent of Katahdin, we installed a
replacement plaque for Thoreau Spring. The wording is identical
to the original as specified by Percival Baxter. The day was windy
and cool with clouds obscuring the landscape from time to time-a
typical day on the Tableland.
I want to thank Bill Greaves of the Maine Forest Service and
MFS pilot Lincoln Mazzei for their critical support in this effortwe would not have accomplished it without their help. Baxter
State Park Resource Manager Rick Morrill was also a great work
mate in this mission.
I hope the plaque remains in place for at least another 80 years.
• Jensen Bissell has worked for Baxter State Park for more than 25
years, serving as Park Director since 2005.
Notes
I This piece was originally run as an entry in the author's blog,
Baxter Trails
2 Quoted in John W. Hakola, Legacy of a Lifetime: The Story
of Baxter State Park (Woolwich, ME: TBW Books, 1981), 16.
Number 279
Thoreau Society Bulletin I 5
Fall 2012
and his siblings. Steeped in Eastem philosophy from an early
age, Christopher understood Thoreau from that perspective. He
attended The Cambridge School of Weston, a private, progressive
high school, when he returned to the USA, and graduated from
college in 1978 Summa Cum Laude with a BFA from Boston's
Emerson College.
Christopher's particular interest was in writing fantasy novels,
and he self-published (under the name of The Magic Clockmakers'
Guild) the following books, many of which he donated for sale to
The Concord Museum and The Orchard House: The Pink Sheep
(1982); A Winter Night's Revels (1983); Halloween to Halloween
(1986); The Spook House (1988); The Mythical Magical Poetry
Book (1995); and Idylls (2004). He once said that he wished he
could have written the Harry Potter series. He was also a poet
and listed that as his profession. He brought his own knowledge
of Thoreau to Concord students through his work as a substitute
teacher. He is fondly remembered by the students who have
contributed to the "Where is Mr. Roof?" page on Facebook. He
gave me his collection of literature classics for my grandchildren,
and Iknow that these books were prized possessions of his.
Christopher vanished and left no clues as to his whereabouts
for his close friends and family to follow. The Concord Library
Special Collections staff has set up a listing of their Christopher
Roof holdings at www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/fin _aids/Roof.
htrn. Christopher is a fascinating Thoreauvian as one may see in
the library collection and on-line.
Christopher Roof
Courtesy Concord Free Public Library
• Kristina Joyce (MSAed from Massachusetts College of Art) is an
artist and teacher out of her home studio in Concord, Massachusetts.
Young Thoreauvian Christopher
Roof
Kristina Joyce
Christopher Roof, born on April 24, 1951, in Concord,
Massachusetts, disappeared from Nashua, New Hampshire, in
August of 2010. What happened to him remains a mystery, His
connection to Henry David Thoreau and The Thoreau Society is
an interesting one and all the more interesting because he donated
his personal records and writings to the Concord Library Special
Collections before he disappeared.
The records show that Christopher is descended from Rhode
Island founder, Roger Williams, and that his grandparents were
originators of the Sheraton Hotel Corporation. His grandmother
Eleanor Moore started the Belknap Street Concord Lyceum (it
eventually merged with the Thoreau Society) and supported it
financially with her husband Robert. Christopher himself worked
at the Lyceum with Anne McGrath for many years. He was a
voracious reader of Thoreau and an excellent guide. With his
personal money, he supported the saving of Concord land-in
particular Thoreau Country land-and other environmental causes
(his Greenpeace coloring storybook is The Whale Friends). The
money he donated could have sustained him for his entire life, and
he always told me that he had given it up willingly.
Roland Wells Robbins (the "pick and shovel historian" who
excavated Thoreau's cabin site) was a father figure to Christopher.
At Roland's memorial service in 1987, Christopher read one of
Roland's poems with me. Christopher's own parents, writers
following a mystic fascination, journeyed to India with him
Thoreau's Importance for
Philosophy: A Review
Stephen Hahn
Rick Anthony
Furtak, Jonathan
Reid, Ed. Thoreau
Fordham
University
Ellsworth,
s Importance/or
and James D.
Philosophy. New York:
Press, 2012. 314p.
Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy brings together thirteen
views of Thoreau's writing in relation to philosophical themes,
ancient and modem, concluding with an e-mail interview between
the first editor, Rick Anthony Furtak, and Stanley Cavell, preeminent American philosopher of the latter part of the twentieth
century and into the twenty-first. Cavell, of course, gave significant
recognition to the philosophical interests inherent in Thoreau's
writing at a time when a different model of philosophical inquiry
dominated academic philosophical discourse to the almost
total exclusion of moral philosophers such as Thoreau from the
philosophical canon and classroom. Cavell recognized as important
philosophical work the practice of reading Thoreau's figurative
expression alongside the investigations ofWittgenstein and Kant's
critical philosophy. In the interview with Cavell collected here
("Walden Revisited" 223-37), these remain two productive points
of comparison among many regarding the history of philosophy,
in which Thoreau both has and has not been situated. The essays
in this volume situate Thoreau in relation to multiple strains of
philosophical inquiry.
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Number 279
The editors take as the epigraph to their introductory essay a
passage from Walden that recalls us to a somewhat different model
and image of philosophical being than the one that emerged in
academic philosophy in the century and a half after Walden and the
rest of Thoreau's writing:
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love
wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some
of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but
practically. 1
Straightforwardly enough, the editors announce their intention
to "address and remedy [the philosophical] neglect [of Thoreau],
and to provide a clear account of Thoreau's contributions to
philosophy," the first of which, of course, is arguably (not all
would agree) to exemplify the alternate definition of philosophy
partially suggested and outlined in this passage.
The essays collected here illuminate how Thoreau's writing
contests what one might call the malnutrition of academic
philosophy as it has evolved through iterations oflogical positivism
and other reductive logical-mathematical models. Allusion is one
way, as Thoreau often inserts into his punning and multi-vocal
prose an encounter with a figure or position from the history of
philosophy or, somewhat uncannily, from the future of philosophy
(Wittgenstein, for instance). The chief philosophical nemesis
who emerges here in Thoreau's quest to realize an alternative
ideal, and to revivify both the philosopher-person and the objects
of his or her attentions, is Descartes (and, secondarily, Locke).
The allies are numerous and include both giants in the canonical
tradition and fellow outsiders: The Cynics (in or out?), Plato,
Socrates, Kant, Hume, Kierkegaard (in or out?), Marx (outsider),
Montaigne and Coleridge (ditto), Wilhelm von Humboldt (ditto),
and both predictably and with somewhat less relish, the American
pragmatists, including C. S. Peirce and John Dewey (somewhat
in, and mostly out). The very minor consideration of William
James, amounting only to a few references, is indicative of the
concentration of focus that would be quite different, I think, if
Wood engraving of
the Walton Ricketson
bas-relief of Thoreau
Source: The Walter Harding Collection (The Thoreau
Society Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden
Woods)
Fall 2012
this were a collection of essays solicited from literary historians
and scholars, though I am counting this as a difference and not
necessarily a demerit. That otherwise than with the exception
of the Cynics the list of engagements, foreshortened here,
progressively tends toward the non-canonical, and non-academic
is part of the story. Frequently, an essay works both to explicate
at a deeper level a surface resemblance, such as that between
Thoreau and Diogenes, and retrospectively to rehabilitate aspects
of a philosopher or school that' had been excluded and maligned,
such as the Cynics (Douglas R. Anderson, "An Emerson Gone
Mad: Thoreau's American Cynicism" [185-200]).
A feature of Thoreau's writing that most clearly separates
him from what would become the identifying characteristic of
mainstream, canonical philosophy is his relative indifference
to logical argumentation and in particular the academic sort
of procedures that can be ridiculed by citing the supposedly
objective and unmotivated admonition of analytic philosophy
to "take 'p' .... " Indirection rules as in the cases of allusion and
punning, and also in the use of other parables and figures. Yet one
not untypical passage from Walden helps to locate Thoreau most
clearly in realm of philosophical (distinct from poetic) discourse:
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should
need only one fact, or the description of one actual
phenomenon to infer all the particular results at
that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our
result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or
irregularity in nature, but in our ignorance of essential
elements in the calculation. . . . The particular laws
are as our points of view, as, to the traveller [sic], a
mountain outline varies with every step, and it has
an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but
one fonn. Even when cleft or bored through it is not
comprehended in its entireness.'
We are tempted to see Thoreau landed here squarely in the
realm of philosophy, reasoning through the puzzle of incomplete
knowledge and multiple perspectives to a certainty ofthe underlying
unity of reality. Such is the most apparently philosophical-like of
passages in Thoreau, considered by the ear of academic philosophy,
depending as much as it does on the untested assumption, or
fiction, of a prior unity of the thing to be apprehended. The passage
articulates an epistemological and metaphysical puzzle, only to
solve it by sleight of hand. Yet it does establish a Thoreauvian
perspective on a question of singular philosophical relevance, the
question of value, i.e., the value of multiple points of view in the
construction and discovery of a collective sense of reality.
A common theme throughout the essays is the recuperation of
a lively relation between self and the objects of its attention, which
is phrased similarly and differently by individual contributors. As
in the passage cited above, this brings into play the issues of value,
which always includes a reference to some agency: Even that which
transcends economy and exchange is sweet only because it does
so for some agent who desires such transcendence. Collectively,
these essays unite in expressions of this theme:
A world, however poor, is not composed of
accumulating fact. The truth is pretty nearly the
reverse: There is a fact at all because there is a
meaningful world, a site where facts cross because
they've been significantly placed. (James D. Reid,
Number 279
Fall 2012
"Speaking Extravagantly," 51.)
To lose the multiple languages of natural history
is to lose nature, to dismember a culture that values
nature... (Laura Dassow Walls, "Articulating
a
Huckleberry Cosmos," 109.)
Yet whether or not he ever succeeds at uniting the
poetic and scientific perspectives, Thoreau is confident
that both of them are converging upon a single reality.
(Rick Anthony Furtak, "The Value of Being," 123.)
Granting that these are merely selective quotations chosen from
among a dozen elaborated interpretations, they do seem to
represent a collective desire. Yet I am not sure that a desire for
a reassurance of Thoreau's grasp of a belief in unity-in-diversity,
if not its revelation, is entirely consonant with the outcomes of
Thoreau's or with Cavell's inquiries.
Thoreau does propose, like Descartes, and in the tradition of
Western philosophy, to get to the bottom of things, and establish
a ''point d'appui," for the apprehension of truth-at least he says
he does SO.3 But he is a complex thinker who also observes in his
always living language:
No face we can give to a matter will stead us
so well at last as the truth. For the most paJ1, we are
not where we are, but in a false position. Through an
infirmity of our natures, we suppose ourselves a case,
and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases
at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.'
To me this describes a circumstance of modem philosophy under
which a philosopher such as Stanley Cavell and certain others
operate and to which they intend to enliven us: philosophy as an
ongoing working out of the positions in which we define ourselves,
the desire for elusive "truth" being a motive sometimes or in some
cases more passionate than in others. In any "case," take the
metaphor where you will, it comes back to a piece of the epigraph
of the introduction to these essays, wisely chosen, "to solve some
of the problems oflife, not only theoretically, but practically."
Thoreau's aim, announced in the chapter "Where I Lived, and
What I Lived For" in a passage extracted to serve as the epigraph
on the title page of Walden, was to be a provocateur, and such he
was and is. These essays survey much of the grounds on which he
can be said to be so for philosophy. Both academic philosophers
and students of literature can enter here and be provoked by the
perspectives of the contributors toward our assumptions ("take
'p' ... l") about Thoreau and the world, and profit from their labors.
• Stephen Hahn is currently associate provost for academic affairs
and interim dean of the College of the Arts and Communication, and
professor of English, at the William Paterson University of New Jersey.
He is the author of the brief study On Thoreau in the Wadsworth's
Philosophers Series (1999).
Notes
I Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau:
Walden (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 14--15.
2 Walden, 290-9l.
3 Walden, 98.
4 Walden, 327.
I7
Call for Papers
American Literature Association
24th Annual Conference
Boston, MA, May 23-26, 2013
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers
CFP for Panel Discussion sponsored by
the Thoreau Society
Thoreau and American Philosophy
The newly-published volume Thoreau s Importance for
Philosophy (Fordham UP) assembles a wide-range of
scholarship to address the question of Thoreau's legacy for
the American philosophical tradition. (See review in this
issue of the Bulletin). As the editors note, Thoreau, while
central to the field of American literature, remains a marginal
figure for academic philosophy: "in fact, many members of
the academic philosophical community in the United States
would be reluctant to classify Thoreau as a philosopher at
all." This roundtable discussion will approach the question
of Thoreau's complex relation to American philosophy as
well as the reasons for his philosophical marginalization.
Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for an IS-minute
presentation) by January 1, 2013, to: kristen.case@maine.
edu. This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.
Pages from a Thoreau Country
Journal
J Walter Brain
October 13, 1989
To Tarbell's Bay, Davis Hill, and the banks of the Concord at
the "Long Pull"-that reach ofthe river that runs in a nearly direct
northerly course from the great bend at Ball's Hill almost all the
way to the Carlisle Bridge. On this stretch, which Thoreau also
called the "Straight Reach," the stream flows wide and ample and
encompasses a great arc of the heavens which it mirrors with such
fidelity that it elevates the river to an Elysian plane. To paddle or
glide on its waters amounts to floating on an upper air where the
heavens constitute the sole support and sustenance of all there is .
This ethereal effect, nay, this true heavenly ascent seems peculiar :
to this reach of the Concord, and may not replicate in any other
river reaches of our Musketaquid watershed.
October appears now at its most beautiful; the air sparkles with
verve, light, and color; the river assumes a dreamlike recumbence
under an Indian-summer-like sky, feathery soft, but without the
smoky haze of true "Indian" weather -that fake but entrancing
spell. Hay-scented Ferns, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, clad the
wooded slopes of Davis Hill above the riverside path, downstream
from Ball's Hill. As I walk along the path, brushing shin and knee
with the pale, threadbare fronds, they exhale a summery scent,
strong and savory, reminiscent of newly-mown sweet hay, the odor
more perceptible now in the fall than in the fullness of the summer
8 I Thoreau Society Bulletin
Number 279
Fall 2012
fronds. As the fronds fade and let off this fragrance, it feels as
though they parted with their summer selves, letting them go waft
ghostlike across river and meadow. The sweet scent becomes
pervasive all along the river path and all around Tarbell's Bay on
the back side of Davis Hill.
Farther along the river path I come upon sight of a
Black-billed Cuckoo, Cocczysus erythropthalmus, perched on a
Red Maple branch that arches over the path. Slim of body, olivebrown above, impeccably white beneath, the cuckoo dons a
beautiful long tail that, when collected lengthwise, consists of two
dark strands with paired crescent-shaped bars of white gossamerwhat a delight to see! The cuckoo's bill projects sharp and thin,
dark, slightly curved, much in tune with the slender shape of the
bird and its elegant poise. Vigilant of my presence, the cuckoo
flies up to the next higher branch, and then continues to move up
tier above tier, climbing up a ladder, towards the tree's summit.
As it flutters in its ascent, it shows me alternately its front and its
back, the tail collected or slightly fanned out. The white on its
underparts extends from chin to undertail coverts; and the olive
brown above spreads uniformly across the back, from forehead to
wingtips to tail. A second cuckoo alights near the top of the tree
and joins the climber at the summit. They soon fly off together to
the beechen grove on the slopes of Davis Hill back up the river
path. There, the cuckoos pause and then part together, jumping off
from tree to tree along the river bank.
I round the northern, or downstream, tip of the riparian hill over
to the bay side. Tarbell's Bay, formerly a sparsely treed seasonal
meadow flushed with river freshets before it was impounded, has
become more of a wet meadow and less so a seasonal fluvial bay. A
culvert in the dike on the bridle causeway at the northeast comer of
the bay controls the water level, the culvert draining into a swamp
that extends alongside the river to the north of Davis Hill. The
Black-billed cuckoo
bay has no direct inlet from or outlet to the river at present. A
John
Caffrey I Original gouache illustration for Thoreau Society
short and narrow gut of maple swamp immediately south of Davis
Bulletin
Hill serves sporadically as inlet during a high spring flood; the
impoundment fed also by runoff and seepage during much of the
year.
supports aquatic and low marsh vegetation that provides coverfor
Writing of this place ona March day in 1859, at a time when waterfowl. The same process of conversion from a treed lowland
farmers kept trees out of the meadow for the production of native
under water only during freshets to a wet meadow or shallow lake
hay, Thoreau entered in his journal " ...and you see there, sheltered
has taken place at what is known as the Mink Meadows in the
by the hills on the northwest, a placid blue bay having the russet hills Estabrook Woods, the former "Pasture Oaks" of Thoreau, a wetland
for shores. This kind of bay, or lake, made by the freshet-these
that today resembles Tarbell's Bay down to the picturesque stumps
deep and narrow 'fiords'-can
only be seen along such a stream with bouquets of wild plants.
as this, liable to the annual freshet. ... There is the magic of lakes
Thoreau's "placid blue bay" at Tarbell's Bay, which did not
that come and go." At that time, the bay had not been impounded
have trees then, must have indeed resembled a bay or a "fiord,"
and the waters "came and went" as they do today in many river as per Thoreau's description of the place. With the surcease of
meadows that change into riparian lakes with the spring tide-l
farming ways in Concord towards the end of the last century,
am thinking in particular of French's Meadow, where the spring the meadow at Tarbell's Bay was abandoned to itself and it soon
freshet makes a very visible and lovely temporary lake. When became overgrown with trees, such as Swamp White Oaks,
the outlet of Tarbell's Bay was diked and a higher level of water
Quercus bicolor, also known today as "pasture oaks," which
was engineered by the sizing and setting of the invert elevation
thrive in such seasonally flooded lowlands. Later, after the trees
of the culvert in the dike, the bay became flooded permanently
had grown to maturity, the impounding of the meadow killed them.
and the trees that grew in that meadow after fanners abandoned
Four Great Blue Herons, Ardea herodias, stand guard on the
meadow haying, killed and eventually reduced to stumps. Rotting
marshier side of the bay, frozen in their poise, but alert to anything
tree stumps with jagged ends poking above the water still stud the to suggest itself a meal. There loiter a small raft of Blackjacks
entire bay. These stumps, clad with mosses and with pretty clumps
or Black Ducks, Anas rubripes, and two pairs of Mallards, Anas
of Marsh St. Johnswort, Hypericum virginicum, constitute now a platyrhynchos, the drakes dressed in spanking new coats in vivid
picturesque element in the place. Much of the bay, especially the colors. Painted Turtles, Chrysemys picta picta, bask in the autumn
large basin on the westerly side of a long, narrow wooded island,
sunshine, huddled one atop the other on the tree stumps, a glint of
Be sure to
check out
Mapping
Thoreau Country
www.mappingthoreaucountry. org
While Thoreau later wrote an extensive description
of the Shanty in his journal, Ricketson detailed his
visitor's appearance in words and in an informal
sketch that recorded how Thoreau looked when he
arrived at Brooklawn on Christmas Day:
Ji).'tNIEL!!UCKETSON.
THOREAU
AT' AGE >7.
!i!ro\'!;'i!1UI!!p."er~ity Lil:ur;;u-y
"In the latter part ofthe afternoon ...1 saw a man
walking up the carriage road, bearing a portmanteau
in one hand and an umbrella in the other. He was
dressed in a long overcoat of dark cloth and wore a
dark soft hat...It flashed at once in my mind that the
person before me was my correspondent, whom in
my imagination I had figured as stout and robust,
instead of the small and rather inferior looking man
before me ...The most expressive feature of his face
was his eye, blue in color and full of the greatest
humanity and intelligence ... In Thoreau, as in other
heroic men, it was the spirit more than the temple in
which it dwelt, that made the man."
UMASS
LOWELL
2012 Year-end Annual Appeal
AmericanBeech-Gayle
The Thoreau Society is a membership or~anization
with the majority of its support coming from members
like you. As an active member, you understand
the importance of keeping Thoreau's legacy alive.
His writings remain eternally relevant because they
cover the .spectrum of human concerns: political,
social, environmental, aesthetic, and personal (i.e. self
culture). In an age of rapid change, Thoreau reminds
us that what is perennial is forever flowering anew.
Moore
Ideas Change the World
As you consider giving generously, it may assure
you to know that a longstanding Board member is
once again contributing up to $5,000 to match all
other Board contributions .50 on the dollar, with the
goal of raising $15,000 total from the Board alone,
as we did last year and years past. He is giving out
of a conviction that Thoreau's ideas are as vitally
important now as they were when he first issued his
characteristic invitation: "Let us consider the way in
which we spend our lives."
We are grateful for your support and look forward to
your continued Membership in helping us to stimulate
interest in and foster education about the life, works,
and legacy of Henry D. Thoreau.
By maintaining your Thoreau Society membership,
you help to ensure the continuation of our activities,
such as the development of The Thoreau Society
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the publication of The Thoreau Society Bulletin and
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as well as our Annual Gathering each July. You
will be supporting our Mission and work as the
Friends of Walden Pond, in support of programs at
the Walden Pond State Reservation.
"~~
do -rvo--:tc4~f/;
w e- c4~f/.
~~~
We will continue to expand our reach with
projects such as Mapping Thoreau Country (www.
mappingthoreaucountry.org), the Walden Climate
Change Collaborative (WCCC), and the Digital
Thoreau (www.digitalthoreau.org).
Your membership renewal date is printed on the
TSB mailing envelope where your name and address
appear. Thank you for your continued support.
Your membership commitment makes a difference!
"
Your tax-deductible contribution will help us
strengthen the framework for delivering information
about Thoreau and Thoreau Country to a national
and international audience-within
all 50 states and
20 countries globally. For over 70 years, the Society
has played a crucial role in fostering debate and
scholarship about Thoreau, keeping his ideas everpresent before the public. You will help to expand
this network, a fellowship of Thoreauvians, begun in
1941 with a gathering of little more than 100 initial
members.
Your ~ift will ensure that we can continue to provide
resources to those interested in Thoreau through our
Annual Gathering and publications, The Thoreau
Society Bulletin and the Concord Saunterer. We
will keep on improving our Gathering, attracting
compelling presenters, and delivering video coverage
of select events to the web, including coverage of our
2013 keynote address to be delivered by Robert D.
Richardson.
Sincerely yours,
Michael J. Frederick
Executive Director
Your gift will help us build Mapping Thoreau
Country, an ongoing project documenting Thoreau's
travels throughout the United States at www.
mappingthoreaucountry.org. We will continue
to attract grants, such as the one from UMass
Lowell in support of the Walden Climate-Change
Collaborative website, which will enable us to
deliver climate-change education at public parks
across Massachusetts, starting with Walden Pond.
And we will continue to utilize the Thoreau Society
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, Your gift will keep us on track with our participation
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Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and the
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continue to explore Thoreau's multi-faceted influence
in present-day intellectual life.
Thoreau Society Mission
The Thoreau Society exists, to stimulate interest in and foster education
about Thoreau's
life, works, legacy and his place in his world and in ours,
challenging all to live a deliberate, considered life.
Vision
The Thoreau Society keeps Thoreau's writings and ideas alive across time and
across generations.
Organizational Goals:
To encourage research on Thoreau's life and works and to act as a
repository for Thoreau-related
materials
To educate the public about Thoreau's
contemporary
ideas and their application to
life
To preserve Thoreau's legacy and advocate for the preservation
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Thoreau country
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In 2001, The Thoreau Society was designated the official Friends group,
You will make possible our continuing role within the
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in support of park programs and activities. We will
continue to manage the Shop at Walden Pond, where
we have greeted millions of visitors since 1995,
when the Shop first opened, introducing them to
Walden and the world of Thoreau and the New
England Transcendentalists.
I
J
supporting the visitor services, conservation projects and park operations at
Walden Pond State Reservation, site of Henry David Thoreau's experiment
in living deliberately (1845-1847) and inspiration for his classic work,
Walden (1854).
Established in 1941, The Thoreau Society is the oldest and
largest organization devoted to an American author. The Society
has long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge about
Thoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts relating
to Thoreau and his contemporaries, by encouraging the use of its
collections, and by publishing articles in two Society periodicals:
The Thoreau Society Bulletin and The Concord Saunterer: A
With your support, the Thoreau Society will remain
a valued resource for scholars, enthusiasts, and the
general public alike. We hope you will join us in
making a generous gift (see the "Year-end Appeal
Donation" line on the Membership Renewal Form on
the next page).
Journal of Thoreau Studies.
Sincerely yours,
The Thoreau Society archives are housed at the Thoreau
Institute's Henley Library in Lincoln, Massachusetts. This
repository includes the collections of Walter Harding and
Raymond Adams, two of the foremost authorities on Thoreau
and founders of the Thoreau Society; and those of Roland
Robbins, who uncovered Thoreau's Walden house site.
Michael Schleifer
President
978-369-5310
Henry David Thoreau
Michael 1. Frederick
Executive Director
978-369-5319
Maxham daguerreotype,
Thoreau
1856
Society Collections
at the Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods
Through an annual gathering in Concord, and through sessions
devoted to Thoreau at the Modem Language Association's
annual convention and the American Literature Association's
annual conference, the Thoreau Society provides opportunities
for all those interested in Thoreau - dedicated readers and
followers, as well as the leading scholars in the field - to gather
and share their knowledge of Thoreau and his times.
Thoreau Society members represent a wide range of professions,
interests, and hometowns across the United States and around
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Thoreau had important things to say and crucial questions to ask
that are just as significant in our time as in his. Our list of past
Society presidents is a sampling of the kinds of people who have
been attracted to Thoreau's writings and philosophies. Through
its programs, publications and projects, the Thoreau Society is
committed to exploring Thoreau's observations on living with
self: society and nature, and encouraging people to think about
how they live their, own lives.
Please check the outside of your envelope for
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Number 279
Fall 2012
pewter on their dark shells. A pleasant
narrow path follows the shoreline of the
bay behind a fringe of wood witb leaves
turned to incandescent hues. Blueberry
thickets line the shoreline, their foliage
running russet to carmine red, the color
not yet fully ripened. Slender Clethra
or Summersweet, Clethra alnifolia,
encroaches on the path from both sides,
its foliage now fully ripened to a clear
yellow.
Ah, that sweet fragrance
of
Hay-scented Ferns wafting across my
path again!
I9
:Pl
.
,
.
.'
.
,'.
~
~
I
• J.Walter Brain lives in Lincoln,
Massachusetts, at a crow's call from
Walden Woods .
• John Caffrey is an artist/writer who lives
in Northumberland, England. He is a life
member of the Thoreau Society, and has
travelled widely in New England."
J. Walter Brain
Upstream view of Concord River from Davis Hill. Concord, MA, October 13, 1989
Bryan Rubenau's Wall of Walden
Corinne H. Smith
with Bryan Rubenau
Bryan Rubenau grew up on a 77 acre Christmas tree farm in
upstate New York. Unsold Scotch pines that grew to "forest-like
heights" created a terrific playground for Bryan, his brother, and
their friends. "We dammed up a low area to create a pond for our
homemade raft, we cleared trails for our bikes, and we constructed
a small log cabin," Bryan remembers. These were kids who were
outside as much as possible. .
It wasn't until Bryan was in his 20s that he had a chance to read
Walden, Thoreau's classic work. He and his wife, Chick Theoret
Rubenau, had just bought their first home in a small village. "I
don't know if it was having new neighbors several feet away, or
the thought of thirty years of mortgage payments looming, but it
seemed like a good time to read a story about a guy who went off
to live in the woods for two years," he says. It may have been just
a used paperback copy, but Bryan was captivated with the book by
the end of the first chapter, "Economy." "1 was hooked. Not just
on the story of his time in the woods, but on this whole new lens
through which I could view the world."
A few years later, Bryan and Chick were traveling in the
Boston area, and tbey stopped to visit Walden Pond. Bryan came
away with two souvenirs: a soda bottle filled with pond water
and Walter Harding's annotated edition of Walden, bought at the
Shop at Walden Pond. From that point on, he would pick up more
editions of the book whenever he saw them at yard sales or in book
drives.
The decade of the 2000s saw Bryan embark on a variety of
year-long personal projects. He gave himse1f365 days to learn or
accomplish something. One year, he watched and reviewed online
his top 100 "guy movies" of all time. Anotber year, he learned to
read Braille. Then there was the time when he decided to bowl 100
strikes. "I'm a bad bowler, so that was harder than it sounds," he
says.
In 2008, his goal was to gather as many copies of Walden
as he could. He already had half a dozen. "My collecting was a
sort of holy trinity of my need for a new project, my fondness for
Henry, and my discovery of eBay," he exclaims. Chick became
somewhat concerned. Suddenly packages were arriving in the mail
each week, and Bryan wasn't able to tell his wife how many more
would come. Bantam and Signet seemed to issue paperbacks with
new covers every year.
At first, he put the books on his shelves in order of purchase.
Then he switched to date of publication. "But they look best
when sorted by height, so they've been that way for a while," he
says. Even though he hasn't been actively looking for more since
2008, a few new-to-him editions still show up on occasion. The
total now stands at 141. The most expensive is a two-volume set
published by Houghton, Mifflin in 1897. It cost him $94. "That's
a far cry from a first edition Ticknor & Fields that can fetch around
$25,000," he says.
When asked which one is most unique, Bryan chooses "a
small, worn pocket book version issued by the Armed Services in
1906, for the exclusive non-commercial use of the military. I can
just picture a soldier on the battlefield turning to it for inspiration."
He himself has gifted a few to friends "who were in the soulsearching phase of their lives."
When the announcement came that former Thoreau Society
President Ed Schofield had passed away in April 20 I0, Bryan
immediately recognized the name. He realized that one of his
Waldens had once belonged to Schofield. His signature appeared
011 the opening fly leaf of a small Modern Library edition, but no
other marks had been made in the book. Bryan felt that the volume
should be returned to the Concord area and to an appropriate entity.
10
I Thoreau
Society Bulletin
Number 279
It's now part of the Edmund A. Schofield
collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden
Woods.
Bryan considers his Walden collection to
be an entity all its own. He rarely pulls out
anyone of the books at random. But when he
does, it's most often the Harding volume he
bought at Walden Pond. His favorite passages
are highlighted on those pages. Still, he says,
"When I look at those shelves, I'm reminded
of Henry's quip about his own collection
of unsold copies of A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers: 'I have now a library
of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven
hundred of which I wrote myself.'"
Fall 2012
Bryan Rubenau stands in front of his collection of 141 editions of Walden.
Additions to the Thoreau
Bibliography
Robert N. Hudspeth
Bilbro, Jeffrey L. "God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of
Ecological Ethics in American Literature." 2012. Baylor
University. PhD Dissertation. 318p. " This study examines
the work of four American writers--Henry David Thoreau,
John Muir, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry--to understand
the different means they propose to enable humans to
participate in the ongoing redemptive work that God desires
to accomplish in his creation."
Brain,1. Walter. "Pages from a Thoreau Country Joumal."
Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 278 (Summer 2012): 9-10.
Burleigh, Robert. If You Spent a Day with Thoreau at Walden
Pond. Reviewed in Publishers Weekly (September 24, 2012):
76.
Chura, Patrick. Thoreau the Land Surveyor. Reviewed by
Dominique Zino in Journal a/the Early Republic 32, No.4
(Winter 2012): 744-747.
Ellis, Cristin E. L. "Political Ecologies: The Contingency
of Nature in American Romantic Thought." 2012.
Johns Hopkins University. PhD Dissertation. 167p. The
dissertation "articulates a tum to materialist thought in
the writing of Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass,
and Walt Whitman, tracing the emergence of a materialist
altemative to the ahistorical and idealized account of nature
conventionally associated with romantic thought."
Ellwood, Elizabeth R. "Climate Change and Species Phenology
at Three Trophic Levels." 2012. Boston University. PhD
Dissertation. 187p. "In response to warmer temperatures
and altered precipitation, plants and animals have adjusted
their phenologies, timing of annual biological events, over
the past few decades. However, a long-term perspective is
needed. I combined observations from Concord, MA, from
the journals of Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s with other
naturalists, to create the longest-known record of migratory
bird arrivals in North America."
Finley, James S. '" Who Are We? Where Are We?': Contact and
Literary Navigation in The Maine Woods." ISLE 19, No.2
(Spring 2012): 336-355.
Furtak, Rick Anthony, Jonathan Ellsworth, and James D.
Reid. Thoreau 50 Importance /01' Philosophy. New York:
Fordham University Press, 2012. 314p. hardcover (ISBN
0823239306), $55.00.
Gillis, Anna Maria. 'Thoreau on Flora." Humanities 33, No.4
(July/August 2012): 4.
Gould, Rebecca Kneale. "Deliberate Lives, Deliberate Living:
Thoreau and Steiner in Conversation." In American
Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce.
James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism. Ed. Robert
McDermott. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfame Books,
2012. 294p. hardcover (ISBN 1584201371), $35.00.
Greenberg, Joy Homer. "Strands: Weaving Mythopoietic
Narratives of Place as Environmental Ethics." 2012. Pacifica
Graduate Institute. PhD. Dissertation. 402p. "Ecopsychology
presents an archetypal perspective informed by the NeoPlatonist concept of anima mundi, or World Soul, as posited
by Theodore Roszak and James Hillman. Such an ethos,
however unconscious, may be seen in the works of Henry
David Thoreau and Rachel Carson, as well as in many
indigenous traditions, including the ancient myths of the
Greek nature goddess, Artemis."
Hansen, Sally P. "Thoreau's Careful Artistry in the Poem
'Smoke." Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 278 (Summer 2012):
5-7.
Heitman, Danny. "Not Exactly a Hermit." Humanities 33, No.5
(September/October 2012).
"Honoring Thoreau's Memory: Concord Events Mark the 150th
Anniversary of 'Walden' Author's Death. Sun Chronicle
[Attleboro, Mass.} (July 15,2012): A2.
Jacobs, Alan. Thoreau: Transcendent Nature/or a Modern
World. London: Watkins Publishing, 2012. 240p.
Number 279
Fall 2012
papercover (ISBN 1780281250), $12.96. Selections from
Thoreau's writings. One of Watkins Masters of Wisdom
series.
Keith, Brianne. "Thoreau's Mysticism." Thoreau Society Bulletin
No. 278 (Summer 2012): 8.
Kytle, Ethan J. '''A Transcendentalist Above All': Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, John Brown, and the Raid at
Harpers Ferry." Journal of the Historical Society 12, No.3
(September 2012): 283-308.
Mc'Iier, Rosemary Scanlon. "An Insects View of Its Plain":
Insects, Nature and God in Thoreau, Dickinson and Muir.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012. 273p. papercover (ISBN
0786464933), $35.00.
Melzow, Candice Chovanec. "Identification, Naming, and
Rhetoric in The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness and The Maine
Woods." ISLE 19, No.2 (Spring 2012): 356-374.
Miller, John P. Transcendental Learning: The Educational
Legacy of Alcott, Emerson, Fuller, Peabody and Thoreau.
Reviewed by Barry Andrews in Thoreau Society Bulletin No.
Thoreau Society Bulletin 111
278 (Summer 2012): 1-3.
Paryz, Marek. The Postcolonial and Imperial Experience
in American Transcendentalism. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012. 250p. hardcover (ISBN 0230338747),
$85.00.
Potter, Tom. "Musings on Thoreau." Thoreau Society Bulletin
No. 278 (Summer 2012): 12-13.
Rodriguez, Ginger Gundersgaard. "Canons in the Classroom:
Interrogating Value in the American Literary Tradition."
2012. Union Institute and University. PhD Dissertation. 303
p. "This study of the reception of a small group of American
authors who had similar initial advantages--the essayists
Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, the poets
Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and
the novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sara Willis Parton
(writing as Fanny Fern)--demonstrates, counter to current
canon formation theory, that the critical and pedagogical
canons move on separate tracks."
Schulz, Dieter. Emerson and Thoreau or Steps Beyond
Students from SUNY Geneseo visited Concord for their second annual month-long summer immersion program in
Transcendental Concord, Summer 2012. They met with Marjorie Harding, wife of the late Walter Harding, her son Allen
Harding, and his wife Kay Gainer. Walter Harding taught in SUNY Geneseo's English department from 1956 to 1982.
Back row, left to right: Antonia Olveida, Sean Endress, Gregory Palermo, Matthew Hill, James McGowan, Prof. Wes
Kennison, Jeffrey Handy, Rory Cushman. Front row: Marjorie Harding, Edward O. Wilson, Allen Harding, Kay Gainer.
12
I Thoreau
Society Bulletin
Number 279
Ourselves: Studies in Transcendentalism. Heidelberg,
Germany: Mattes, 2012. 307p. hardcover (ISBN
3868090576), €30.00.
Sexton, Melissa S. "'An Aligned, Transformed Constructed
World': Representing Material Environments in American
Literature 1835-1945." 2012. University of Oregon. PhD
Dissertation. 300p. "This dissertation seeks to avoid two
extremes that have polarized literary debate: on the one hand,
a strong constructivism that reduces environments to textual
effects; and, on the other hand, a strong realism that elides
language's constructive power, assuming texts' mimetic
transparency. Positioning itself within the ecocritical attempt
to reconnect text and environment, my project articulates
a constructive vision of material representation that I call
'constrained realism.'"
Sharma, Aprajita. Henry David Thoreau s Walden: "A Semiotic
Approach." New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers,
2012. 217p. hardcover (ISBN 8184353243), $13.00.
Smith, Corinne Hosfeld. Westward J Go Free: Tracing Thoreau :s
Last Journey. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Green Frigate
Books, 2012. 456p. papercover (ISBN 192704330 I), $28.95.
Reviewed by J. Parker Huber in Thoreau Society Bulletin
No. 278 (Summer 2012): 10-11.
Thoreau, Henry D. " 1849: Concord, MA: Henry David
Thoreau Declines the Honor." Lapham's Quarterly 5, No.
4 (Fall 2012): 88-90. Excerpt from "Resistance to Civil
Government" in an issue devoted to politics.
---.
The Green Thoreau: America:S First Environmentalist
on Technology, Possessions, Livelihood, and More. Ed.
Carol Spenard LaRusso. Novato, Calif.: New World Library,
2012. 120p. papercover (ISBN 1608681432), $14.00.
---.
October; or Autumnal Tints. Ed. Robert D. Richardson.
New York: w.w. Norton, 2012. 128p. hardcover (ISBN
0393081885), $17.96. With color illustrations by Lincoln
Frederick Perry.
---.
Walden, or Life in the Woods and "Civil Disobedience."
ed. W. S. Merwin and William Howarth. New York: Signet
Classics, 2012. 336p. papercover (ISBN 0451532163),
$5.95.
Trudgill, Stephen. "Nature's Clothing and Spontaneous
Generation? The Observations of Thoreau and Dureau
de la Malle on Plant Succession." Progress in Physical
Geography 36, No.5 (October 2012): 707-71A.
Van Anglen, Kevin P. "Inside the Princeton Edition: 'The
Preaching of Buddha.'" Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 278
(Summer 2012): 3-5.
Van Fossan, Ford. "The Bow, the Buck, & Thoreau." Gray s
Sporting Journal 37, No.5 (September/October 2012): 56-61.
a0
We are indebted to the following individuals for information
used in this Bulletin: Glenn H. Mott, Richard.T. Schneider, and
Richard Winslow Ill. Please keep your editor informed of items
not yet added and new items as they appear.
Fall 2012
"Old Manse"
Artist: Ludwig Mestler
Source: The Paul Brooks Collection (The Walden Woods Project
Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods)
EMERSON SOCIETY
Awards Announcements 2012-2013
The Emerson Society announces four awards
for projects that foster appreciation for Emerson.
*Graduate Student Paper Award"
Provides up to $750 oftravel support to present a paper on an
Emerson Society panel at the American Literature Association
Annual Conference (May 2013) or the Thoreau Society Annual
Gathering (July 2013). Please submit a 300-word abstract by
December 20,2012.
"Research Grant"
Provides up to $500 to support scholarly work on Emerson.
Preference given to junior scholars and graduate students.
Submit a 1-2-page project proposal, including a description of
expenses, by March 1,2013.
"Pedagogy or Community Project Award"
Provides up to $500 to support projects designed to bring
Emerson to a non-academic audience. Submit a 1-2-page projec
proposal, including a description of expenses, by March 1, 2013.
"Subvention Award"
Provides up to $500 to support costs attending the publication
of a scholarly book or article on Emerson and his circle. Submit
a 1-2-page proposal, including an abstract of the forthcoming
work and a description of publication expenses, by March 1,
2013.
Send Research, Pedagogy/Community,
and Subvention
proposals to: Jessie Bray ([email protected]) and Bonnie Carr
O'Neill ([email protected])
Award recipients must become members of the Society;
membership applications are available at
httpi//www, emersonsoci ety.org
Number 279
Fall 2012
Sentence-ing Thoreau: The Game
Michael Berger
I
'.
I
In his nifty little book on Emerson as reader and writer, First
We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process, Bob
Richardson offers a neat taxonomy of Emersonian sentences that
have "a little bite or pop, a flash-point," including "the whip-crack,
the back-flip, the brass ring (hole in one), and the mousetrap." As
Thoreau also was quite a sentence maker, perhaps we can come up
with a similar taxonomy for his virtuosity. To give a fuller picture,
Richardson describes the whip-crack as a sentence in which "it is
the final word that makes the whole sentence snap," thus: "Every
man is wanted, but no man is wanted much." The mousetrap
sentence, he notes, is "usually baited with a Latinate abstraction,
and usually sprung with plain Anglo-Saxon." Examples: "A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." "An institution is the
lengthened shadow of one man."
At the Bulletin, we are wondering, what are some of Thoreau's
paradigmatic sentence types and how would you name them? If
this game intrigues you, send examples and names to the editor to
appear in a subsequent Bulletin.
Notes from Concord:
The "Shop at" and "Friends or'
Walden Pond
Michael Frederick
Executive Director
The Thoreau Society has operated the Shop at Walden Pond
for 17 years, since 1995. The Shop has greeted millions of visitors,
introducing them to the pond, the Concord authors, and the rich
cultural and ecological history of the region. The Shop plays a key
role in carrying out the Society's mission to educate the public
about the life, works, and legacy of Henry D. Thoreau, but it also
provides the Society with the distinct honor and opportunity to
serve the greater Walden Pond State Reservation overall through
the Friends of Walden Pond.
As an important visitor services and interpretive component
of the Reservation, the Shop provides resources to visitors during
their stay and gives them the opportunity to bring something home
after they have left the pond, such as books and other mementos
that serve as reminders of their special trip to Walden.
Through the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the Thoreau
Society dating back to 2001 when the Society was designated the
official Friends group as part of a public/private partnership with
the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation
(DCR), the Society has been supporting conservation, recreation,
and interpretive programs and activities at Walden. For instance,
each year the Friends cosponsor the Window on Walden book talks
at the Shop in the Tsongas Gallery with authors covering a broad
array of topic from children's books to Thoreau and surveying.
The Friends also plays an ongoing and significant role at
the pond. The largest contribution in terms of funding came in
2005 when the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental
Affairs (EOEA) awarded the Friends of Walden Pond a matching
grant of $25,000 ($50,000 total) to rehabilitate the interior of the
bathhouse and refurbish some sign age within the Reservation.
With members in all 50 United States and 20 countries
around the world, Thoreau Society members directly determine
the ability of our organization to remain active at the pond. We
thank you for your year-end contributions and the crucial support
you give throughout the year, both financially and through direct
involvement.
In May 2012, the DCR hired Maryann Thompson Architects
to design a new visitor center at Walden Pond State Reservation.
The Thoreau Society and representatives of the Friends of Walden
Pond regularly participate in the ongoing meetings of the Walden
Pond Advisory Board.
We look forward to keeping you informed of future
developments.
d;llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll11ll1ll1l11ll1llllllllllllllllll1111111111111111I111111111111I111111111111111111111111111111111111I111111III
,,<
111111lib;
Thoreau Society Fellowship
' 'j
The Thoreau Society is pleased to announce the
second annual Thoreau Society Short-Term
Research Fellowships.
Recipients will receive $500 towards travel and
research expenses at archives in the Greater-Boston area
on Thoreau related projects, as well as free attendance at
the Thoreau Society 2013 Annual Gathering held in
_
Concord, MA, in early July. Preference will be given to
~ those candidates who will use the Thoreau Society Collections
~
housed at the Thoreau Institute (described here:
~ http://www. walden.orgiLibrary /The _Library_Collections)
= for at least part of the fellowship period. Candidates are also
encouraged to present their work at the Annual Gathering
during or the year after the fellowship period. To apply,
= candidates should send an email to the Executive Director
([email protected])
with the following
attachments:
=
_
~
~
=
_
-.I) A current curriculum vitae
2) A project proposal approximately 1,000 words in
length, including:
• a description of the project;
• a statement explaining the scholarly significance of
the project; and
• an indication of the specific archives and collections
the applicant wishes to consult.
3) Graduate students only: A leiter ofrecommendation
from a faculty member familiar with the student's work
and with the project being proposed. (This can be
emailed to the Executive Director separately.)
Applications
are due
January 21, 2013.
Awardees will be notified March 4,2013.
-
Please contact the Executive Director for more information.
~
~
~111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111IHllIIIIII1111i111111111111111111111111111111~
14 I Thoreau Society Bulletin
Number 279
Notes & Queries
Kurt Moellering
We begin this column on with the sad news of the death of two
Japanese scholars of Thoreau, Professors Hikaru Saito (19152010) and Nagayo Honma (1929-2012). Professor Hikaru Saito,
Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo, studied with Perry
Miller at Harvard and was a leading scholar of American literature
with special reference to Christian thought, Jonathan Edwards,
and Emerson in particular, as well as the transcendentalists more
broadly. As one of the founders of the Thoreau Society of Japan, he
left a deep impact on students of the American Renaissance, while
translating the works of major American authors for the general
public.
Professor Nagayo Honma (1929-2012),
also Professor
Emeritus of The University of Tokyo, studied at Amherst College
and Columbia University and was the most representative
Americanist in Japan. He wrote about and taught American
political, cultural, and intellectual history as the president of the
Japanese Association for American Studies and as
honorary
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a
founder and vice-chairman of the board of trustees, Aspen Institute
Japan.
Thanks to all who submitted to this Bulletin, and thanks to our
proofreaders: Bob Hudspeth, Dave Bonney, and Ronald Hoag.
Susan Moellering forwards an email reflection she received
on Election Day by Lillian Daniel. In the reflection, "No Small
Votes," Daniel emphasizes the importance of local elections
and that "there are no small votes." For inspiration, she looks
to Thoreau who "spoke passionately about the power of town
meetings in a speech entitled "Slavery in Massachusetts."
Cynthia Price-Glynn, principal harpist of the Boston Ballet,
sends the October 2004 issue of the Chinese American Forum, a
quarterly magazine published in St. Louis. In the issue, there is an
article "From Beijing to Bellingham: Dating the Beginning of a
New Life from a First Reading of Walden" by Ning Yu. Yu shares
the excitement he felt in Beij ing in 1981 when he encountered
Thoreau for the first time. The line that hooked him: "How many
a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!"
Thanks to Mike Berger for coming up with the idea (and the
text) of our new Thoreau sentence game, Sentence-ing Thoreau
(see page 13). I very much look forward to your sentences and
categories. Mike also sends an item from the July 20 edition of
the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to Mike, "an article
about campus libraries responding to students' desire for more
quiet areas says Georgia Tech is 'experimenting with so-called
Walden zones, or deep quiet areas, designed to help students work
free of the distractions of technology.' The article quotes William
Powers from Hamlet s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the
Digital Age, wherein Powers 'suggests that we create distractionsfree "Walden zones," at home and elsewhere, like Henry David
Thoreau's retreats to the woods in search of peace and quiet. ,,,
Mike also has forwarded "Good Stuff," an August 18 New
York Times article that discusses the difficulty the author, Gretchen
Rubin" has getting rid of all the extra "stuff' in her life and in
her Manhattan apartment. In her quest to simplify, she makes
a humorous parenthetical nod to Thoreau: "But simplicity
is complicated. (Even Thoreau, in his famous admonition
an
Fall 2012
'Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!' couldn't limit himself to a
single '''simplicity. "') Actually, Thoreau limited himself to two
"simplify's," but who's counting?
In his regular Thoreauvian dispatches from Maine, Jym St.
Pierre finds Thoreau in an art show. The show, "Maine's Woods,"
is at the Atrium Art Gallery at Lewiston-Auburn College, and it
displays the work of Bert L. Call who photographed the Maine
woods in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Each
photograph is accompanied by a quote from Thoreau's The Maine
Woods.
Jim Stapelton and Diana Bigelow have written and produced
a play about an imagined encounter between Thoreau and Emily
Dickinson. According to Jim and Diana, "the drama centers on the
two artists' conflicting needs for communion and solitude. A good
half of the play is in the language of these iconic New England
writers." It has been performed extensively in the Pacific Northwest
and is on its way east! "Henry & Emily" will be performed on
April 5-7, 2013, at Stage Left Studio, 214 W. 30th St, NYC. For
more information go to www.jimstapleton.com.
Corinne Smith sends word of a Thoreau replica cabin
constructed on the campus of Penn State Altoona. In the summer
2012 issue ofthe Ivy Leaf, Penn State Altoona's quarterly magazine,
Professor Ian Marshall writes about the experiences of him and his
students as they undertook building a Thoreau cabin. The article
also features several perspectives from his students. (For any of
you regular readers of the Bulletin, you will perhaps remember
that I too have undertaken the construction of a Thoreau replica
cabin with students. Ours, however, remains unfinished. When I
read of a completed cabin, I am always pained with a twinge of
jealousy. Though, Professor Marshall, I have something that Penn
State Altoona does not when it comes to Thoreau cabins: not one,
but two unfinished ones!)
Corinne was herself featured, along with Richard Smith, in
the Boston Globe on September 20 in an article about Thoreau's
links to communities outside of Concord that are documented in
Corinne's recent book Westward I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau s
Last Journey and the project Freedom's Way: Natural Heritage
Area. Corinne is also doing her part to help preserve Union Station
in Springfield, Massachusetts. On the website of the Springfield
Redevelopment Authority, Corinne has posted information about
the four documented times Thoreau passed through Springfield.
Corinne writes, Thoreau "would have stopped at the Westem
Railroad station each time. It pre-dated the Union station buildings
from 1926, obviously. But at least he was there."
Richard Schneider finds mention of Thoreau in Minnesota.
In the September 20 edition ofthe Minnesota Star Tribune, Rhonda
Hayes writes the column "Brushes with History" in which she
explains discovering recently that her home near Lake Calhoun
was once visited by Thoreau the year before he died. As many
Thoreauvians do, Hayes gets some special enjoyment in walking
in Thoreau's footsteps.
"When I was Thoreau at Night," a poem by Cecily Parks, is
in the Fall 2012 Kenyon Review; thanks to Bob Hudspeth for this
find.
Richard Winslow brings to our attention a couple of news paper
mentions of Thoreau. In the New York Times (September 2, 2012),
the article "Where's Walden? GPS Often Doesn't Know" tells how
GPS systems confuse Concord's pond with a reservoir near Lynn.
And in the Boston Globe (July 24, 2012), "Walden Environmental
Number 279
CIO·
Project to Honor Clinton- describes the awarding of the Global
Environmental Leadership.
• former President Clinton by
the Walden Woods Proje
Finally, and on ape
te. I have recently received from
my friend Katie Martin a ~ •. s: sketch of Thoreau by Dwight
Sturges (see below). The ir 'on on that photo, taken from A
Week on the Concord and Merrimac): Rivers, reads: "In each dewdrop of the morning / Lies
. e of a day." This picture hung
in the home of Katie's
et f • decades, and when he passed
away recently Katie gene
-:. == ve this picture to me. Her father
Guy Emerson Martin \\
_ - llower of the transcendentalists
generally, and Emerson in ~ icular (how could he not be, with
that middle namel). Katie
I th are interested in the origins of
the picture, which was ske
y turges in 1938. If anyone has
information about it, pleas
it my way.
The winter came on unexpectedly early.
-Henry David Thoreau,
The Maine Woods, published 1864
President s Column:
Thoreau
'as Wrong
Michael Schleifer
In the Spring ha t r of Walden, Thoreau states that we can
never have enough of nature. Of course, he did not live on the
Northeast coast of the United States in October 2012. The past few
weeks have been an unusual journey for me and my family. On
October 29, we left our home in the Manhattan Beach section of
Brooklyn to join my mother-in-law a mile away, on the other side
of Sheepshead Bay. Warnings about a record breaking storm surge
had been predicted (as it turned out, quite accurately) for over
a week, and the combination of high tide, a full moon, and late
season hurricane was too much for our coastal community to bear.
My wife Jamee and I went for a walk at about 5:45, with little
indication of what was imminent. We saw high winds, but little
rain and no water on the streets. As mom's house is=-or, rather,
was-just a couple of hundred yards from the bay, we wrote the
warnings off as just another exaggeration by the weather folks.
Like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, we asked "since when
can weathermen predict the weather?" We found out 15 minutes
later when we received a fortuitous knock at the door and cries of
"get out now," as ankle deep water surged down the street and into
mom's street level first floor. We moved our cars a few hundred
yards away from the water, which turned out to be in vain. Five
minutes later we would have been in her dark attic cowering.
Instead, we made our way to higher ground in the one car that
survived, to what was to become our shelter for the next 4 weeks.
We could only watch with the rest of the world as events unfolded
on our hosts' television. We saw an entire neighborhood across the
bay bum to the ground in an electrical fire. Over 100 homes were
lost. A friend called from her ship in Boston harbor-s-of course
they could not come into New York-to say that her husband was
still at home and that our street was under 15 feet of water. She told
us, "Forget your home, your cats are dead." As I look at these cats
while writing this, I remember God's response when Nietzsche
made a similar pronouncement. (OK, it is a joke found on T-shirts,
but Nietzsche is, in fact, dead.)
Where nature and life are concerned, Thoreau always comes
to mind. What book did I grab when leaving my house? Assuming
we might be away a day or two (it turned into a month. And six
weeks later, we still use space heaters), I grabbed Thoreau and the
Art of Life from Heron Dance Press. (Yes, it is available through
the Shop at Walden Pondl) From ajoumal entry in 1851, Thoreau
writes: "Is not disease the rule of existence?" Interpreted as disease, that is surely what we suffered in the weeks that followed
Hurricane Sandy. Others met a fate far worse than our own. Because
the water stopped 3 inches below the ceiling in our basement, our
first (and now only) living space was spared. The sweet irony is
that much of what was lost in the basement should have been lost
long ago. Simplify, Simplify.
As it turns out, sometimes it is necessary to practice
resignation. This was one time I had more than enough of nature.
16
I Thoreau
Society Bulletin
Number 279
Fall 2012
The Thoreau Society Bulletin is a quarterly publication containing Thoreau
Society news, additions to the Thoreau bibliography, and short articles
about Thoreau and related topics. It is indexed in American Humanities
Index and Ml.A International Bibliography.
Editor: Kurt A. R. Moellering, PhD.
Layout Editor: Rob Velella, MA.
Editorial Advisory Committee: Dave Bonney, Ronald A. Bosco, Jessie
N. Bray, Nicholas Chase. James Dawson, James Finley, Michael Frederick,
Ronald Wesley Hoag, Robert Hudspeth, Brianne Keith, Wesley T. Mott,
Sandra Petrulionis, Richard Schneider.
Honorary
Advisor:
Edward O. Wilson, PhD.
Board of Directors: Michael Schleifer, CPA, President; Charles T. Phillips,
Treasurer; Gayle Moore, Clerk; Rev. Barry Andrews, DMin; Michael
Berger, PhD; J. Walter Brain; David Briggs, PhD; Andrew Celentano; Jack
Doyle; Joseph Fisher; Susan Gallagher, PhD; Margaret Gram; Ronald Hoag,
PhD; Elise Lemire, PhD; Paul J. Medeiros, PhD; Tom Potter, Immediate
Past President; Dale Schwie; Joseph Wheeler.
Staff: Michael J. Frederick,
Executive Director; Marlene Mandel,
Accountant; Roger Mattlage, Membership; John Fadiman, Shop Supervisor;
Martha Sinclair, Richard Smith, and Melanie Stringer, Shop at Walden
Pond Associates.
Established in 1941, The Thoreau Society, Inc."
is an international
nonprofit organization with a mission to stimulate interest in and foster
education about Thoreau's life, works, legacy, and his place in his world
and in ours, challenging all to live a deliberate, considered life. The Thoreau
Society ™ has the following organizational goals:
To encourage research on Thoreau's life and works
and to act as a repository for Thoreau-related
materials
To educate the public about Thoreau's ideas and
their application to contemporary life
To preserve Thoreau's legacy and advocate for the
preservation of Thoreau country
Edmund O. Wilson signs books during the Thoreau Annual
Gathering, July 2012. Wilson was this year's keynote
speaker.
Please submit items for the winter Bulletin
to your editor before February 15:
[email protected]
Although exceptions will occasionally be made for
longer pieces, in general articles and reviews should be
no longer than 1500 words. Longer submissions may be
forwarded by the editor to the Concord Saunterer. All
submissions should conform to The Chicago Manual of
Style. The Thoreau Edition texts (Princeton University
Press) should be used as the standard for quotations from
Thoreau's writings, when possible. Contributors need not
be members of the Thoreau Society, but all non-members
are heartily encouraged to join.
Membership in the Society includes subscriptions to its two publications,
the Thoreau Society Bulletin (published quarterly) and The Concord
Saunterer: A Journal 0/ Thoreau Studies (published annually). Society
members receive a 10% discount on all merchandise purchased from The
Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond and advance notice about Society
programs, including the Annual Gathering.
Membership:
Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord, MA
01742, U.S.A.; tel: (978) 369-5310; fax: (978) 369-5382; e-rnail: info@
thoreausociety.org.
Merchandise
(including books and mail-order items): Thoreau Society
Shop at Walden Pond, 915 Walden Street, Concord, MA 017424511, U.S.A.: tel: (978) 287-5477; fax: (978) 287-5620; e-mail: info@
shopatwaldenpond.org;
Web: www.shopatwaldenpond.org.
Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies: Kristen Case,
University of Maine at Farmington, Roberts Learning Center, 270 Main
Street. Farmington, ME 04938, U.S.A.; tel: (207) 778-7239; e-mail: kristen.
[email protected].
Thoreau Society Bulletin: Kurt Moellering, Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia
Road. Concord, MA 01742, U.S.A.: tel: (617) 852-9889; fax (978) 3695382; e-mail: [email protected].
The Thoreau Society Collections: the Society's Collections are housed at
the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, owned and managed by the Walden
Woods Project. For information about using the Collections or visiting the
Institute, please contact the curator at: [email protected].
All other communications:
Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord,
MA 01742, U.S.A.; tel: (978) 369-5310; fax: (978) 369-5382; e-rnail:
[email protected].
www.thoreausociety.org
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Thoreau Society Bulletin, Fall 2012, Number 279

Transcription

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