walden....

ok,so today's first blog has been borrowed from mpr's writer's almanac....

It's the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts (1817). He's the author of Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) and the essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849).

He became the first member of his family to go to college when he enrolled at Harvard in 1833 at age sixteen. He wasn't especially happy with the teaching methods used at Harvard. Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have remarked that most of the branches of learning were taught at Harvard and Thoreau to have replied, "Yes, indeed, all the branches and none of the roots." He graduated in 1837, ninth in his class, and refused a diploma, thinking there were better ways to spend five dollars.

He changed his name to Henry David and became a teacher. When criticized by the supervisor of the local public school for not using corporal punishment on his students, Thoreau thrashed a random group of his pupils to illustrate the senselessness of it all and resigned from the school. When Emerson moved to Concord, Thoreau lived with him and did odd jobs around the house. Emerson encouraged Thoreau to write poetry, and suggested that Thoreau keep a journal, both of which Thoreau continued to do his entire life.

In 1845, when Thoreau was twenty-seven, he built a small cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, a small lake near Concord, and moved there. His motto was "Simplify, simplify, simplify." He said that his goal was "to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach." And he said, "I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up." Walden was published in 1854. Thoreau said, "Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.


i like this guy.......wonder how he handled all the weeds after several days of rain...........