Thinking about getting a #Thoreau portrait to hang in the new apartment, help me decide which one.

"I feel as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without principle to her, not expecting more, and yet not content with less. If she could know that I make an infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she would see that this true though incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better than a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, without the principle of growth in it."

#Thoreau on #Friendship (from a Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers)

#Quote

3/ and later he points a finer point on it:

"It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender."

#Thoreau #Walden

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” -- #Thoreau, #Walden, published on this day in 1854.

#bookstodon
#litstudies

#OTD in 1854 #Walden was published. Thoreau's journal entry for that day was uncharacteristically brief:

Aug. 9. Wednesday. —To Boston.
“Walden” published. Elder-berries. Waxwork yellowing.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm

@gutenberg_org #Thoreau

This is a great review. I've tried to read some of Kaag's other books and found them shallow, facile, and also kind of arrogant? Anyway, don't buy the book, but hopefully this review will make you want to read Walden:

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/henry-david-thoreau-walden-henry-at-work-review

#Thoreau #Jacobin #Labor

I have always been someone who walks a lot, for many of these reasons.

https://atmos.earth/benefits-of-walking-and-thinking/

But they get the #Thoreau #quote wrong! It's: in wildness is the preservation of the world. NOT wilderness. Big difference methinks

1/ I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but whenever I read a new book I'm always thinking about ways it connects or relates to all the other books I've read.

Naturally, because I tend to reread a lot of the same things (like #Thoreau and #Zhuangzi) I tend to more easily find connections between new books and those more familiar ones.

When I first read #BraidingSweetgrass a few years ago I immediately felt many, many connections to both.

@CitizenWald
🥥 Just curious, how many locales in 'Murica ban #Thoreau's
writings? 🥥

Or if you want to celebrate Thoreau's 206th birthday and you're a @medium member/user you can also read them on @thetaoistonline:

https://thetaoist.online/only-the-world-we-look-for-18bc669a3181

https://thetaoist.online/that-matter-to-which-i-am-bound-7a2520773c80

https://thetaoist.online/the-nature-of-emotions-31285ef07c6a

#OTD #Thoreau

Thought I'd re-share some of my recent blog posts about #Thoreau since #OTD in 1817 he was born. I guess it would be more accurate to say these are posts where I think with Thoreau, or use Thoreau's writing and ideas to make sense of my experience of the world.

About a trip to Mackinac Island, where Thoreau visited shortly before his death: https://freeanduneasy.blog/only-the-world-we-look-for/

About a hospital stay with my disabled brother: https://freeanduneasy.blog/that-matter-to-which-i-am-bound/

Phenology and emotions: https://freeanduneasy.blog/the-seasons-and-their-changes/

2/2 ... Already some of my small thoughts--fruit of my spring life--are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds; and other some are prematurely ripe and bright, like the lower leaves of the herbs which have felt the summer’s drought."

7 August, 1854

#Thoreau #Quote

1/2 #Today is the 206th anniversary of Thoreau's birth.

"Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness? How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character? ...

#Thoreau #Quote #QuoteOfTheDay #QOTD

Learning how to relate to and inhabit the place we live daily—our homes—is a lifelong endeavor, one that Thoreau, more than any other, has helped me with.

But how do we relate to places we inhabit only briefly?

"My relationship to those places, like all relationships, was shaped as much by what I wasn’t seeing as by what I was. Or, to put it more bluntly, my experience of that place was a direct result of what I ignored"

https://freeanduneasy.blog/only-the-world-we-look-for/

#Thoreau #WritingCommunity @writingcommunity

If, like me, you have nothing to do on a Friday night, *and* you want to read a 2000ish word post about a recent trip I took to my family's 100 year old cottage on the shore of Lake Michigan and how it relates to Thoreau's final journey before his death, then you're in luck:

https://thetaoist.online/only-the-world-we-look-for-18bc669a3181

Or on my blog: https://freeanduneasy.blog/only-the-world-we-look-for/

#Thoreau #TravelWriting #WritingCommunity @writingcommunity #Blogging

I know I'm a day late for a #ThursdayThoreau post, but time is an illusion anyway:

https://freeanduneasy.blog/only-the-world-we-look-for/

This is a reflection on my trip to my family cottage in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I walked with #Thoreau on Mackinac Island as the redstart sang.

#writingcommunity @writingcommunity #blogging #MackinacIsland

Action from principle,—the perception and the performance of right,—changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the *individual,* separating the diabolical in him from the divine." — #Thoreau

1/ John Kaag on the childless Thoreau as a model for fatherhood:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/16/opinion/fatherhood-henry-david-thoreau/

He does a good job of including a lot of interesting biographical info about Thoreau most people don't know...

#FathersDay #Thoreau #Fatherhood

If you're looking for something to read this #weekend check out my latest post about Thoreau's "The Maine Woods" and a trip to the emergency room with my disabled brother.

https://freeanduneasy.blog/that-matter-to-which-i-am-bound/

#LongReads #Thoreau #Disability

1/ While I was in the emergency room last week with my brother there was one passage from Thoreau that kept pushing its way into my mind. I tried all week to write about something else but it was relentless, so I decided to try and work it out of my system by writing whatever came to mind.

It is way longer than I expected but it feels good to get it all out.

https://freeanduneasy.blog/that-matter-to-which-i-am-bound/

@writingcommunity #WritingCommunity #Thoreau #Disability #Blogging