ThoreauSocietyBulletin

ISSN 0040-6406 Number 279 Fall 2012

Remembering Thoreau in 1962 atDumbarton Oaks

Joseph C. Wheeler

CELEBRATING THOREAU'S LEGACY

This year, Thoreauvians are remembering Thoreau 150 yearsafter his death. I had the privilege of attending a Washington,D.C. event on May 11, 1962-on the hundredth anniversary. Thisremembrance event was held in the sylvan glade at DumbartonOaks Park. It was cosponsored by Secretary ofthe Interior StewartL. Udall, and The Wilderness Society represented by Howard C.Zahniser. The idea for the ceremony came from William MonisMeredith, Jr., who later became United States Poet Laureate.

Walter Harding, the Thoreau Society's Executive Director, wasasked 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 theoccasion. However, my mother, Ruth Wheeler, got her invitationand sent it on to me, since I was at the time working for the PeaceCorps in Washington.

The attached picture that I took that day shows from left to rightHoward 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 nota speaker; he attended as a "friend" of Justice Douglas).

A search for a copy of remarks made revealed that SecretaryUdall had had a court reporter transcribe the short speeches.Jeff Cramer, curator of collections at The Thoreau Institute, hasprovided me a copy of the transcript which he found in WalterHarding'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 withCongress on The Wilderness Act that was passed in 1964 shortlyafter his death.

Howard Zahniser, in introducing Secretary of the InteriorStewart L. Udall, called him "a Thoreauvian who hirnselfis awareof the importance of the quality of wildness and the importance ofthe preservation of areas where it can be experienced." He referredto Udall as "the captain of our own hucklebeny party."

Secretary Udall, in introducing the speakers, quoted acommunication from the author E. B. White, who said, "For a deadman, Thoreau manages to keep surprisingly abreast of the news. Ifind him assaying calm in all weathers and all ideas. I hope he andhis 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 inten minutes with a woodchuck than most men could get out of anight with Cleopatra."

Udall said, when introducing Robert Frost, who was then 88years old, that he had "the SaJ11equalities of mind, the SaJ11efeelingfor this land. He has the same regard for the need of being versed incountry things, as he has put it. I think: he has the SaJ11eawarenessthat Thoreau had of the elusiveness of truth .... "

In his brief remarks, Robert Frost noted that there were fourgreat Americans: Washington, AdaJ11s,Jefferson, and in particular,Madison. "There is nothing to measure beside those statesmen butthe names of Thoreau and Emerson." Continuing, Frost discussedWalden.

More than anything else, Thoreau wrote thatwonderful, beautiful story book: character; incidents;adventure; adventure in thought; adventure inhousekeeping; everything; and whenever I am weary

Contents

Remembering Thoreau in 1962 at Dumbarton Oaks 1

Call for Papers: Thoreau Society Bulletin 2

Thoreau Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3

Young Thoreauvian Christopher Roof 5

Thoreau s Importance for Philosophy: A Review 5

Call for Papers: Thoreau and American Philosophy 7Pages from a Thoreau Country Journal 7

Bryan Rubenau's Wall of Walden 9

Additions to the Thoreau Bibliography 10

Sentence-ing Thoreau: The Game 13

Notes from Concord 13

Notes & Queries. . 14

President's Column . . . . . . . . . .. 15

2 I Thoreau Society Bulletin Number 279 Fall 2012

of considerations-there is a line of my poetrysomewhere-when I am weary of my considerations,and I cannot stand it any longer, J always say, "Mefor the woods." Somebody said I talk wood too much.The word "woods" means mad, you know, too. Butthat is it. I want to go wild in the woods. I have beentelling this story a long time. The first poem in myfirst book is the wish for wilderness where I can getreally lost. I never got lost. Like Daniel Boone said,he never was lost. He had been bewildered; but I havenot even been bewildered. I want to be bewildered-lost-not be able to find my way home. That is whatthe wilderness is.

When Udall introduced William O. Douglas, then SupremeCourt Associate Justice (who became the longest serving justicein the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, completing his servicein 1975), he noted that "Thoreau called himself 'Inspector ofSnowstorms' .... I think if he has any successor as 'Inspectorof Wilderness,' it is our next speaker, a man who shares his scornfor modem transportation. He is a 'shank's mare' man. He hasstill today, as lively and as keen as Thoreau's, a concern for theestrangement of man from his natural surroundings, and I think hewould share one ofthe things that Thoreau wrote or said in his lastyears ... '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 Society Bulletin

Thoreau as a Mystic, Transcendentalist,Natural Philosopher, Writer,

and Citizen/Activist.

The Thoreau Society seeks to include in The Thoreau SocietyBulletin over the next several numbers a variety of shortpieces celebrating Thoreau's legacy, in recognition of thesesquicentennial of Thoreau's death in 1862.

Short articles by scholars and enthusiasts are welcome onfive themes encompassing the main fields of thought andaction in which Thoreau's legacy is widely perceived. Threeof those come from his famous self-definition: "The fact isI am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopherto boot." In addition, most readers would acknowledgeThoreau's importance as writer and as citizen. Other broadthemes and definitions may be important, but these area handy bunch on which to hang an array of celebratoryreflections.

Submissions on the order of 400-1,000 words are invited-we are looking for personal "takes" on Thoreau, overviews,and pithy summaries rather than detailed excursionssupported with secondary sources. Should initial effortsinspire longer treatment (citations allowed but not requiredhere), longer submissions on these themes are welcome forThe Concord Saunterer.

national parks. They were leaving enormous quantities of theirtrash behind them. He then said:

We are all grateful to the Supreme Court ofMassachusetts for its 1960 decision in the Nickolscase.' Plans had been made to build concrete rampsfor the beaches of Walden Pond, to widen the beach,which meant cutting down the embankment, cuttingmany trees to provide access roads for fishermenwho no more cml walk, and to put up a 100-footconcrete bath house. But for the intervention of theMassachusetts Court, Walden Pond would be today ahighly modernized amusement park.

This man Thoreau did not know the world becausehe never traveled much. He said, "It is not worththe while to go round the world to count the cats inZanzibar,"? to which comment Mr. Tomlinson oncereplied that, while Thoreau was right about Zanzibar,we wish he had visited it because he would havecounted more than cats. We miss the book he wouldhave made."

Thoreau's curiosity and active mind would haveindeed produced an exciting calm on Zanzibar,bringing to light things that its miserable people andthe slave traders of that day never knew about theearth and [its] beauty.

I have traveled with Thoreau everywhere he went.In New England, he did not penetrate as far north inthe Maine woods as I had imagined. He saw some ofthe head water of the Allagash, but not the wild riveritself, the one which, like Walden Pond, is now beingthreatened by bulldozers and roads and motels andcivilization.

Wherever Thoreau went, he was the explorer whowas excited, who was stumped and baffled by newdiscoveries, and that is a great comfort to all of usamateurs, who, no matter how frequent our hiking ofold trails, always find something new that sends usscurrying to the libraries for research.

I do not believe Thoreau ever did identify the nightwarbler which he talked about in Walden, and whichI believe was the oven bird in flight. Once he sawthree birds and he said they were sandpipers, tell tails,or plovers. Then he added, "Or maybe they are justtumstones."

Thoreau's curiosity was about the wonders ofcreation, including man, but mostly about thosewonders which are at our feet and yet which weseldom see. "Is not the midnight," Thoreau asks, "likeCentral Africa to most of us?"?

The answer in 1962 is still in the affirmative. Yeteven here, along the Potomac, great events oftentranspire at midnight.

I wonder how many have heard on wild Marchnights the armada of whistling swans over Georgetownand the Palisades, heading for northern nesting.grounds. We do not have the whippoorwill Thoreauknew from the North Woods, mld it ushers in, as youknow, the darkness; and when the first gray streaks of

Number 279 Fall 2012

today.dawn are visible, it announces that the time for sleep isalmost over. The haunting sound of that wondrous birdhas strong appeal to Thoreau, whose wish was that hewould hear it some night, hear it sing in his dreams.

Thoreau, an individualist, was the spiritual kinto Gandhi, although they were separated by many,many decades; and he inspired some of the things thatGandhi did.

Thoreau would, I think, be alarmed at America'spresent trend to conformity. Thoreau, the individual,did not walk with the crowd nor bend to society'sprejudices, and the Bill of Rights was not written forhis time; for a nation of conformists, civil rights wouldnot be very consequential.

Emerson said Thoreau was in his own personpractical, and almost a refutation to the theories ofthe Socialists. He lived extemporaneously from hourto hour, like the birds and the angels, the only manof leisure in his town, and his independence made allothers look like slaves.s

Thoreau found his sanctuary, his cathedral, inthe woods. The endless wonders of nature were hisexcitement. A swamp was not a spot to drain, but aplace for reflection. He discovered there the symbioticrelation of plant to plant, of animal to animal. Thesewere his excitements.

If we could all say to him, the heaven and the earthare one flower, we would be as anxious to clean up ourrivers and preserve our islands of wilderness as we areto put a man on the moon.

On June 17, 1853, Thoreau notes in his journal, "Ifa man walks in the woods for love of them and [to] seehis fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days,he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his wholeday as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he isesteemed industrious and enterprising-making earthbald before its time.'?

Thoreau lived when. men were appraising trees interms only of board feet, not in terms of water shedprotection and birds and music. His protests againstthat narrow outlook were among the first to be heardon this continent, and they still plague the conscienceof all those whose voice is the voice of conservation,but whose deeds are destructive of wilderness value.

Thoreau lived long before the insecticides andpesticides appeared to upset our ecological balanceand to poison the fields and gardens where we growour food and the waters that carry the poisonoussolubles into our farms and rivers and lakes.

Thoreau lived when the symbol of destruction ofthe wilderness was the ax and gun powder. He neverknew the bulldozer and the reckless, ruinous loggingpractices in which we now indulge.

Thoreau did, however, know the quiet desperationin which most people led their lives, and man'scapabilities to destroy the earth and its goodness, andhis warnings are relevant and timely in the 1960s,more relevant and timely, I think, than when they wereuttered, and that is the occasion for the meeting here

Thoreau Society Bulletin 13

I feel privileged to have attended remembrance eventscelebrating Henry David Thoreau's life, both 100 years and 150years after his death. As Ireflect on this Dumbarton Oaks ceremonyhonoring Henry Thoreau, I note that the emphasis was on thepreservation 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. Atthe time of its passage, some nine million acres were preserved,and today, according to The Wilderness Society website, nearly110 million acres are protected. Clearly, E. B. White was right insaying Thoreau is still talking to us.

• Joseph C. Wheeler was born and brought up on Thoreau Farm inConcord and worked for fortyyears in internationaldevelopment.Afterreturningto Concord in 1992,he led the campaign to preserve the house inwhich Thoreau was born; he is a member of The Thoreau SocietyBoard.

AcknowledgementsIam grateful to Doris M. Audette, who discovered the existence

of the transcript ofthe Dumbarton Oaks event, and helped with thepreparation 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.2d911 b (1960). This case was the culmination of The Thoreau Society'sSave Walden Campaign. See Joseph Wheeler, "Saving Walden," TheConcord Saunterer, N.S. Volume 12/13, 2004/2005.

3 Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau:Walden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 322.

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, November1863.

6 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau." The Atlantic Monthly, October1883.

7 Thoreau, Journal, vol. 5. (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press,Houghton Mifflin, 1949),267.

Thoreau SpringJensen Bissell

In 1846, Henry David Thoreau ascended from a nearbycampsite on the West Branch of the Penobscot toward what isnow known as Baxter Peak. It seems clear that Thoreau climbed asignificant part of the way toward the peak and almost assuredlyabove treeline, most likely ascending near the current Abol Slideor somewhere between Baxter Peak and South Peak, but poorweather prevented Thoreau from reaching the summit. Thoreau'ssubsequent writings about his experience on Katahdin and in theMaine Woods had a great and lasting effect on people's viewof the region. Fannie Hardy Eckstrom wrote of the influence of

4 I Thoreau Society Bulletin Number 279 Fall 2012

Thoreau Spring Tablet, installed August 22, 2012Courtesy of Jensen Bissell

Thoreau's writing, "So, though, he was neither woodsman norscientist, Thoreau stood at the gateway of the woods and openedthem to all future comers with the key of poetic insight. And afterthe woods shall have passed away, the vision of them as he sawthem will remain .... Indeed, this whole description of Katahdinis unequaled.'?

Nearly eighty years later in 1924, Percival P. Baxter concludedhis political career after failing to win the Republican party'snomination over Owen Brewster of Dexter, Maine. Brewsterwent on to become Governor of Maine and in 1925 he climbedKatahdin with great fanfare as the first sitting Governor to do so.The site of the spring at the junction of the Abol and Hunt Trailswas christened "Governor's Spring" in 1925 and commemoratedby an engraving on a rock near the spring that read:

Governor'sSpring

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 helppromote his proposal to create a national park centered on Katahdin.Brewster's national park proposal arose during Baxter's work tocreate the Park, and Baxter worked ceaselessly for two years todefeat the proposal. In 1933 Baxter completed the purchase ofthefirst 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 locationnear the spring. This was installed and a photo of the plaque existsin the Park's archives. It can be assumed that the original chiseledcommemoration of Governor's Spring was removed at this timefor it is no longer extant at the site.

Sometime over the years, the original 1933 plaque was stolenor removed. On August 22, 2012, almost eighty years again fromthe date of the installation of the original plaque and more than160 years from Thoreau's ascent of Katahdin, we installed areplacement plaque for Thoreau Spring. The wording is identicalto the original as specified by Percival Baxter. The day was windyand cool with clouds obscuring the landscape from time to time-atypical day on the Tableland.

I want to thank Bill Greaves of the Maine Forest Service andMFS pilot Lincoln Mazzei for their critical support in this effort-we would not have accomplished it without their help. BaxterState Park Resource Manager Rick Morrill was also a great workmate 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 25years, 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 Storyof Baxter State Park (Woolwich, ME: TBW Books, 1981), 16.

Number 279 Fall 2012 Thoreau Society Bulletin I 5

Christopher RoofCourtesy Concord Free Public Library

Young Thoreauvian ChristopherRoof

Kristina Joyce

Christopher Roof, born on April 24, 1951, in Concord,Massachusetts, disappeared from Nashua, New Hampshire, inAugust of 2010. What happened to him remains a mystery, Hisconnection to Henry David Thoreau and The Thoreau Society isan interesting one and all the more interesting because he donatedhis personal records and writings to the Concord Library SpecialCollections before he disappeared.

The records show that Christopher is descended from RhodeIsland founder, Roger Williams, and that his grandparents wereoriginators of the Sheraton Hotel Corporation. His grandmotherEleanor Moore started the Belknap Street Concord Lyceum (iteventually merged with the Thoreau Society) and supported itfinancially with her husband Robert. Christopher himself workedat the Lyceum with Anne McGrath for many years. He was avoracious reader of Thoreau and an excellent guide. With hispersonal money, he supported the saving of Concord land-inparticular Thoreau Country land-and other environmental causes(his Greenpeace coloring storybook is The Whale Friends). Themoney he donated could have sustained him for his entire life, andhe always told me that he had given it up willingly.

Roland Wells Robbins (the "pick and shovel historian" whoexcavated Thoreau's cabin site) was a father figure to Christopher.At Roland's memorial service in 1987, Christopher read one ofRoland's poems with me. Christopher's own parents, writersfollowing a mystic fascination, journeyed to India with him

and his siblings. Steeped in Eastem philosophy from an earlyage, Christopher understood Thoreau from that perspective. Heattended The Cambridge School of Weston, a private, progressivehigh school, when he returned to the USA, and graduated fromcollege in 1978 Summa Cum Laude with a BFA from Boston'sEmerson 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 toThe 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 PoetryBook (1995); and Idylls (2004). He once said that he wished hecould have written the Harry Potter series. He was also a poetand listed that as his profession. He brought his own knowledgeof Thoreau to Concord students through his work as a substituteteacher. He is fondly remembered by the students who havecontributed to the "Where is Mr. Roof?" page on Facebook. Hegave 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 whereaboutsfor his close friends and family to follow. The Concord LibrarySpecial Collections staff has set up a listing of their ChristopherRoof holdings at www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/fin _aids/Roof.htrn. Christopher is a fascinating Thoreauvian as one may see inthe library collection and on-line.

• Kristina Joyce (MSAed from Massachusetts College of Art) is anartist and teacher out of her home studio in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau's Importance forPhilosophy: A Review

Stephen Hahn

Rick Anthony Furtak, Jonathan Ellsworth, and James D.

Reid, Ed. Thoreau s Importance/or Philosophy. New York:

Fordham University Press, 2012. 314p.

Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy brings together thirteenviews of Thoreau's writing in relation to philosophical themes,ancient and modem, concluding with an e-mail interview betweenthe first editor, Rick Anthony Furtak, and Stanley Cavell, pre-eminent American philosopher of the latter part of the twentiethcentury and into the twenty-first. Cavell, of course, gave significantrecognition to the philosophical interests inherent in Thoreau'swriting at a time when a different model of philosophical inquirydominated academic philosophical discourse to the almosttotal exclusion of moral philosophers such as Thoreau from thephilosophical canon and classroom. Cavell recognized as importantphilosophical work the practice of reading Thoreau's figurativeexpression alongside the investigations ofWittgenstein and Kant'scritical philosophy. In the interview with Cavell collected here("Walden Revisited" 223-37), these remain two productive pointsof comparison among many regarding the history of philosophy,in which Thoreau both has and has not been situated. The essaysin this volume situate Thoreau in relation to multiple strains ofphilosophical inquiry.

6 I Thoreau Society Bulletin Number 279 Fall 2012

The editors take as the epigraph to their introductory essay apassage from Walden that recalls us to a somewhat different modeland image of philosophical being than the one that emerged inacademic philosophy in the century and a half after Walden and therest of Thoreau's writing:

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtlethoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to lovewisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life ofsimplicity, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve someof the problems of life, not only theoretically, butpractically. 1

Straightforwardly enough, the editors announce their intentionto "address and remedy [the philosophical] neglect [of Thoreau],and to provide a clear account of Thoreau's contributions tophilosophy," the first of which, of course, is arguably (not allwould agree) to exemplify the alternate definition of philosophypartially suggested and outlined in this passage.

The essays collected here illuminate how Thoreau's writingcontests what one might call the malnutrition of academicphilosophy as it has evolved through iterations oflogical positivismand other reductive logical-mathematical models. Allusion is oneway, as Thoreau often inserts into his punning and multi-vocalprose an encounter with a figure or position from the history ofphilosophy or, somewhat uncannily, from the future of philosophy(Wittgenstein, for instance). The chief philosophical nemesiswho emerges here in Thoreau's quest to realize an alternativeideal, and to revivify both the philosopher-person and the objectsof his or her attentions, is Descartes (and, secondarily, Locke).The allies are numerous and include both giants in the canonicaltradition 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 Americanpragmatists, including C. S. Peirce and John Dewey (somewhatin, and mostly out). The very minor consideration of WilliamJames, amounting only to a few references, is indicative of theconcentration of focus that would be quite different, I think, if

Wood engraving ofthe Walton Ricketsonbas-relief of Thoreau

Source: The Walter Harding Collection (The ThoreauSociety Collections at the Thoreau Institute at WaldenWoods)

this were a collection of essays solicited from literary historiansand scholars, though I am counting this as a difference and notnecessarily a demerit. That otherwise than with the exceptionof the Cynics the list of engagements, foreshortened here,progressively tends toward the non-canonical, and non-academicis part of the story. Frequently, an essay works both to explicateat a deeper level a surface resemblance, such as that betweenThoreau and Diogenes, and retrospectively to rehabilitate aspectsof a philosopher or school that' had been excluded and maligned,such as the Cynics (Douglas R. Anderson, "An Emerson GoneMad: Thoreau's American Cynicism" [185-200]).

A feature of Thoreau's writing that most clearly separateshim from what would become the identifying characteristic ofmainstream, canonical philosophy is his relative indifferenceto logical argumentation and in particular the academic sortof procedures that can be ridiculed by citing the supposedlyobjective and unmotivated admonition of analytic philosophyto "take 'p' .... " Indirection rules as in the cases of allusion andpunning, and also in the use of other parables and figures. Yet onenot untypical passage from Walden helps to locate Thoreau mostclearly in realm of philosophical (distinct from poetic) discourse:

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we shouldneed only one fact, or the description of one actualphenomenon to infer all the particular results atthat point. Now we know only a few laws, and ourresult is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion orirregularity in nature, but in our ignorance of essentialelements in the calculation. . . . The particular lawsare as our points of view, as, to the traveller [sic], amountain outline varies with every step, and it hasan infinite number of profiles, though absolutely butone fonn. Even when cleft or bored through it is notcomprehended in its entireness.'

We are tempted to see Thoreau landed here squarely in therealm of philosophy, reasoning through the puzzle of incompleteknowledge and multiple perspectives to a certainty ofthe underlyingunity of reality. Such is the most apparently philosophical-like ofpassages in Thoreau, considered by the ear of academic philosophy,depending as much as it does on the untested assumption, orfiction, of a prior unity of the thing to be apprehended. The passagearticulates an epistemological and metaphysical puzzle, only tosolve it by sleight of hand. Yet it does establish a Thoreauvianperspective on a question of singular philosophical relevance, thequestion of value, i.e., the value of multiple points of view in theconstruction and discovery of a collective sense of reality.

A common theme throughout the essays is the recuperation ofa lively relation between self and the objects of its attention, whichis phrased similarly and differently by individual contributors. Asin the passage cited above, this brings into play the issues of value,which always includes a reference to some agency: Even that whichtranscends economy and exchange is sweet only because it doesso for some agent who desires such transcendence. Collectively,these essays unite in expressions of this theme:

A world, however poor, is not composed ofaccumulating fact. The truth is pretty nearly thereverse: There is a fact at all because there is ameaningful world, a site where facts cross becausethey've been significantly placed. (James D. Reid,

Number 279 Fall 2012 Thoreau Society Bulletin I 7

"Speaking Extravagantly," 51.)

To lose the multiple languages of natural historyis to lose nature, to dismember a culture that valuesnature... (Laura Dassow Walls, "Articulating aHuckleberry Cosmos," 109.)

Yet whether or not he ever succeeds at uniting thepoetic and scientific perspectives, Thoreau is confidentthat 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 fromamong a dozen elaborated interpretations, they do seem torepresent a collective desire. Yet I am not sure that a desire fora reassurance of Thoreau's grasp of a belief in unity-in-diversity,if not its revelation, is entirely consonant with the outcomes ofThoreau's or with Cavell's inquiries.

Thoreau does propose, like Descartes, and in the tradition ofWestern philosophy, to get to the bottom of things, and establisha ''point d'appui," for the apprehension of truth-at least he sayshe does SO.3 But he is a complex thinker who also observes in hisalways living language:

No face we can give to a matter will stead usso well at last as the truth. For the most paJ1, we arenot where we are, but in a false position. Through aninfirmity of our natures, we suppose ourselves a case,and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two casesat the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.'

To me this describes a circumstance of modem philosophy underwhich a philosopher such as Stanley Cavell and certain othersoperate and to which they intend to enliven us: philosophy as anongoing working out of the positions in which we define ourselves,the desire for elusive "truth" being a motive sometimes or in somecases more passionate than in others. In any "case," take themetaphor where you will, it comes back to a piece of the epigraphof the introduction to these essays, wisely chosen, "to solve someof the problems oflife, not only theoretically, but practically."

Thoreau's aim, announced in the chapter "Where I Lived, andWhat I Lived For" in a passage extracted to serve as the epigraphon the title page of Walden, was to be a provocateur, and such hewas and is. These essays survey much of the grounds on which hecan be said to be so for philosophy. Both academic philosophersand students of literature can enter here and be provoked by theperspectives 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 affairsand interim dean of the College of the Arts and Communication, andprofessor of English, at the William Paterson University of New Jersey.He is the author of the brief study On Thoreau in the Wadsworth'sPhilosophers Series (1999).

Notes

IHenry 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.

Call for Papers

American Literature Association24th Annual Conference

Boston, MA, May 23-26, 2013

Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, OrganizersCFP for Panel Discussion sponsored by

the Thoreau Society

Thoreau and American Philosophy

The newly-published volume Thoreau s Importance forPhilosophy (Fordham UP) assembles a wide-range ofscholarship to address the question of Thoreau's legacy forthe American philosophical tradition. (See review in thisissue of the Bulletin). As the editors note, Thoreau, whilecentral to the field of American literature, remains a marginalfigure for academic philosophy: "in fact, many members ofthe academic philosophical community in the United Stateswould be reluctant to classify Thoreau as a philosopher atall." This roundtable discussion will approach the questionof Thoreau's complex relation to American philosophy aswell as the reasons for his philosophical marginalization.Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for an IS-minutepresentation) by January 1, 2013, to: kristen.case@maine.edu. This panel is sponsored by The Thoreau Society.

Pages from a Thoreau CountryJournal

J Walter BrainOctober 13, 1989

To Tarbell's Bay, Davis Hill, and the banks of the Concord atthe "Long Pull"-that reach ofthe river that runs in a nearly directnortherly course from the great bend at Ball's Hill almost all theway to the Carlisle Bridge. On this stretch, which Thoreau alsocalled the "Straight Reach," the stream flows wide and ample andencompasses a great arc of the heavens which it mirrors with suchfidelity that it elevates the river to an Elysian plane. To paddle orglide on its waters amounts to floating on an upper air where theheavens 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 otherriver reaches of our Musketaquid watershed.

October appears now at its most beautiful; the air sparkles withverve, light, and color; the river assumes a dreamlike recumbenceunder an Indian-summer-like sky, feathery soft, but without thesmoky haze of true "Indian" weather -that fake but entrancingspell. Hay-scented Ferns, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, clad thewooded slopes of Davis Hill above the riverside path, downstreamfrom Ball's Hill. As I walk along the path, brushing shin and kneewith the pale, threadbare fronds, they exhale a summery scent,strong and savory, reminiscent of newly-mown sweet hay, the odormore perceptible now in the fall than in the fullness of the summer

8 I Thoreau Society Bulletin

fronds. As the fronds fade and let off this fragrance, it feels asthough they parted with their summer selves, letting them go waftghostlike across river and meadow. The sweet scent becomespervasive all along the river path and all around Tarbell's Bay onthe back side of Davis Hill.

Farther along the river path I come upon sight of aBlack-billed Cuckoo, Cocczysus erythropthalmus, perched on aRed Maple branch that arches over the path. Slim of body, olive-brown above, impeccably white beneath, the cuckoo dons abeautiful long tail that, when collected lengthwise, consists of twodark strands with paired crescent-shaped bars of white gossamer-what a delight to see! The cuckoo's bill projects sharp and thin,dark, slightly curved, much in tune with the slender shape of thebird and its elegant poise. Vigilant of my presence, the cuckooflies up to the next higher branch, and then continues to move uptier above tier, climbing up a ladder, towards the tree's summit.As it flutters in its ascent, it shows me alternately its front and itsback, the tail collected or slightly fanned out. The white on itsunderparts extends from chin to undertail coverts; and the olivebrown above spreads uniformly across the back, from forehead towingtips to tail. A second cuckoo alights near the top of the treeand joins the climber at the summit. They soon fly off together tothe beechen grove on the slopes of Davis Hill back up the riverpath. There, the cuckoos pause and then part together, jumping offfrom tree to tree along the river bank.

I round the northern, or downstream, tip of the riparian hill overto the bay side. Tarbell's Bay, formerly a sparsely treed seasonalmeadow flushed with river freshets before it was impounded, hasbecome more of a wet meadow and less so a seasonal fluvial bay. Aculvert in the dike on the bridle causeway at the northeast comer ofthe bay controls the water level, the culvert draining into a swampthat extends alongside the river to the north of Davis Hill. Thebay has no direct inlet from or outlet to the river at present. Ashort and narrow gut of maple swamp immediately south of DavisHill serves sporadically as inlet during a high spring flood; theimpoundment fed also by runoff and seepage during much of theyear.

Writing of this place ona March day in 1859, at a time whenfarmers kept trees out of the meadow for the production of nativehay, Thoreau entered in his journal " ...and you see there, shelteredby the hills on the northwest, a placid blue bay having the russet hillsfor shores. This kind of bay, or lake, made by the freshet-thesedeep and narrow 'fiords'-can only be seen along such a streamas this, liable to the annual freshet. ... There is the magic of lakesthat come and go." At that time, the bay had not been impoundedand the waters "came and went" as they do today in many rivermeadows that change into riparian lakes with the spring tide-lam thinking in particular of French's Meadow, where the springfreshet makes a very visible and lovely temporary lake. Whenthe outlet of Tarbell's Bay was diked and a higher level of waterwas engineered by the sizing and setting of the invert elevationof the culvert in the dike, the bay became flooded permanentlyand the trees that grew in that meadow after fanners abandonedmeadow haying, killed and eventually reduced to stumps. Rottingtree stumps with jagged ends poking above the water still stud theentire bay. These stumps, clad with mosses and with pretty clumpsof Marsh St. Johnswort, Hypericum virginicum, constitute now apicturesque element in the place. Much of the bay, especially thelarge basin on the westerly side of a long, narrow wooded island,

Number 279

Black-billed cuckoo

John Caffrey I Original gouache illustration for Thoreau SocietyBulletin

supports aquatic and low marsh vegetation that provides coverforwaterfowl. The same process of conversion from a treed lowlandunder water only during freshets to a wet meadow or shallow lakehas taken place at what is known as the Mink Meadows in theEstabrook Woods, the former "Pasture Oaks" of Thoreau, a wetlandthat today resembles Tarbell's Bay down to the picturesque stumpswith bouquets of wild plants.

Thoreau's "placid blue bay" at Tarbell's Bay, which did nothave trees then, must have indeed resembled a bay or a "fiord,"as per Thoreau's description of the place. With the surcease offarming ways in Concord towards the end of the last century,the meadow at Tarbell's Bay was abandoned to itself and it soonbecame overgrown with trees, such as Swamp White Oaks,Quercus bicolor, also known today as "pasture oaks," whichthrive in such seasonally flooded lowlands. Later, after the treeshad grown to maturity, the impounding of the meadow killed them.

Four Great Blue Herons, Ardea herodias, stand guard on themarshier side of the bay, frozen in their poise, but alert to anythingto suggest itself a meal. There loiter a small raft of Blackjacksor Black Ducks, Anas rubripes, and two pairs of Mallards, Anasplatyrhynchos, the drakes dressed in spanking new coats in vividcolors. Painted Turtles, Chrysemys picta picta, bask in the autumnsunshine, huddled one atop the other on the tree stumps, a glint of

Fall 2012

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Thoreau Country

While Thoreau later wrote an extensive descriptionof the Shanty in his journal, Ricketson detailed hisvisitor's appearance in words and in an informalsketch that recorded how Thoreau looked when hearrived at Brooklawn on Christmas Day:

"In the latter part ofthe afternoon ...1 saw a manwalking up the carriage road, bearing a portmanteauin one hand and an umbrella in the other. He wasdressed in a long overcoat of dark cloth and wore adark soft hat...It flashed at once in my mind that theperson before me was my correspondent, whom inmy imagination I had figured as stout and robust,instead of the small and rather inferior looking manbefore me ...The most expressive feature of his facewas his eye, blue in color and full of the greatesthumanity and intelligence ... In Thoreau, as in otherheroic men, it was the spirit more than the temple inwhich it dwelt, that made the man."

AmericanBeech-Gayle Moore

Ideas Change the World

We are grateful for your support and look forward toyour continued Membership in helping us to stimulateinterest 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 SocietyCollections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods,the publication of The Thoreau Society Bulletin andConcord Saunferer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies,as well as our Annual Gathering each July. Youwill be supporting our Mission and work as theFriends of Walden Pond, in support of programs atthe Walden Pond State Reservation.

"~~ do -rvo--:tc4~f/; we- c4~f/. "

~~~

We will continue to expand our reach withprojects such as Mapping Thoreau Country (www.mappingthoreaucountry.org), the Walden ClimateChange Collaborative (WCCC), and the DigitalThoreau (www.digitalthoreau.org).

Your membership renewal date is printed on theTSB mailing envelope where your name and addressappear. Thank you for your continued support.

Your membership commitment makes a difference!

Sincerely yours,

Michael J. FrederickExecutive Director

2012 Year-end Annual AppealThe Thoreau Society is a membership or~anizationwith the majority of its support coming from memberslike you. As an active member, you understandthe importance of keeping Thoreau's legacy alive.His writings remain eternally relevant because theycover the .spectrum of human concerns: political,social, environmental, aesthetic, and personal (i.e. selfculture). In an age of rapid change, Thoreau remindsus that what is perennial is forever flowering anew.

As you consider giving generously, it may assureyou to know that a longstanding Board member isonce again contributing up to $5,000 to match allother Board contributions .50 on the dollar, with thegoal of raising $15,000 total from the Board alone,as we did last year and years past. He is giving outof a conviction that Thoreau's ideas are as vitallyimportant now as they were when he first issued hischaracteristic invitation: "Let us consider the way inwhich we spend our lives."

Your tax-deductible contribution will help usstrengthen the framework for delivering informationabout Thoreau and Thoreau Country to a nationaland international audience-within all 50 states and20 countries globally. For over 70 years, the Societyhas played a crucial role in fostering debate andscholarship about Thoreau, keeping his ideas ever-present before the public. You will help to expandthis network, a fellowship of Thoreauvians, begun in1941 with a gathering of little more than 100 initialmembers.

Your ~ift will ensure that we can continue to provideresources to those interested in Thoreau through ourAnnual Gathering and publications, The ThoreauSociety Bulletin and the Concord Saunterer. Wewill keep on improving our Gathering, attractingcompelling presenters, and delivering video coverageof select events to the web, including coverage of our2013 keynote address to be delivered by Robert D.Richardson.

Your gift will help us build Mapping ThoreauCountry, an ongoing project documenting Thoreau'stravels throughout the United States at www.mappingthoreaucountry.org. We will continueto attract grants, such as the one from UMass

Lowell in support of the Walden Climate-ChangeCollaborative website, which will enable us todeliver climate-change education at public parksacross Massachusetts, starting with Walden Pond.And we will continue to utilize the Thoreau SocietyCollections at the Thoreau Institute for projects suchas the Digital Thoreau, a website for an annotated,scholarly edition of Walden.

, Your gift will keep us on track with our participationat annual academic conferences including the ModemLanguage Association (MLA), the Association for theStudy of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and theAmerican Literature Association (ALA), where wecontinue to explore Thoreau's multi-faceted influencein present-day intellectual life.

You will make possible our continuing role within thevibrant community of historic Concord and at WaldenPond, where we manage the Friends of Walden Pondin support of park programs and activities. We willcontinue to manage the Shop at Walden Pond, wherewe have greeted millions of visitors since 1995,when the Shop first opened, introducing them toWalden and the world of Thoreau and the NewEngland Transcendentalists.

With your support, the Thoreau Society will remaina valued resource for scholars, enthusiasts, and thegeneral public alike. We hope you will join us inmaking a generous gift (see the "Year-end AppealDonation" line on the Membership Renewal Form onthe next page).

Sincerely yours,

IJ Michael Schleifer

President978-369-5310

Michael 1. FrederickExecutive Director978-369-5319

Henry David Thoreau

Maxham daguerreotype, 1856

Thoreau Society Collections

at the Thoreau Institute

at Walden Woods

Thoreau Society MissionThe Thoreau Society exists, to stimulate interest in and foster educationabout Thoreau's life, works, legacy and his place in his world and in ours,challenging all to live a deliberate, considered life.

VisionThe Thoreau Society keeps Thoreau's writings and ideas alive across time andacross generations.

Organizational Goals:To encourage research on Thoreau's life and works and to act as arepository for Thoreau-related materials

To educate the public about Thoreau's ideas and their application tocontemporary life

To preserve Thoreau's legacy and advocate for the preservation ofThoreau country

Friends of Walden PondIn 2001, The Thoreau Society was designated the official Friends group,supporting the visitor services, conservation projects and park operations atWalden Pond State Reservation, site of Henry David Thoreau's experimentin living deliberately (1845-1847) and inspiration for his classic work,

Walden (1854).

Established in 1941, The Thoreau Society is the oldest andlargest organization devoted to an American author. The Societyhas long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge aboutThoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts relatingto Thoreau and his contemporaries, by encouraging the use of itscollections, and by publishing articles in two Society periodicals:The Thoreau Society Bulletin and The Concord Saunterer: AJournal of Thoreau Studies.

Through an annual gathering in Concord, and through sessionsdevoted to Thoreau at the Modem Language Association'sannual convention and the American Literature Association'sannual conference, the Thoreau Society provides opportunitiesfor all those interested in Thoreau - dedicated readers andfollowers, as well as the leading scholars in the field - to gatherand share their knowledge of Thoreau and his times.

The Thoreau Society archives are housed at the ThoreauInstitute's Henley Library in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Thisrepository includes the collections of Walter Harding andRaymond Adams, two of the foremost authorities on Thoreauand founders of the Thoreau Society; and those of RolandRobbins, who uncovered Thoreau's Walden house site.

Thoreau Society members represent a wide range of professions,interests, and hometowns across the United States and aroundthe world. They are connected by the conviction that HenryThoreau had important things to say and crucial questions to askthat are just as significant in our time as in his. Our list of pastSociety presidents is a sampling of the kinds of people who havebeen attracted to Thoreau's writings and philosophies. Throughits programs, publications and projects, the Thoreau Society iscommitted to exploring Thoreau's observations on living withself: society and nature, and encouraging people to think abouthow they live their, own lives.

Elections Nominations

If you wish to nominate someone for a position onThe Thoreau Society Board of Directors, please send thename and contact information of that person, plus yourrationale for making the nomination to Tom Potter:

Email: tpotter@scican.net

Mail To: 341 Virginia RoadConcord, MA 01742

Please be sure that you have discussed the nominationwith the nominee, that the person is a member of TheThoreau Society, and that the person is willing to serve.

All nominations must be postmarked by April 15, 2013.

Members of the Committee on Nomination and Electionsdo not have a term limit but must be elected each year.The current members of the committee are Brent Ranalli,C. David Luther, and Gary Scharnhorst.

Nominations

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Thoreau Society BulletinISSN 0040-6406 Fall 2012

Please check the outside of your envelope foryour membership renewal date to see if you

need to renew at this time.

Membership LevelsIndividual (US/Canada/Mexico)* $50Family (US/Canada/Mexico)* $65Student (US/Canada/Mexico )* $30Sustaining $85* international memberships, add: $10

Donor Circles (includes membership)Maine Woods $100Cape Cod $250Concord & Merrimack $500Walden $1,000LifeMembership** $1 ,250**Help to ensure the long-term stability of the organization.

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Number 279 Fall 2012

pewter on their dark shells. A pleasantnarrow path follows the shoreline of thebay behind a fringe of wood witb leavesturned to incandescent hues. Blueberrythickets line the shoreline, their foliagerunning russet to carmine red, the colornot yet fully ripened. Slender Clethraor Summersweet, Clethra alnifolia,encroaches on the path from both sides,its foliage now fully ripened to a clearyellow.

Ah, that sweet fragrance ofHay-scented Ferns wafting across mypath again!

• J.Walter Brain lives in Lincoln,Massachusetts, at a crow's call fromWalden Woods .

• John Caffrey is an artist/writer who livesin Northumberland, England. He is a lifemember of the Thoreau Society, and hastravelled widely in New England."

Thoreau Society Bulletin I 9

:Pl. ,

. .

.' ,'. ~~

I

his top 100 "guy movies" of all time. Anotber year, he learned toread Braille. Then there was the time when he decided to bowl 100strikes. "I'm a bad bowler, so that was harder than it sounds," hesays.

In 2008, his goal was to gather as many copies of Waldenas he could. He already had half a dozen. "My collecting was asort of holy trinity of my need for a new project, my fondness forHenry, and my discovery of eBay," he exclaims. Chick becamesomewhat concerned. Suddenly packages were arriving in the maileach week, and Bryan wasn't able to tell his wife how many morewould come. Bantam and Signet seemed to issue paperbacks withnew 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 bestwhen sorted by height, so they've been that way for a while," hesays. Even though he hasn't been actively looking for more since2008, a few new-to-him editions still show up on occasion. Thetotal now stands at 141. The most expensive is a two-volume setpublished by Houghton, Mifflin in 1897. It cost him $94. "That'sa 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 "asmall, worn pocket book version issued by the Armed Services in1906, for the exclusive non-commercial use of the military. I canjust picture a soldier on the battlefield turning to it for inspiration."He himself has gifted a few to friends "who were in the soul-searching phase of their lives."

When the announcement came that former Thoreau SocietyPresident Ed Schofield had passed away in April 20 I0, Bryanimmediately recognized the name. He realized that one of hisWaldens had once belonged to Schofield. His signature appeared011 the opening fly leaf of a small Modern Library edition, but noother marks had been made in the book. Bryan felt that the volumeshould be returned to the Concord area and to an appropriate entity.

J. Walter Brain

Upstream view of Concord River from Davis Hill. Concord, MA, October 13, 1989

Bryan Rubenau's Wall of Walden

Corinne H. Smithwith Bryan Rubenau

Bryan Rubenau grew up on a 77 acre Christmas tree farm inupstate New York. Unsold Scotch pines that grew to "forest-likeheights" created a terrific playground for Bryan, his brother, andtheir friends. "We dammed up a low area to create a pond for ourhomemade raft, we cleared trails for our bikes, and we constructeda small log cabin," Bryan remembers. These were kids who wereoutside as much as possible. .

It wasn't until Bryan was in his 20s that he had a chance to readWalden, Thoreau's classic work. He and his wife, Chick TheoretRubenau, had just bought their first home in a small village. "Idon't know if it was having new neighbors several feet away, orthe thought of thirty years of mortgage payments looming, but itseemed like a good time to read a story about a guy who went offto live in the woods for two years," he says. It may have been justa used paperback copy, but Bryan was captivated with the book bythe end of the first chapter, "Economy." "1 was hooked. Not juston the story of his time in the woods, but on this whole new lensthrough which I could view the world."

A few years later, Bryan and Chick were traveling in theBoston area, and tbey stopped to visit Walden Pond. Bryan cameaway with two souvenirs: a soda bottle filled with pond waterand Walter Harding's annotated edition of Walden, bought at theShop at Walden Pond. From that point on, he would pick up moreeditions of the book whenever he saw them at yard sales or in bookdrives.

The decade of the 2000s saw Bryan embark on a variety ofyear-long personal projects. He gave himse1f365 days to learn oraccomplish something. One year, he watched and reviewed online

10 I Thoreau Society Bulletin

It's now part of the Edmund A. Schofieldcollection at the Thoreau Institute at WaldenWoods.

Bryan considers his Walden collection tobe an entity all its own. He rarely pulls outanyone of the books at random. But when hedoes, it's most often the Harding volume hebought at Walden Pond. His favorite passagesare highlighted on those pages. Still, he says,"When I look at those shelves, I'm remindedof Henry's quip about his own collectionof unsold copies of A Week on the Concordand Merrimack Rivers: 'I have now a libraryof nearly nine hundred volumes, over sevenhundred of which I wrote myself.'"

Number 279 Fall 2012

Bryan Rubenau stands in front of his collection of 141 editions of Walden.

Additions to the ThoreauBibliography

naturalists, to create the longest-known record of migratorybird arrivals in North America."

Finley, James S. '" Who Are We? Where Are We?': Contact andLiterary 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 (ISBN0823239306), $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 AmericanPhilosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce.James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism. Ed. RobertMcDermott. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfame Books,2012. 294p. hardcover (ISBN 1584201371), $35.00.

Greenberg, Joy Homer. "Strands: Weaving MythopoieticNarratives of Place as Environmental Ethics." 2012. PacificaGraduate Institute. PhD. Dissertation. 402p. "Ecopsychologypresents an archetypal perspective informed by the Neo-Platonist concept of anima mundi, or World Soul, as positedby Theodore Roszak and James Hillman. Such an ethos,however unconscious, may be seen in the works of HenryDavid Thoreau and Rachel Carson, as well as in manyindigenous traditions, including the ancient myths of theGreek 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 ModernWorld. London: Watkins Publishing, 2012. 240p.

Robert N. Hudspeth

Bilbro, Jeffrey L. "God's Wildness: The Christian Roots ofEcological Ethics in American Literature." 2012. BaylorUniversity. PhD Dissertation. 318p. " This study examinesthe work of four American writers--Henry David Thoreau,John Muir, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry--to understandthe different means they propose to enable humans toparticipate in the ongoing redemptive work that God desiresto 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 WaldenPond. Reviewed in Publishers Weekly (September 24, 2012):76.

Chura, Patrick. Thoreau the Land Surveyor. Reviewed byDominique Zino in Journal a/the Early Republic 32, No.4(Winter 2012): 744-747.

Ellis, Cristin E. L. "Political Ecologies: The Contingencyof Nature in American Romantic Thought." 2012.Johns Hopkins University. PhD Dissertation. 167p. Thedissertation "articulates a tum to materialist thought inthe writing of Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass,and Walt Whitman, tracing the emergence of a materialistaltemative to the ahistorical and idealized account of natureconventionally associated with romantic thought."

Ellwood, Elizabeth R. "Climate Change and Species Phenologyat Three Trophic Levels." 2012. Boston University. PhDDissertation. 187p. "In response to warmer temperaturesand altered precipitation, plants and animals have adjustedtheir phenologies, timing of annual biological events, overthe past few decades. However, a long-term perspective isneeded. I combined observations from Concord, MA, fromthe journals of Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s with other

Number 279 Fall 2012 Thoreau Society Bulletin 111

Students from SUNY Geneseo visited Concord for their second annual month-long summer immersion program inTranscendental Concord, Summer 2012. They met with Marjorie Harding, wife of the late Walter Harding, her son AllenHarding, 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. WesKennison, Jeffrey Handy, Rory Cushman. Front row: Marjorie Harding, Edward O. Wilson, Allen Harding, Kay Gainer.

papercover (ISBN 1780281250), $12.96. Selections fromThoreau's writings. One of Watkins Masters of Wisdomseries.

Keith, Brianne. "Thoreau's Mysticism." Thoreau Society BulletinNo. 278 (Summer 2012): 8.

Kytle, Ethan J. '''A Transcendentalist Above All': ThomasWentworth Higginson, John Brown, and the Raid atHarpers 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 (ISBN0786464933), $35.00.

Melzow, Candice Chovanec. "Identification, Naming, andRhetoric in The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness and The MaineWoods." ISLE 19, No.2 (Spring 2012): 356-374.

Miller, John P. Transcendental Learning: The EducationalLegacy of Alcott, Emerson, Fuller, Peabody and Thoreau.Reviewed by Barry Andrews in Thoreau Society Bulletin No.

278 (Summer 2012): 1-3.Paryz, Marek. The Postcolonial and Imperial Experience

in American Transcendentalism. New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2012. 250p. hardcover (ISBN 0230338747),$85.00.

Potter, Tom. "Musings on Thoreau." Thoreau Society BulletinNo. 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. 303p. "This study of the reception of a small group of Americanauthors who had similar initial advantages--the essayistsHenry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, the poetsEmily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, andthe novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sara Willis Parton(writing as Fanny Fern)--demonstrates, counter to currentcanon formation theory, that the critical and pedagogicalcanons move on separate tracks."

Schulz, Dieter. Emerson and Thoreau or Steps Beyond

12 I Thoreau Society Bulletin Number 279 Fall 2012

Ourselves: Studies in Transcendentalism. Heidelberg,Germany: Mattes, 2012. 307p. hardcover (ISBN3868090576), €30.00.

Sexton, Melissa S. "'An Aligned, Transformed ConstructedWorld': Representing Material Environments in AmericanLiterature 1835-1945." 2012. University of Oregon. PhDDissertation. 300p. "This dissertation seeks to avoid twoextremes that have polarized literary debate: on the one hand,a strong constructivism that reduces environments to textualeffects; and, on the other hand, a strong realism that elideslanguage's constructive power, assuming texts' mimetictransparency. Positioning itself within the ecocritical attemptto reconnect text and environment, my project articulatesa constructive vision of material representation that I call'constrained realism.'"

Sharma, Aprajita. Henry David Thoreau s Walden: "A SemioticApproach." New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers,2012. 217p. hardcover (ISBN 8184353243), $13.00.

Smith, Corinne Hosfeld. Westward J Go Free: Tracing Thoreau :sLast Journey. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Green FrigateBooks, 2012. 456p. papercover (ISBN 192704330 I), $28.95.Reviewed by J. Parker Huber in Thoreau Society BulletinNo. 278 (Summer 2012): 10-11.

Thoreau, Henry D. " 1849: Concord, MA: Henry DavidThoreau Declines the Honor." Lapham's Quarterly 5, No.4 (Fall 2012): 88-90. Excerpt from "Resistance to CivilGovernment" in an issue devoted to politics.

---. The Green Thoreau: America:S First Environmentaliston 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 (ISBN0393081885), $17.96. With color illustrations by LincolnFrederick Perry.

---. Walden, or Life in the Woods and "Civil Disobedience."ed. W. S. Merwin and William Howarth. New York: SignetClassics, 2012. 336p. papercover (ISBN 0451532163),$5.95.

Trudgill, Stephen. "Nature's Clothing and SpontaneousGeneration? The Observations of Thoreau and Dureaude la Malle on Plant Succession." Progress in PhysicalGeography 36, No.5 (October 2012): 707-71A.

Van Anglen, Kevin P. "Inside the Princeton Edition: 'ThePreaching of Buddha.'" Thoreau Society Bulletin No. 278(Summer 2012): 3-5.

Van Fossan, Ford. "The Bow, the Buck, & Thoreau." Gray sSporting Journal 37, No.5 (September/October 2012): 56-61.

a0

We are indebted to the following individuals for informationused in this Bulletin: Glenn H. Mott, Richard.T. Schneider, andRichard Winslow Ill. Please keep your editor informed of itemsnot yet added and new items as they appear.

"Old Manse"Artist: Ludwig MestlerSource: The Paul Brooks Collection (The Walden Woods ProjectCollections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods)

EMERSON SOCIETYAwards Announcements 2012-2013

The Emerson Society announces four awardsfor projects that foster appreciation for Emerson.

*Graduate Student Paper Award"Provides up to $750 oftravel support to present a paper on anEmerson Society panel at the American Literature AssociationAnnual Conference (May 2013) or the Thoreau Society Annual

Gathering (July 2013). Please submit a 300-word abstract byDecember 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 ofexpenses, 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 projecproposal, 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. Submita 1-2-page proposal, including an abstract of the forthcomingwork and a description of publication expenses, by March 1,

2013.

Send Research, Pedagogy/Community, and Subventionproposals to: Jessie Bray (brayjn@etsu.edu) and Bonnie Carr

O'Neill (bco20@msstate.edu)

Award recipients must become members of the Society;membership applications are available at

httpi//www, emersonsoci ety.org

Number 279 Fall 2012 Thoreau Society Bulletin 113

Sentence-ing Thoreau: The GameMichael Berger

I'.I

In his nifty little book on Emerson as reader and writer, FirstWe Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process, BobRichardson offers a neat taxonomy of Emersonian sentences thathave "a little bite or pop, a flash-point," including "the whip-crack,the back-flip, the brass ring (hole in one), and the mousetrap." AsThoreau also was quite a sentence maker, perhaps we can come upwith a similar taxonomy for his virtuosity. To give a fuller picture,Richardson describes the whip-crack as a sentence in which "it isthe final word that makes the whole sentence snap," thus: "Everyman is wanted, but no man is wanted much." The mousetrapsentence, he notes, is "usually baited with a Latinate abstraction,and usually sprung with plain Anglo-Saxon." Examples: "A foolishconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." "An institution is thelengthened shadow of one man."

At the Bulletin, we are wondering, what are some of Thoreau'sparadigmatic sentence types and how would you name them? Ifthis game intrigues you, send examples and names to the editor toappear in a subsequent Bulletin.

Notes from Concord:The "Shop at" and "Friends or'Walden Pond

Michael FrederickExecutive Director

The Thoreau Society has operated the Shop at Walden Pondfor 17 years, since 1995. The Shop has greeted millions of visitors,introducing them to the pond, the Concord authors, and the richcultural and ecological history of the region. The Shop plays a keyrole in carrying out the Society's mission to educate the publicabout the life, works, and legacy of Henry D. Thoreau, but it alsoprovides the Society with the distinct honor and opportunity toserve the greater Walden Pond State Reservation overall throughthe Friends of Walden Pond.

As an important visitor services and interpretive componentof the Reservation, the Shop provides resources to visitors duringtheir stay and gives them the opportunity to bring something homeafter they have left the pond, such as books and other mementosthat serve as reminders of their special trip to Walden.

Through the Friends of Walden Pond, an activity of the ThoreauSociety dating back to 2001 when the Society was designated theofficial Friends group as part of a public/private partnership withthe 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 talksat the Shop in the Tsongas Gallery with authors covering a broadarray of topic from children's books to Thoreau and surveying.

The Friends also plays an ongoing and significant role atthe pond. The largest contribution in terms of funding came in2005 when the Massachusetts Executive Office of EnvironmentalAffairs (EOEA) awarded the Friends of Walden Pond a matching

grant of $25,000 ($50,000 total) to rehabilitate the interior of thebathhouse and refurbish some sign age within the Reservation.

With members in all 50 United States and 20 countriesaround the world, Thoreau Society members directly determinethe ability of our organization to remain active at the pond. Wethank you for your year-end contributions and the crucial supportyou give throughout the year, both financially and through directinvolvement.

In May 2012, the DCR hired Maryann Thompson Architectsto design a new visitor center at Walden Pond State Reservation.The Thoreau Society and representatives of the Friends of WaldenPond regularly participate in the ongoing meetings of the WaldenPond Advisory Board.

We look forward to keeping you informed of futuredevelopments.

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,,< Thoreau Society Fellowship '''jThe Thoreau Society is pleased to announce thesecond annual Thoreau Society Short-Term

Research Fellowships.

Recipients will receive $500 towards travel andresearch expenses at archives in the Greater-Boston areaon 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 -

(Mike.Frederick@thoreausociety.org) with the following _attachments:

-.I) A current curriculum vitae

2) A project proposal approximately 1,000 words inlength, including:• a description of the project;• a statement explaining the scholarly significance ofthe project; and• an indication of the specific archives and collectionsthe applicant wishes to consult.

3) Graduate students only: A leiter ofrecommendationfrom a faculty member familiar with the student's workand with the project being proposed. (This can beemailed 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 Fall 2012

Notes & QueriesKurt Moellering

We begin this column on with the sad news of the death of twoJapanese scholars of Thoreau, Professors Hikaru Saito (1915-2010) and Nagayo Honma (1929-2012). Professor Hikaru Saito,Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo, studied with PerryMiller at Harvard and was a leading scholar of American literaturewith special reference to Christian thought, Jonathan Edwards,and Emerson in particular, as well as the transcendentalists morebroadly. As one of the founders of the Thoreau Society of Japan, heleft a deep impact on students of the American Renaissance, whiletranslating the works of major American authors for the generalpublic.

Professor Nagayo Honma (1929-2012), also ProfessorEmeritus of The University of Tokyo, studied at Amherst Collegeand Columbia University and was the most representativeAmericanist in Japan. He wrote about and taught Americanpolitical, cultural, and intellectual history as the president of theJapanese Association for American Studies and as an honorarymember of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was afounder and vice-chairman of the board of trustees, Aspen InstituteJapan.

Thanks to all who submitted to this Bulletin, and thanks to ourproofreaders: Bob Hudspeth, Dave Bonney, and Ronald Hoag.

Susan Moellering forwards an email reflection she receivedon Election Day by Lillian Daniel. In the reflection, "No SmallVotes," Daniel emphasizes the importance of local electionsand that "there are no small votes." For inspiration, she looksto Thoreau who "spoke passionately about the power of townmeetings 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, aquarterly magazine published in St. Louis. In the issue, there is anarticle "From Beijing to Bellingham: Dating the Beginning of aNew Life from a First Reading of Walden" by Ning Yu. Yu sharesthe excitement he felt in Beij ing in 1981 when he encounteredThoreau for the first time. The line that hooked him: "How manya 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 thetext) of our new Thoreau sentence game, Sentence-ing Thoreau(see page 13). I very much look forward to your sentences andcategories. Mike also sends an item from the July 20 edition ofthe Chronicle of Higher Education. According to Mike, "an articleabout campus libraries responding to students' desire for morequiet areas says Georgia Tech is 'experimenting with so-calledWalden zones, or deep quiet areas, designed to help students workfree of the distractions of technology.' The article quotes WilliamPowers from Hamlet s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in theDigital Age, wherein Powers 'suggests that we create distractions-free "Walden zones," at home and elsewhere, like Henry DavidThoreau's retreats to the woods in search of peace and quiet. ,,,

Mike also has forwarded "Good Stuff," an August 18 NewYork Times article that discusses the difficulty the author, GretchenRubin" has getting rid of all the extra "stuff' in her life and inher Manhattan apartment. In her quest to simplify, she makesa humorous parenthetical nod to Thoreau: "But simplicityis complicated. (Even Thoreau, in his famous admonition

'Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!' couldn't limit himself to asingle '''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 itdisplays the work of Bert L. Call who photographed the Mainewoods in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Eachphotograph is accompanied by a quote from Thoreau's The MaineWoods.

Jim Stapelton and Diana Bigelow have written and produceda play about an imagined encounter between Thoreau and EmilyDickinson. According to Jim and Diana, "the drama centers on thetwo artists' conflicting needs for communion and solitude. A goodhalf of the play is in the language of these iconic New Englandwriters." It has been performed extensively in the Pacific Northwestand is on its way east! "Henry & Emily" will be performed onApril 5-7, 2013, at Stage Left Studio, 214 W. 30th St, NYC. Formore information go to www.jimstapleton.com.

Corinne Smith sends word of a Thoreau replica cabinconstructed on the campus of Penn State Altoona. In the summer2012 issue ofthe Ivy Leaf, Penn State Altoona's quarterly magazine,Professor Ian Marshall writes about the experiences of him and hisstudents as they undertook building a Thoreau cabin. The articlealso features several perspectives from his students. (For any ofyou regular readers of the Bulletin, you will perhaps rememberthat I too have undertaken the construction of a Thoreau replicacabin with students. Ours, however, remains unfinished. When Iread of a completed cabin, I am always pained with a twinge ofjealousy. Though, Professor Marshall, I have something that PennState Altoona does not when it comes to Thoreau cabins: not one,but two unfinished ones!)

Corinne was herself featured, along with Richard Smith, inthe Boston Globe on September 20 in an article about Thoreau'slinks to communities outside of Concord that are documented inCorinne's recent book Westward I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau sLast Journey and the project Freedom's Way: Natural HeritageArea. Corinne is also doing her part to help preserve Union Stationin Springfield, Massachusetts. On the website of the SpringfieldRedevelopment Authority, Corinne has posted information aboutthe four documented times Thoreau passed through Springfield.Corinne writes, Thoreau "would have stopped at the WestemRailroad station each time. It pre-dated the Union station buildingsfrom 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, RhondaHayes writes the column "Brushes with History" in which sheexplains discovering recently that her home near Lake Calhounwas once visited by Thoreau the year before he died. As manyThoreauvians do, Hayes gets some special enjoyment in walkingin Thoreau's footsteps.

"When I was Thoreau at Night," a poem by Cecily Parks, isin the Fall 2012 Kenyon Review; thanks to Bob Hudspeth for thisfind.

Richard Winslow brings to our attention a couple of news papermentions of Thoreau. In the New York Times (September 2, 2012),the article "Where's Walden? GPS Often Doesn't Know" tells howGPS systems confuse Concord's pond with a reservoir near Lynn.And in the Boston Globe (July 24, 2012), "Walden Environmental

Number 279 Thoreau Society Bulletin 115

Project to Honor Clinton- describes the awarding of the GlobalEnvironmental Leadership. • former President Clinton bythe Walden Woods Proje

Finally, and on ape te. I have recently received frommy friend Katie Martin a ~ •. s: sketch of Thoreau by DwightSturges (see below). The ir - 'on on that photo, taken from AWeek on the Concord and Merrimac): Rivers, reads: "In each dew-drop of the morning / Lies . e of a day." This picture hungin the home of Katie's et f • decades, and when he passedaway recently Katie gene -:. == ve this picture to me. Her fatherGuy Emerson Martin \\ _ - llower of the transcendentalistsgenerally, and Emerson in ~ icular (how could he not be, withthat middle namel). Katie I th are interested in the origins ofthe picture, which was ske y turges in 1938. If anyone hasinformation about it, pleas it my way.

CIO·

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 cannever have enough of nature. Of course, he did not live on theNortheast coast of the United States in October 2012. The past fewweeks have been an unusual journey for me and my family. OnOctober 29, we left our home in the Manhattan Beach section ofBrooklyn to join my mother-in-law a mile away, on the other sideof Sheepshead Bay. Warnings about a record breaking storm surgehad been predicted (as it turned out, quite accurately) for overa week, and the combination of high tide, a full moon, and lateseason hurricane was too much for our coastal community to bear.

My wife Jamee and I went for a walk at about 5:45, with littleindication of what was imminent. We saw high winds, but littlerain 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 thewarnings off as just another exaggeration by the weather folks.Like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, we asked "since whencan weathermen predict the weather?" We found out 15 minuteslater when we received a fortuitous knock at the door and cries of"get out now," as ankle deep water surged down the street and intomom's street level first floor. We moved our cars a few hundredyards away from the water, which turned out to be in vain. Fiveminutes later we would have been in her dark attic cowering.Instead, we made our way to higher ground in the one car thatsurvived, to what was to become our shelter for the next 4 weeks.We could only watch with the rest of the world as events unfoldedon our hosts' television. We saw an entire neighborhood across thebay bum to the ground in an electrical fire. Over 100 homes werelost. A friend called from her ship in Boston harbor-s-of coursethey could not come into New York-to say that her husband wasstill at home and that our street was under 15 feet of water. She toldus, "Forget your home, your cats are dead." As I look at these catswhile writing this, I remember God's response when Nietzschemade 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 comesto mind. What book did I grab when leaving my house? Assumingwe might be away a day or two (it turned into a month. And sixweeks later, we still use space heaters), I grabbed Thoreau and theArt of Life from Heron Dance Press. (Yes, it is available throughthe Shop at Walden Pondl) From ajoumal entry in 1851, Thoreauwrites: "Is not disease the rule of existence?" Interpreted as dis-ease, that is surely what we suffered in the weeks that followedHurricane Sandy. Others met a fate far worse than our own. Becausethe water stopped 3 inches below the ceiling in our basement, ourfirst (and now only) living space was spared. The sweet irony isthat much of what was lost in the basement should have been lostlong ago. Simplify, Simplify.

As it turns out, sometimes it is necessary to practiceresignation. This was one time I had more than enough of nature.

16 I Thoreau Society Bulletin Number 279 Fall 2012

Edmund O. Wilson signs books during the Thoreau AnnualGathering, July 2012. Wilson was this year's keynotespeaker.

Please submit items for the winter Bulletinto your editor before February 15:

kurt.moellering@thoreausociety.org

Although exceptions will occasionally be made forlonger pieces, in general articles and reviews should beno longer than 1500 words. Longer submissions may beforwarded by the editor to the Concord Saunterer. Allsubmissions should conform to The Chicago Manual ofStyle. The Thoreau Edition texts (Princeton UniversityPress) should be used as the standard for quotations fromThoreau's writings, when possible. Contributors need notbe members of the Thoreau Society, but all non-membersare heartily encouraged to join.

Printed on J 00% recycled paper.

The Thoreau Society Bulletin is a quarterly publication containing ThoreauSociety news, additions to the Thoreau bibliography, and short articlesabout Thoreau and related topics. It is indexed in American HumanitiesIndex and Ml.A International Bibliography.

Editor: Kurt A. R. Moellering, PhD.

Layout Editor: Rob Velella, MA.

Editorial Advisory Committee: Dave Bonney, Ronald A. Bosco, JessieN. 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; MichaelBerger, PhD; J. Walter Brain; David Briggs, PhD; Andrew Celentano; JackDoyle; Joseph Fisher; Susan Gallagher, PhD; Margaret Gram; Ronald Hoag,PhD; Elise Lemire, PhD; Paul J. Medeiros, PhD; Tom Potter, ImmediatePast 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 WaldenPond Associates.

Established in 1941, The Thoreau Society, Inc." is an internationalnonprofit organization with a mission to stimulate interest in and fostereducation about Thoreau's life, works, legacy, and his place in his worldand in ours, challenging all to live a deliberate, considered life. The ThoreauSociety ™ has the following organizational goals:

To encourage research on Thoreau's life and worksand to act as a repository for Thoreau-relatedmaterialsTo educate the public about Thoreau's ideas andtheir application to contemporary lifeTo preserve Thoreau's legacy and advocate for thepreservation of Thoreau country

Membership in the Society includes subscriptions to its two publications,the Thoreau Society Bulletin (published quarterly) and The ConcordSaunterer: A Journal 0/ Thoreau Studies (published annually). Societymembers receive a 10% discount on all merchandise purchased from TheThoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond and advance notice about Societyprograms, including the Annual Gathering.

Membership: Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord, MA01742, U.S.A.; tel: (978) 369-5310; fax: (978) 369-5382; e-rnail: info@thoreausociety.org.

Merchandise (including books and mail-order items): Thoreau SocietyShop at Walden Pond, 915 Walden Street, Concord, MA 01742-4511, 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 MainStreet. Farmington, ME 04938, U.S.A.; tel: (207) 778-7239; e-mail: kristen.case@maine.edu.

Thoreau Society Bulletin: Kurt Moellering, Thoreau Society, 341 VirginiaRoad. Concord, MA 01742, U.S.A.: tel: (617) 852-9889; fax (978) 369-5382; e-mail: kurt.moellering@thoreausociety.org.

The Thoreau Society Collections: the Society's Collections are housed atthe Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, owned and managed by the WaldenWoods Project. For information about using the Collections or visiting theInstitute, please contact the curator at: curator@walden.org.

All other communications: Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord,MA 01742, U.S.A.; tel: (978) 369-5310; fax: (978) 369-5382; e-rnail:info@thoreausociety.org.

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