dual personalities

Tag: Henry David THoreau

July 13, 2016

Walking out the gate

by chuckofish

Did you know that National Simplicity Day was observed yesterday (July 12th) in Thoreau’s honor? I did not know this.

However, there are so many of these “unofficial” holidays, one can hardly be expected to keep track of them all.

Henry-David-Thoreau--close-

Poor Thoreau. I have no doubt that he would be totally non-plussed by his latter day popularity. I mean what would he think of everyone contemplating simplicity on a special day, and texting each other Thoreau memes on their iPhones? Oy.

I have to say, though, that I have given a lot of thought lately to this idea: “It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.” (Walden)

If an enemy took the town, I could do that. I have a lot of stuff, but it is just stuff.  I would take great-great-great-grandmother Hannah Patten’s sampler (out of the frame and rolled up) with me.

For now, I’m dealing with a typical flyover summer…

Screen Shot 2016-07-12 at 10.40.32 AM…and trying to keep cool.

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July 12, 2016

Cherish your moodiness

by chuckofish

"Melancholy Promenade" by Diego Rivera, 1904

“Melancholy Promenade” by Diego Rivera, 1904

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of earth, over its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what country you are travelling; where no farmer can complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing; on which you can go off half-cock and wave adieu to the village; along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free; where the walls and fences are not cared for, where your head is more in heaven than your feet on earth; which have long reaches where you can see the approaching traveller half a mile off and be prepared for him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some root and stump fences which do not need attention; where travellers have no occasion to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming; whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; where you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness; where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor conversing with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

–H.D. Thoreau, A Writer’s Journal

It is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), so let’s celebrate by reading the longest sentence ever (see above) and having some alone-time in the out-of-doors.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

Peder Monsted

Peder Mork Monsted

The Tree, 1861 John Milne Donald

“The Tree” by John Milne Donald, 1861

Cheers to Henry David Thoreau! Enjoy your Tuesday.

4 Comments
July 4, 2016

Some prouder pageantry

by chuckofish

chris 77

A toast to our brother, whose birthday we celebrate today! I’m sure he will be celebrating Thoreau-style.

The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the morning was the evening of a celestial day. The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon. Character always secures for itself this advantage, and is thus distinct and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether things or persons.

–from “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” by Henry David Thoreau

3 Comments
May 6, 2016

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants.”

by chuckofish

Today we note again the anniversary of the death of Henry David Thoreau in 1862.

Benjamin_D._Maxham_-_Henry_David_Thoreau_-_Restored

Let us not forget these wise words:

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

—Slavery in Massachusetts

Hear, hear!

Have a good weekend. Happy Mother’s Day!

4 Comments
December 29, 2015

The party’s over

by chuckofish

snoopyFullSizeRender

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

5 Comments
July 17, 2015

For he’s a jolly good fellow 2015

by chuckofish

paul muggin

Not a mug shot

Well, the OM turns the Big 6-0 today. Booyah. He probably still has that seersucker suit (above) and it probably still fits him.

His daughters sent him cards.

Inside: And by stud I mean dork

Inside: And by stud I mean dork

and

dad card 2

As you may infer from the choice of cards, the OM is not a party dude, so we will have a quiet celebration. It will involve eating with the boy and daughter #3 in some restaurant where the OM can order a pork steak, a flyover delicacy (?). Hopefully there will be a margarita for me in the bargain.

There is…this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,–now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.

Henry David Thoreau, A Walk to Wachusett

6 Comments
January 14, 2015

Stay positive

by chuckofish

kirkpatrick_sun_01

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

*Woodcut by Ethel Kirkpatrick, c. 1905

4 Comments
November 13, 2014

Let me think about that for a moment

by chuckofish

greenleaves 3

Here is some food for thought on this Thursday n November. Take a moment (or two or three) for some deep thoughts.

1. “The trouble with you,” Walter had said in a recent phone conversation, “is that you’re too prepared. You don’t give the Holy Spirit room to do wondrous things. You need to take risks now and then–that’s what makes life snap, crackle and pop.”

–Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford

2. “When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the university,” he later wrote, “I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted, with my little Testament in my hand … The first text which caught my eye was this: ‘They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.'”

–Charles Simeon

3. “That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

–Henry David Thoreau

4.

British 2nd Division at Kohima, India war memorial

British 2nd Division at Kohima, India war memorial

Discuss among yourselves.

 

5 Comments
October 7, 2014

The Era of the Wild Apple

by chuckofish

In the Orchard by Winslow Homer

“In the Orchard” by Winslow Homer

“To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.” It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit. . . The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor soul, there are many pleasures which you will not know! . . . the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.”

– Henry David Thoreau

How right you are, Henry!

Claude Monet, 1878 "Apple Trees in Bloom at Vetheuil"

Claude Monet, 1878 “Apple Trees in Bloom at Vetheuil”

Winslow Homer "Green Apples"

Winslow Homer “Green Apples”

Well, it is apple season and, although I can’t pick them wild off a tree, I do buy some pretty good ones at my local Dierberg’s. And you know what they say about an apple a day, right?

4 Comments
July 15, 2014

Some Thoreau on Tuesday

by chuckofish

thoreau-head2

Saw Perez Blood in his frock,–a stuttering, sure, unpretending man, who does not speak without thinking, does not guess. When I reflected how different he was from his neighbors, Conant, Mason, Hodgman, I saw that it was not so much outwardly, but that I saw an inner form. We do, indeed, see through and through each other, through the veil of the body, and see the real form and character in spite of the garment. Any coarseness or tenderness is seen and felt under whatever garb. How nakedly men appear to us! for the spiritual assists the natural eye.

–Journal, 1851

4 Comments