Back to Concord

A confession dear blog-reader – I am a poor reader. I read with a painful slowness and only a modicum of comprehension. In high school, in the year we read American literature, we were supposed to read Walden and a number of essays by Emerson. Well, I managed to get through the Emerson (and remember enjoying it) but the Thoreau was impossible. So, after a mere 36 and a half years, I have picked up Walden and lo-and-behold it is worth the effort. Would that I had done my assignment back then.

Some words from Walden: But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
Of course this is so much more true today than in Thoreau’s day. Just think about how paralyzed we become when the electric power fails. And perhaps I have become a tool of this computer and this blog.
No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Is all the linking done in blogs allowing others to think for us? Maybe so. I will try to put down an original thought now and then.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attentions from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
What would Thoreau have thought of the Web or cell phones or instant messaging?
Finally (for today) I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.
This I know from experience to be true. I feel sorry for those who refuse to get out and walk.