Writers Unbound

Mary, we’re approaching the end of the wisdom series, here’s ‘Walking’

http://www.mymillionairebuddy.com/ebooks/wk77-walking/wk-77-thoreau.zip

Crnr Greville & Perth
Prahran
Victoria 3181
Australia
–

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9Gl8IxlQM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_ThoreauJust a bit more background:
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)[1] was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and “Yankee” love of practical detail.[2] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life’s true essential needs.[3]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[4] Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government – “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”[5] – the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: “‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”[5]

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Return to Concord: 1837-1841
3 Civil disobedience and the Walden years: 1845–1849
4 Later years: 1851-1862
5 Death
6 Beliefs
7 Influence
8 Critique
9 Works
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links

[edit] Early life and education
He was born David Henry Thoreau[6] in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in Jersey.[7] His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, was known for leading Harvard’s 1766 student “Butter Rebellion”,[8] the first recorded student protest in the United States.[9] David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become “Henry David” until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change.[10] He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia.[11] Thoreau’s birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.

Portrait of Thoreau from 1854.Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau’s aunt both wrote that “Thoreau” is pronounced like the word “thorough”, whose standard American pronunciation rhymes with “furrow”.[12] In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called “my most prominent feature.”[13] Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty.”[14] Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive. However, Louisa May Alcott reportedly mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau’s facial hair “will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man’s virtue in perpetuity.”[15]