[Music] Good evening. In case you're in the wrong place, this is a transcendentalist ramble, a journey through nature and thought. My name is
Bruce Magneson and the photography and video in this presentation was done by me. Uh my wife Lisa is here as a co-host, so she'll help me out with questions as we go through and this is a Massachusettsbased
presentation as far as geography goes. Uh but I do see people are putting into their uh their location in the chat. That's great. See where people are from. We're going through a bit of a noraster here. Very appropriate in Massachusetts here a little bit 30 mi from the coast. We seem to not be getting the brunt of
it since I'm looking out the window and seeing the trees are not moving. But I think at the coast that's a different story. So but very New English high of 44 degrees I think today which is a little rough for May but such as it is in New England. So we will start off with quotes. Lots of quotes.
The transcendentalists are certainly very good for a a quote. Start off with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. What is a weed? a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. It's one
of my favorite Emerson quotes. So, with that, we'll talk about uh the agenda we're going to have today. We'll do an introduction. Uh we'll go through some of the major characters that are in the transcendentalist movement. Then, we'll go through the actual ramble of various locations in and around Boston
and eastern central Massachusetts that are related to the transcendentalists. And then we'll do a wrap-up. So during the webinar, I'll take some breaks and answer questions. You do have questions. There is a Q&A box here that you can pop those questions in there and Lisa will try and keep me honest and
take breaks and address the questions as we go along. So as an introduction, what is transcendentalism? Uh there was a recent book by Randall Fuller who is actually a descendant of Margaret Fuller, one of the transcendentalists. He wrote a book that
just came out late last year called Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism. And his definition is its primary argument is every person is valuable and worthy of respect because every person contains a divine spark. And that once we realize that society and community
will be renovated in a way that has yet to occur. So it officially began as a movement in 1836 uh in Harvard Square in Cambridge. or gentleman after attending the 200th anniversary uh of Harvard hard to
believe 1836 Harvard was already 200 years old at that point started as a college in 1636 and the Willard Hotel and Harvard Square where the first meeting happened I guess that hotel was no longer there but the gentlemen involved were George Ripley or Ralph Waldo Emerson both of we'll talk a
little bit more about Frederick Henry Hajj and George Putnham it was a break from unitarianism was born from a debate between the new light theologians who believe that religion should focus on an emotional experience and old light opponents who
valued reason in their approach. So, I want to give a shout out to a friend of mine, Richard Higgins, uh, who's written a book, just came out actually last November, called Thorough's God. And he was kind enough to kind of give me a transcendentalism 101 during the winter. And he has some
pretty good descriptions of it. Holds every person has unique powers and they should research for them and consciously unfold, guide, and nourish them. In that sense, it was self-culture. When people do that, they discover that the divine principle resides in themselves and in every human person. William Ellery
Channing said, "We see God around us because God dwells within us." Says, "Knowledge depends on the senses. The transcendentalist believe in intuition, our native ability to know truth on our own without external proof and independent of other views or prior revelations of the truth." Emerson said
his whole teaching came down to the infinitude of the private man. Uh was an armchair. They were very active. like pragmatism attest the truth of an idea by the difference it makes. Thus the transcendentalists uh were very strongly anti-slavery.
They believe the in inequality of women must end and that children must not be punished or trained as workers but rather led to foster the spirit within. So we'll talk about kind of these really three core concepts abolition women's rights and education. So the transcendentalists we're going to meet are very core to those particular
concepts and they did believe that divine wisdom could be read directly in nature and that's another major component Henry David Thorough which we'll talk a lot about. Um he certainly is a proponent of that. Um I wouldn't say transcendentalis is riddled with humor but there is this
relatively famous cartoon came out uh Christopher Piers Cranch was a transcendentalist. Um he wrote or did this cartoon called the transparent eyeball. uh around 1836 to 1838 just when uh Emerson had written his first
essay nature and this is from nature he says standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the bllythe air and uplifted into infinite space all mean egotism egotism vanishes I become a transparent eyeball I am nothing I see all the currents of the universal being
circulate through me I am part or particle of god so he kind of took that concept of the trans uh the transparent eyeball ball and made this cartoon of an eyeball with legs. Uh so that's probably as much as humor we can squeeze out of the transcendentalist in the next hour,
but um I'll try not to make it as uh too dry. So I want to set some context. This is all happening in the you know early to mid 1800s in the United States. But it is a very very um lot of change going on
in this time. This is actually a photograph of the Lel Mills. But in 1848 you have the Senica Falls Convention upstate New York which is the beginning of the uh women's suffragette movement here in the United States. You have in Europe and we'll talk about this with Margaret Fuller. You have European
revolutions France, Italy, Germany, the Austrian Empire. 1848 is actually known as a year of revolutions in Europe. So we have a lot of dynamic uh things going on in that part of the world. We have abolition. We have the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850. Both of those play a lot into the precursor to the Civil War. Um, actually I plan on doing a presentation on John Brown in the fall. So, we'll get a lot more detail in the Kansas Nebraska Act, but obviously slavery is a huge issue in the mid uh 19th century and you
have industrialization like this picture of LOL shows. You have steamships, you have railroads and you have the rise of factories. So, it is a very dynamic time. I know that I think all of us and throughout history everybody thinks they live in the most dynamic time. And certainly we're talking about that now with things like artificial
intelligence, things along of th those nature that nature. But certainly in the mid 1800s, an awful lot of stuff is going on. It changed and the world is happening very rapidly. And the transcendentalists are really really kind of, you know, ruminating on this. So we'll talk about some of the major
characters in our story. We'll talk about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he David Thorough. So we'll start with Emerson the sage of conquer. So he is born in Boston in 1803
actually dies in conquered in 1882. He does graduate from Harvard in 1821. He's an essaist and a lecturer. His major works are nature is kind of the seminal work as far as transendental is concerned. That's published in 1836. He has the American scholar in 1837 and
the very famous essay self-reliance in 1841. He does inherit money from his first wife Ellen who passes away from tuberculosis. We'll actually talk a little bit about that as well since that has a large impact on the folks in the story. He has to sue to get part of his
estate and at the beginning he does become kind of the bank of Emerson. Um you know the reason that conquered is conquered is the place that all of these people gravitate to is because Emerson and Emerson is able in the early days to fund a lot of this and so a lot of these
people are coming into the town and he's able to support them in various ways. Thorough actually works in his house and he helps out Bronson Alcott getting in the house and he's helping people publish. Um he does end up making a good living as a lecturer. he actually kind of gives up the pulpit and becomes a
lecturer both here and abroad. Um he does have financial troubles at the end of his life but for the most part he is really both the spiritual and the economic engine of the transcendentalists in the mid 1800s in conquered so he's the benefactor of them. Uh his house is still there today
a little bit outside conquered center. It's open from pretty much around now until I think around Columbus Day. Um, it is still owned by the family and I will say it is not airond conditioned. So if you do want to go, I would suggest you probably go actually day when it's
44 degrees might not be such a bad day to go there. Um, but um, it is a is a Spartan place. Um, right across the street from it is the Conquered Museum. And the Conquered Museum is this amazing m little museum relatively speaking um,
right outside conquered. And a lot of the folks that we talk about, artifacts from them and other things including the Revolutionary War are housed in this museum. And with the Emerson house being right across the street, when the conquered museum comes into being in the
1930s, they have a discussion with the Emerson family about a lot of the artifacts that they have and they come to the conclusion that they're better house can have, you know, better HVAC or there's no H there's no actually AC in those days, but you know, a better climate control um a better place to
show it at the conquered museum. And so you see in this picture here on the right hand side, this is actually Emerson's house taken from a window in the conquered museum. So it literally is right across the street. And they take Emerson's study and move it pretty much
lockstock and barrel across the street. And so today when you go to the conquered museum, you will see Ralph Waldo Emerson's study um pretty much fully put together. Uh there's actually, we'll talk about this a little bit later on, he's buried
uh in a plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Conquered as well. And from the backyard, there's kind of this path that wanders and it does eventually end up at Walden Pond. So you can see from this map here, if you do start at Waldo's house here and ramble through the woods,
and this is all pretty much public land, you can walk to Walden Pond. And this is actually the location of where Thorough's um uh cabin was. This is actually the visitor center here on the other side of the road. And it's about 2.2 miles. So
they would do that walk and you can still do that walk today. Speaking of thorough, he is the only one who's actually born in conquered of the transcendentalist. So he's born there in 1817 and dies in 1862 in conquered. He does graduate from Harvard as well in
1837. His major works are weak on the conquered Marramac rivers 1849. He was actually writing that while he was at Walden Pond in the 1840s. Um he also has an essay on walking and of course Walden his most famous famous book is published in 1854.
Um you know during his lifetime he does not sell a lot of books. One of the jokes is um I believe the publication run for the week on the conquered Marramac River is around a thousand volumes. um he ends up getting about 700 back and so he makes a joke that um he has a
rather large library of which he has written most of the books since they're the copies of the weekend of conquered in Marramac rivers but that is the book that he is working on while he's at Walden um basically is kind of an homage to his brother John who had passed away a couple years early from lock jaw
Brontton Alcott is born in actually Walcott Connecticut in 1799 he dies in Boston 1888 he is one One of his most noted things is he creates the temple school in Boston. He is very much uh involved in education and a lot of kind
of radical ideas for the day in education and um he actually engages Elizabeth Peabody um the famous Peabody sisters, Peabody sisters and Margaret Fuller actually works at the Temple School in Boston for a while as well. He's one of the most frequent visitors to thorough. uh thorough actually
mentions him in the book not by name but I think he calls him the philosopher but he does talk about in Walden that he's getting these visits and Alcott does actually visit Walden quite a bit thorough there uh friend and fellow activist Franklin Benjamin Sanborn said
in these eulogy of Alcott can he remember a single good cause a single Germany idea in the last 60 years that did not find the embodiment in Mr. Alcott interesting character not the most pragmatic man in the world and when we get to Fruitlands we'll talk a little bit more about that but obviously the
other thing is his daughter is Louisa May Alcott the author of Little Women this is the orchard house in conquered where she wrote the book um it's not where the book takes place but is where she wrote it and over on the left side here this is actually Alcott's philosopher school philosophy school so
he has a school of philosophy the building still stands today that he ran for I think 10 years or so um right next to the orchard house. You can see the house right here and this is the actual orchard house um which can be visited today. Interesting place to go. He wrote a famous book called general maxims of
teaching by which to relegate the instructions the instructor's practice in instruction and uh you know some of his ideas were you know we kind of take them for granted now but we talked at the beginning of you know he wasn't into corporal punishment actually thorough when he graduates Harvard he does become
a school teacher his early days and he leaves school teaching because they want him to deliver corporal punishment and he wants no part of that so a lot of these things that are happening and they are happening in Massachusetts um you know a lot of horse man a lot of the ideas around public education do
generate from Massachusetts in the mid to late 1800s so we certainly have that to thank as far as our public school system goes in the United States and moving on to Margaret Fuller this famous quote by Edgar Alan Poe who is a contemporary of these and actually kind of verbally jousted with a lot of the
transcendentalists because he was a critic as well as an author he says humanity can be divided into three classes men and Margaret Fuller so they famously had a couple of debates um on various things. I think it was down in Baltimore, but her name was actually Sarah Margaret Fuller. Um should have
actually mentioned with Thorough, his birth name was actually David Henry Thorough and he changed it for ideas that people don't really know to Henry David Thorough and was known that as the rest of his life. But you'll see that with a lot of these transcendentalists, the name that they use um does change.
So Margaret Fuller was birth name was Sarah Margaret Fuller, but she does go by Margaret Fuller. She's born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1810. Actually, she was in Cambridge Port, part of Cambridge. And her father, he decides to retire from public life and ends up buying a
farm in Grten, but he dies two years later. So, the family has left to have to deal with this um farm in Grten and she goes to Boston to support herself. So, she lives in Boston um and actually ends up working at the Temple School. Um and this is kind of the theme with Bronson Elcott. She does work at the
Temple School, but she's unpaid. Um, and I think she tolerates that for a year or two, and then she has to go off and make a living. She does two organized conversations for women, which rely on Greek myths, among other examples, to challenge a contemporary place of women in society. We'll get to that in a
second. And she edits the first two years of the dial, which is the publication that the transcendentalists um create. Once again, she does that unpaid. And uh her first book is a translation of Gerta called Conversations with Gerta
in the last years of his life while at her mother farm mother's farm in Grten and is published in 1839. And they believe she was a model for Hawthorne's Hester Prin and she certainly is a model for Zenobia uh main character in the Bllythe romance which
we'll come to later. Hawthorne's book about the transcendentalist uh experimental community in West Roxbury called Brook Farm. So this is the dial as uh obviously graphics weren't a huge
thing back in those days but this is issue number one posted uh published in 1840. She does become the first foreign correspondent for a US newspaper. Not just the first female for foreign correspondent. I believe she was actually the first foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune who is edited
by Horus Greley. He's a very very big proponent of really both uh Thorough and Fuller. She actually goes over to one of the revolutions I mentioned in 1848 is happening in Rome. She goes to cover that falls in love with one of the
revolutionaries there Giovani Sulli and uh they have a son Angelo. Um unfortunately the revolution does not go their way. So they're forced to kind of scramble and so she is going to bring the family back to the United States and
unfortunately they perish in a shipwreck off Fire Island and actually Emerson then sends Thorough down there to see what he can get ideally recover the remains of Fuller but he is not able to do that. He is able to get some of her
belongings. I believe he ends up with actually the button off her husband's coat. But um and thorough talks about this in Cape Cod, his book going to the Cape before he gets to the Cape, he ends up in a shipwreck in either I think Situ or Cohassid and he's on the beach and
you know there's tons of shipwrecks uh happening on the New England coast in those days and they become a real source for scavenging. So when these stuff washes ashore, including bodies, including cargo, everything else, uh the people go down to the beach and start really picking stuff apart. So um when
he gets down to Fire Island, he is not able to recover Fuller's remains. But we will get to uh where her memorial is. And about those conversations, as I mentioned, Elizabeth Peabody, um, who's one of her sisters, ends up being Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife's, Sophia
Peabody. She has a bookstore in downtown Boston, and it was right near where the current brattle bookshop is, if you're familiar with that, on West Street, right by downtown Crossing in Boston. And this plaque you can see right here, it's an indication these buildings are pretty old. And that's where they hold
some of the conversations. and her bookshops were the first to offer foreign authors. She published the dial there. Um and it was a meeting place for transcendentalists and intellectuals. So a whole host of characters here. Alcott, William Channing, Theore Parker we'll get to later on and Margaret Fuller
gives her lectures called conversationists and they were definitely very very important part of the early feminist movement. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is technically not a transcendentalist, uh, but he is hanging out with this crowd in a big way. And like I said, he
marries Elizabeth Pebbid's sister, Sophia Pee. Um, and he lives in in well, he lives in conquered and of course lives in Salem. Uh, but he lives in two different houses in conquered which are very famous. We'll get to those, but he is born in Salem in 1804. Actually dies on vacation in Plymouth, New Hampshire
in 1864. He keeping the theme here of these alterations of the name, he changes his name by adding a W to it. So rather than a Hawthorne, it becomes Hawthorne. And the reason for that is one of his ancestors was one of the judges during
the Salem witch trial. So he wanted to distance himself from that. And I think the guy's nickname actually was the hanging judge. So he has that h family legacy that he wants to distance himself from. So he adds a W to his name. Um he does go to Bowden class of 1825 and his
classmates are actually Henry Wtherworth Longfellow and the future president of the United States Franklin Pierce who he was on vacation with in Plymouth New Hampshire when he died in 1864. He marries Sophia Puby in 1842. And like I say he's not a transcendentalist. Um if you're familiar
with Hawthorne's work he certainly has a less optimistic view of human nature particularly when you think about things like the scarlet letter and the house of the seven gables. Speaking of which, the House of the Seven Gables is something you can visit up in Salem today. Um, we went there uh
this winter and Sophia Peeb was actually an artist and so some of her original works are in the House of the Seven Gables and she was quite a good artist and once again, you know, a female artist in the mid 1800s is not something that's all that
common. Um, so she is a very very accomplished artist and I have two of her paintings at the house of the seven gables and one of the famous attributes to the house of the seven gables is the hidden stairway. I had not been there in 50 plus years but I remember the hidden
stairway. So you can go up the hidden stairway. I did not remember that but um the tour guide lets us go up the hidden stairway which is very hidden and very narrow. Um, the interesting thing about this stairway is the House of Seven Gables, there's this character, I guess, who kind of appears in different places
and it's it's I don't think it's articulated that there's a hidden staircase, but it's kind of implied. The interesting thing is this is actually put in after the novel was written. So, the house is redone in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and the actually a lot of
the Seven Gables had been removed. And so this Caroline Emerton is the owner of this at this point in time. We'll get to her in a second. She kind of retrofits it to make it, you know, kind of, you know, art mimicking history, mimicking art. And she has this hidden stairway installed. And uh she has the seven
seven gables. By the time Hawthorne was there, um one of his cousins actually owned the house in the 1800s. And at that point, it did not have the original seven gables. It had been kind of rejiggered and didn't I think it only had like three or four gables, but she put it back to the original seven gables.
And speaking of which, we will do a little pano here of it's kind quite a complex down in Salem on the water. They have the houses of seven gables. They have this courtyard and there are various buildings related uh to the time frame in that. And they
actually moved Hawthorne's birthplace, this red house here on the left was he was born in Salem and the building was down the street, but they moved it to the location. And and so now when you go to the house of the seven gables, you can actually go into Hawthorne's birthplace as well. It's a very nice
complex. And it's interesting, we'll get this story um with the Margaret Fuller House as well, but as I mentioned, Caroline Emerton is this philanthropist who buys the house in the late 1800s, early 1900s, redo it, what's in the staircase, but she makes it a settlement
house for immigrants. So in the early 1900s, it becomes a settlement house for immigrants. And to this day, it still has that function as they offer classes. When we were there in I guess it was January of this year, they're offering a lot of Ukrainian
classes and things based on Ukrainian um language to help any Ukrainian people who had immigrated to this country transition into the United living in the United States. So that whole concept of a settlement house is kind of interesting that we'll see that with the Margaret Fuller House that these houses,
you know, have had these functions for a while now. I mean, uh, Hawthorne wasn't nearly into the social, um, uh, progressive, uh, stuff that Fuller was, but, it is kind of interesting that this house becomes a settlement house. Over
100 years later, it still is that. And the only house he actually owned is the Wayside, which is a couple of houses down from the Orchard House in Conquered, and he owned that uh, 1852 to 1870. um he passes away and Sophia keeps
it is currently a national uh parks property and full disclosure I have started to volunteer for the National Park Service at the Minute Man Historical National Park. So this is not open all that often I think due to staffing and other concerns. Um so I'm
hoping I've never been in it. Um I've been outside obviously photographing it but this third story section was added for Hawthorne and so he wrote in here. Uh, but it is open. I believe it's open on weekends beginning mid July, mid June um
through Columbus Day, but I'm not sure. So, I do need to talk to my contact at National Park Service to see what's going on there. And I'd love to volunteer and be able to work at that house. But working at the Old North Bridge is pretty cool as well. So, if you have any floating around any of the visitor centers or the old north bridge,
you may run into me. So, this is conquered. This is actually the the um Minute Man Park is split into two. This is the Battle Road area where there's a visitor center with a 23minute video on it. This is the Old North Bridge, but there's also a visitor
center here with a shorter or seven-minute video. The actual or old north bridge is right here. And in between is just like a whole mess of history. So, we have Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is where a lot of these folks are buried in a famous place called Arthur's Ridge. Um, you have the wayside right here, Hawthorne's house.
You have uh the Orchard House here. You go down here and you have Emerson's house and you have the conquered museum. So, this whole stretch of road is just an amazing amazing amount of history. And then you have the old Mance over here by the old North Bridge. Part of
the challenge is they're owned a lot by different entities. So, there is not a one-stop shopping as far as ticketing goes. Um, as I said, the National Park Service owns the wayside, but the Orchard House kind of its own thing. The Emerson House is its own thing. The Conquer Museum, it's his own thing. Old Man is owned by the trustee of reservations. But an incredibly
interesting place to visit um if you haven't. And if you have, it's an incredibly interesting place to go back to. So, uh I think at this point we will take a break and see if um we have any questions.
>> Yeah, Bruce, a couple interesting things. Um, we did have we do we have someone who works at the Main Street Visitor Center on the call today, Abby, who has um welcomed people to stop by and mention that the map um you were showing she gives out there. So that's awesome. Welcome Abby.
>> So Abby probably knows my friend Victor who works at visitor center as well. >> Yeah, probably. So, um, one of the questions that came up, and this was asked really early on, Bruce, so you may have already covered it, but, um, I thought Margaret Fuller only had one child and he died, drowned along with Margaret and her possible husband when
he was three in a shipwreck. How could she have a descendant? Am I remembering wrong? That's the first question. So, did you mention that she had descendants early on? >> Yes. Yes. Well, I think the descendant comes from uh one of her sp one of her siblings. >> Okay. >> U, but yes, he she did have a son. I think it was actually one or two years
old. But yes, unfortunately he did perish in the ship shipwreck as well. >> Okay. So that answered that. So someone in the family's child, not necessarily her child. >> Actually, probably a brother since the guy's last name was Fuller. So I would assume that was he's a descendant of Margaret Fuller's brother. Margaret Fuller's I should know this, but one of
her siblings was married to married to a Channing, but there was so many there was more connections within the transcendentals with the Fuller family. >> Great. Um, also we've had um one or two people saying that they're planning to visit conquered and I know you're
thrilled to hear that to see some of the sites that you're talking about. Um, one another question is can conquer be seen all in one day? Um, so what do you think about that? >> Well, I think that's a really interesting question because when I get to my transcendentalist ramble, I will
show you if you are dedicated what you can do in one day. Um, but as far as conquered specifically, I would say yes, it would be a busy day. The challenge is uh I just found this out when I was down at the old north bridge yesterday that
the Old Man right now is only open on uh Saturdays and Sundays and Monday holidays. So I don't know the other places I know the Conquer Museum is pretty much open every day. I don't know about the Emerson House, but the only thing I would say about seeing it in one day is is everything open. But as far as going to it, I mean that's just an
amazing day. There nice restaurants in conquered. You can definitely particularly this time of year with the um light uh staying late in the afternoon, early evening. Um yeah, it's a it's a full day and you'll be your head will be full of history, but um you can definitely do it.
>> Great. Um and Abby also the one who works at the visitor center mentioned that Margaret Fuller's sister Ellen was married to William Ellery Channing went by Ellery and was a friend of the Rose and he's a nephew to the Unitarian minister. So lots of interesting things.
>> Yes. And I see somebody says, "Well, the allcart daughter is transcendentalist." We we'll get to that in a second. Um I have a little bit about Louisa May and um her view on that. >> Great. Okay, that's all the questions for now, Bruce.
>> Awesome. Thank you. Okay, so the Old Corner bookstore, I mean, I just put this in there because I used to I worked in downtown Boston for like 30 plus years and I walked by this building every day um and was disappointed. It's a Chipotle. It used to be the Globe Corner bookstore um when I first worked
in Boston in the mid 80s. But it's interesting in the fact that it is the oldest commercial building in Boston. So it's built in 1718. It's actually built on the site of Anne Hutchinson's house. So people familiar with Anne Hutchinson, he's one of the people who displeased the Puritans and was banished to Rhode Island. Um, but
the reason I bring it up in this context is it was the home of Tickner and Fields, and they're a publishing house in the 1800s, and they're really at the center of publishing a lot of these folks. Longfellow, Emerson, Thorough, Hawthorne, um, James and Annie Fields
are two of the people who are involved in this. Annie Fields, I did a presentation a while back um, about artistic New England. She ties into Sarah Orwitt up in Maine. She ties into Isabella Stewart Gardner. So really interesting nexus of a lot of the
intellectual life of Boston and Massachusetts going on in the mid 1800s and it actually ends up being a precursor to the publishing house of Hotton Mifflin. And so it was saved by demolition in 1960. And when I did my research for this presentation, it made me feel a bit
better as to why it's a Chipotle is because it's currently leased out and that helps pay for preservation efforts in Boston. Um, so I said I was disappointed when it went from the Globe Corner bookstore, which was an amazing bookshop of mostly travel books. I think if I remember correctly, back in the 80s
and 90s, um, see as Chipotle, not to slam anything anything against Chipotle per se, but um, you know, part of the economics. And so the fact that we still had this building literally, you know, like 400 years old that's still there, um, is amazing. And to switch gears a little bit, um you
can't really talk about this situation in this era without kind of going down this hole. Tuberculosis, as we've seen already, and we'll see later, um ends up being a big issue with a lot of these folks. And so Thorough himself, his sister Helen, Theodore Parker, and Emerson's first wife, as I mentioned,
Ellen, all succumb to it. Um mercury poisoning, which this one is even kind of crazier in certain ways. There was a thing called calaml which is used to treat various diseases and it's also used for teething until 1948 and it's got I believe it's arsenic in
it and so Sophia Pee who's Hawthorne's wife she is very sickly throughout her whole life she does actually outlive Hawthorne but she's never in great health and the supposition is her father was a dentist and he uses it he used it
for her teething in her very very early um childhood actually may have contained lead. Um it contains some sort of contaminant and particularly as a young child to have that was incredibly difficult for her with her development. Um so it actually affects Louisa May
Alcott as well because during the Civil War she's a nurse um for Civil War soldiers down south and she has some unknown disease and one of the doctors there treats her with this and once again for the rest of her life basically Louisa May Alcott is in poor health until she passes away. I believe she
passed away in her 50s, but she is not in great health from her mid20s onward. As I mentioned, Thorough's brother on John passes away from lock jaw. He actually cuts himself with his uh he's actually sharpening his razor, rusted
razor, I guess, cuts himself, ends up contracting lock jaw, ends up dying in Thorough's arms um a couple of weeks later. So, you know, once again, and we have tetanus boosters now and tetanus shots, so you kind of have a good appreciation of uh, you know, some of
the advancements we've made and scarlet fever. And a really, really tragic time frame for the transcendentalist is within a month of Thorough's brother passing away, Emerson's first son, Waldo, passes away from scarlet fever. So, it's it's in the winter time frame,
January to February, I think 1843, maybe. Um so that really hits the transcendentalist community really really hard with both those deaths that happened so close together and typhoid fever um claims dar uma una who is over in the
UK I believe and I believe Sopia and una were buried in the UK and were disinterred and brought back to sleepy hollow maybe about 10 years ago. So, and not to think this is something in the past, the best-selling author
John Green, ironically enough, literally just released a book about a month ago called Everything is Tuberculosis, the history and persistence of our deadliest infection. So, unfortunately, tuberculosis is still with us and um you know, it does pop up every once once in a while here in the United States, but
certainly other parts of the world. It is very very pervasive. So, um this is Author's Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. um right kind of behind the square, Monument Square in downtown Conquered. Um you can drive into the
cemetery. It is the author's ridge is kind of back toward the rear of the cemetery. So if you're doing that one day trip into Conquered, I would suggest that you maybe drive into the cemetery, save a little bit of time, and you can go up to the author's ridge and Hawthorne's up there, Thorough's up there, Emerson's up there. Um pretty
interesting place. These are cemeteries are actually beautiful spots, very wooded, well tended. So with that, we'll go into the transcendentalist ramble. So what kind of got me down this path was, you know, I've been interested in the
transcendentalist. They, you know, they've existed in conquer, which is only about 15 minutes, well 30 minutes from where I live, probably 10 miles. So, I've been in the area a lot and they kept coming up in different things I was doing, different readings, and I was
like, well, I should go visit these places. So, I decided to kind of issue myself a challenge of some of these places are south of Boston. And those of you who are natives or residents around Boston realize those of us north of Boston, traveling south of Boston is you might as well be going to Tahiti. Uh, we don't really typically venture that far
south. We have people who go north to the mountains and to Maine and people who go south to Cape. Um, so I decided like if the winter's a good time, traffic's not horrible. Let's have a challenge and go visit some of these sites. So, uh, the major majority of these were done in a single day.
And I'm up here in Chelmsford, but kind of swept down here to West Roberry. And there's Brook Farm down here. This is the Theodore Parker Church in West Roxberry. School Master Hill in Franklin Park. Um, I actually missed this one. I had to go back the following weekend. But that's the Margaret Fuller House in
Cambridge, Mount Arman Cemetery and the Cambridge Watertown line and then out to Walen Pond. Um, Old Mance and Fruitlands I have been to a zillion times. Um, I did go back to the Old Mass actually at Christmas time. They had a very nice program there at Christmas time, but those were not included in the day, but
it was a pretty robust day of going and visiting these these sites. And, you know, they're I wouldn't say they're a lot of them aren't typically, you know, well visited, and we'll kind of get into that. And as I mentioned with Alcott um and actually George Ripley, there were a
couple of transcendentalist communities that spawned from the movement in the 1840s. And there are some remnants of them still today. First one's Brook Farm, which as I mentioned is in West West Roberry, which is um I guess officially part of Boston, but a little bit south of downtown. And this is
what's left there. It was founded by George Ripley. Um it was a transcendentalist commune from 1841 to 1843. It was actually issued as a joint stock company. Our friend Nathaniel Hawthorne is a member. So, you know, that's the whole thing about debate. Was he a transcendentalist? No, probably
not. His his his work certainly weren't in that vein, but he was very much in the movement and he was a resident of Brook Farm for six months. And I think he actually was a owner in the joint stock company and actually had to sue to get some money back. But it changes in
1847 uh or 1844 to 1847 to what's called a forest balance which is another utopian. There's this whole hotbed of utopian communities that are going on in the United States in the mid 1800s. The most notable one is probably the Shakers. I did do a presentation on the
Shakers a while ago where I went into some of the other communities, United Onidita communities and there's various ones that kind of pop up and um there's Ruskin, John Ruskin, the um gentleman from England who was very influential. These things do kind of pop up all over
the place. So this brook farm kind of goes from a transcendentalist one and goes to a forerist one and eventually becomes a ruth lutheran property for 130 years and then it's actually acquired by the state of Massachusetts and now managed by the department of
conservation and recreation west Roxberry. Um the lone building remaining is not from Brook Farm. It's actually from the print shop from the Luther Lutheran Martin Luther orphanage. Um, what the transcendentalist Brook Farm was most noted for was its school. Like
I said, education was very core to what was, excuse me, going on with the transcendentalists. So, they had this school there that they were charged people to go to and that became kind of the economic engine for that. Unfortunately, none of this stuff really um exists anymore, but there is a property there. It is a park. It's
actually kind of an entrance to a cemetery. If you go back in there, there's a cemetery. Um, but there's actually pretty good walking trails and there's some information about Margaret Fuller visited there. Thorough visited there. Um, so those folks were actually involved with that. Um, Emerson was a bit skeptical as he was of most things
along this line. He does visit, I believe. Um, he doesn't live there. Um, but this is a note from Ripley to Emerson. Our objects, as you know, are to ensure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor that now exists, to combine the thinker and the
worker as far as possible in the same individual to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life that can be held amidst be had amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions. One of the more
interesting things about some of the stuff you read from the transcendentalist is how pertinent it is to today. Now if you read that this is 1840 I believe the communist manifesto comes out a couple years later. Um and you see that with you see that particularly with
the shakers. Um Frederick Engel who wrote the communist manifesto with KL Marx actually comments on the Shakers and their communal life. So you have these things going on and you see this thing about you know the thinker and the worker and is adapted to their tastes and talents. You know the whole thing about you know each adapted to his
needs. So you have a lot of these ideas bubbling around uh in this area and it's pretty fascinating that this is all happening around here. This one I find once again not rife with humor here but this one I find very funny. This is from Hawthorne to his at the time fiance Sophia PBD and says after breakfast Mr.
Ripley put a four-pronged instrument into my hands, which gave me to understand was called a pitchfork. And he and Mr. Farley, being armed with similar weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure. I shall make an excellent husbandman. I feel the original Adam reviving within
me. So um so he only excuse me lasted six months, but um you know he was a very much of a cultured guy. Ends up working for um the customs house in Salem. manual labor was not his forte, but this is a pretty comical passage of
his time at Brook Farm. So, the Margaret Fuller, there was a cottage there that burns down in 1984. They called it the Margaret Fuller College cottage because she did stay there a lot when she visited Brook Farm. Um, I was wandering through the woods and I found this foundation near where
the map told me the location of Margaret Fuller's cottage was. I assume it's the if it was the foundation of Margaret Fo's Cottage, they would have said that. But um it was pretty close and um you know, like I said, there's kind of some rambles you can go through there. And obviously I was there in the winter, so the trail was a little bit restricted,
but um it's a it's a beautiful spot in West Roxberry. And the other community is Fruitlands Museum out in Harvard, Massachusetts. So for a little bit of ge uh geographic positioning here, Harvard is out to the west. We're off of 495 here. um a few
towns down from Grten and it is the home to the Fruitlands Museum which was uh established by Clara Endicott Sears. She's a preservationist from a wealthy Boston family. She actually does some legitimate research and writes a book called Gleanings from
Shaker Journals. So the Shakers had a village in Harvard, Mass um right down the road from where the Fruit Lands was. So once again, you have this really interesting kind of juxaposition because some of the fruit land members, at least one ends up going to the Shakers when Fruit Lands falls apart. Um the Alcott,
I think Bronson wanted to go to the Shakers and his wife finally stepped in. So that's not going to happen. Um but she does actually get some um information journals from first primary source journals from the Shakers and she has a book that she wrote about Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands because the
farmhouse that was there is was on the property and she buys that uh this is actually a shaker house that she has moved to the property later. But um it was a pretty interesting story. So Bronson Alcott and a gentleman from England. I believe Alcott met him when Alcott did a speaking tour in England.
And this guy Charles Lane, they come up with this idea of we can live on this farm and you know we can do all these wonderful things and and and subsist on mother nature, but they don't want to use beasts of burden or manure. They don't start habitating there until
June. You know, I'm not an expert farmer, but if you're not planting your crops till June here in New England, that's probably not going to end well. So they don't make it through the winter winter. So the experiment such as it was only lasts for a few months and they have to basically go with tail between their legs back to Cambridge or back to
I forget actually where Alcott ends up. He ends up back in conquered like I said one I believe Lane does end up with the Shakers for a bit. Um and the Shakers did have a whole thing where they had what they called winter shakers where people would go live with the Shakers in their village for the winter and then scadaddle when the weather got better. So that was not an unusual thing, but um
it was just really interesting having the Shaker Village a couple of miles away and um Brute Lands tapping as well. And so this Brutlands does have they have the Shaker building right there. They have a museum of Native Americans and they also have a museum in the Hudson River School of Painting. So um
it is owned by the Trusty Reservations as is the old man. So once again, I highly recommend a place to go. And obviously in the fall you have uh I think it's on Prospect Mount. you're looking over there to either Mount Wus andor Manadnok, but it's just a beautiful, beautiful spot.
So, um it's always interesting to see things that are written at the time, the contemporary comments that are made. Um there was an article in this publication called The Nun or the article titled The Nunness in a publication called The Pioneer. Um, Robert Carter says, "Alcott
was very strict, rather despotic in his rule of the community, and some of the members have told me they were nearly starved to death there, and they absolutely would have perished with hunger if they had not fertily gone among the surrounding farmers and begged for food." One of the other stories is is that he and Lane were out really having all kinds of philosophical
discussions where his wife um Marmy in the Little Women is basically kind of making things work um like harvesting what little crops they have, getting apples, things along those lines. And Emerson's famous quote is, "I will not prejudge them successful. They look well in July. We will see them in
December and in December, Jan January, they actually disbanded." Um, he did see them because they were basically heading back to conquered. So, like I said, it's a beautiful spot. Um, it is very steep on a hill. You kind of park um for the most part up at the top of the hill where there's a nice cafe and a gift shop. This is the farmhouse of
Fruitlands, the Shaker Building. See how they're related. And you go down there and over here are the Native American and Hudson River School um museums. And now this is a part of the trustees um they do have um different art exhibits. There's an art exhibit actually right now based on the Shakers that just opened up last week. Um so it's a really
incredible place to go and like I said you know going back with the theme of nature and the transcendentalists um this is really an amazing place to um spend some time particularly in the fall. Uh back about 20 years ago, they had a bunch of sculptures by the now deceased sculptor Joe Wright where he
took trees and basically took the root ball here and used that as a head and then fashioned these into various beams throughout the woods. It was an amazing exhibit um that I had the pleasure of actually having him be the tour guide for the exhibit. It was really cool. And this is my wife and daughter walking through the woods. They have amazing um
hiking trails throughout the area as well. So um somebody mentioned about you know we're the Alcott children transcendentalist. So Louisa May Alcott does write a book really a satire called transcendental wild oats and um
Hawthorne writes a book called the blindale romance which is based on his experiences at Brook Farm. And uh they're both kind of a jaund's view rightfully so of what would happen at Brook Farm. Louisa May Alcott definitely she was a young girl when the whole thing happened and I I think she was 10
or 11 around that time and uh you know so she kind of knew what what was what to a certain degree and um she does write this novella um later on in her life that is um kind of skewers her father's experiments at Brook Farm and Hawthorne's a little less harsh to a
certain degree but um it's it's an interesting take and of course once again he left for six months. So, continuing the ramble, we have the Margaret Fuller House, uh, which is this is where she was born and grew up, um, until her father decided to go to the
wilds of Graten in those days. And this is in in Cambridge. Um, once again, as within as with the health of the Seven Gables, this becomes a settlement house. And in 1902, and you can see the time frame with this and the House of Seven Gables is very similar, early 1900s, lots of immigration happening. So,
obviously, there's a need here. So, both of these buildings become settlement houses, which I find kind of interesting, particularly in Fuller's case. and she was very much well ahead of her time. A lot of progressive ideas and to this day, you know, this is what this building is used for. You know, child and family services, food services, elder services, and community
advancement all for the city of Cambridge. Um, that's how it looked back when photography was young. Doesn't really look all that different today. Um, definitely could use a paint job. Um, but they have put a mural here in the side. Uh, and it is a community
location in Cambridge, um, near Central Square. And this is their website. And so integrated community services to help individuals come overcome challenges. I think Margaret Fuller would be happy that that is what it's being used for today.
So they have a marker. Her family has a plot at Mount Aruburn Cemetery, which is in Cambridge. I know I've mentioned that in previous presentations. Lots of famous people are buried there. It is a garden cemetery. I think it was one of, if not the first garden cemetery in the United States in the 1830s. So there is
a marker to her. um she did take the name solely. It's debatable as to whether she actually married um the count not there's no official um wedding certificate as such but she did take his name and uh this is the family plot and you can certainly see that today in
Mount Orman Cemetery. So we'll quickly go through Theodore Parker who is another transcendentalist. Um he's born in Lexington and dies in Florence 1850. Why is he in Florence? He has tuberculosis. So you know the whole thing of trying to get better air that was a lot of the you know outside was one of the the real big therapies for
tuberculosis. Some people did recover from it. Uh most did not. Um he graduates from Harvard Divinity School actually can't go there undergraduate because he has a lack of funds. Um he is a minister at the West Roxberry Unitarian Church for about 10 years in the 1830s and 1840s. He's one of the
secret six tying back to my friend John Brown. Actually I should not call it John Brown my friend but um tying back to John Brown. Um there were a bunch of people in uh Massachusetts I think mostly who were known as the secret six who were kind of supporting him both financially and ide ideologically. Um
Parker was not that rich. Um but he did um promote a lot of John Brown's ideas and some couple of famous quotes that have been reused by the Parker. One is a government of all by all for all which kind of gets co-opted by Abraham Lincoln for the Gettysburg address. And this
longer-winded one is I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The ark is a long one. My eyes reach out but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And for what I see, I am sure it bends towards justice. So you're
very f I'm sure most of you are familiar with that phrase that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. It's attributed to MLK. This is the original. You can see why MLK is noted as a great orator. This is very wordy. Um, but the concept is there and
uh uh MLK put it to a much more concise word. So his church is still there today in West Roberry. It's called Theodore Parker Unarian Church um right on the the main drag in West Roxberry and there's a statue to him.
So he actually for those of us from Chelmsford we have a book that we discuss uh one book the whole town reads every year. sponsored by the friends of the library. They buy 500 copies for people in town to read. And the one we had last year was Master and Slave Husband and Wife. And the author, Ilon
Woo, actually came to speak last April, just a month ago that it won the Puliter Prize. And the main characters in the book are William and Ellen Craft and they are escaped slaves. They're involved in the abolitionist movement. They're involved with Frederick Douglas. Uh Theodore Parker actually performed
the marriage for the ceremony. It's the marriage ceremony for those two. So, that's kind of a neat little tiein there. Um, moving on to School Master Hill, which is in Franklin Park. Emerson lives here for a couple of years. He teaches in West Roxbury, which is known as Canterbury. Then, um, actually leaves
and ends up living in a farm in in Chumsford for a few months. Uh, he leaves this um job to actually attend Harvard Divinity School. and it was on the location that today is Franklin Park which was part of the emerald necklace
which Frederick Lawmstead put together. Didn't complete it but put it together. Um I'm actually working on a project on Mstead as well. He pops up a lot and actually became later on the location for the superintendent's house um the park and he wrote a poem about it and
there's a marker in this rather rather large rock there of where the house that Emerson lived while he was a teacher uh in the mid1 1820s. And once again, it gets you to Franklin Park, which is this amazing gem uh in the Emerald Necklace, you know, right in the downtown bar around Boston. And um you'll see a
picture here that um this is the old superintendent's house. This is the only structure that's left. And looking through there, you can see this is a golf course. And in the winter, it's used as a sledding hill. So, it's this ma amazing expanse of open space within Boston. And uh you know, the emerald necklaces
uh a bunch of those. And the old man, as I mentioned, the old man um is actually built by Emerson's grandfather in 1769. Hawthorne, uh when he gets married, he and Safia rented from 1842 to 1845. And
Thorough's wedding present to them is a vegetable garden. He actually cultivates a vegetable garden for them. As I mentioned before, he's owned by the trustees. Right now, it's open on uh Saturdays and Sundays and Monday holidays. It'll be open for three days this weekend. I assume will be open more during the summer, but uh positive. So,
the old man is one of these really interesting structures in American history because it's there in 18 built in 1869 uh 1769 and it is literally I don't know 100 yards or so from the old north bridge. So, you know, the shot
heard around the world is literally happening within viewing distance of this. And so, they do have a lot of reenactments there. And they have this is a um this was actually on April 17th a few years back. We had their 250th anniversary. Um a few weeks back u but this was done um before co so around
2019 or 2018 but they shot off cannons and this is actually a photo of the house um kind of taken from the north bridge. This is even a different one. But the interesting thing is this study over here this window you know overlooks the north bridge. So they saw literally the
start of the American Revolution and it's the room that Emerson writes his essay nature which is kind of his kicking off the transcendentalist movement and Hawthorne about six or seven years later writes a short story collection called Mosses from an old mans which actually gives the name to
the house which I think is a French term for minister's house. So, it's one of these really unique rooms in American history where like the stuff it is the room where it happened at kind of parap paraphrase uh Hamilton.
And if you want to see the actual chair that Emerson wrote nature in, that is at the Cocker Museum. They have they have Thorough's writing desk. Um they have one of the lanterns that was, you know, um um commanded by Paul Rivere to hang in the Old North Church. Um just an amazing repository of early American
history. So we have Wald and Pond um which thorough starts in July 4th 1845 and departs September 6th 1847 two month two years two months and two days on the shores of Walden Pond. This is actually
the illustration of the first edition of Walden Pond with this illustration done by one of his sisters published in 1854 and my slides are going a bit wonky. Um, he said, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front
only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover what I had that I had not lived." So, this is actually the dimensions blueprint as it were of the cottage. It
was 10 x 15 of the cabin and this is the list of materials. He builds the whole thing for $28.13 which in today's dollars is about $2,800. So, he is the progenitor of the little house um movement that we have
going on here, but he uses a lot of repurposing secondhand using old bricks um refuge shingles and uh sides. Um really a man way ahead of his time. So, before I jump into kind of the end of this, let's take if we have any more
questions. Lisa, >> I don't see any. Um if does anyone have any questions they want to type in and we can um Bruce can get them at the end. So yeah, I think we're I think we're good for now. All right. So, um, one of the benefits
of getting older, there are a few, but there are a couple, is in the state of Massachusetts, you can get a for $10 a pass for the Department of Conservation and Recreation for most of their properties. And they run Walden Pond.
So, last fall, I used that as an impetus to say, "Okay, I'm going to go and photograph Walden Pond for a year. Probably do it longer, but I'll do it." So, I started in September. Still doing it today. Um, it does cost $8 a day. If you're out of state, it's $30. Um, so,
so I've been to Walden Pond a dozen or so times. And I also volunteer for the Challenge for Teleia here in town, which is the tele media station has access to all kinds of cool audio and visual equipment. So, it morphed into not just a photographic kind of experiment, but
also a video experiment. So over the course of the last few months, I put together this 2 minute and 19 second video, which is kind of my homage to thorough. [Music]
Heat. Heat. [Music] Where are you? [Music]
So, I'll say a couple of things about that video. Um, one is Thorough did live in Chelmsford for actually about 2 years, very young, from about 2 to four years old. So, I did show a house called the Fisk House and it's very unclear where he lived in Chelmsford. Um, he
mentions in his journal a few times. I mean, he writes in the 1850s, I think, are the entries in his journal. um some houses have moved but he actually did there's no doubt he lived in Challenger for two years so we can claim some ownership of thorough and the other thing I will say is um that a video of the ice fisherman it was a really
interesting experience because the things around here don't freeze that much anymore in the winter I grew up in upstate New York grew up playing ice hockey as a kid on natural ponds that happened pretty much every winter it's a rare occurrence around here now but this winter we had a relatively cold uh
winter at least compared to um uh recent standards and So it um froze over about I think seven or eight inches thick um at Walden Pond and there were a lot of ice fishermanmen out and I said it was just a really cool experience to be right in the middle of Walden Pond standing on the ice and you know just looking all around that was uh I'm glad
I was able to experience that but you know so if you it is I will say you know back to the question about can you do conquered in a day it is a long day and you know you could make argument you could probably spend the whole day just at Walden but um it is a pretty cool place so as I mentioned lots of quotes from
these folks Uh, rather than love, than money, then fame, give me truth. I don't know whether John Lennon co-opted that for his song, but if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them. Books are a treasured wealth of the
world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Appropriate since we're being sponsored by a library tonight. I love this is my favorite one. Live in each season as it passes. Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of the earth. That's what I'm trying to do on my year-long kind of
photo escapade, video escapade in Walden Pond is really appreciate each season as it comes along. Certainly here in New England, um, you know, for better or for worse, we have very four very, very distinct seasons. Uh, another famous one, the man the mass of men leave lives of quiet desperation and our life is
frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify. So once again, he is pretty pertinent. Um, this is just a quick one. the um you know modernization was really encroaching upon the world. Industrialization is beginning to kick off in full steam in the 1840s and 1850s
and the railroad goes right by Walden Pond literally. And so he makes comments about it's a passenger train to Fitchburg and so he makes comments when he's living in the cabin at Walden when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder shaking the earth with his feet and breathing
fire and smoke from his nostrils. The train track does um go at the far end of the pond. You come to the pond where the parking lot is is actually they're rebuilding the bath house down by the beach, but all the way across is where the um train track is. And I was walking through there and I just stopped
that is in no way amplified. Um, so, um, I mean they're diesel trains today as opposed to coal and steam trains from 200 years ago, but um, you still have that intrusive noise to this day and there still is the commuter rail um, going from Boston to Fitchburg.
So, another quote, if a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps is because he hears a different drummer, let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak, should he turn his spring into summer.
So, we'll wrap up here. Um, this is the eulogy that Emerson gives at Thorough's funeral. The country knows not yet or in the least part how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task which none else can
finish. A kind of indignity to so noble a soul that it should depart out of nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he at least is content. His soul was made for the noblest of society. He had a short life, exhausted the capabilities of this world. Wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue,
wherever there is beauty, you will find a home. Now, I will say, you know, when when Emerson gives a lecture, whatever, these things are very long. I believe his eulogy was I think it might have been like I don't know if it was two hours is right, but it was long. Uh but this is end and it's an incredibly incredibly touching words for he and you
know he and thorough had a fractured relationship and you know kind of went in and out and toward the end they seem to have reconciled and sort this is an amazing amazing tribute to his friend. So legacy this is actually at the Dakota Museum um which is about two miles from
Walden Pond. It's a sculpture park called Huff and Puff by Hugh Hayden will be on view there until 2033. He takes the Walden uh cabin, Thorough's cabin, and puts it at an angle. It's a very disquing um view. Um really interesting
piece of work. Uh Frederick Nze firmly read Emerson as a 17-year-old. Obviously, the abolition movement owes a lot to them. Women's rights, that takes a long time. The 19th amendment, giving the women the right to vote, does not come until 1920, which is 80 years after
a lot of the suffragette movement happened. education I mentioned um a lot of um current educational theory can trace itself back to the transcendentalists and guys like Alcott and Thoro himself I mean non-violence certainly Gandhi and MLK reference him um a famous essay called resistance to
civil government which later gets termed civil disobedience and today's environmental movement he's certainly one of the progenitors of that and one of the famous books that really kind of encapsulates that is the environmental imag imagination written in 1996 by Lawrence Bule
And there is no shortage of resources. Um, a whole mess and there's far beyond this. I'll just highlight a couple. A fiction and non-fiction. The non-fiction is there's a biography published relatively recently by Laura Desel Walls called Henry David Thorough, a life and
a novel called Woods Burner written in 2009 by John Pipkin. This takes a um episode in the thorough's life where he and a friend of his, I believe it was Edward um inadvertently start a fire in the forest near conquered. And
so he's actually kind of, you know, people would would whisper behind him Woods burn woods burner when he walked by. So he was kind of considered um a bit of an outcast for that particular episode because a fire in those days is a huge deal as it is today. But then you're not only building the structure, you're not only burning the structures,
but you're burning the fuel because you know basically how houses are heated and Walden L Walden Pond, the actual space that Emerson gives thorough to spend time there as a wood lot. So it's being managed as a source for fuel. So this book is really interesting because it takes that particular episode and weaves
in different stories about it's in the late 1830s, 1840s and gives you a really good sense of what the community is like in that time frame. So I highly recommend that. So with that, um, I am on Instagram. I'm not on an Iceland, of course. Um, I am on Instagram at Bmag
Photo. I have a public Facebook page of Bruce Jmnus Photography and a web page of Bruce Magnusmugmug.com. And I'll be more than happy to take any other questions. >> Yeah, we do have a few questions, Bruce. Um, a few slides back, um, someone
asked, "What was the hair used for?" >> Yeah, I think it was in the plaster. Okay, good. >> I I I saw that myself. I was like, sure. >> Um, another question is, was George Ripley a different person from the um
Ripley's Believe It or Not? >> Yes, >> different person. >> Yep. >> Okay. Um, was there any overlap with the Quakers? >> Quakers. Um, I don't know of a I don't I'm not familiar with with the Quaker. I know there are Quaker meeting house. I know
there's one up in Ex New Hampshire which is very old. One of the oldest buildings in Extra New Hampshire. I had to photograph it for a different project but um it's an interesting question. I'm not I'm sure there must have been because you know they're non-violent um you know very much intellectual. Um but
I can't recall of any direct relation. The Shakers and the Shakers were quasi derived from the Quakers back in the UK. U but I don't know of any direct interactions. Doesn't mean there weren't any. >> Great. Thanks. Um, someone asked you you had mentioned the pass um, where you get
that and what places you can visit. So that's the Massachusetts State Parking Pass. Is that right? >> Yeah, that's and you can go to the website DCR is I think it's DCR.org or dcr.mmat.mma.org. But it is pretty much any state park in
Massachusetts that charges a fee except for Quabin. And there might have been another one. I was kind of surprised if they were going to accept thing make exceptions. They didn't accept Walden Pond because I mean I've been to Walden Pond now in all kinds of weather. Um haven't been there in the summer so I
know it's crowded in the summer but I will say there's very few times I've been there where I certainly been alone. I have I was one wicked cold day this winter I was alone but there's always people there but it does include that but it includes most um state parks. We went to um what was that place you went to in uh
>> uh Purgatory Falls. >> Purgatory Chasm. >> Chasm, right? purgatory chasm down in Sutton. We went there in the fall, had a you know parking fee and it works there. So it's it's >> and you have to be a mass resident, Bruce, do you do you know >> you have to be a mass resident and you have to be over 62.
>> Great. Thank you. Um just a comment that the quote about the legacy of the libraries and knowledge for nations is so pertinent today given the ax cuts to libraries and universities and um >> we all agree with that. Let's see. I'm just scanning to see if there's any other questions.
a lot of accolades. We really appreciate it. Um, you know, it's so great to see people from so many different states. You know, not only local, but you know, I saw people from New Jersey and Maryland and, you know, all kinds of places. So, thank
you all so much for coming. It's great. We've had so many questions. Still looking to see if there's any other ones. I think that's about it. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for attending. Like I said, I hope to have some more coming this fall.
I'm percolating some things around John Brown, Frederick Olmstead, might do something uh on Quebec. And um I appreciate people's attendance sharing this dreary, cold nor easter day here in New England and hopefully gave you some interesting ideas of places you might
want to visit and some other interesting things to check out as far as literature and knowledge goes. Thanks everyone. >> Bye. Thank you for coming. [Music]