The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan: July 2009

A Float

We at TTYDK can only guess where the Jeremiad is Jeremiading from, or at, now.

A Reverse Canoe Commute; or, Pointed Portage

This piece in the Times describes the conceptual reverse commute of two artists, on their way (back) to the Museum of Natural History.

Four days ago Mr. Starling and a fellow artist, Tyler Rowland — accompanied in a second (regular, nonart) canoe by another artist, Kasper Akhoj , and Dante Birch , a production manager at Mass MoCA — began enacting a kind of reverse expedition, taking not rare animal trophies but a load of complex cultural baggage and post-colonial inquiry back to the history museum. In May Mr. Starling put his canoe into the Hoosic River, whose south and north branches run through the Mass MoCa complex, and paddled and drifted to the Hoosic’s junction with the Hudson. Then, last Thursday, he picked up the journey in Albany, relying on tides, elbow grease and the kindness of strangers as he and the three other men made their way to Manhattan. (“Last night we had sushi, in Beacon,” Mr. Starling said when asked how they had been sustaining themselves along the way. “It’s been quite civilized, actually.”)

We would like to canoe the Hoosic someday. (Via D. Diehl.)

Island Camping

Just in case there was any question or any doubt or any anything, really, let it be known that we are completely down with, for instance, this:

via popupcity.net and swiss-miss.com

If you are one of those people who find themselves wondering what San Francisco looked like from a balloon in, say, 1901, or 1902, shortly after the Great Fire, then this is the Library of Congress site for you, or 4 U. The balloon was owned and (perhaps) operated by Professor T. S. Baldwin, who, on a previous balloon trip, freaked out his eight passengers, when the balloon broke from its moorings and traveled 50 miles south to Pescadero, though nearly floated west, out to sea. Another of the "aeronauuts" is listed as Edward Dudley. The long shadows suggest, according to the Library of Congress, that the trip was one of the last of the day. Up to twenty people could get in the balloon at a time, each person flying for a dollar.

Raging

Here's a debate that may or may not still be raging over at The Year in Pictures, a most excellent photo blog: Ali v. Jacko. (The photo of Ali is by Danny Lyons, who is the Muhammed Ali of photos of the about-to-be-destroyed South Street Seaport, seen here.)

m.p.f.i.a.b.o.a.p.

Man playing flute in a bubble on a pond on Twitpic

"Man playing flute in a bubble on a pond," a new photograph by Sam Amidon.

Choices?

There is in fact a Thoreau twitter, no relation and quite for months, but there is also a Roland Headley twitter, begging the question: what are you to do?
via Doonesbury.com

Feelies

It always amazes us that so few people know that Thoreau was a huge fan of the Feelies, in the '80s, when Hoboken was the Concord, Mass. of New Jersey.

via andrewromano.tumblr.com

Mercurial Skies

Summer in the city means the weather is always changing, as we here at TTYDK can attest. Why, just the other day we entered the subway in Brooklyn, and the weather was sunny and nice, with just a few clouds, but by the time we got to Manhattan, we could see that it had begun raining bagels. Lox of luck trying to find the right umbrella!

Long Nights

Via You Look Marvelous

When You Are Too Tired to Blog You Just Show Off a Postcard Which Contains a Photo Containing the Wild Where It's Not Necessarily Expected!

This just in over the Thoreau You Don't Know's e-transom:

hello friends!
greetings from copenhagen. today, at 7 AM, i saw two people asleep in a tent, which they had set up literally on the platform of the central train station! wow. this is a great idea. i am going to go camping in the train stations of the world. it looked like this: http://bit.ly/myKfQ
if you know people in copenhagen, or malmo sweden, i'm playing in copenhagen tomorrow Tuesday at 9 PM at Huset, and wednesday in Malmo somewhere i forget at 7 PM.

NEWS

1. I made two videos of a new song. you can see them here. Video A is necessary for comprehending the full implications of
Video B, but Video B is way more amazing.

Video A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7Qc57EQjY

Video B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCHk8BYllOQ

2. There is an amazing honkytonk band called the Sweetback Sisters. This band includes one Stefan Amidon on drums and some singing. They have a KILLER new record out. You must buy it. Order a hard copy:
http://www.thesweetbacksisters.com/
Or download it from iTunes:
http://bit.ly/d9gdl

okay bye!
sam
vimeo.com/samamidon

We wish we got more postcards featuring people camping in train stations. As it is, we will make do with this one.

Semi-Rhetorical Question

Where is the government?

What If Al Stieglitz Had a Cell Phone

For All

On the Fourth of July, you have to spend a little time speculating, when it comes to deciding exactly how cool Jefferson and Adams and all those guys were, but you don't have to wonder about how cool these two women are. They are completely cool, obviously.

Available now from Robert Sullivan, the New York Times best selling author, and published by Harper. A description from the publisher:

What if Henry David Thoreau—America’s pioneering nature lover, the man who famously lived in a little house of his own construction—was actually pro-city rather than just a monkish introvert who wanted to be left alone in the woods? What if the man we think of as so serious and introspective was really a joker, a bit of clown, a kind of stand-up comic in his day? And what if the fact that he often went home to his family or into town for supper didn’t show him to be a cheater or a fraud as far as self-reliance goes? What if spending time with his friends and family—i.e., community—was his point all along?

Reasons that Thoreau is maybe more applicable to these troubling times than you may imagine

¶ He was living not in a peaceful time where he could just sit there and look at a pond but at a time of financial crisis, panics, even, when unemployment was first being recognized as a crisis, when people began to think that the economic system was broken—to wit, there were unemployed workers often living at Walden Pond.
¶ He was not just writing about butterflies (though he uses one to excellent, redemptive effect at Walden's end) but about how work was taking over our lives, how play was disappearing, how things like conversation were disappearing, along with sympathy, empathy and gratitude.
¶ He was very interested in gadgets, being an engineer himself--no technophobe--and living at a time of intense technological excitement.
¶ He was big on tunes, as in music, as in having a playlist, though in those days it was called a repertoire—he played a mean flute.

A Review

A mischievous reporter on the universe, Sullivan has found beauty in a notorious swamp in The Meadowlands (1998) and wisdom in an alley in Rats (2004). In his latest slyly philosophical inquiry, he endeavors to free Henry David Thoreau from his calcified reputation as a cantankerous hermit and nature worshipper. Sounding like your favorite teacher who manages to make history fun and relevant, Sullivan vibrantly portrays the sage of Walden as a geeky, curious, compassionate fellow of high intelligence and deep feelings who loved company, music, and long walks. An exceptional writer mad for puns, Thoreau
was also a bold social critic and—the crux of Sullivan’s stimulating argument—a brilliant, tongue-incheek
humorist. Sullivan, himself plenty saucy, also elucidates Thoreau’s radical focus on “man’s
interaction with nature.” In command of a great diversity of fascinating material, Sullivan succinctly illuminates the striking parallels between Thoreau’s time and ours—foreclosures, lost jobs, and rapid technological change. Thoreau remains vital and valuable because of his acute observations, wit, and lyricism and his recognition that the “force of life is everywhere,” a perception even more essential now that the consequences of the societal choices Thoreau prophetically critiqued have reached staggering proportions.--Donna Seaman, in Booklist

More from the publisher:
Henry David Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think you know, even if they don’t. He’s the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods, the mystic worshipping solemnly in the quiet church of nature. He’s our national Natural Man, the prophet of environmentalism. But here Robert Sullivan—who himself has been called an “urban Thoreau” (New York Times Book Review) presents the Thoreau you don’t know: the activist, the organizer, the gregarious adventurer, the guy who likes to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burn the woods down). Sullivan argues that Walden was a book intended to revive America, a communal work forever pigeonholed as a reclusive one, and that this misreading is at the heart of our troubled relationship with the environment today. Sullivan shows us not a lonely eccentric but a man in his growing village, a man who danced and sang, who worked throughout his short life at the family pencil-making business, and moved into his parents’ house after leaving Walden Pond, but always paid his father rent. Passionate yet whimsical, The Thoreau You Don’t Know asks us to re-examine our everyday relationship with the natural world, and one another.

The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan