text: Thoream Bulletin ociety ISSN 0040-6406 Number 236 Summer 200 1 Friends of Walden Pond: Remarks at the Celebration of The Friends of Walden Pond Agreement Ronald A. Bosco [Editor's Note: The following remarks were presented at Walden Pond State Reservation on the occassion of the announcement of The Friends of Walden Pond, a new activity of The Thoreau Society to support the Walden Pond State Reservation. Also speaking at the tree planting ceremony were Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Peter Webber, Walden Pond Supervisor Denise Morrissey, and Division of Forests and Parks Director Todd Frederick] Thoreau Society and DEM representatives plant a tree at \\ to mark the beginning of The Friends of Walden Pond. Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Webber, Division of Forests and Parks Director Frederick, Program Manager Lafleur, Walden Pond State Reservation Supervisor Morrissey, honored guests: On behalf of the officers, Board of Directors, and members of the Thoreau Society, I am delighted to be here today to cel- ebrate the Agreement between the Department of Environmental Management and the Thoreau Society that formally estab- lishes the Society as The Friends of Walden Pond. The Thoreau Society was formed exact- ly sixty years ago, and since then it has grown to be the largest, and now oldest, society in the world devoted to the legacy of an American writer. Over the years, individuals from all walks — literary academics; environ- mentalists and land preservationists; social and political reformers; practitioners of the unique brand of American individualism and self-reliance that emerged in the nineteenth century; professionals in art history, natural history and science, geography and urban planning; and, of course, lovers of nature — have joined the Society with this shared mis- sion: to honor Henry David Thoreau by stim- ulating interest in and fostering education ■ about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours; by encouraging research on his life and writings; and by advocating for the preservation of "Thoreau country." Our members and the varied interests and talents that they bring to the _ Society reflect the extraordinary breadth of the intellectual and imaginative hold that Thoreau exerts on American culture — indeed, on global culture — to this very day. As we stand together at the site immor- talized by Thoreau in Walden, that master- piece of literary art which expresses so fully the ideal of American self-culture, it is worth reflecting on the fact that extensive coopera- tion between governmental agencies and professional societies such as we represent is quite rare. Yet, as President of the Thoreau Society and as a Concordian, I am confident that I speak for all our members as well as for our neighbors when I say that we enthusias- tically look forward to our role as The Friends of Walden Pond and the way in which, while serving as The Friends, we will be furthering the mission of the Department of Environmental Management: to exercise care and oversight for the natural, cultural, continued on page 2 In This Issue 2 Editor's Note Susie Carlisle 3 President's Column Ronald A. Bosco 6 Thoreau in the Military Classroom Matthew Ignoffo 7 Curator's Column Jeffrey S. Cramer 8 - Annual Gathering 9 Thoreau Society Visits Japan 10 Remarks at Soko University Ronald A. Bosco 12 Acceptance Speech of T.S. Honorary Life Membership at Soko University Alumni Gathering Daisaku Ikeda 14 Review: William Cain's Historical Guide to Thoreau Randall Conrad 15 Thoreau Society Committees 16 Notes and Queries 18 Thoreau Bibliography 20 Calendar Editor's Note Susie Carlisle A ^1 begin my second year as -/~\.Oeditor of the Bulletin, I must offer sin- cere and heartfelt thanks to all those who have sent encouraging words and, more importantly, contributions during the past twelve months. Your assistance has been invaluable, particularly the additions for the Thoreau bibliography and the items includ- ed in "Notes and Queries." True to Thoreau's example of careful and close observation, your dedication to promoting interest imand continued appreciation for Thoreau has allowed the Bulletin to grow to the respectable quarterly publication it is today. I ask for your continued assistance in providing both smaller items of interest as well as longer pieces to be presented as feature articles. The teachers' column — "Thoreau in the Classroom" — has met with tremendous success; I encourage all educa- tors to submit their material featuring approaches to teaching Thoreau at all levels. And our entire readership is always interest- ed in discovering new connections to Thoreau both within and beyond Concord- proper; I continue to call for submission any and all full-length and feature articles. With this in mind, the following are the deadlines for submission of material for each issue: My primary goal for the next year is to ensure that each issue of the Bulletin is mailed on time; with your help in meeting submission deadlines, I am sure that we can be successful. In addition, both the Bulletin and The Concord Saunterer will be adopting MLA (Modern Language Association) for- mat for all articles, notes, and bibliographic entries. Questions regarding the format- should be sent to Susie Carlisle, Editor; Thoreau Society Bulletin; Baker Farm; Lincoln, Massachusetts 01773-3004 or via e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. Finally, let me congratulate all mem- bers — and non-members — of the Thoreau Society on making the 60th Annual Gathering a tremendous success. A total of 230 attended the festivities ( 148 members, 82 non-members), which is sixty-five stronger than last year's gathering. Twenty-two states and three countries were represented, demonstrating that Thoreau and his works are far-reaching indeed. With the 150 th anniversary of the publication of Walden on the horizon, let us continue to spread the good works of Henry David Thoreau. Fall September 1 Winter December 1 Spring March 1 Summer July 1 New Life Members Charles Phillips Karen Merrill a - Life Membership The Society is once again offering life memberships. Life Membership includes all the benefits of an individual membership with the added advantage that your contribution will be managed for the long-term benefit of the Society. Cost: $ 1 ,000 per person Your Life Membership contribution is tax-deductible. Please contact the office for further information. 1 I 1 E I (781)259-4750 continued from page 1 and historic resources of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and to provide quality public recreational opportunities that are environmentally sound, affordable, and accessible to all citizens. As The Friends of Walden Pond, operating under the Thoreau Society's Friends of Walden Pond Committee, we will aid and promote management pro- grams and activities jointly developed by DEM and the Society for the Walden Pond State Reservation. These programs will include public education, environmental con- servation, and physical improvements to the Reservation for which no government funds are available. We will also actively support DEM's mission to balance resource protection and enhancement with public use and enjoy- ment at Walden Pond. Thoreau wrote in Walden, "A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." The depth of one's own nature is invariably also a measure of an individ- ual's — or in this case, a society's — commit- ment to its ideals. I cannot imagine a more appropriate way for the Thoreau Society to extend and share our founders' vision of how best to preserve the legacy of Henry David / Thoreau than for us to actively promote his legacy at the very site to which thousands of people from across the world have made their pilgrimage over the past century— a site which to all Thoreauvians is a sacred trust for us to preserve. And, because the explicit educational, research, and advocacy components of the Society's mission dovetail so perfectly with those of DEM's overall mission, I truly believe that, through our position as The Friends of Walden Pond, the Thoreau Society, in concert with the Department of Environmental Management, will be furthering our respec- tive missions while also performing an invaluable service to our neighbors and friends in Concord and Lincoln, to all the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and, indeed, to the many citizens of the world who will, I trust, continue to make their pilgrimage to this uniquely beautiful, inspiring, and historic site. In closing, I would like to acknowledge Todd Lafleur, Stuart Weinreb, and Kathy Abbott, whose generosity toward the Thoreau Society and confidence in its mission have made this occasion possible. President's Column Ronald A. Bosco [Editor's Note: The following address was pre- sented by Thoreau Society President Ronald A. Bosco on July 14, 2001, during the Business Meeting at the Annual Gathering.] I am honored and, I must confess, humbled to stand before you this morning as the president of the Thoreau Society as we continue our celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Society. Since its founding and its initial "gathering" of twelve or so Thoreauvians in 1941, the Thoreau Society has grown to be the largest, and now oldest, society in the world devoted to the legacy of an American writer. Over the years, individuals from all walks — literary academics; environmentalists and land preservationists; social and political reformers; practitioners of the unique brand of individualism and self-reliance that emerged in nineteenth-century America; professionals in art history, natural history and science, geography and urban planning; and, of course, lovers of nature — have joined the Society with this shared mission: to honor Henry David Thoreau by stimulating interest in and fostering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours; by encouraging research on his life and writings; by acting as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Thoreau; and by advocating for the preservation of"Tho rea u co u ntry." Ou/ members and the varied interests and talents that they bring to the Society reflect the extraordinary breadth of the intel- lectual and imaginative hold that Thoreau exerts on American culture — indeed, on global culture — to this very day. In my inaugural address before this assembly last year, I spoke of my belief that we are at a significant transitional moment in the Society's history, and while I admitted that transitions are by definition disruptive, I stated then, and do so again now, that my study of the seasonal structure of Thoreau's Journal convinces me that tran- sitions in theory and transitions in practice are also generative. I promised you then that I would devote my entire attention in 2000 and 2001 to carrying through on three goals I had set forth in my statement of vision for the Society's future. Those goals were to continue to extend governance opportunities to the membership-at-large through struc- tures such as the Committee on Nominations and Elections; to implement the advocacy component of the Society's- mission, particularly advocacy on behaTf of Thoreau's ideals of social and political justice and on behalf of the preservation of "Thoreau country"; and to complete my term in 2002 with the means in place to insure the long-term financial self- sufficiency of the Society, and, as one sign of that self-sufficiency, to make every reasonable effort restore the Society's presence in the town of Concord proper. With the dedicated effort of the officers, the Board of Directors, and our membership-at-large, the Thoreau Society has made significant progress in each of these areas during the past year. I say "the Thoreau Society has made significant progress," because I truly believe our mission and all successes we achieve under it are larger than the work of one individual such as the president or of one group of indi- viduals such as the Board. And I must say further, the successes achieved by the Thoreau Society this past year are nothing short of remarkable: First and foremost, Thoreau Society Membership and the Thoreau Society Collections. Our membership has grown significantly as during this past year 331 new members have joined us and 975 persons have renewed their memberships in the Society. Taking into account our institutional and life members — and may I remind all that life memberships in the Society are once again available — today the membership of the Society stands at a record 1,684 persons and institutions. This is certainly a milestone achievement, and it speaks to the sense shared by us all that today the Thoreau Society is, as the saying goes, "on the move." The Society is confident and secure in its understanding of its mission and is operating in a way faithful to its mission, and — perhaps most important of all — the Society is uncon- ditionally open to all persons of good will who share our devotion to Thoreau's life, work, and philosophy and our commitment to preserving and promoting his legacy. Also on the subject of growth, I am pleased to report today that the Thoreau Society Collections, which as we all know includes not only the Society Archives and the Archives of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau but also the Harding, Adams, and Robbins collections that make us the holders of the most comprehensive and impressive collection of Thoreauviana in the world, have been significantly enhanced by the generosity of our longtime friend and colleague, Brad Dean. The Bradley P. Dean Collection, which includes an extraordinary body of materials relating to the intellectual and cultural world in which Thoreau lived, Thoreau manuscript facsimiles (in micro- film, photocopies, and transcripts), a substantial record of Thoreau's sources, and electronic files relating to Thoreau's life and writings, is an excellent complement and sup- plement to the collections we already hold. On behalf of the Society, I thank Brad for his generosity in donating to the Thoreau Society Collections this superb resource for the present and future generations of readers, teachers, researchers, and editors of Thoreau. Second, the Thoreau Society Endowment. For the first time in its history, the Thoreau Society has an endowment, which is an essential first step in the direction of the long-term financial self-sufficiency of the Society. In the past year we received two substantial bequests from the estates of Society members Margaret Emmon Ingalls Bodfish and Harriet M. Sweelland; we also received a substantial outright gift from James J. Smith, who passed away shortly after sending us his gift. In sum, the two bequests and one gift amount to approxi- mately $400,000. What is especially remarkable to me in the events of the past year that have created our endowment is how each of the donors quietly shared with us a personal commitment to Henry David Thoreau and his legacy, and how these three persons felt so strongly about their respective commit- ments that they remembered the mission of the Thoreau Society as the most effective means through which they could each preserve and promote their personal commitment to that legacy. While I very much regret that I never had the privilege of meeting these persons, I am warmed not only by their generosity toward the Society, but also, and perhaps more particularly, by the quiet and dignified way in which each has chosen to memorialize their commitment to Thoreau by supporting the Society's mission during this and in future generations. At my request, the Board of Directors has permanently restricted the principal associated with the Bodfish Bequest, the Sweetland Bequest, and the Smith Fund. However, in what I trust all Society members will regard as a fitting tribute to each of these donors, the Board has directed that, in furtherance of our educational and research mission, continued on page 4 President's Column, from page 3 beginning in 2002 the interest accrued on the principal will be used only to support a number of competitively awarded short- term Thoreau Society Fellowships; these may be applied for by any member of the Society who proposes to conduct educational and/or research activities in the Thoreau Society Collections. Third, The Friends of Walden Pond, An Activity of the Thoreau Society. Late last year, Executive Director Tom Harris and I, with the support of the Board of Directors and the counsel of Robert Galvin, John Mack, -and Joseph Wheeler, initiated negotiations with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management ( DEM) with the intent of the Thoreau Society becoming the state's official "friends" organization for Walden Pond State Reservation. As I indicated in a letter to the membership this Spring, our service as The Friends of Walden Pond began on February 1, 2001 (under terms of an Agreement signed on February 28), and our work in that capac- ity would be overseen by a standing commit- tee of the Thoreau Society which I would personally chair. On April 20, Peter Webber, DEM Commissioner, Todd Frederick, Division of Forests and Parks Director, Denise Morrissey, Walden Pond State Reservation Supervisor, and I were joined by several members of the Board and several long-time members of the Society in a cere- mony at Walden Pond during which we planted a tree in commemoration our Friends of Walden Pond Agreement. As The Friends of Walden Pond, the Thoreau Society will work closely with the Department of Environmental Management to further DEM's mission: to exercise care and oversight for the natural, cultural, and historic resources of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and to provide quality public recreational opportunities that are environ- mentally sound, affordable, and accessible to all citizens. As The Friends, operating under the Thoreau Society's Friends of Walden Pond ( Committee, we will aid and promote manage- ment programs and activities jointly developed by DEM and the Society for the Walden Pond State Reservation. These programs will include public education, environmental conservation, and physical improvements to the Reservation for which no government funds are available. We will also actively support DEM's mission to balance resource protection and enhance- ment with public use and enjoyment at Walden Pond. I cannot imagine a more appropriate way for the I horeau Society to extend and share our founders' vision from sixty years ago of how best to preserve Thoreau's legacy than for us to actively promote that legacy at the very site to which thousands upon thousands of people from across the world have made their pilgrimage over the past century — a site which to all Thoreauvians is a sacred trust for us to preserve. And, because the explicit educational, research, and advocacy compo- nents of the^ociety's mission dovetail so perfectly with those of DEM's overall mis- "Our members and the varied interests and talents that they bring to the Society reflect the extraordinary breadth of the intellectual and imaginative hold that Thoreau exerts on American culture — indeed, on global culture — to this very day." sion, I truly believe that, through our posi- tion as The Friends of Walden Pond, the Thoreau Society, in concert DEM, will be furthering our respective missions while also performing an invaluable service to our neighbors and friends in Concord and Lincoln, to all the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and, indeed, to the many citizens of the world who will, I trust, continue to make their pilgrimage to this uniquely beautiful, inspiring, and historic site. Fourth, the "Globalization" of the Thoreau Society. As indicated by the fact that we draw our members from twenty-three countries around the world, the Thoreau Society has enjoyed a status as a "global" Society for many years — certainly for many years before terms such as "global" and "globalization" entered the popular vocabulary. Jn May of this year, we took a major step in formalizing our global status. At the invitation of Soka Gakkai Internationa] ( S( il ), a Tokyo-based JBuddhist lay organization, and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, Executive Director Tom Harris, Society Secretary Joel Myerson, and I spent May 3 through May 8 in Japan discussing Thoreau and Transcendentalism with SGI members and Dr. Ikeda, who is also the honorary president- of SGI's parent organiza- tion, Soka Gakkai (meaning "society for the creation of value"). During our stay, we visited the headquarters of Soka Gakkai, and we also visited the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, the Soka University of Japan, and the Soka Schools of Japan, all of which were founded by Dr. Ikeda. Through private meetings, public presentations, and newspa- per and television coverage, our visit placed Thoreau and his intellectual, literary, social, and political legacy before nearly thirteen million SGI members throughout the world. Yes, nearly thirteen million members. On the afternoon of the 5 th , for instance, I had the privilege of speaking before seven thou- sand people in the Soka University main auditorium (an additional four thousand people saw and heard my address via closed circuit TV in the campus's adjoining central gymnasium). In my address, which was translated into Japanese as I spoke and appeared on May 6 in Japanese in the Seikyo Shimbun, a Tokyo daily with a circulation of 5.5 million, I spoke about Thoreau and the legacy of his social thought in the twentieth century as well as about the mission of the Thoreau Society. At the conclusion of my address, I presented Dr. Ikeda with an Honorary Life Membership in the Thoreau Society. In his address, which followed mine, Dr. Ikeda referred to the lasting influence of Thoreau's ideals and to the relevance of his concept of individualism in the modern age. He also drew several parallels between Thoreau's character and that of Soka Gakkai founder Tsunesaburo Makiguchi ( 1871 - 1944). Makiguchi, who founded the organi- zation in 1930 as an educators' society, was imprisoned and died there for his opposition to World War II. Remaining true to Makiguichi's vision, Dr. Ikeda, who is an accomplished educator, author, and poet, has advocated for world peace through edu- cation and international cultural exchange throughout his career. In Choose Life (1974), an influential book in which he collaborated with Sir Arnold J. Toynbee, Dr. Ikeda pro- posed that the diverse problems confronting the world's populations should always be overcome through peaceful solutions — a position he maintains to this day as evi- denced by his recently published Creating and Sustaining a Century of Life (2001 ). For his lifelong support of world peace, Dr. Ikeda has been awarded honorary doctorates and professorships by more than one hundred colleges and universities around the world. Among numerous other honors, he has received the United Nations Peace Medal, the Simon Wiesenthal International Tolerance Award, the Rosa Parks 1 lumanitarian Award, and the Tagore Peace Award. It was therefore a singular honor for me, on behalf of the Thoreau Society, to name Dr. Ikeda an Honorary Life Member. I have every confidence that this visit to Japan has inaugurated an important friend- ship and intellectual exchange between the Thoreau Society and the Soka Gakkai and Soka University communities. In a passage of the Preamble to its International Charter, Soka Gakkai partially defines its mission thus: We believe that Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, a humanistic philosophy of infinite respect for the sanctity of life and all-encompassing compassion, enables individuals to cul- tivate and bring forth their inherent wisdom and, nurturing the creativity of the human spirit, to surmount the dif- ficulties and crises facing humankind and realize a society of peaceful and prosperous coexistence. What I find so powerful — and, I might add, so powerfully Thoreauvian — about this passage is that it proposes that all societal change begins with the cultivation of the "inherent wisdom" of the individual and the- nurturing of "the creativity of the human spirit." As we celebrate our sixtieth anniver- sary, I welcome our association with Soka Gakkai and Dr. Ikeda as a highly appropriate way for us to extend our founders' vision of how best to preserve and promote Thoreau's legacy; indeed, as I look forward to our next sixty years, I believe we have an obligation to continue to meet with all such persons and institutions of good will with whom we share a commitment to ideals such as these. Truly, then, during the past year the Thoreau Society has enjoyed significant successes. Our membership has grown dramatically, and our Collections have been significantly enhanced. With our endow- ment, we are now enjoying a degree of finan- cial self-sufficiency we have never before experienced, and we are using those funds in the best way possible: to promote our mission through fellowships for our members. In our capacity as The Friends ofWalden Pond we have formalized our relationship with DEM and the local and state communities, and, I might add, the Thoreau Society has taken on the most estimable address in all the Thoreauvian world: Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts. And, finally, by developing friendships and opening intellectual conversations with organizations such as Soka Gakkai, we are introducing Thoreau's legacy and fulfilling our mission to preserve and promote that legacy to millions of peo- ple around the world. Yet as I reflect on these remarkable successes, I realize that they offer us many challenges, as well as opportunities, in the near future. Let me indicate just a few of the steps which, with the concurrence of the Board of Directors, I have taken in order for us to meet those challenges and realize some of those opportunities. These steps entail the reorganization of several of the Society's committees and the strengthening of their charges. A list of Society committees, their membership, and charges is available today at the entrance to the church, and it will be published in the next issue of the Bulletin. The Finance Committee, under the leadership of Robert Galvin, who has graciously accepted appointment as the Society's Vice President of Finance, will now meet with the Society's Executive Director and Business Manager six times per year (exclusive of Board meetings) in order to maintain a running review of all aspects of the Society's finances and make recommen- dations on how we can achieve economies at all operational levels. The Committee will also develop an investment policy for the Society which the Board will take up at its January 2002 meeting. Finally, the Committee will join Tom Harris and me as we develop strategies to increase the size of, and insure continued high returns on, the Society's endowment. For 2001-2002, the Society's and the Walden Woods Project's respective Education and Research Committees have been merged into one committee. This committee, which will be called the Education and Research Committee with a membership that has been jointly appointed by the President of the Thoreau Society and the Executive Director of the Walden Woods Project, has been charged to develop the means whereby the educational and research missions of both the Thoreau Society and the Walden Woods Project can be developed in such a way as to reinforce each other and realize the potential for education and research at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, which is a collaboration of the Walden Woods Project and the Thoreau Society. I am pleased to report that Robert Hudspeth of the Society's Board of Directors and Jayne Gordon, Director of Education at the Thoreau Institute, have agreed to co-chair this Committee and to steer its deliberations to a successful conclusion. The Friends ofWalden Pond Committee, which I chair, will this year take on the very targeted charge to continue to develop the Society's relationship with DEM, and through The Friends, to expand on and fund educational, research, and other public opportunities at Walden Pond that are con- sistent with our mission as a Society and our service as The Friends ofWalden Pond. To that end, and on behalf of the Committee, I am pleased to report that we have already embarked on a fundraising campaign that will underwrite the work in which we have joined with DEM as The Friends. Responding to an open letter and appeal that I mailed to all households in Concord and Lincoln in April and May, our neighbors have already donated $5,180 to The Friends ofWalden Pond; to show its own commitment to our service as The Friends, on July 12 — Henry's 184th birthday — the Society's Board of Directors matched that sum! Finally, I have appointed (or reappointed) three ad hoc committees of the Board. The Walden in 2004: A Sesquicentennial Celebration Steering Committee, which the Board of Directors first constituted last year with Joel Myerson and me as co-chairs, will continue to advise the Board on activities sponsored and fully or partially funded by the Society with respect to this celebration. With the concurrence of the Board, the Committee has already determined that the events sponsored by the Society in 2004 will be (1) an expanded Annual Gathering, (2) a series of public events developed in connec- tion with the Society's position as The Friends ofWalden Pond, and (3) possibly an expanded "special" issue of The Concord Saunterer devoted to Walden the book and Walden the place. The Committee will also advise the Board and represent the Society's interests in discussions with local, national, and international organizers of other events marking the 150 th year since the publication of Walden. Before discussing my brief charge to an ad hoc By-Laws Committee, which will be chaired by Robert Hudspeth, I should like to say a few words about my view of by-laws generally. I understand by-laws as legal instruments by which complex organizations such as the Thoreau Society state their mis- sion, establish procedures by which they conduct their affairs, and assign legal respon- sibility for the organization's finances, the conduct of the organization's affairs, and the like in officers and directors (or by whatever name they may be called). I do not believe that by-laws are to be devised and entered into lightly; I do not believe that, once implemented, by-laws should be changed without great care and due deliberation. That said, I believe that as they now stand the current By-Laws of the Thoreau Society have been carefully and thoughtfully devised and put into practice. Any errors that occurred in devising and implementing our By-Laws have been publicly apologized for by those who were responsible for them, and all have been rectified. In recent years, the only concern that has con tinned on page 19 Thoreau in the Military Classroom Matthew Ignoffo, Ph.D. Teaching American Literature at the Prop School for West Point, I work with enlisted men and women, ages 17-21, who need academic strengthening before they can gain admission to the Military Academy. Many of the students are recruited athletes or minorities, and few are well-read in any American authors. Presenting Thoreau to military students has its own unique challenges. At best, these students think that he was a hermit who lived his whole life in a remote wilderness. Some think of him as the "first American hippie" because they have heard he was an anti-war protestor. Over the years, these preconceptions have interfered with my students' willingness to read Walden and "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." I will describe the approach I use to introduce my students to the real Henry Thoreau. First, I explain to them the mythology of the American Dream. America was created in the full burst of the Romantic Movement as what seemed to be the last best hope of humanity. The American Dream originally involved a mystical sense of rebirth in a New Eden, an ideal haven of multitudes united in harmony, the one family of humankind in union with nature. However, the Dream decayed into the capitalistic opulence of commercial materialism. Contrasting the difference between glowing ideal and tarnished reality is a recurring American theme in such diverse works as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Mark Twain's Gilded Age, and Oliver Stone's Watt Street. The two authors I focus on to illustrate this theme are Thoreau and Malcolm X. Students are assigned to read Walden, "Civil 1 )isobedience," and The Autobiography of Malcolm A' looking for common ideas which they will have to discuss in a term paper. Connecting Thoreau with Malcolm X intrigues students. Although these two writers lived in very different times and seem at first to be very different men, I point out that both men are actually making the same point — namely, that what America pretended to be and what it has become are two very different things. Both men kept searching for ideals to believe in, and even when their faith was severely shaken, they still held onto the sense that there was a deep-down reality to the ideal American Dream of universal harmony, oneness with nature, and spiritual enlightenment. Vs I horeau performed his experiment in living during the mid 1840s, he had a remarkable prescience to foresee trends that I illustrate by using the Titanic disaster and the 1983 Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi. The Titanic was the embodiment of the Gilded Age, reflecting the idea that science and technology — the two new gods of the Industrial Revolution— had benevolently made all things possible. For example, man could tame lightning, bring it indoors, and illuminate the world. The Titanic was an equally Promethean achievement demon- strating that humans were on a modern odyssey of endlessly evolving progress, true masters of their fate and captains of their destiny. The ship was a microcosm of her Here was a fiery young idealist who believed that America was the New Eden own world, and her destruction was not only a shocking end to the superficial optimism of the Gilded Age, but also an ominous forecast of what would soon follow: the "Great War" to end all wars, the "lost generation," the stock market crash, the depression, World War II, the nuclear age, the Cold War, acid rain, global warming, the "information age," etc. The Gilded Age's new mechanical gods were obviously not so benevolent as they had first seemed, and Henry Thoreau could see this trend in the Fitchburg Railroad which regularly chugged by Walden, telegraph lines carrying messages between Boston and Texas, and factories that made munitions to fight the war against Mexico. The disturbing minimalist film Koyaanisqatsi is an odd illustration of the contrast between America as "a place in the sun" and the brutal reality under the grand illusion that we have created for ourselves, the illusion which Thoreau could see taking shape in 1845. The movie demonstrates key themes of the corrupted American Dream: the helpless-hopeless syndrome of dehuman- ized people herded together and turned into blank faced robots; a clockwork society ruled by its own gadgets but disconnected from nature; the human desire to find a sense of meaning and belonging in the midst of a mechanistic world; and the schizophrenic sense of being a stranger to one's self. Thoreau recognized these themes as he sat by the pond and listened to the forest during his two-year residence at Walden. Like Thoreau, Malcolm X was a dynamic person, always learning and changing. He searched for a Romantic Age sense of -value, something deeper than the thrills offered by drugs, sex, money, and power. He is the quintessential Twentieth-Century man searching for dignity and identity, the elusive qualities Thoreau fsund in himself at Walden. Malcolm X summed up the original American Dream when he described his journey to Mecca: "Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people. . . — all together, brothers!" (330) He could easily be one of Thoreau's fellow Transcendentalists when he stated, "Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be prop- erly balanced." (355) Seeking this paradise by carefully observing the details of nature, Thoreau warned us against leading the "fool's life" of "quiet des- peration" (16, 18). Seeing the threat of humans becoming "tools of their tools," he counseled a life of "simplicity and naked- ness" (38). He advised that if we disregarded the lessons of nature, we would not only destroy nature but also ourselves. Marching to the beat of a "different drummer" (230), he counseled us to be fully awake, not to be fooled by our own illusions. Once all these ideas are established, L return to the students' preconception of Thoreau as the "first American hippie." When students realize why he was angered by the poll tax, by the war with Mexico, and by slavery, they can appreciate the insights he expressed as he weighed the difference between the ideal that America set as its goal and the corrupted reality that replaced that ideal. Researching their term papers, students discover for themselves the fire that burned inside Thoreau, his desire to make a better society, a better government, and a better world. Some stubbornly cling to their view of the author as an angry fussbudget. However, most students are impressed by the spiritual passion and intellectual anger fueling Thoreau's courageous confrontation of the corrupt power structure during his time and setting the example for people like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. In my classroom, I have a photograph ot Thoreau taken less than a war before his death in 1862. As we begin our study of his Teaching, from page 6 writing, I merely point the picture out, but at the conclusion, I ask the students to reexamine his face, looking more closely at his eyes. Here was a fiery young idealist who believed that America was the New Eden. Disillusionment ravaged him as slavery and state's rights tore the new country apart. He was witnessing the second fall of Eden. In the Bible, the loss of paradise was followed by Cain's murder of his brother Able. Thoreau would have regarded the Civil War as a war between brothers and therefore a confirma- tion of the loss of innocence. In the photograph, Thoreau's eyes express an infinite, profound sadness. While the diagnosed cause of his death was pneu- monia, I explain to my students that I believe he died of a broken heart, having witnessed the loss of the idealized society he had so ardently advocated in Walden and "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." Once my students view Thoreau with this perspective, they see not an anti-war crack- pot but a true patriot who believed in America with every cell of his brain, a citizen who loved America with every atom of his heart. For military students, this understanding of Thoreau is enlightening because it makes them reexamine their own view of the world in which they live, the world where the ideal America Dream still struggles against the American Nightmare. References: Malcolm X & Haley, A. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973. Reggio, G. (Director). Koyaanisqatsi [Videotape]. Carmel, CA: Pacific Arts Video Records. 1983. Thoreau, H. D. Walden, or, A Life in the Woods and "Civil Disobedience." New York: Collier Books, 1962. Matthew Ignoffo is Instructor of the Success Development Course at the United States Military Academy Preparatory School. Accessing the Thoreau Society Collections Contact Jeff Cramer, Curator of Collections at the Thoreau Institute M-F 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (781) 259-4730 or firstname.lastname@example.com For an online catalog and finding aids, visit our Web site at: www. walden.org/institute Used Books Wanted Cleaning out your attic? Simplifying your life? If you have used books relating to Thoreau (including Emerson, Transcendentalism, nineteenth- century New England history, etc.) please consider making a donation to the Thoreau Society. Support the Thoreau Society We will resell the books in our Shop at Walden Pond, on our e-commerce site at www.walden.org, and through a mail-order flyer. Procedes will support our publications and activities. Receive First Notice As a member, you will receive first notice of these used books either by mail or e-mail. Create an Opportunity For many students and Thoreauvians abroad, the books you have may not be available any other way. By contributing your books to the Society, you can be sure that we will find appreciative new owners. Quick and Easy Simply box 'em up and ship 'em out: The Thoreau Society 44 Baker Farm Lincoln, MA 01773-3004 Curator's Column Jeffrey S. Cramer This past year has been a very exciting one for me as Curator. At this point, every book in the collec- tions — over 8000 volumes — has been cata- loged, and can be searched through the Henley Library Catalog on our website. In addition, preliminary Finding Aids have been created for the collections. The level of information at present ranges from general categories of material to specific item-level listings. A search engine has been created allowing for the searching of these finding aids, individually or collectively. Over the next few years the finding aids will become more detailed, allowing for greater access to the nearly 100,000 non-book items. A finding aid has also been created for the periodicals in the collections. This is a title list, allowing for a quick review, with each title linked to the Henley Library Catalog for holdings information. On the Research Collections web page, individual pages have been created for each collection, with a variety of information and links. Some recent gifts include: • Original program: "Harvard University, Cambridge. Order of Performances for Exhibition, Monday, July 13, 1835" which lists, as #3, "A Greek Dialogue. 'Decius and Cato.' Manlius Stimson Clarke, Norton. David Henry Thoreau, Concord." Donated by Betty Spelman. • Original 1962 Leonard Baskin print of Thoreau; and, 1967 Thoreau Commemorative Stamp sheet, signed by Baskin. Donated by Joe Gilbert. • 20" x 30" signed limited edition Iris print of Boston photographer John Suiter's image of Thoreau's Walden house replica. Donated by the photographer. The Curator is available from 8:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday and can be reached at: The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, 44 Baker Farm, Lincoln, MA 01773-3004. Phone/fax: 781-259-4730. E-nuul: ] email@example.com. 200 1 Annual Gathering and John Mack with two of this year's three Walter 1 larding Distinguished Service Av irish lawn for reading of "Walking I >assow«Walls presenting al the Masonic ireau Edition at the business meeting; 5 1 Peter Allien makes bird mber Robert Gah lerger wait for a r< Waltei Brain gears up for the annu alden Pond State Reservation I leads a group un a tour bl ilson, and Jeffrey Cramer at I n'st Parish Church; l 'i fayni resides nth Rick D rson and l'ln llis < ole; 10) 1 (enise Morrisse) ; painting of Katahdin; 12) Thoreau Society Presidents 1 the Saturday evening deception 2001 Thoreau Society Awards Thoreau Society Medal - Edward 0. Wilson Distinguished Achievement Award Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award Robert]. Galvin John D. Mack Lorna C. Mack Thoreau Society Visits Japan A the invitation of Soka Gakkai /\ '["International (SGI), a Tokyo-based J~ \. l^Buddhist lay organization, and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, Thoreau Society representatives Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson, and Tom Harris spent May 3 through May 8 in Japan discussing Thoreau and Transcendentalism with SGI members and Dr. Ikeda, who is also the honorary pres- ident of SGI's parent organization, Soka Gakkai (meaning "society for the creation of value"). Through private meetings, public presentations, and newspaper and television coverage, this visit placed Thoreau and his intellectual, literary, social, and political legacy before nearly thirteen million SGI members throughout fhe world. The tour began on May 1 and 2 in Los Angeles as Bosco, Myerson, and Harris visited the newly completed Soka University of America campus in Aliso/Veijo, California, before the university's official May 3 opening. There, University President Daniel Y. Habuki and Dr. Eric Hauber, Vice President of Enrollment Services and Long Range Planning and Professor of Cell Biology, led the three through the impressive stucco campus buildings and state-of-the-art educational facilities as faculty and adminis- trators explained the guiding philosophy for the new liberal arts college: "to foster a steady stream of global citizens committed to living a contributive life." Soka University of America will enroll its first students, a class of 125 dravnn from seventeen countries around the world, this fall. On the evening of May 3, Bosco, Myerson, and Harris were greeted in Tokyo by SGI representatives and twenty local Soka Gakkai members. The next day, the three vis- ited the headquarters of Soka Gakkai, the Siekyo Printing Press, and the Min-On Concert Association, and they met with fac- ulty and researchers from the Institute of Oriental Philosophy. The Seikyo Presj, Min-On Concert Association, and Institute of Oriental Philosophy have all been established during Dr. Ikeda's presidency. The Seikyo Press, under the direction of Mr. Osamu Matsuoka, publishes the Seikyo Shimbun, Soka Gakkai's daily newspaper, which has a circulation of 5.5 million, and numerous titles relating to the organization's mission. Under the leader- ship of Mr. Masafumi Tomioka and his col- leagues Hiroyasu Kobayashi and Nobuyuki Motohashi, the Min-On Concert Association introduces classical music to less privileged populations in Japan and throughout the world, serves as a repository for the largest Bosco presents Soka Gakkai International President Daisaku Ikeda with the Society's first ever Honorary Life Membership. collection of musical scores, recordings, instruments, and artifacts in Japan, and realizes Dr. Ikeda's belief that cultures can achieve a productive and lasting understanding of each other through the Arts. Finally, through its magnificent research facilities in Japan, India, France, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Russia, the Institute of Oriental Philosophy seeks to clarify the rele- vance of Eastern philosophy in the modern world and publishes the Journal of Oriental Studies, one of the world's premier journals in the field. Bosco and Myerson had exten- sive and informative discussions about Thoreau and his relation to Emerson and American Transcendentalism in general with Dr. Yoichi Kawada, Director of the Institute, and Professors Toshie Kurihara and Toru Shiotsu of the Institute. Before leaving Japan, Bosco was presented with two beautiful edi- tions of the Lotus Sutra in English and a most impressive facsimile edition of a Lotus Sutra manuscript by Dr. Kawada and his col- leagues; he has deposited these as gifts from the Institute of Oriental Philosophy in the Thoreau Society Collections for use by the many students and scholars of Thoreau who, visit our collections. The focal point of the Tokyo trip was the Soka University Alumni Day on May 5. Over eleven thousand gradu- ates of the Soka University of Japan returned to the campus in Hachioji City, Tokyo, for the celebra- tion and for an address Society representatives by Dr. Ikeda, whose life- long interest in Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman was apparent throughout his talk and also evidenced by his personally anno- tated copies of books by these authors which had been placed on display: Bosco and Ikeda, speaking through an interpreter prior to the main addresses, discussed the legacy of Thoreau and the need for poetry in today's classrooms. Joining the discussion were professors from Soka University and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy. On the afternoon of the 5 th , Bosco spoke before nearly seven thousand people in the Soka University main auditorium (an addi- tional four thousand people saw and heard his address via closed circuit TV in the campus's adjoining central gymnasium); Bosco's address, which concentrated on Thoreau and the legacy of his social thought in the twentieth century, and on the mission of the Thoreau Society, was translated into Japanese as he spoke and it appeared in Japanese in the Seikyo Shimbun on May 6. At the conclusion of his address, Bosco presented Dr. Ikeda with an Honorary Life Membership in the Thoreau Society. In his address, which followed the presentation, Dr. Ikeda referred to the lasting influence of Thoreau's ideals and to the rele- vance of his concept of individualism in the modern age. He also drew several parallels between Thoreau's character and that of Soka Gakkai founder Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944). Makiguchi, who founded the organization in 1930 as an educators' society, was imprisoned for his opposition to World War II. (Dr. Ikeda was moved by the fact that Thoreau Society founder Walter Harding had been a consci- entious objector during World War II.) After Makiguchi died in prison in 1944, his mission was carried on by his student Josei continued on page IS .ire greeted at the Soka School, 10 Remarks at Soka University Ronald A. Bosco President Ikeda, and Members of the Soka University and Soka Gakkai International Communities: On behalf of the officers, Board of Directors, and members of the Thoreau Society, I am truly honored to be here today to formally inaugurate what I believe will be a lasting friendship between the Soka University and Soka Gakkai International communities and the Thoreau Society. Your celebration on this occasion of the succession of your founders' spirit to new generations suggests to me, and I tcust to you, that our mutual dedication to education, self-culture, and peace serves us as rich ground on which to form and nurture our friendship. . The Thoreau Society was established exactly sixty years ago, and since then it has grown to be the largest and oldest society in the world devoted to the legacy of an American author. Over the years, individuals from all walks of life — literary academics; religious, social, and political reformers; environmentalists and land preservationists; students and practi- tioners of the unique brand of individualism that emerged in nine- teenth century America; professionals in art history, natural history and science, and geography and urban planning; and, of course, lovers of nature — have joined the Society with this common mission: to honor Henry David Thoreau Our members and the varied interests and talents that they bring to the Society reflect the extraordinary breadth of the intel- lectual and imaginative hold that Thoreau himself exerts on American culture — indeed, on global culture — to this very day. But two questions that even many of his followers routinely ask about Thoreau are: How did this man, a man who died in 1862 after living a life of relative obscurity, a man whose friends and neighbors often characterized as a solitary, anti-social per- sonality, a man whose writings never attract- ed wide readership during his life, achieve such a devoted following? And, " by stimulating interest in and fos- tering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours; by encouraging research on his life and writings; and by advocating for the preservation of those portion- o) America's natural land- scape — Walden Pond, Cape Cod, and the Maine Woods — that Thoreau lum- sel) explored, developed as means to probe the depth oj his own nature, and immortalized in his writings. President Ronald A. Bosco delivers an address on Thoreau to a combined audience of 1 1 ,000 alumni of the Soka University in Japan. Why, during the twentieth century, were this man's ideas instrumental in inspiring such momentous cultural transformations as the nonviolent revolution led by Mahatma Gandhi in India, the Civil Rights movement led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, ]r. in the United States, and contemporary envi- ronmentalism which, beginning in America during the 1960s and 1970s, has now emerged aS a world-wide cause? In his essay on "Character" (1866), Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in the early years of their friendship served the young Thoreau as a mentor, provides us with an answer to these questions. In "Character," Emerson wrote that from time to time Providence sends to us a few persons — "teachers,-" he called them — who, by their "sentiment and by their habitual grandeur of view," "elevate" the world iii which we live and work. Thoreau was truly a teacher, and I believe that Thoreau's genius and originality as a teacher are best understood as qualities that emerge out of a series of complex relation- - ships in which Thoreau interacted with and reflected upon the larger world of which he was a part: with othe'r people, as in his relations with his neighbors in Concord, Massachusetts; with the economic, social, and political institutions of his day, against which he typically assumed an adversarial posture; and with nature, which provided him with his greatest economic, social, and political independence and well-being, and offered him the greatest opportunity for insight into himself. As is often true of the lessons of great teachers, the power of the lessons that Thoreau has provided to the generations that succeed him is not derived from his personality or even from the particular works that he wrote or acts of civil protest that he performed. The authority of Thoreau's lessons derive from his spirit, and from the humility with which he first prayed for, and then acted upon, that inward experience, that inward light, through which he recognized the signifi- cance inherent in nature as well as in men and their institutions. Whether drawn from his reflections on nature, on other people, or on institutions, Thoreau's most significant lessons for himself and for those of us who follow him were always directed inward: to the symbolic or intellectual energy and wisdom from outside of himself that he internalized as means to realize and sustain his own humanity. The most valuable lesson that Thoreau delivers to us today is that all cultural trans- formation begins with the individual, begins from within. This is also the lesson that Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the early champions of environmentalism drew from Thoreau. When he states in "Resistance to Civil Government," "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which II all of its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly," Thoreau is surely commenting on the limita- tions of the state, but he is also, and more particularly, remarking on the importance of the individual recognizing the "higher and independent power" that he possesses, a quality that Emerson once called "the infinitude of the private man." Without the individual realizing his own power, acknowl- edging that such power comes only from within, and then transforming the world around him through the appropriate exercise of that power, the state becomes dominant and creates a society char- acterized by oppression and the most crass variety of materialism. In Walden, which is his per- sonal study of the possi- bilities that nature offers for self-culture, Thoreau's emphasis is again on the individual's measuring and nurturing of the life within, a point he aptly Students of the Soka makes when he writes, "A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." As I have reread the text of the Soka Gakkai International Charter over the past several weeks, I have paused often at this statement in the Preamble: We believe that Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, a humanistic philosophy of infinite respect for the sanctity of life and all-encompassing compas- sion, enables individuals to cultivate and bring forth their inherent wisdom and, nurturing the creativity of the human spirit, to surmount the difficulties and crises facing humankind and realize a society of peaceful and prosperous coexistence. What I find so powerful, so moving about this passage is that, as it draws attention to the religious and philosophical foundations of Soka Gakkai International, it also proposes that all societal change begins with the cultivation of the "inherent wisdom" of the individual and nurturing of "the creativity of the human spirit." It is on this ground that I believe the members of Soka University, Soka Gakkai International, and Thoreau Society meet and should begin those conversations out of which productive friendships grow. I cannot imagine a more appropriate way for the Thoreau Society to extend our founders' vision of how best to preserve the legacy of Henry David Thoreau than for us to meet with all persons of good will with whom we share a devotion to ideals such as these. My enthusiasm for this moment and my optimism for our future are best conveyed in the subtle prose poetry of one of my favorite passages from Thoreau's Journal. Touched by the vivifying warmth of School system outside of their campus in Tokyo. an early spring day in 1853, Thoreau wrote, "[T]he future is worth expecting. Encouraged, I set out once more to climb the mountain of the earth, for my steps are sym- bolical steps, and in all my walking I have not reached the top of the earth yet." In closing, President Ikeda please allow me to state again how honored I am to stand before you today. The founders of our respective societies whose spirit we honor — Henry David Thoreau and Presidents Makiguchi and Toda — understood, as you have said, that, "A great revolution of character in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will cause a change in the destiny of humankind." Through the example of your own life-long devotion to the principles of Buddhist activism and philosophy, you have inspired a generation to devote themselves to pursuing the "human revolution" that follows from the individual engaging in the process of self-reformation, or, as Thoreau called it, self-culture. Your commitment to "humanism in action," to the transformation of the indi- vidual and of the cultures of the world through "Value-creating education" — through the pursuit of the ideals of peace, social justice, human rights, and respect for the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of others — through humanitarianism in all forms — through championing environmental protection — and through discerning the poetic relation in which the individual stands to nature — speaks profoundly to Emerson's ideal of the teacher: the person who, by his "habitual grandeur of view," elevates the world in which we all live and work. Thoreau wrote in his Journal on May 10, 1853, "He is richest who hasinost use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If these gates of golden willows affect me, they correspond to the beauty and promise of some experience on which I am entering. If I am over- flowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poet- ry, — all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of sci- ence, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. / pray for such inward experi- ence as will make nature sig- nificant" (emphasis added). Call for Nominations The Awards Committee of the Thoreau Society solicits nominations for the following awards: Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award for an accomplishment that is limited in time and scope Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award for accomplishments in the areas included in the Thoreau Society's mission statement or for contributions that serve the Thoreau Society itself and/or Thoreau Society Medal for significant and sustained contribu- tions that exemplify the ideals and values represented by Henry Thoreau For more information, or to make a nomination, please contact the Awards Committee chair, Joel Myerson (firstname.lastname@example.com) or other members of the committee, Susie Carlisle (firstname.lastname@example.com) or Bob Hudspeth (email@example.com). The deadline for nominations is 15 February 2002. 12 Acceptance Speech of the Thoreau Society Honorary Life Membership at the Soka University Alumni Gathering 1 May 5,2001, Daisaku Ikeda A fi Jieartfelt welcome and congratula- i-V JL V tions to Soka University alumni, graduates who have gathered today brimming with youthful zest and vigor! Ever since I was young, I have been a devoted reader of the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great philosopher of the American Renaissance and mentor to Henry David Thoreau. Emerson wrote: "Friendship and associa- tion are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race, banded for some catholic object; yes, excellent..." Today, we have the peerless honor of welcoming a most distinguished delegation from the United States, members of the Thoreau Society who are truly great teachers, with their immense intellect and noble character. I wish to express my gratitude to you from the bottom of my heart for joining us today. This day is when graduates of Soka University return to their alma mater from every corner of Japan, from 50 countries over five continents, so that they too may band in "a grand phalanx" before they embark upon new epics of their own mak- ing. Thank you so very much! To those of you who have gathered at the Central Gymnasium, I thank you dearly for traveling long distances to join us on this occasion. I urge all of you to always forge ahead with youthful vigor, no matter what. You may grow older, and the years may begin to take their toll on you physically, but your spirit must always be young. The spirit, after all, is the most important. Also present today are representatives of the Soka Gakkai future Division, who are with us to celebrate our Successors' Day. My congratulations to each of you. Whether you go on to achieve greatness or not will determine whether the Soka Gakkai can enjoy a truly successful centennial celebra- tion in 2030. That is why I have such high expectations tor you to do your very best! President Bosco, Secretary Myerson, both of whom I hold in the highest esteem, together with the youth who shall succeed my work, and with the resolve to further learn the spirit of Thoreau, the great explorer of life's inner realm, and follow in his foot- steps, I wish to humbly accept the I fbnorary Life Membership of the esteemed Thoreau Society. I thank you for this great distinction from the bottom of my heart. A most telling incident took place in the summer of 1844. Thoreau, the poet of eternal youth, was 27 years old — the same age as most of you here today. Indeed, I understand that Mr. Thomas Harris, the Thoreau Society Executive Director who is also here with us, is a young 28 years of age. On that day some 160 years ago, Thoreau's mentor, Emerson, was planning to speak out against slavery at a rally to be held in Concord. However, the local church, being quite conservative at the time, took a dim view of Emerson's position and would not allow the rally to be held on its premises. Emerson was also denied the right to have the church bell rung to notify residents of the gathering. It had to be held at a court building instead, and the turnout suffered as a result. Thoreau, however, would not tolerate the affront his cherished mentor was forced to bear. Rejecting the constraints the authorities imposed, an infuriated Thoreau stormed into the church, his powerful arms striking its bell again and again. It was a resounding appeal to the citizens of Concord: Arise, sleeping souls! Gather, people of conscience! Come hear my mentor's cry for truth, and join our phalanx for justice! I have long held Emerson and Thoreau — who stood undaunted as mentor and disciple — as heroic figures, and I drew inspiration from them as I, too, extolled to the world the dawn of the ideals upheld by my mentor, Josei Toda. I have thrown myself into this struggle without cease to this day, never once succumbing to>(ear. According to Thoreau, "when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up." This is the spirit that the Soka Gakkai epitomizes. Indeed, the citadels for peace that we have built around the world are impervious because they are founded on the heroism of common citizens, never to be defeated, never to be intimidated. That is why I hereby declare that the Soka Gakkai's triumph is total, for we have over- come even the most villainous acts by those who connive to sec us fail. The long-awaited dedication of the Aliso Viejo campus of Soka University of America has finally arrived. SUA is a liberal arts college for the 2 1 " century, an institution devoted to the ideals of humanistic educa- tion that Thoreau also embraced. In spite of' their busy schedules before traveling to Japan, our guests from the Thoreau Society took the trouble to visit the new campus to extend their warm felicitations for the occa- sion. Once again, allow me to express my heartfelt gratitude to you. Soka University in Japan, the Soka Schools in Tokyo and Kansai, and Soka Kindergartens of their respective countries have made dramatic strides over the years, a feat largely due to the long-standing support of our alumni. Among our graduates are those who were first accepted by Tokyo University and Kyoto University, yet such prestigious schools were spurned; instead, they chose to attend Soka University. I shall always remember you and the courage and convection you showed in making such a decision. Many freshmen standouts entering Soka University this year have demonstrated similar resolve. They too passed the entrance examinations of the finest schools, from Japan's national universities to private insti- tutions like Keio and Waseda, even China's premier seat of higher learning, Fudan University-yet they elected to enroll at Soka. I therefore ask every member of the university faculty and administration to respond to our students' sincerity and commitment in kind, that no effort is to be spared addressing their needs. The scrum of friendship, that those of you engaged in value creating education have built up over the years, is being joined by an endless procession of immensely gifted and hardworking youth from around the world. Francois Due de La Rochefoucauld, the 18 th century French author, observed that, "The greatest Treasure in this World, is a true Friend, and yet it is a Treasure which Men least trouble themselves to look after." Every member of the Soka University alumni should be proud that their lives shine with this most precious treasure. You may have felt a touch of nostalgia being reunited with the statue of Leo Tolstoy that stands before this auditorium. It is a well-known fact of history that the Russian novelist had the audacity to parade Thoreau's thoughts in his writings at a time when the censors of Czarist Russia were giving them careful scrutiny. Tolstoy had succeeded Thoreau in lifting the torch against tyranny, using the power of the pen to wage a struggle calling for a great social reformation that arose from a revolution of the inner self. A person whose life is founded on an unshakable philosophy will never be misled by the absurdity perpetrated'by the powerful or swayed by superficial trends. We must live 13 out our lives with wisdom and strength, never to stray from the laws that govern the universe. That is the quintessence of Thoreau's spiritual legacy, his wisdom, like endless waves, to encompass the entire world. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the father of Soka education who gave his life for peace, felt no disgrace was worse than the praise extended by fools. He upheld his faith and conviction to the very end, accepting every abuse and persecution as a great honor. The following account is found in Pedagogical Thoughts, Theories and Men, a history of modem education in Japan published in 1943: "As to the well-known primary school principals in Tokyo during the Taisho Era ( 1912-26), it is to be regretted that not a single individual commanded admiration. Instead, the truly great educators were hidden among the ranks of teachers who persevered in obscurity. And the most outstanding among them was Principal Tsunesaburo Makiguchi." Therein lies the greatness of our late mentor, founder of the Soka Gakkai. Makiguchi was among the first in Japan to advocate the harmonious coexistence of nature and humanity, an understanding that was also deeply shared by Thoreau. In any event, it is the person who takes a valiant stand in an hour of need, battling for justice to the very end, who lives on in glory in our hearts. Such people attain immortality through the drama of their lives, the tale of their deeds to be passed on from generation to generation. This was Thoreau's view of history. "There is never an instant's truce," Thoreau maintained, "between virtue and vice." That is why he chose to set forth into the harsh realities of society, to teach and demonstrate to us through his own actions the manner in which a person may persevere in the relentless and ever-vigilant practice of self-reformation. He imparts an equally profound message to us when he wrote, "The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable, — of a bad one, to make it less valuable." If we do not actively engage in the immediate issues of politics and society, then we can never establish a life of genuine value. The philosopher thus appeals to our soul with these words: Accept the challenge! Take action! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the human rights champion who fearlessly upheld the ideals of Thoreau since his days as a student, wrote the following: "History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important destiny-to complete a process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly..." I believe there is no better time than now for those youth imbued with true sincerity and integrity, to maintain a sharp vigil over the political course of this country. I urge my dear friends, the alumni of Soka University, to stand up for the sake of our nation, for the cause of peace. I ask that you exert every fiber of your being to this struggle, whose outcome will be crowned with delightful victory! Tenacity and effort is what ensures victory, a formula for success that applies as equally to the individual as it does to the organiza- tion. Without these two qualities, every struggle is doomed to fail. Thoreau had his gaze set firmly upon the / future of humanity. I, too, am looking beyond the day when I shall no longer be here. A key requirement of leadership is fore- sight. Thoreau envisioned that "in the last stage of civilization Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy will be one... "The leaders of tomorrow must be endowed with a poetic mind, inspired by strong faith and empow- ered by a vast and profound philosophical understanding. We live in an age in desperate need for genuine leadership. People around the world yearn for it. I earnestly hope that a class of the most capable leaders shall rise from among your ranks. The true poetic mind alluded to by ^Thoreau possesses a cheerful optimism that cannot be discouraged, a robust view of life and the world unfettered by trivial matters. "The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments," writes Thoreau. "He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world, while he lives." We too must forge on, undaunted by adversity, our spirits joyful and unbounded as we soar far above the trifling abuse and mockery that so often attempts to deny our advance. Our stage, after all, is the world, our task truly global in scale. Thoreau's poetic mind is also honed to overcome every challenge, the obstacles that arise to impede one's progress, to the very end. To achieve this, one's spirit must be fired by the thrill of victory and tempered by a tenacity of purpose. I too vow to stoke the flames of Thoreau's poetic passion in my heart, a world poet laureate bequeathing every line and verse for justice's ultimate victory. May 6 th of this year marks the 140 th anniversary of Thoreau's passing. In 2003, 200 years will have passed since the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson. A year after that, we fete the sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of Thoreau's seminal work, Walden, or Life in the Woods. As such, I pray that the esteemed Thoreau Society be blessed by prosperity for all time, that it continue in this new century to inspire in all of us the exquisite hues of a harmonious life lived creatively. In closing, I would like to dedicate a. passage by Walt Whitman, whom Thoreau admired as well. I send these words to all of you, whom I so deeply cherish; as you pre- pare to depart from this seat of learning once again, to cast forth upon a journey fraught with challenge and adversity in your quest to fulfill the purpose of your life. In his poem, Whitman advises us not be hindered by jealousy or division: "my comrade, Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras" I urge all of you to make your mark upon the path you have chosen to walk, to always be true to your mission in life until the very end. The Soka Alumni is a gathering of the lion-hearted. And we must now stand as boldly as the king of lions, rising up together and roar as one! Roar in triumph! I will always be praying for each of you, my treasured friends, that you may lead a life of health, success and victory. Never lose your vigor and cheer! I am truly grateful that you have come here today from around the world. Thank you very much! Thank you to the following advertisers for supporting the Thoreau Society's publications: Commonwealth Editions Island Press Library of America ^Middlesex Savings Bank If you would like to add your support to the Society's publications program, please contact Tom Harris at (781 ) 259-4750 or Tom«firstname.lastname@example.com 14 Book Notes: William Cain's Historical Guide to Thoreau Randall Conrad William Ii. Cain. ed. A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 285 pp. $35.00 hard- cover; SI 6.95 paperbound. In this volume, the fourth in a series providing context for . masterworks of the national liter- ature, five notable Thoreauvians draw upon evolving fields such as material culture studies to illumi- nate the social environment that generated the later Journal, "Civil Disobedience," Walden, and the stereotyping of Thoreau himself into a Concord eccentric. In the early spring of 1850, Thoreau chanced upon an abandoned, still-functioning toy water wheel that a child must have fash- ioned while playing in a Walden meadow. This discovery inspired several rich journal pages, never re-used in any published work (3:50-53, April 1850). Using Thoreau's charming field'observa- tions as a starting point for her key essay, Laura Dassow Walls, an authority on Thoreau's science writing, elucidates the creative dynamic by which Thoreau tran- scended the limiting personae typically available to the midcentury science writer. Thoreau instead forged what Walls calls a "technology of inscription" enabling him to "braid together the physical facts of the natural world and the truths of trans- cendental 'higher law."' Walls mined this field in Seeing New Worlds (1995) and in her subsequent insight- ful studies of Thoreau the scientist; now she reaches a new level of synthesis, using a style as clear and fluid as the coursing melrwater that powers the model engine in Thoreau's meadow. Her essay is encyclopedic enough in its 20-plus pages to encompass a welter of objects and ideas — the water wheel, the notions of inscription and eduction, the Young-Ludwig kymograph, the dawn of technology (whether industrial, literary or symbolic), and the literary articulation of nature required to produce Thoreau's "facts flowering into truths." With bold dexterity, Walls braids these seeming disparities together into a luminous vision of transcendental science that is at once rugged and delicate, and as "far- sounding" as the tinkling water wheel that inspires it. Well beyond the history of science writing in the nineteenth century, Walls believes that "seeing new worlds" is a present-day imperative: we can, and today we must, discover uses of Thoreau that will guide our paths through a cosmos increasingly driven by "modern" science. Lawrence Rosenwald's chapter on "Civil Disobedience" is of comparable scope. A war tax resister as well as a scholar, Rosenwald examines "the complex relation between text and action" and clarifies the paradoxes in, and behind, Thoreau's famous essay. Many readers of "Civil Disobedience" are aware that Thoreau's complex philosophy of conscientious objec- tion — put to the test by increasingly violent struggles against slavery in Massachusetts and nationwide — progressed beyond nonvi- olent protest in the 1850s, eventually "siding with the light" as Frederick Douglass and masses of abolitionists had already done in breaking away from W. L. Garrison's pacifist movement. Few, however, probably realize the extent to which "Civil Disobedience" itself was forged amid the growing pressures of the preceding decade. Rosenwald traces an important evolution between 1840 — Thoreau's first tax refusal — and 1849, the first publication of his essay under the signif- icant title "Resistance to Civil Government." Rosenwald establishes that the individual act of tax refusal that won Thoreau his night in jail is actually a blending, for dramatic purposes, of two distinct protests by the young Thoreau — his "signing off' from the First Parish Church tax rolls in 1840 and his more significant refusal of the poll tax begin- ning in 1842. We then learn that Thoreau's history-making poll tax refusal is based on "a fiction": His account of his tax resistance in the essay revises his tax resistance in the world, in the community of Concord. In the essay, Thoreau cites the Mexican War as a reason for refusing to pay the poll tax. In the world, Thoreau's action predated the war by four years. In the essay, Thoreau refuses the tax because, as he writes, 'I cannot for an instant recog- nize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.'ln the world, he apparently began refusing taxes out of an unwillingness to recognize any political organization whatever. Compounding the paradox is Thoreau's disingenuous presentation of the poll tax itself. As Rosenwald demonstrates, it was never a federal tax (the Mexican War was financed with other monies), and even during the one year when it was reckoned as a state tax (1845), Massachusetts law forbade using such revenue to pay for fugitive slave-catching. "Most of the time, then, Thoreau was refusing to pay tax to Middlesex County and the town of Concord, neither of which could plausibly be called the slave's government." The ultimate paradox of "Civil Disobedience" is that although Thoreau misrepresented many partic- ulars, he was "broadly and propheti- cally right" in the guiding vision he articulated. Rosenwald argues that it is Thoreau's unlikely synthesis of pacifism and support for political revolution — rather than a global rejection of government or violence — that inspired, famously, the partic- ular successes of both Gandhi's first civil-rights campaign in South Africa and King's leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott. It is "almost an accident," Rosenwald concludes, "that the essay depicts a nonviolent action," Thoreau's tax refusal of the 1840s. "Nonviolence is not a first principle for him; it is at most a practical preference." Since Thoreau, unlike philosophers of nonresis- tance, does not associate his- action with a posi- tion on violence, he was able without contra- diction to defend violent actions "on the same grounds as.. .nonviolent action," during the escalating struggles over the Fugitive Slave Law and the public opinion wars over John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. Dana Nelson, Cecelia Tichi, and Robert Gross respectively contribute innovative studies of the historical specificities of Thoreau's images of men, manhood, jind race; a reading of Walden in the light of "decades-long feminist and material culture scholarship" in the field of nineteenth- century domesticity; and the stereotyping of the "hermit of Concord" during Thoreau's own lifetime, viewed as the effect of increased local social tension and stratifica- tion. Editor William Cain supplies a concise biographical introduction and an illustrated, well-assembled chronology. 15 Thoreau Society Regular and Ad Hoc Committees: 200 1 -2002 /. Regular Committees: Annual Gathering Committee: (for charge, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, section 10.1, [c]):T. Beams (Society Membership Services Coordinator); H. Deese; D. Ganoe, Chair (dbga- email@example.com); S. Petrulionis; T. Potter Committee on Nominations and Elections : (for charge and membership, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article IV): S. Delano*; W. Mott; D. Schwie*; L. Walls, Chair (email@example.com); C. Wilkins* (asterisk indicates member elected by the Society member- ship-at-large) Executive Committee: (for charge and member- ship, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article V, section 5.6): R. Galvin; R. Hoag, Chair ( (email@example.com); T. Potter Finance Committee: (for expanded charge, see below; additionally, in 2001-2002 and thereafter as specified in the charge below, the Finance Corfimittee will also assume the responsibilities of the regular Membership and Development Committee [for charge, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, section 10.1, (c)]): R. Galvin, Chair (email@example.com); ). Mack; J. Wheeler Friends of Walden Pond Committee: (for charge, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, sec- tion 10.1, [c]):R. Bosco, Chair (email@example.com); J. Mack; J. Wheeler; A. Winter (member from the community); T. Harris (ex officio); D. Morrissey (ex officio) Publications Committee: (for charge, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, section 10.1, [c]): S. Carlisle (Editor, Thoreau Society Bulletin); T. Harris; R. Hoag (advisor to the Committee); W. Mott, Chair (firstname.lastname@example.com); R. Schneider (Editor, The Concord Saunterer) Standing Committee: (for charge, see By-Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, section 10.1, [c]; additionally, for 2001-2002, the Standing Committee will also assume the responsibilities of the Collections Committee [for charge, see By- Laws of the Thoreau Society, article X, section 10.1, (c)[ ): R. Bosco; R. Hoag; J.-Myerson, Chair (firstname.lastname@example.com); B. Powell (advisor to the Committee); E. Witherell (advisor to the Committee) //. Ad Hoc Committees (with charges as specified below): Awards Committee: S. Carlisle; R. Hudspeth; J. Myerson, Chair (email@example.com); E. Witherell (advisor to the Committee) By-Laws Committee: R. Husdpeth, Chair (hud- email@example.com); R. Schneider Education and Research Committee: K. Anderson (ex officio); R. Bosco (ex officio); B. Dean; J. Cramer; J. Gordon and R. Hudspeth, Co-Chairs (firstname.lastname@example.com; email@example.com); T. Harris (ex officio); L. Walls; L. P. Wilson. Note: Members of this Committee designated "ex officio" shall not be voting members of the Committee. Thoreau Birthplace Advisory Committee: R. Bosco; T. Harris; R. Hoag, Chair (email@example.com); J. Mack (advisor to the Committee); f. Wheeler (advisor to the Committee) Walden in 2004: A Sesquicentennial Celebration — Steering Committee: R. Bosco and J. Myerson, Co-Chairs (email@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.com); D. Ganoe (Chair, Annual Gathering Committee); I. Gordon; T. Harris (staff support); W. Mott; R. Schneider (Editor, The Concord Saunterer) III. Charges to Committees Awards Committee: (The charge that follows is the recommendation of the ad hoc Awards Advisory Committee constituted last year.) The committee recommends that both the Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award and the Thoreau Society Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award be made for ( 1 ) accomplishments in the areas included in the Thoreau Society's mission statement: to honor Henry David Thoreau by stimulating interest in and fostering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours, by coordinating research on his life and writings, by acting as a repository for Thoreauviana and mate- rial relevant to Henry David Thoreau, and by advocating for the preservation of Thoreau Country, or (2) contributions that serve the Thoreau Society itself. The committee further recommends that the Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award be made for a accomplishment that is limited in time and scope, and that the Thoreau Society Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award be made for a contribution that has taken place over some time. Few will achieve Walter's record of service to Thoreau and the Society, but his contribution should be seen as an ideal when considering nominees for the award. The committee recommends that the Thoreau Society Medal be awarded to an individual or organization exemplifying the ideals and values represented by Henry Thoreau. The Thoreauvian contribution of the recipient should be significant and sustained. We suggest one ad hoc committee of three, appointed by the President, to solicit from Society members nominations of individuals or groups for all three awards. The committee should also have the power to nominate candidates. Every nomination should be accompanied by a state- ment from the nominator explaining how the candidate meets the criteria for the award. The committee will make its recommendation to the board which will make the final decisions. We leave it to the President to decide the length of the term that members should serve, but we recommend that every time the committee changes, one member from the former committee be carried forward. Nominations should be solicited for each award every year, but the Society should not be obligated to make any award in a given year. The Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award and the Thoreau Society Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award should consist of a plaque and a certificate that describe the awardee's contribution. The Thoreau Society Medal consists of the medal itself and a citation that describes the awardee's contribution. As part of the planning for the Annual Gathering, the Executive Director and the Annual Gathering Committee should designate a suitable time for making these awards. By-Laws Committee: By December 1, 2001, this Committee will by will draft and circulate to the Board an amendment to the By-Laws that will provide that any amendment proposed and signed by 5% of the individual (not institutional) voting members of the Society will automatically become the subject of a ballot circulated to the member- ship-at-large during the Society's cycle of balloting that traditionally occurs each Spring. The Board will discuss the Committee's draft of this amend- ment at its January 2002 meeting, and in its final form the amendment it will be the subject of a ballot before the membership next Spring. Education and Research Committee: For 2001-2002, this Committee has been created and its members jointly appointed by the President of the Thoreau Society and the Executive Director of the Walden Woods Project; its membership has been approved by the Thoreau Society Board of Directors. The overall charge to this Committee is ( 1 ) to review and discuss the position paper submitted to the Board by the 2000-2001 Thoreau Society Research Committee which preliminarily addressed means by which the Society could achieve its educational and research missions to the mutual advantage of both; (2) out of that review and discussion, to prepare a statement of how the educational and research missions of both'the Thoreau Society and the Walden Woods Project can be developed in such a way as to rein- force each other and to realize the potential for education and research at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, which is a collaboration of the Walden Woods Project and the Thoreau Society; (3) to specify and illustrate to the greatest extent possible the respective obligations of the Thoreau Society and the Walden Woods Project in realiz- ing the potential for education and research at The Thoreau Institute, and to propose committee and other structures that will facilitate education and research opportunities at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods; (4) to present a draft interim report to the President of the Thoreau Society and the Executive Director of the Walden Woods Project no later than December 15, 2001, which, in turn, both the President of the Thoreau Society and the Executive Director of the Walden Woods continued on page 17 Todd Richardson, from the University of South Carolina, suggests that there may be "a new generation of Thoreau inspired radical- ism." He writes: "My interest was piqued when I came across a magazine entitled The Angry Thoreaitvian while browsing through the shelves of my local newsstand. A closer look revealed that The Angry Thoreauvian does not regularly contain articles on the life and works of H.D. Thoreau — rather, it is a "fanzine" — a publi- cation by and for the American subculture. The editor, one Reverend Randall Tin-ear, began publication in the early nineties in Hollywood, California, and had recently issued its twenty-eighth number with a print run of three thousand copies. The Angry Thoreauvian has a marked political orientation towards the radical left, and its hard-hitting (and sometimes disturb- ing) articles cover areas of interest to a. counter-culture readership of the twenty- first century: political essays leveling accusa- tions of police brutality and religious hypocrisy, the present state of feminism in the underground, problems with media bias, happenings in the punk music scene, among others. One letter to the editor reads, in part, "Your publication is full of vile epithets [and] rude observations... with little regard to the feelings of others. I so admire that in a magazine!" Michael Meyer in his Several More Lives to Live notes that Thoreau "had at one time or another said no to all the right things; his everlasting nay affirmed his significance and relevance for many Americans in the 1960s." But the publication of The Angry Thoreauvian indicates that the affinity which American counter-culture has for the politi- cal ideology of Henry David Thoreau did not end with the sixties — it is alive, and could well thrive again." Randall Conrad notes the following: "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad." Bob Gaskins, a creator of the Microsoft PowerPoint slide presentation program, used to quote Thoreau's line from "Civil Disobedience" to inspire his col- leagues, according to Ian Parker in The New Yorker, 28 May 2001 (p. 80). Larry Smith, poet and professor of English at B( iSl ' 1 irelands ( College lias been perform- ing poems from his new Thoreau's Lost journal: Poems by Larry Smith ( Westron Press, P.O. Box 5285, Toledo, Ohio 4361 1, SIO ppd). Smith also includes recitations Irom Thoreau's Waldenand "Civil Disobedience" in his performances at libraries, colleges, museums and even coffee- houses in Ohio. The book may also be ordered from the Shop at Walden Pond. Brian Bartlett writes that in the recent novel '. Mercy Among the Children by Canadian novelist David Adams Richards (Doubleday Canada, 2000, forthcoming in the U.S. and England this fall), the poor, Job-like autodi- dact hero has read Thoreau. In what might be taken as a snub of Thoreau, the narrator says of Sydney Henderson: "he did not know that he, and not Thoreau, was the real article, or that his civil disobedience went to the very soul of man" (p. 41). "Oh Thoreau!" — a concert featuring read- ings from works"by Thoreau and John Cage, and other relevant repetoire including works by Gottschalk, Cage, Ives, and Pleyel, was presented on Sunday, May 13 th in the Russell House of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Randall Conrad of Lexington writes that readers who appreciated J. O. Valentine's lively sketch of Tasha Tudor and her family may be interested to know that Walden is not the only work in which Frederic Tudor (1783-1864), the "Ice King" entrepreneur who shipped Walden's water to tropical markets, appears. He also gets a mention in The Maine Woods, targeted this time for altering the environment in Nahant, north of Boston. Thoreau is referring to the "Rockwood" estate, today the site of the Nahant, Massachusetts, Country Club. In 1812 these lands, totalling some 75 acres, were deeded to the young Frederic Tudor by his merchant father. Frederic improved Rockwood with farmlands and a "rustic • stone" summer cottage built in 1825. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep- pasturage before it is habitable by man. Consider Nahant, the resort of all the fashion of Boston, — which peninsula I saw but indistinctly in the twilight, when I steamed by it, and thought that it was unchanged since the discovery. John Smith described it in 1614 as "the Mattahunts, two pleasant isles o\ groves, gardens, and cornfields"; and others tell us that it was once well wooded, and even furnished timber to build the wharves of Boston. Now it is difficult to make a tree grow there, and the visitor comes away with a vision oj Mr. Tudor's ugly fences, a rod high, designed to protect a few pear-shrubs. (Thoreau, The Maine Woods, ed. . Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 1972, 154.) Thoreau's description forms an ironic con- trast with the cheery summary of Frederic Tudor's improvements in a Historical Note that prefaces the Tudor family records archived at Harvard: "Continuing the fami- ly's practice of improving their property, Frederic invested large sums of money in plants, trees and flowers and converted a barren hill into a showplace." (Tudor Family "Rockwood" Records, 1799- 1863. Historical Collections, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. (www.library.hbs.edu/hc/sfa/tudorrockwood) An 1849 "Letter on the Ice Trade" written by Tudor that Bradley Dean has made avail- able at www.walden.org/contemporaries/t/ Tudor_Frederic/ illuminates the market- creating techniques that made the Ice King's fortune. Robert L. Harris reports that permanently set in the floor of the Pheasant Lane Mall (Nashua, NH) is the following: "There is'no season such delight can bring, as summer, autumn, winter and the spring. Henry David Thoreau" Thoreau makes yet another appearance on network television; On a spring episode of "Ed," four of the characters, high-school kids, sit in a small circle talking about Walden, their teacher at her desk in the back- ground. One of the kids, in an effort to come on to a girl, memorized the "lives of quiet desperation" passage, which seems to have prompted him to read the book — or at least the first three chapters. He actually evinces some enthusiasm for the book and concludes that Walden is "one big wake-up call." Later he reads the "live deliberately" passage to two of his teachers and asks them, "Wow, was this guy cool or what?" His English teacher responds, "Yes, Henry David Thoreau is a cool guy." The following appeared in the 18 June 1878 edition of the Portland, Maine Sunday Times: "The following advertisement was in a Boston daily journal last week: A lady in N.H., of Emersonian thought and sentiment, offers conditions for refreshment, spiritual and physical, to parties of two persons for one week or fortnight after July 1. River and mountain scenery; choice library in town. Two meals and private table; table and household appointments in / 17 emulation of Cornaro and Thoreau. Separate rooms if desired. French and German spoken. $14 the week for two persons. Address Mrs. - ." Daniel Botkin presented a lecture at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts on 28 March 2001 entitled "What Thoreau Would Say to George W. Bush: Solving Environment Problems in the 21st Century." With frequent references to his book No Man's Garden: Thoreau and a New Vision for Civilization and Nature, Botkin claimed that the first thing Thoreau would tell Bush is "learn directly from detailed experiences... You have to think about nature and civiliza- tion mixed together as one system." Michael Berger sends an Alumni Program brochure from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico that includes the following , Thoreau quote: "What everyone echoes . . . as true today, may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion." In the April 19-25 issue of Maine Times, contributing editor John Cole writes "A Few Choice Words" entitled Thoreau and the Land. Cole "offers a collection of well- chosen words from the Concord boy who did so much to inform how we think about the world around us. The prescience of Thoreau's 105-year-old thoughts continues to amaze and provoke." In the 1 1 March 2001 issue of the Chicago Tribune, Barry Kritzberg alerts us to an article invoking Thoreau's method of "tax evasion" titled "Thou Protesteth? Just Saying No to the Tax Man." Teacher Monica Hiller, a participant in the Summer 2000 Teacher's Workshop offered at the Thoreau Institute, was featured in a 24 May 2001 article in the BostoifGlobe. Using an interdisciplinary and multi-media approach, Hiller coaxes her students "to open their eyes a little wider and to look more deeply inward." An article in the 3 June 2001 issue of The New York Times details Reverend Al Sharpton's approach to civil disobedience. Using Thoreau's essay as a guide, Sharpton is willing indeed to serve his jail time as part of his non-violent protest in New York's theater district. It is with deep regret that the Thoreau Society notes the passing of Robert Lucas. Bob was the proprietor of Robert F. Lucas Antiquarian Books. He specializedin books by and about Thoreau and was a member of The Thoreau Society. He was very generous in sharing his great knowledge of Thoreauviana. Bob conducted his business with the utmost integrity, and was a good friend to many of us. We will miss him. Committees, from page 15 Project will discuss with their respective Boards in meetings during January 2002; (5) acknowledging comments and recommendations emerging from discussions that occur in January 2002, to present a final report to the President of the Thoreau Society and the Executive Director of the Walden Woods Project for discussion by their respective Boards and implementation no later than July 2002. In the context of this detailed charge, but as a consideration separate from it, no later than December 1 5, 200 1 , the Committee will also ( 1 ) devise application forms for_the Thoreau Society Fellowships program, which was approved by the Board of Directors in January 2001 for implemen- tation in 2002; (2) develop and prepare formal guidelines for the advertising, judging, and award- ing of these fellowships; (3) create an appropriate organizational structure to oversee the Thoreau Society Fellowships program; and (4) present a detailed report on these matters to the President of the Thoreau Society for review by the Thoreau Society Board of Directors in January 2002. Note: Members of this Committee designated "ex officio" shall not be voting members of the Committee. Additionally, the charge to the Committee shall not be construed to limit the range of topics or the nature thereof that the Committee may entertain during its deliberations. In effect, under the terms of its' charge, the Committee has the authority to discuss and make recommendations about matters relating to edu- cation and research at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods that the Committee deems appro- priate for discussion and as appropriate as subjects on which to make specific recommendations. Finally, the time frame for the work of this Committee as indicated is a suggested maximum time frame only; ideally, the work of the Committee will be brought to closure as expedi- tiously as possible so that its recommendations can be implemented prior to July 2002. Finance Committee: For 2001-2002, and until such time as the charge that follows is explicitly altered or set aside by the Board of Directors, the charge to this Committee is: ( 1 ) to meet with the Society's Executive Director and Business Manager six times per year, exclusive of Board meetings; (2) to maintain a running review of all aspects of the finances of the Society and the finances of activities of the Society such as The Friends of Walden Pond (the latter in consulta- tion-with The Friends of Walden Pond Committee); minimally, this running review shall take into account the Society's cash reserves, income and expenses relating to the Shop, all. operational expenses in addition to those associat- ed with the Shop (including personnel expenses), investments, and any other matters relating to the Society's finances that the Committee deems appropriate for review; and (3) to regularly advise the President (and through the President the Board of Directors) and the Executive Director of the financial condition of the Society, to recom- mend to them any and all reasonable means to achieve economies in the operational expenses of the Society at all levels, and to recommend mea- sures to improve returns on the Society's invest- ments (e.g., the Bodfish Bequest, the Smith Fund, and the like). Thoreau Birthplace Advisory Committee: This Committee will advise the Board on roles the Society may wish to take on as the future of the Thoreau birthplace unfolds over the next several months. Walden in 2004: A Sesquicentennial Celebration — Steering Committee: This Committee will advise the Board of Directors on .activities sponsored and fully or partially funded by the Society with respect to this celebration. The only events sponsored and funded fully or partial- ly by the Society in 2004 will be ( 1 ) an expanded Annual Gathering, (2) a series of public events developed in connection with the Society's posi- tion as The Friends of Walden Pond, and (3) pos- sibly an expanded "special" issue of The Concord Saunterer devoted to Walden the book and Walden the place. With the concurrence of the Board, the Committee will represent the Society's interests in discussions with local, national, and international organizers of other events marking the 150 th year since the publication of Walden. Annual Gathering July I 1-14, 2002 The Spiritual and Political Mind of Thoreau with keynote sp'eaker Lewis Hyde Please send us your ideas and suggestions for speakers, programs, and activities for next year's Gathering. Send your suggestions along with a half-page description to: The Thoreau Society Annual Gathering Committee - 44 Baker Farm » Lincoln, MA 01773-3004 firstname.lastname@example.com All suggestions must be received by 21 December 200 1 18 Additions to the Thoreau Bibliography Cain, William E., ed. .4 Historical guide to Hcnrv David Thoreau. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Carfaro, Philip. "Thoreau, Leopold, and ("arson: Toward an Environment \ 'irtue Ethics." Environment Ethics 23, no. 1 (spring 2001): 3 -17. Foster, David R. Thoreau's Country: Journey Through a Transformed Landscape. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. Review: Journal of American Studies 34, no. 3 (December 2000): 520-521. Reviewed by R.W. (Herbie) Butterfield. McGregor, Robert Kuhn. .4 Wider View of the Universe: Henry Thoreau's Study of Nature. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1997. Review: Journal of Historical Geography 27, no. 1 (January 2001): 116-118. Reviewed by (Steven M. Schnell. McSweeney, Kerry. The Language of the Senses: Sensory-Perceptual Dynamics in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1999. Review: The Review of English Studies 52, no. 205 (2001 ): 125- 126. Reviewed by Michael O'Neill. Susie Carlisle & Olson, Kelli. "A Cultural Study of Henry D. Thoreau's The Maine Woods." Diss. Georgia State U, 2000. Samuels, Bayle Brandow. Enduring Roots: Encounters with Trees, History, and the American Landscape. Review: The Journal of American History 88, no. 1 (June 2001). Reviewed by Brian Donahue, who notes Samuels' exploration of an "ideal middle ground between wildness and cultivation" as "she walks with Henry Thoreau after wild apples, seeing him not as a sentimen- tal pastoralist but as a fellow seeker for integration between the garden and the wild." Sewell, George T. To Katahdin: The 1876 Adventures of Four Young Men and a Boat. Gardiner ME: Tilbury House, 2000. Paperback, 107pp, S20, introduction by Neil Rolde, and afterword by Irvin C. "Buzz" Caverly, Jr., Director of Baxter State Park. Sewell was one of Thoreau's pupils and Ellen Sewell's younger brother. Tauber, Alfred I. Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing. Berkeley: l T of California Press, 2001. Thoreau, Henry David. Cape Cod. Review: Yarmouth Register, volume XXIX, No. 16, 24 March 1865, page 2, column 2. Earliest newspaper review of Cape Cod yet located. . Collected Essays and Poems. Edited by Elizabeth Hall Witherall. New York: Library of America, 2001. Review: Boston Globe, 26 May 2001. Reviewed by Claude Crowley. -. Journal, Volume 6: 1853. Edited by William Rossi and Heather Kirk Thomas. The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Review: The Virginia Quarterly Review 77, no. 2 (spring 2001): 54-55. We are grateful for the contributions made to the bibliography by M. Berger, M. Harding, B. Dean, and R. WinslowLTI. Please continue to keep Susie Carlisle informed of any items missed and new items as they appear at, 44 Baker Farm, Lincoln, Massachusetts 01773-3004; e-mail email@example.com; fax (978) 827-3162. Whenever possible, include a copy of the book, article, or other item so that it can be presen>ed in the Thoreau Society's collection at the Thoreau Institute. Japan Visit, from page 9 Toda, who had been imprisoned with Makiguchi for his own anti-militaristic beliefs during World War II. Following the end of the war, Toda rebuilt Soka Gakkai and increased its membership to over 750,000; Toda's work prepared the way for Dr. Ikeda, who succeeded him as president in 1960. Soka Gakkai's expansion has occurred largely under the leadership of Dr. Ikeda, who has increased the organization's size and scope, so that today there are thirteen mil- lion members in one hundred and forty- eight countries. Their mission to promote peace, culture, and education has remained tlie same while their activities toward achiev- ing that mission have expanded greatly. The similarities between Thoreau and Ikeda are evident in the individualistic nature of reform that both champion and to which Ikeda has repeatedly drawn attention as a core concept informing Soka Gakkai's mis- sion: A great revolution of character in lust a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society, and further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind. — Daisaku Ikeda, The Human Revolution An accomplished educator, author, and poet, Dr. Ikeda has advocated for world peace through education and international cultural exchange throughout his career. In one of his many influential publications, Choose Life ( 1974) in which he collaborated with Sir Arnold J. Toynbee, he proposed that the diverse problems confronting the world's populations should always be overcome through peaceful solutions — a position he maintains to this day as evidenced by his recently published Creating and Sustaining a Century of Life (2001 ). For his lifelong sup- port of world peace, Dr. Ikeda has been acknowledged by more than one hundred colleges and universities around the world which have awarded him honorary doctor- ates and professorships. Among numerous other honors, Dr. Ikeda has also received the United Nations Peace Medal, the Wiesenthal Center's Simon Wiesenthal International Tolerance Award, the Rosa Parks Humanitarian Award, and the Tagore Peace Award. following the presentation of the I lonorary Life Membership in the Thoreau Society to Dr. Ikeda and his address, the plat- form party ol some several hundred persons moved to a ceremony in the adjoining gym- nasium. There, Dr. Masami Wakae, President ol Soka University, recognized the scholarly and professional achievements of Bosco and Myerson by awarding each of them the Soka University academic Award of Highest Honor; for his contribution to the promotion of Thoreau'* legacy as the Society's Executive Director, Harris was pre- sented with the Soka University Award of Honor. At the invitation of Dr. Ikeda, that evening, in a ceremony in the Makiguchi Memorial Garden on the campus, Bosco, Myerson, and Harris dedicated a mature cherry tree in remembrance of Henry David Thoreau; in his brief remarks, Bosco acknowledged the gesture as a generous and fitting tribute to the shared ideals for which Thoreau and Makiguchi lived. At the request of the Society's president, a former secondary school teacher, Bosco and his companions visited the Soka Schools on their last day in Japan. Located in Kodaira, a suburb of Tokyo noted for its natural beauty, the Soka Schools include junior and senior high schools founded by Dr. Ikeda in 1968 and an elementary school founded by him in 1978. Mr. Michio Kobayashi, Chairman of the Soka Schools, hosted the visit during which students from the K- 12 system greeted their guests with a tour, musical perfor- mances, and a formal tea ceremony. After lunch and discussions with teachers and continued on page 19 President's Column, from page 5 been raised about our By-Laws is a question over the mechanism by which they may be amended. According to the results of my research into the Society's By-Laws going back to 1948 (which is the earliest dated version of our By-Laws that I have,found), our By-Laws have always explicitly stated that the right to in any way amend the By- Laws rests entirely with the membership. Unfortunately, neither in 1948, nor today, nor at any time in between, has our By-Laws provided aji actual mechanism for the membership doing so. Acting on motions that were introduced during its meetings this week, the Board proposes the following: First, any member of the Society may propose to any officer or member of the Board of Directors an amendment to, or they may pose a question, concern — whatever — about, the By-Laws. I personally promise the Board will respectfully receive and discuss anything relating to the By-Laws that comes before it, and that anyone who approaches the Board on a subject relating to the By- Laws will receive an answer — without any- one having to go through the mediation of a committee. This is my answer to guarantee- ing the rights and democratic processes of the Society to all its members, and the Board of Directors has unanimously accepted their responsibility to see that the process I have just described is honored. Second, by December 1, 2001, the ad hoc By-Laws Committee will draft and circulate I to the Board an amendment to the By-Laws that will formalize the process I describe above, and will also provide that any amend- ment proposed and signed by 5% or the individual (not institutional) voting mem- bers of the Society will automatically become the subject of a ballot circulated to the mem- bership-at-large during the Society's cycle of . balloting that traditionally occurs each Spring. The Board will discuss the Committee's draft of this amendment at its January 2002 meeting, and I have every reason to believe that it will be the subject of a ballot before the membership next Spring. I have also appointed an ad hoc commit- tee under the leadership of the Society's Treasurer Ronald Hoag that will advise the Board on roles the Society may wish to take on as the future of the Thoreau birthplace unfolds over the next several months. As we all know, many of our members including Ron, Kathi Anderson, Helen Bowdoin, John Mack, Joseph Wheeler, and others, along with many individuals from local communi- ties, have devoted an enormous amount of time and energy into seeing that the poten- tial represented by the birthplace can be real- ized. Their efforts have now come to an impasse, and it is in the context of this impasse that I have charged the ad hoc Thoreau Birthplace Committee to conduct its investigations and, by December 15, 2001, advise the Board of Directors in the broadest terms possible on the Society's role regarding the future of the birthplace. I began this address by pointing to the remarkable diversity of talent that the mem- bership of our Society represents and that has sustained and enabled us to grow as a Society for the past sixty years. To celebrate our membership and the contributions they have made to the advancement of the mission of the Thoreau Society, last year I charged an ad hoc Committee of the Board to formalize descriptions of, and develop guidelines for nominating and choosing recipients for, three Society awards that have not been presented in some time: the Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award, the Thoreau Society Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award, and the Thoreau Society Medal. Each of these awards recognizes individuals or institutions for sig- nificant and sustained contributions to the Society's mission, with the achievement award typically recognizing scholarship or public service, the service award recognizing accomplishments that are limited in time and scope, but are nevertheless essential to furthering the Society's mission, and the medal recognizing achievements that exem- plify the ideals and values represented by Henry Thoreau. After receiving and accepting the commit- tee's recommendations in January of this year, the Board constituted this committee as an ad hoc Awards Committee. A call for nomina- tions for these awards went out in our Winter/Spring 2001 Bulletin, and our mem- bership responded with great enthusiasm. I am so very pleased to announce that Robert D. Richardson, Jr. has been named to receive the Thoreau Society Distinguished Achievement Award and Professor E. O. Wilson has been named to receive the Thoreau Society Medal; these awards will be presented at a later date, with announce- ments posted in a forthcoming Bulletin. I am also very pleased to announce that three persons have been named to receive the Thoreau Society Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award, and that it is my distinct honor today to present these per- sons with their awards and to extend my hand to each of them in gratitude for their respective commitments of time and consid- erable talent to the Thoreau Society. May I ask Robert J. Galvin, John D. Mack, and Lorna C. Mack to rise, and may I ask all of you in the audience to join me in congratu- lating these three truly generous and com- mitted citizens of our Society. 19 In closing, and before I move down to the floor to present Bob, John, and Lorna with their awards, I wish to personally thank the officers, the Board of Directors, and the membership-at-large of the Thoreau Society for making the past year a highly gratifying experience for me in my role as president and for advancing the mission of the Society in the thoroughly spectacular ways I have described to you today. I end by quoting yet once again the passage from Thoreau that has inspired me for much of my life, and that certainly has inspired my service on behalf of the Society this past year. Touched by the vivifying warmth of an early spring day in 1853, Thoreau wrote in his Journal, "[T]he future is worth expecting. Encouraged, I set out once more to climb the mountain of the earth, for my steps are symbolical steps, and in all my walking I have not reached the top of the earth yet." r * Japan Visit, from page 18 school administrators on the challenges facing contemporary educators, the three Thoreauvians engaged in a lively question and answer period with the senior high school students, whose comments about self-reform and humanism revealed a strong grounding in the philosophies of Soka Gakkai's founders and many parallels with Thofeau and other American Transcendentalists. As Bosco stated in his address at Soka University, we sincerely hope that this trip inaugurates an important and a lasting friendship between the Soka University and Soka Gakkai communities and the Thoreau Society that will advance the causes we share: education, peace, culture, and, especially, respect for the "inherent wisdom" of the individual and for our environment. These are the ideals to which our founders devoted their lives, and these are the ideals most crucial to the success of the missions of our respective organizations. We are now working on ways in which Soka Gakkai and Thoreau Society members may join in the near future in lectures and other public events to further explore parallels between the missions of their organizations and to discuss concerns of mutual interest. September Massachusetts 22 Saturday I Oa.m. Of Pond Lillies & Music Boxes: Thoreau and The Old Manse A Thoreau Society Excursion Laurie Butters, Director, The Old Manse Part of the Thoreau Society's excursion program "I have traveled a great deal in Concord" featuring monthly walks in and around Concord, Massachusetts. Space is limited. To reserve a spot and for informa- tion on where to meet contact the Thoreau Society at (78 1 ) 259-4750 or online at www.walden.org/society. 26 Wednesday 7:30 p.m. "A History of Myself Southborough Historical Museum Richard Smith, as Henry Thoreau, will recreate Thoreau's 1847 lecture. Thoreau gave this talk twice, and most of it was later incorporated into his book Walden. The lecture was Thoreau's answer to all of the people who wanted to know why he had lived in a one-room house at Walden Pond for 2 years, 2 months and 2 days. There will be a question and answer period with "Mr. Thoreau" after the lecture. Sponsored by the Southborough Historical Society. Southborough Historical Museum is located at 25 Common Street, Southborough, MA. Free and open to the public. October Massachusetts 3-5 Columbus Day Weekend Cape Cod Excursion Follow Thoreau's journey on Cape Cod from Eastham to Provincetown. Adam Gamble, author of In the Footsteps of Thoreau: 25 Historic and Nature Walks on Cape Cod, will lead the three-day excursion. Robert Finch, essayist and co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing, will join us for an evening discussion of nature writing and the Cape. Packages ($395 for members) include B&B lodging and meals. For more information, call 1 78 1 ) 259-4750 or visit our Web site at www.walden.org/socicty. 13 Saturday I Oa.m. Thoreau and the Farmers of Concord A Thoreau Society Excursion Richard Smith Part of the Thoreau Society's excursion program "1 have traveled a great deal in Concord" featuring monthly walks in and around Concord, Massachusetts. Space is limited. To reserve a spot and for informa- tion on where to meet contact the Thoreau Society at (781) 259-4750 or online at www.walden.org/society. 15, 22, 29, & Nov. 5 Mondays 7:00-9:00 p.m. NATURE AND CULTURE; SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY Thoreau Institute, Lincoln, MA A four part discussion series on selected essays of Henry Thoreau, presented by The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods Price of $50 includes copy of Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (Dover) $40 for Thoreau Society members "Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," "A Plea for Captain John Brown," "Walking" and "Life Without Principle" are among Henry Thoreau's most powerful, provocative pieces of writing. In them, Thoreau examines the place of the individual in the natural world and the cultural community, and man's responsibility to both the environment and the govern- ment in "living deliberately"— consciously and conscientiously. The five essays will be the subjects of conver- sation during a four-part discussion series held at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, a research and education center in Lincoln. Jayne Gordon, the Institute's Education Program Director, will facilitate the sessions and provide participants with historical context. The booklet of essays, with a syllabus and framing questions for each evening, will be mailed to all partici- pants in advance. November Massachusetts 1 7 Saturday I Oa.m. Thoreau & The Walden Bean Field A Thoreau Society Excursion Bradley P. Dean, Media Center Director, The Thoreau Institute Part of the Thoreau Society's excursion program "1 have traveled a great deal in ( loncord" featuring monthly walks in and around Concord, Massachusetts. Space is limited. To reserve a spot and for informa- tion on where to meel contact the Thoreau Soucty.it (781) 259-4750 or online at www.walden.org/society. © 2001 The Thoreau Society, Inc. The Thoreau Society Bulletin, published quarterly by the Thoreau Society, is indexed in American Humanities Index and MLA International Bibliography. Editor, Susie Carlisle Assistant Editor, Tom Harris Graphic Designer/Illustrator, Karen Merrill Board of Directors: Ronald A. Bosco, President; Susie Carlisle; Helen R. Deese; Robert J. Galvin, V. P. of Finance; David Ganoe; Ronald W. Hoag, Treasurer; Robert Hudspeth; John Mack; Wesley T. Mott, V.P. of Publications; Joel Myerson, Secretary; Sandra Petrulionis; Tom Potter; Richard Schneider; Laura Dassow Walls; Joseph Wheeler Executive Director Tom Harris Business Manager Karen Kashian Membership Coordinator Tamara Beams Program Coordinator Richard Smith Shop Manager Jon Fadiman Shop Staff Emily Hogan, Tim Smith Established in 1941, The Thoreau Soceity, Inc., is an international nonprofit organization with a mission to honor Henry David Thoreau by stimulating interest in and fostering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world arid ours, by coordinating research on his life and writings, by acting as a ~ repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Henry David Thoreau, and by advo- cating for the preservation of Thoreau Country. Membership in the Society includes subscrip- tions to its two publications, The Concord Saunterer (published each autumn) and The Thoreau Society Bulletin^ published quarterly). Society members receive a ten percent discount on all merchandise purchased from the Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond and advance notice about Society programs, including the annual gathering. Contact the Thoreau Society administrative offices in Lincoln, Massachusetts, for membership information (address below). Thoreau Society Directory Communications relating to The Concord Saunterer should be addressed to Richard Schneider, Department of English-and Modern Languages, Wartburg College, 222 Ninth Street NW, Waverly, I A 50677;tel: (319) 352-8435; e-mail: email@example.com. Inquiries about merchandise (including books and mail-order items) should be directed to Jon Fadiman, Manager, the Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond, 915 Walden Street, Concord, MA 01742-4511, U.S.A.; tel: (781) 259-4770; fax: (978) 287-5620; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. All other inquiries and communications should be directed to the Thoreau Society, 44 Baker Farm, Lincoln, MA 01773-3004, U.S.A.; tel: (781) 259-4750; fax: (781) 259-4760; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com www.walden.org \§ Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper