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Nathan Hopson

Thoreau - Walking - Webtext - 41 views

  • When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle south-west, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks, would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits, which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide for the thousandth time, that I will walk into the south-west or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
    • Nathan Hopson
       
      West = new + free, East = old + constrained Not a reference to world history, but to the American context (West = frontier). The Americas were the West (to Europe) and the West was America (as Turner/Billington argue).
  • I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west.
    • Nathan Hopson
       
      See above...
Lauren Mitchell

Thoreau's Walking - 2 - 0 views

  • "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art compared with a fine, dark green one growing vigorously in the open fields."
    • Lauren Mitchell
       
      Do you think Thoreau would get one of those spray tans?
  • Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.
  • Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even gravelled walks
  • In Literature, it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the Schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-the mallard-thought, which, 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west, or in the jungles of the east.
  • I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect.
  • all good things are wild and free
  • The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.
  • I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
  • strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle south-west, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle — varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks, would  be, not a circle, but a
Lauren Rosen

Mobile devices: Wireless devices and consoles provide new ways for teens and adults to ... - 22 views

  • African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet, and their use is growing at a faster pace than mobile internet use among whites or Hispanics.  While African-Americans are less likely than whites to use laptops to access the internet, they are more likely to use other mobile devices such as cell phones. Half of all African-American adults (48%) have used their cell phone to access the internet, compared with 40% of Hispanic adults and just 31% of white adults.
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    Information on the use of mobiles according to PEW studies.
Jeff Ferrell

Walden Illustrated | A picture per page, by people! - 37 views

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    A project collecting illustrations for Thoreau's Walden, a page at a time.
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