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Just a few bits and bobs today.

First the bits.

Did you catch the book cover gifs at Slate not long ago? Subtle and quite clever some of them.

Then at the Atlantic The Terror and Tedium of Living Like Thoreau. Only it strikes me that people tend to not get what living like Thoreau actually means. They think he was monk in the woods sitting around all day observing ants and the water reflecting on Walden Pond. But Thoreau frequently had visitors, especially Emerson. And he didn’t sit around all day. You can’t cultivate an acre of beans while sitting around. Thoreau was a very busy and purposeful fellow!

The thing that draws the author to the solitude and wilderness of Alaska is the desire to live life fully, purposefully and with awareness. She thinks of all sorts of big picture stuff that this means — traveling the world, being a writer — but discovers these big things require one live moment by moment in the small things:

So: How to live? Just filling a day, I learned in my little cabin, is a tricky but essential business. I could much sooner tell you the way I’d like to spend a life than the way I’d like to spend an hour. Lives are fun to play with: I’ll be a writer! An astronaut! A world traveler! It’s harder to make yourself into a noun in the span of a day. Days are about verbs. In the cabin, there were too many options, and none of them very exciting. Read, write, walk, run, split wood, bake bread, pick berries, call my mom, hunt the mosquitos that had snuck into the cabin? Most of what I did in that cabin was mundane. There aren’t many stories worth telling. There aren’t many moments I remember.

One does not need solitude in order to figure this out, but I suppose it helps and it makes a great story.

And now the bobs.

I just found out that Jeanette Winterson will be giving a lecture and reading at the University of Minnesota at the end of October. The event is free and open to the public. Bookman and I will be there even if we have to stand behind the back row. So excited!

Early in October Bookman and I will be going to the first ever NerdCon and today they posted the event schedule. It is a two day affair that focuses on storytelling. There are going to be all kinds of interesting panels to choose from like diversity, the moral responsibility of the storyteller, storytelling through song, truth in fiction, and more! Authors the likes of John Scalzi, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kimya Dawson, Patrick Rothfuss, Maggie Stiefvater and lots of others will be there. Fun! Of course I will take pictures and report back on the events.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau’s classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desper­ate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereo­typed but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a character­istic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true neces­saries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing, to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said noth­ing about.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Stephen Fender, Professor of American Studies and Director of the Postgraduate Centre in the Humanities, University of Sussex, this new edition of Walden considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history: social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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In recognition of the US midterm elections, I decided to have a browse through Lend Me Your Ears: The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations and share with you a few entries that have come from the American political world. Enjoy…

“I will seek the presidency with nothing to fall back on but the judgment of the people and with nowhere to go but the White House or home.”
Robert Dole 1923-, American Republican politician, announcing his decision to relinquish his Senate seat and step down as majority leader.

“One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move.”
Robert H. Bork 1927-, American judge and educationalist, from The Antitrust Paradox (1978)

“The American people have spoken – but it’s going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.”
Bill Clinton 1946-, 42nd President of the United States 1993-2001, on the US presidential election of 2000.

“We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labour union, neighbourhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”
George Bush Sr. 1924-, 41st President of the United States, acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, 18 August 1988.

“No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.”
Alfred Emanuel Smith 1873-1944, American politician, comment on the New Deal in New Outlook, Dec 1933

“I suggested [in 1966] that we use the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will strike out.”
Huey Newton 1942-1989, American political activist, from Revolutionary Suicide (1973)

“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton 1947-, American lawyer and Democratic politician, speech to her supporters, conceding the Democratic party presidential nomination to Barack Obama, 7 June 2008.

“The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a grey wharf-rat at last.”
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862, American writer, from Journal (1853)

“On my arrival in the United States I was struck by the degree of ability among the governed and the lack of it among the governing.”
Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859, French historian and politician, from Democracy in America (1835-40) vol. 1

I was pleasantly surprised to find two comments from writers that were recently added! How nice! I have two manuscripts in my desk that were rejected a number of times. I have a manuscript that could be a winner that I am working on with the help of a friend. And I have already received [...]

We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the window to look abroad through some clear space over the fields. We see the roofs stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art.

--Henry David Thoreau, "A Winter Walk" (1843)

by John Porcellino from the writings of Henry David Thoreau with an introduction by D.B. Johnson Center for Cartoon Studies/Hyperion April 2008 Moving to New England a few years ago I felt compelled to finally be a good citizen and read Walden. It was one of those books assigned to me back in high school that I never go around to because I could never get into it. Thoreau was not approachable

National Library Legislative Day is May 1st & May 2nd; it's a chance to go to Washington DC and advocate for libraries.

Can't make it? Then participate without the travel, with Virtual Library Legislative Day. Full information and links are at the YALSA Blog. So go over, check out the links and the talking points, and get read to call, fax and email.