Mr. T’s birthday…
Today is Henry David Thoreau’s birthday. In keeping with the environmental theme of my posts this week, I should be lauding this icon of the environmental and naturalist movement. I won’t do that, so let me explain why.
I don’t like to speak ill about the dead, but I lived in Concord for a few years and the Boston area for many more. An observant person living in that area couldn’t help but notice that Mr. T was a nut who would be institutionalized today if we had any quality mental hospitals left (most of them now are little more than what Salieri experienced in the movie Amadeus).
Mr. T and the rest of the transcendentalists would debate God and Nature drinking rum in Concord’s taverns while their families almost died from cold and hunger (that experience enshrined in the Fruitlands Museum, northwest of Concord, MA. I’m not sure those transcendental tipplers solved any of the world’s problems, but they certainly didn’t solve their families’. (In their defense, those hot toddies can be comforting during those Boston-area winters, which is why apres-ski activities are so popular throughout New England.)
In Walden Woods, haven for conservationists (and Don Henley and the Eagles), Mr. T lived in a one-room log cabin. He needed a fire to keep warm when he wasn’t throwing down rum in Concord center, so he built them, and, on one occasion, almost burned down those woods around the lake (which they still call a pond, but just try walking around it—I did, several times). I’m not sure Henley’s Walden Woods Project would be so successful if Mr. T had succeeded in doing so. But icons are icons, so maybe the Eagles’ front man would have forgiven Mr. T.
Since I’m a reviewer as well as a writer, let me review Mr. T’s famous book. It’s a dreary little tome. The bet I can say about it? It’s the short cure for insomnia! If you need a long cure, read War and Peace. I don’t know what genre label I should give his “masterpiece” either. Maybe the folks at B&N have it shelved under cookbooks (setting fire to Walden Woods) or colonial tippling. OK, maybe I’d shelve it under historical nonsense.
In many ways, Mr. T showed what NOT to do in regards to conservation activism. It’s no wonder that I can’t understand why conservationists treat him as their patron saint. I guess I’ll just have to accept him reluctantly as a meaningless icon like everyone else. We need a few right now. Poor Gaia needs all the help she can get, especially in this political climate where Mr. Trump and his cronies are on the attack. We need a hero, a symbol for the conservation movement. I’d opt for John Muir (unfortunately he was a fan of Mr. T) or Ansel Adams, who was both a photographer and environmentalist, or maybe even the A-Team’s Mr. T, over Thoreau.
But happy birthday, Henry David. I’m sure the rum is better wherever you are now.
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In libris libertas…
