It’s the new year, although we’re already into February, and like many others, I often start with good intentions, resolutions so to speak. We have in our hearts the desire to change for the better, to “drown our muskrats” as Henry David Thoreau says in the final chapter of Walden, though the task is certainly …
Although Walden by Henry David Thoreau has fascinated me for years, Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches is new to me. Obviously, many people know Alcott, another prominent writer from Concord, for Little Women. This past year my daughter read the book for the first time, which is much more than I can boast, but I’ve …
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It’s about this time that I’m usually wrapping up my teaching of American Romanticism. We’ve made it through Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and we’re just about done with my favorite, Henry David Thoreau. Over the years, I’ve made deletions and additions to the scope and sequence, hoping …
The White Whale 