This past July, Iranian scholar Alireza "Ali" Taghdarreh left his country for the first time to visit America. Taghdarreh has produced the first-ever Persian translation of Walden. We were honored to have him come to Concord to speak at our 2015 Annual Gathering "Thoreau's Sense of Place."
The Walden Woods Project invited Taghdarreh to speak at the Institute to celebrate their 25th anniversary. He was introduced by their chairman, Don Henley, of the Eagles. You may...
In a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, "10 Things You Might Not Know about Fear," Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer mentioned the relatively obscure origins of FDR's famous declaration in the face of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" As Jacob and Benzkofer report, Eleanor Roosevelt was once asked about the origins of this frequently quoted sentence in her husband's first...
Scot Miller's photography has been featured in many books and publications. He is the author of Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic, Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic, and, most recently, Thoreau’s Maine Woods: A Photographic Journey Through an American Wilderness. Scot’s lifelong commitment to conservation is reflected in his photographic illustrations of Thoreau’s writings, his work for The Yosemite Fund, and his support for the...
On September 30, 2014, the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) held a community meeting to gather additional input from stakeholders, including the Thoreau Society, on the design of the new Visitor Center at Walden Pond. Construction of the new building, which will include exhibit space and a bookstore, will begin in the spring of 2015 and finish in 2016. Through the Friends of Walden Pond, our long-term partnership with the DCR...
In “Walking,” Thoreau not only defines sauntering as one of his cherished pursuits; he also self-consciously chooses a “perfectly symbolical” shape or contour for his sauntering journeys: "The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a parabola . . .like one of those cometary orbits, which have been thought to be non-...
2012-2013: The Thoreau Society received a $28,000 Creative Economy Grant from the University of Massachusetts. We are using the award to establish the Walden Climate Change Collaborative, create a new website for the Thoreau Society, and fund internships at the Thoreau Society.
