CONCORD DAY TRIP - STOP PIMPING OUT YOUR DAUGHTER

Apparently, Wednesday is Henry David Thoreau's 200th birthday.

This tidbit of information sparks an impromptu trip to Concord, Massachusetts, with a co-worker to pay homage to Thoreau's grave.  It will also allow me a chance to pay my respects to my birthday secret-sharer, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

We arrive at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  Well, not THE Sleepy Hollow Cemetery; the one of Washington Irving fame is in Sleepy Hollow, New York.  This is the Massachusetts version of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and it contains the famous Author's Ridge, resting place of several notable American writers and many other well-known local characters, including the originator of the Concord grape!)

Louisa May Alcott is here, along with her lazy-ass bum of a father Bronson (Amos Bronson, to be more precise).  Bronson liked such things as women, nakedness, making money off his daughter's success, and pretending to be a great educator in order to start a questionably-reputable commune of sorts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is interred here with his family.   It could be rumor, it could be fact, it could be something I truly learned, or maybe I'm just making this shit up, but supposedly Emerson wanted to go live in the woods but couldn't because of his status in the community, so he convinced Henry David to do it, instead, and lived vicariously through him.  Of course, Thoreau spent part of every day at other peoples' houses, so his "sparse woodsy lifestyle" only suited him when he wasn't out on the town in another capacity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is buried here, too, and it seems someone has been here recently, very recently judging by the dry, pristine, recently smoked joint, perhaps the young couple who arrived before we did.

After our cemetery musings, we head over to the Concord Public Library for a Thoreau exhibition.  We learn such wonderful things as what the Thoreau family pencil company products look like, and that Thoreau and friend Edward Hoar set about one hundred acres of field and forest on fire when trying to cook a stew out in the open during a fishing trip.  The fire, set in motion one year prior to the Walden hibernation, results in HDT feeling less than contrite.  His lack of contrition led to many people not thinking he was such a Great Thinker.

We say our quick good-byes to the many sculptures and busts in the library.  On our way out we notice a bust of Amos Bronson Alcott.  "Put on some clothes," we admonish, "and stop pimping out your daughter."