In my junior year of High School. That was 72-73. What's that 40 years ago? Mr. Waldon Pond, is one heck of a thinker!!! 'bout time for a little refresher. Thanks, Tuesday.

You are much appreciated.

Because he was independently wealthy. His family owned the largest pencil factory in the US.

never confuse simple to mean cheap.

Early life and education, 1817-36[edit]
Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau[7] in Concord, Massachusetts, into the "modest New England family"[8] of John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was born in Jersey.[9] His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion",[10] the first recorded student protest in the Colonies.[11] David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become "Henry David" until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change.[12] He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia.[13] Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord. The house has recently been restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust,[2] a nonprofit organization, and is now open to the public for the first time in its history.

Walden was an exercise in "applied ideology".

To take a theoretical ideal and actually apply it in real time.

On paper the number crunchers say it can be done but, can it really be done?

There is so much more "froth" today than in 1845. Back then even the most dedicated urbanite knew something of how to navigate the world without technology. It seems that today we understand more about Einsteinian physics at the expense of Newtonian physics. Our lives seem to be governed more by attitude and affect than by experience. We see it right here every day; ideas and emotions spun out for their own sake with no real expectation that they mean anything beyond how they make us look to others or to ourselves.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I think when we invest the content of our lives in the real world we are compelled to live deliberately. We might be able to think and feel as quickly as we want, but the real world has a pace of its own that cannot be altered by wishing it so. It is that resistance to our desires that gives meaning to what we do in the world.