Walden Pond

http://thoreau.eserver.org/default.html

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8FUPrd5ra0

Walden Pond (Gamzon pics)

Thoreau Quotes

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/walden/

"Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living." - Walden
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." - Walden
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." - Walden
"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." - Walden
"Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps." - "Walking"
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Walden
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Walden
"I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls." - Walden
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Walden
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." - Walden
"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line." - Walden
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience." - Walden
"It is never too late to give up your prejudices." - Walden
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion." - Walden
"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names." - Walden
"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." - Walden
"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields." - Walden
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." - Walden
"Simplify, simplify." - also: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" - Walden
"The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves."' - "Slavery in Massachusetts"
"The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly." - Walden
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Walden
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Walden
"The universe is wider than our views of it." - Walden
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust." - Walden
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." - "Civil Disobedience"
"What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new." - Walden

TP CASTT

Take 10 minutes to finish reading or reread your poetry section and complete the TP CASTT handout from the other day.

Then share out to the whole class an overview (summary) of what your section was about.  Please note the literary devices or rhetorical strategies that Whitman uses in your section of "Song of Myself."

Song of Myself

AGENDA:

Read "Song of Myself" aloud
 Favorite poem intro:  #50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u38h4Bj20RQ 

James Earl Jones:  6-7  17-19

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVLXfIh25N0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVLXfIh25N0


#1, #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMoRb5f-EQ 

John O'Keefe  #15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEICvyaXNOc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBAMPc5TUgA

Re-examine All You Have Been Told"

AGENDA:

Quotes of the day:

"The unexamined life is not worth living.".  Socrates
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.". George Santayana


ESSENTIAL QUESTION:  Why does Whitman ask the reader to "re-examine all you have been told" and how does this relate to the central themes of Transcendentalism?

REVIEW the Emerson/Whitman exercise of previous day (Venn comparison).

READ the Whitman quote and the task.  

Ms. Gamzon will model a response.

EVALUATE Whitman's argument.  Then write a paragraph response to the quote that defends, challenges or qualifies Whitman's argument (as per Question 3 of AP exam).

SHARE responses and DISCUSS.

Next week we will begin reading and analyzing selected sections of Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself".


TRANSCENDENTALISM
“Re-examine All You Have Been Told” : Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau

"This is what you shall do..." by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass.

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Think about the implications of Whitman’s exhortation to “dismiss whatever insults your soul.”  What are some of the things that you have been told “at school or church or in any book” that you might re-examine?

Imagine this quote is being used for Question 3 of the AP English Language and Composition Exam in May.  Write a paragraph response that defends, challenges, or qualifies Whitman’s argument.  Use specific, appropriate evidence to develop your position.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Petta quote:

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."

-Henry David Thoreau

Agenda:

Brief bio about Emerson.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/emerson.html 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSPuY4RONjo 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI8Kq2uUbqM 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18iGopcsquY

Share out "The Preface" Cornell notes.

Begin reading Emerson's "The Poet".

HMWK:  Finish reading "The Poet" for homework

Walt Whitman and Breaking Bad?

Some of you mentioned Walt Whitman and Breaking Bad

'Breaking Bad' recap: Crystal blue persuasion

• 

Walter White makes the decision to get out of the meth-cooking business…

The title of this midseason finale of “Breaking Bad” — “Gliding Over All” — is a fairly big hint as to where the episode ends. It is, after all, a Walt Whitman quote, and Whitman is one of the few tangible pieces of evidence that could connect Walter White to the criminal empire he’s built in the mind of his brother-in-law, the one who always overlooks him because, hey, who’s going to suspect Walter?

GLIDING O'ER ALL.

GLIDING o'er all, through all,

Through Nature, Time, and Space,

As a ship on the waters advancing,

The voyage of the soul—not life alone,

Death, many deaths I'll sing.


Ms. Petta's Transcendentalist quote of the day:
"Keep your face always towards the sunshine- and shadows will fall behind you." -Walt Whitman

Ms. Proctor's (school nurse) Transcendentalist quote:

The first wealth is health.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson