Henry David Thoreau

Community Reading with Eric Karpeles

~Co-sponsored by Point Reyes Books~

Please join TNS host Eric Karpeles for another panoramic community event, a chorus of 50 individual voices reading from the pages of one of America’s most impassioned nature lovers.

Among the readers were Michael Rafferty, founder of The Bolinas Hearsay News, the Bolinas farmer Peter Martinelli, the actress Frances McDormand, the poets Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman, the artist Michael Sell, the winemaker Sean Thackrey, and the Shakespearean scholar Hanford Wood. We heard Thoreau on his wanderings in nature, his abhorrence of slavery, and the right to civil disobedience.

To follow along with the passages being read, download this PDF. Our Flickr site has more images of the event.

Listen (audio only)

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Henry David Thoreau

In his retreat from the interactions of nineteenth century society, Thoreau turned to the woods and fields, trees and creatures, to help him understand humanity’s place on the planet. At the same time he was engaged with helping runaway slaves, protesting the war with Mexico, and resisting what he saw as inequitable taxation. Transcendentalist, political activist, poet and essayist, Thoreau has much to offer our TNS audience.