Monday

My daughter likes to take rain walks. She's not a kind of person to stay inside even though she's still a little afraid of thunder and lightning at age 7. She really loves her mother, and her mother goes for walks to get out, change her inside consciousness. My daughter doesn't let me read to her like my sons did. She doesn't like to watch movies. Her mother is absolutely devoted to her, to the best of her abilities. 

I really like a thunderstorm. They're amazing displays of nature. To see one come rolling in. That's a midwestern appreciation, you can't see a thunderstorm come rolling in in NYC unless you have a penthouse. There is a view of the sky in my second floor walkup but it's not like seeing a storm coming in, in the midwest. 

She slapped a leaf and said, "I'm high fiving nature." I thought about how Cori's mother has given Ruby an appreciation of nature that I foster as well. As we turned back onto our block, it really started pouring. 

Continuing to read Walls' biography, Thoreau decided to leave Staten Island. He didn't like the museums of New York, he didn't think people were really living. 

He went and visited Brook Farm, but left in a snowstorm. Nobody wanted to take him. 

Henry David Thoreau questioned the community members' idealism and wrote in his journal, "As for these communities, I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven"

I'm asking people about Thoreau memories, what they know. I asked my father who is well read. He said he couldn't remember much. He thinks he read Walden at some point. My father worked in computers after being a logic professor briefly. He read a lot, really enjoyed the life of the mind. My friend could remember reading him in college. He was a doctor and we've gone on many backpacking and canoe trips. It's funny, there are a million books about Thoreau and not that much about him in the common parlance. He's a niche interest. Richard Rodriguez talked about how becoming educated distanced him from his family. I suppose learning about something pushes you away from the common people, my friend and father enjoy highlights I tell them, like Thoreau had narcolepsy, probably a secondary symptom from tuberculosis. The tuberculosis and bronchitis would take his life at 44. My father is 76 and I am 56. We've really outlived Thoreau. I was reading a question about what would have happened to John Lennon if he'd lived to today instead of being killed in 1980. One time when I was at Blue Note seeing Charlie Haden, I sat near Yoko and John junior.  

I asked my soccer online friends, and one said Civil Disobedience was important.