Happy Saturday. I was going to stay away from the people whose birthdays were discussed in Friday's Cheers and Jeers until I realized I KNOW about one of them. So today let's celebrate the 197th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau (pronounced, as I learned at a NEH seminar on the Transcendentalists in Concord, MA "THUH-row" with the accent on the first syllable).
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Ok, we do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
ejoanna
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
art ah zen
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
Dave in Northridge
Sunday:
loggersbrat
Henry David Thoreau, photographed (it's a daguerrotype) by Benjamin Maxham in 1856. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord and spent almost all of his life there. His family made pencils (during the NEH seminar we went to the Thoreau Institute, which had just opened in the woods near Concord [with substantial funding from Glenn Frey of the Eagles] and we saw a box of Thoreau Pencils there) and that cushioned him somewhat, because he graduated from Harvard College in 1837, at the start of the worst panic the United States had seen so far. Full biographical details can be found at the Thoreau Institute's website.
You probably know him through reading Walden and Civil Disobedience, but the work I want to discuss today is a speech he wrote for the Fourth of July celebrations of 1854, "Slavery in Massachusetts." in this speech, he said he was surprised and disappointed to find that what had called his townsmen in Concord together was Nebraska, especially because the current administration in Boston was busy enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1851, Concord had rung bells and fired cannons to celebrate the 4th only one week after two slaves had been sent back south, “as if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others.” It probably won't surprise you that he was a strong supporter of John Brown and that he gave the central eulogy for him at Concord's memorial service in 1859 (John Brown the abolitionist was anything BUT the crazy man Southern historians have portrayed him as, and I might write about this at DKos at some point). Thoreau died in 1862 of tuberculosis at the age of 45. His reputation has only increased since his death.
Now, would anyone like to write for next Saturday? I'm going to Netroots Nation 14 and while I COULD queue something for the 19th I thought I'd give someone else a chance to write for IAN to see how it works.