President Obama's speech had different examples of what our country went through that made all of us come together as one giant community. He brought up the american revolution, 9/11, and hurricane katrina. He used different examples that affected everybody's lives in different ways and got people to understand what he was trying to say, and to gain thier support. I thought that adding those different parts of what our country went through was a good idea. People could relate to it or understand how our country was impacted and how it has moved on since then and have become a stronger country. Basically, President Obama's speech showed how our country can make it through a crisis and can successfully change its goals to make our country better.

Blithe = Happy

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."

              -Walden, Conclusion

-This quote immediately caught my question right off the bat (not to mention it's the first two lines.) Here, I believe Thoreau was trying to explain that he never would have found time later in life to go to Walden and live out in the woods and he didn't want to give up this opprotunity. After being out in the woods for a while, this reason was also the reason why he left. He did take the opprotunity to live in the woods and now he has many other things to accomplish in life, maybe other things he'd never be able to get around too if he continued to live in the woods.

"I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open."

          -Walden, Conclusion

-Thoreau didn't even spend a week before making his own trail through the woods to the shores of the pond. If it didn't take him a week to make that track, then we can assume he went there frequently throughout the day. When he 'fears' that others have walked on his path to the lake, I think he's actually physically afraid and accepting of the fact that other people went there. If he was actually physically afraid, then he probably didn't want other people to get inspiration from the pond or just the nature around them like he did. But, he wasn't physically afraid, then he accepts that from the five-six years he wasn't there, someone else has found his trail and decided to see nature for what it is...beautiful.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

           -Walden, Conclusion

-This quote made me immeidately think to the line, 'Walk to the beat of your own drum.' Thoreau is pretty much saying that if one man is different from all of his friends, then he is not thinking the same way that he is, or have the same mind set and is 'walking to the beat of his own drum.'

"If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me."

            =Walden, Conclusion

-Well, once I found out what a garret meant (it's kind of like a loft; it has a floor with an open space at the top of the house just underneath the roof) this quote had me thinking for a few minutes about what Thoreau was trying to say. I believe he was trying to say that if he was stuck in a corner of the highest place he could get to and look down at everybody, he could see for a long ways, thinking about people and why they do this and that.

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"Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong..."

              -Civil Disobedience

-This quote caught my attention rather quickly. By majorities I assume he meant people in the higher/rich class. Here Thoreau is wondering if there could ever be a time where it's not the higher class citizens that decide what is right and what is wrong. These people could easily use their beliefs on what is right and wrong to manipulate those less fortunate.

"I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way."

-This quote explains why Thoreau was put in jail. He believes that the people put him in jail just so they could do something to him and get him out of the way of other problems that could arise. Thoreau thought his reason for being locked up was silly and thought that being put in jail was the only, and the best thing, that the government could do as a punishment.

"If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a man..."

-This quote goes back to the topic that nature is the universe, and a human's soul is the universe. So when a plant dies, so does a man because they're all connected into a bigger picture. I think he's also trying to say if a man can't live according to nature (the customs of a city or a country) then he too will die because he can't adapt to what he can do to survive.

What do you know about the Transcendentalist?

I know that nature is a great aspect of transcendentalists. Emerson and Thoreau have both written about nature but in different ways. Emerson wrote about how man relates to nature and Thoreau (in Walden) wrote about how nature helped him build his own house near Lake Walden. Both of them agree that nature is art and since their soul is a part of the universe, which nature is a part of, they are a part of nature themselves.

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What do you still wonder?

What about nature makes transcendentalists write so much about it? Is it because it's a beautiful and innocent thing we take for granted or because it's just there and no one has really ever appreciated it before and they want to spread the word that nature is a beautiful thing and should be admired?

"...as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle."

         -Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

This quote caught my attention, because the description was written so well, that i could picture everything happening in my mind. It also made me relax too. Just thinking about being in an area with a lake, as the sun came up, made me feel calm and collected with myself. It also made me wish that this was one of those places I could go to if i was having a hard day.

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"...some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber."

          -Economy

This quote made me actually think about what it was talking about. I understood that he (Thoreau) said that he was going to cut down the trees to build his house to live in, but i had to think about the tree as a whole. Were they actually white? and What did he mean when he used the word 'arrowy'?  Once I found out that he meant that the tree resembled an arrow, did I realize he was actually talking about a pine tree. But, the 'white pines' part made me think about the possiblity that there was snow falling at this time. Then I came to the thought of, why didn't he cut the trees that were fully grown instead of the trees that were 'still in thier youth'? I then thought about if it was because the tree was a symbol of him. Maybe it was symbolizing that he was tall and young.

"All science has aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races nad of functions, but scarely yet a remote approximation to an idea of creation."

             -Nature: Introduction

-I like this quote because it reminds me of the Great Awakening and the Scientific revolution when people are starting to realize that God isn't the main reason for why certain things happen and about new things that are invented or created. The thought of mankind makes me wonder why i was born the way I am and if God really does control my destiny. Does he drive me to make the choices that I do and will it help me later on in life.

"The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to thier influence."

             -Nature: Chapter 1

-This quote made me think about all of the things we can see, or feel, that influence us to write or draw or to capture in a picture amazing ideas and thoughts that would benefit the world and make it a better place. There could be songs or poems about all of these things that people would enjoy listening to and it all came from something that is always there but no one really thinks about.

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 Nature: Chapter 2

According to Emerson, beauty is the world around you; the flowers, the animals, the envionrment as fresh and new as the day it was put there. No one changed any of it and its something that's breathtaking and life changing. I would have to agree with him. Nature is breauty and relaxing and for those who decide to tear it up to build a building in its spot is taking away one of the many things that is innocent and free.