So I fulfilled two dreams at once on Sunday: Ascending a pulpit - a REAL one this time, not the one that's always there in my head - and standing on the hallowed ground once trod by my heroes Thoreau, Emerson and Dickinson. I gave the opening lecture at this year's Monadnock Lyceum in Peterborough, New Hampshire (a town so adorable you keep trying to hug it). The series is held at the Universalist Unitarian Church on Main St., and the pulpit in question was evidently host to both Thoreau and Emerson in its day. Presumably not simultaneously. They were close, but let's not get carried away.
THE pulpit. That's not me, but I think you get the picture.
ps If you want a copy of my talk, email me on the contact page. I was having such a good time up there extemporizing I only got around to giving half of it!
pps The event was recorded by NPR for New Hampshire Public Radio for broadcast next Sunday. Sooner or later, you'll be able to find it here.
Earlier in the weekend, I had stopped at Walden Pond to pay my respects and found the experience transcendently moving (despite the un-ironic sale of t-shirts reading "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes"), and after my lecture I hied myself to another personal shrine: the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass. #seeNewEnglandly
The original
The re-mix