"I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war,

plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors,

comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities

besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily musters

and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times

afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies,

shipwrecks, piracies and sea-fights; peace, leagues,
stratagems, and fresh alarms.

A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions,

lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily
brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes,

stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes,

opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion,...

Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments,

jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels,

sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons,

cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals,

burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical,

then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers

created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again

of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned;

one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns

bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs,

another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps...."

 

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy 1652

 

 

"when the storm rages and the shipwreck of the the

state threatens, we can do nothing more worthy than to

sink the anchor of our peaceful studies into the ground

of eternity."

 

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

 

 

 

 

"Thoreau said to look along the bank right

at water level and to stand still for a few

minutes and right where the grasses stuck

up through the water you would see a muskrat

if there were any. I stood still for a bit, and sure

enough in a few minutes I saw a muskrat in the

middle of the city 2,000 miles from Walden Pond.

And I realized that Concord is where you are right now,

 and Walden Pond is the nearest body of water.

Denver was my real Concord."

 

from Channeling Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

an interview with Robert Richardson

 

author of the Emerson bio "The Mind on Fire"

 

                                 Salon.com