A Concise Summary of Walden

Walden is an American book written by Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, and manual for self-reliance.  Published in 1854, it details Thoreau’s experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau did not intend to live as a hermit, for he received visitors regularly, and returned their visits. Rather, he hoped to isolate himself from society to gain a more objective understanding of it. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau’s other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period.

Economy: In this first and longest chapter, Thoreau outlines his project: a two-year and two-month stay at a cozy, “tightly shingled and plastered,” English-style 10’ x 15’ cottage in the woods near Walden Pond. He does this, he says, to illustrate the spiritual benefits of a simplified lifestyle. He easily supplies the four necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, and fuel) with the help of family and friends, particularly his mother, his best friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For: After playing with the idea of buying a farm, Thoreau describes his house’s location. Then he explains that he took up his abode at Walden Woods so as to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Although he criticizes the dedication of his neighbors to working, he himself is quite busy at Walden — building and maintaining his house, raising thousands of bean plants and other vegetables, making bread, clearing land, chopping wood, making repairs for the Emersons, going into town, and writing every day. His time at Walden was his most productive as a writer.

Reading: Thoreau discusses the benefits of classical literature (preferably in the original Greek or Latin), and bemoans the lack of sophistication in Concord, evident in the popularity of unsophisticated literature. He also loved to read books by world travelers. He yearns for a utopian time when each New England village supports “wise men” to educate and thereby ennoble the population.

Sounds: Thoreau opens this chapter by warning against relying too much on literature as a means of transcendence. Instead, one should experience life for oneself. Thus, after describing his house’s beautiful natural surroundings and his casual housekeeping habits, Thoreau goes on to criticize the train whistle that interrupts his reverie. To him, the railroad symbolizes the destruction of the pastoral way of life. Following is a description of the sounds audible from his cabin: the church bells ringing, carriages rattling and rumbling, cows lowing, whip-poor-wills singing, owls hooting, frogs croaking, and cockerels crowing.

Solitude: Thoreau rhapsodizes about the beneficial effects of living solitary and close to nature. He claims to love being alone, saying “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Visitors: Thoreau writes about the visitors to his house. Among the 25 or 30 visitors is a young French-Canadian woodchopper, Alec Therien, whom Thoreau idealizes as approaching the ideal man, and a runaway slave, whom Thoreau helps on his journey to freedom in Canada.

The Bean-Field: Thoreau relates his efforts to cultivate 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of beans. He plants in June and spends his summer mornings weeding the field with a hoe. He sells most of the crop, and his small profit of $8.71 covers his needs that were not provided by friends and family.

The Village: Thoreau visits the small town of Concord every day or two to hear the news, which he finds “as refreshing in its way as the rustle of the leaves.” Nevertheless, he fondly but rather contemptuously compares Concord to a gopher colony. In late summer, he is arrested for refusing to pay federal taxes, but is released the next day. He explains that he refuses to pay taxes to a government that supports slavery.

The Ponds: In autumn, Thoreau discusses the countryside and writes down his observations about the geography of Walden Pond and its neighbors: Flint’s Pond (or Sandy Pond), White Pond, and Goose Pond. Although Flint’s is the largest, Thoreau’s favorites are Walden and White ponds, which he says are lovelier than diamonds.

Baker Farm: While on an afternoon ramble in the woods, Thoreau gets caught in a rainstorm and takes shelter in the dirty, dismal hut of John Field, a penniless but hard-working Irish farmhand, and his wife and children. Thoreau urges Field to live a simple but independent and fulfilling life in the woods, thereby freeing himself of employers and creditors. But the Irishman won’t give up his aspirations of luxury and the quest for the American dream.

Higher Laws: Thoreau discusses whether hunting wild animals and eating meat is good. He concludes that the primitive, animal side of humans drives them to kill and eat animals, and that a person who transcends this propensity is superior to those who don’t. (Thoreau eats fish and occasionally salt pork and woodchuck.)In addition to vegetarianism, he lauds chastity, work, and teetotalism. He also recognizes that Indians need to hunt and kill moose for survival in “The Maine Woods,” and ate moose on a trip to Maine while he was living at Walden. 

Brute Neighbors: Thoreau briefly discusses the many wild animals that are his neighbors at Walden. A description of the nesting habits of partridges is followed by a fascinating account of a massive battle between red and black ants. Three of the combatants he takes into his cabin and examines under a microscope as the black ant kills the two smaller red ones. Later, Thoreau takes his boat and tries to follow a teasing loon about the pond. He also collects animal specimens and ships them to Harvard College for study.

House-Warming: After picking November berries in the woods, Thoreau adds a chimney, and finally plasters the walls of his sturdy house to stave off the cold of the oncoming winter. He also lays in a good supply of firewood, and expresses affection for wood and fire.

Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors: Thoreau relates the stories of people who formerly lived in the vicinity of Walden Pond. Then he talks about a few of the visitors he receives during the winter: a farmer, a woodchopper, and his best friend, the poet Ellery Channing.

Winter Animals: Thoreau amuses himself by watching wildlife during the winter. He relates his observations of owls, hares, red squirrels, mice, and various birds as they hunt, sing, and eat the scraps and corn he put out for them. He also describes a fox hunt that passes by.

The Pond in Winter: Thoreau describes Walden Pond as it appears during the winter. He claims to have sounded its depths and located an underground outlet. Then he recounts how 100 laborers came to cut great blocks of ice from the pond, with the ice to be shipped to the Carolinas.

Spring: As spring arrives, Walden and the other ponds melt with stentorian thundering and rumbling. Thoreau enjoys watching the thaw, and grows ecstatic as he witnesses the green rebirth of nature. He watches the geese winging their way north, and a hawk playing by itself in the sky. As nature is reborn, the narrator implies, so is he. He departs Walden on September 6, 1847.

Conclusion: This final chapter is more passionate and urgent than its predecessors. In it, he criticizes conformity: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” By doing so, men may find happiness and self-fulfillment.

Cremating the World's Most Expensive Painting

In May of 1990 Japanese billionaire Ryoei Saito made history when he purchased Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet and Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette at auction in the span of two days.  He spent a record sum on the paintings, equivalent to about $300 million today. Following the sale both works went straight from the limelight into foam-padded packing crates and were shipped off to a top-secret storeroom in the Tokyo area. 

Mr. Saito spent a few hours with his purchases, then locked them in a climate-controlled vault. And there they stayed, untouched and unseen–a symbol of the ever increasing commodification of art.

While the paintings rested, Saito struggled, financially and otherwise.  The 75-year old Japanese paper magnate briefly caused a scandal when he said he would have the  paintings cremated with him after his death, though his aides later claimed Saito threats were just an expression of his intense affection for the works.

After Saito’s death in 1996, it wasn’t clear who owned the paintings–Saito’s heirs, his company, or his creditors–or even where they were. Museum curators and auction houses tried to locate the works, but were never successful. To this day both masterpieces remain lost in the murky waters of the international art market.

An Unwatched American Classic

Killer of Sheep is a 1970s American drama film written, directed, produced, and shot by Charles Burnett.  The drama depicts the culture of urban African-Americans in Los Angeles' Watts district. 

Killer of Sheep was shot on a budget of less than $10,000 over roughly a year's worth of weekends in 1972 and 1973, with additional shooting in 1975. In 1977, Burnett submitted the film as his Master of Fine Arts thesis at the School of Film at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Burnett stated that he also intended to make the film a history of African-American music and filled it with music from a variety of genres and different eras. Unfortunately, for this reason, the film could not be released because he had not secured rights to the music used in the film.

Shown sporadically after it's completion in the late 1970s, its reputation grew until it won a prize at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival.

Since then, the Library of Congress has declared it a national treasure as one of the first fifty on the National Film Registry and the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time. Even with these enormous accolades, due to the expense of the music rights the film was never shown theatrically or made available on video. It was only seen on poor quality 16mm prints at few and far between museum and festival showings.

In 2007, three decades after it's completion, the music rights were finally purchased at a cost of US $150,000. The film was restored and transferred from a 16mm to a 35mm print and given a limited theatre release. 

Could You Buy All the Silver in the World?

In the early seventies, amidst political upheaval, inflationary pressures and stagnant economic growth, the richest family in America (at the time), the Hunt family of Texas, tried to corner the market on precious metals. As a way to hedge themselves from the rampart printing of dollars the US government was doing, the Hunts decided to accumulate large amounts of hard asset investments. Since gold could not be held by private citizens back then, the Hunt brothers focused on silver.

In 1979, the Hunt brothers, along with a group of wealthy Arabs, formed a pool buying silver and silver futures. The Hunt brothers used their positions in silver futures to acquire more of the physical metal. As cash was continually losing value due to inflation, the Hunts decided to settle their long silver futures contracts with delivery of silver, instead of cash settlement. Before too long, they had amassed over 200 million ounces of silver which was about half of the world’s supply.

Prices soon started to appreciate. When they started, the price of silver was below $5/oz. By late 1979  prices had increased tenfold and were trading near $55/oz.  As prices went higher and new buyers got into the market, the exchanges became increasingly fearful of defaulting. As the Hunts owned 77% of the world’s silver, either in physical form or futures contracts, the market had been cornered. The Hunts’ $1 billion investment was now worth around $4.5 billion. 

The U.S. government became concerned over what it saw as a clear attempt at manipulating the nation’s silver reserves.  Federal commodities regulators introduced special rules to prevent any more long position contracts from being written or sold for silver futures. This stopped the Hunts from increasing their positions by temporarily suspending the fundamental rules of the commodities market. 

The Hunt name, however, kept them afloat with easy terms on more short-term capital. The Federal Reserve then took an unusual step: it strongly encouraged banks to stop making loans for speculative activity. When it became clear that the government was after the Hunts’ scalps, their credit dried up. Concerns that the Hunts might not be able to meet margins with new loans and would go under (pulling several brokerages and banks with them), put further downward pressure on the price of silver. On March 27, 1980, the Hunt brothers finally missed a margin call and the market plunged; silver led the way, dropping to under $11 from its high of $48.70. 

Government officials considered a bailout to prevent systemic chaos. The action was vetoed, however, because the government agencies didn’t want to be seen as underwriting dangerous financial speculation. In the end, the Hunt name held true, and the brothers arranged a private bailout from a consortium of banks and companies. The Hunts were dragged in front of Congress, scolded, charged with manipulation, fined, fined again and forced into bankruptcy. It took nearly a decade for them to unwind all their silver holdings and satisfy creditors, and the final bill left them billions poorer.

Contributed by Taylor Cook

The Giftcard Economy

There is a good reason that Giftcards are known within the retail industry as a stored-value product: they store their value very well, and often permanently. The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $100 billion spent on gift cards in 2010, roughly $12 billion will never be redeemed — “a bigger impact on consumers,” Tower notes, “than the combined total of both debit and credit card fraud.” A survey by Marketing Workshop Inc. found that only 30 percent of recipients use a gift card within a month of receiving it, while Consumer Reports estimates that 19 percent of the people who received a gift card in 2010 never used it.

Considering that two-thirds of all holiday shoppers in 2010 planned to give someone else a gift card, you most likely received one yourself. Perhaps you are among the exceptional minority, and you have already spent it, or soon will. But the odds say that it has instead wound up in your sock drawer.

From Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt’s book Freakonomics