You know, for all of Thoreau's talk about getting back to nature and living the simple life, I really think he would have wanted people to enjoy all the shopping that his home at Walden Pond had to offer.
Walden Pond in the Autumn. It was really beautiful, but Julie got to enjoy it more than I did. I had a job near Concord, MA, and it involved a six hour long exam so I didn't get a whole lot of free time. Julie got to jog around the pond, check out the house where 'Little Women' was written, and generally just get her Transcendentalist mojo on.
A replica of Henry, staring at his hand, outside a replica of his cabin at Walden. Sigh. I sort of hate myself for needing to take pictures of this kind of stuff. Immediately after the Concord job, there was a gig in Boston that I was able to conveniently pick up. We had a free day in between, so we went to check out Salem. What could be cooler than Salem in October, amirite?
aaaaand that about sums up Salem. Totally kitchy town, lots of middle-aged ladies dressed up in witchy outfits tittering in some sort of domesticated nerdgasm, dragging around their husbands who seemed to be unable to stop themselves from rolling their eyes around a lot. It was really, really silly. Did not live up to my childhood memories of going there. I'm really fascinated by the Salem witch trials too, and I feel like the wrong lesson is often taken away from them. People tend to point to that episode as a lesson in hysteria, but I think that the finer point is that it was a lesson in what happens when church and state are not separate. Which seems obvious but, people like to glide over that aspect.
This is called the Witch House because it is the only piece of Salem left that was around at the time of the trials, and probaby because it looks all gothic, sort of. Some religious nutjob judge or other lived here. Kind of a weak tourist trap, really. We also went to the Boston aquarium, which also did not live up to my childhood memories... things look a lot smaller to me now than they did in those days. Got a picture of a space alien jellyfish.
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