Monday, March 8, 2010

Dead Poets Tour

While I procrastinate on the "So You Wanna Be a Kripalu Volunteer" Post, I thought I'd give you a recap of a little adventure I went on with some friends last week.

We decided to do a New England Literary tour, with the highlight being a pilgrimage to the graves of some dead writers.

We paid our respects to Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne & Alcott:

and poked around outside Emerson's old house (which was closed for the season)



Our next destination was the really not very secluded (or pond-like) Walden Pond, which we renamed the Sea of Walden, being as it's quite large.


we even had a picnic at the site of Thoreau's old hut while we discussed becoming born-again transcendentalists...


It being only lunchtime, and all our objectives accomplished, we decided to carry on to Boston.
Upon arriving, we tried to absorb some of the smart that floats around the Harvard campus. We walked around and looked decidedly unfashionable in what came to be known as our "homeless gypsy" outfits. My companion Sara and I further tried to embarrass our urbanite friend Dave by donning fake accents and pretending not to speak English.

I was quite miffed to learn that Harvard does not allow outsiders into its library...libraries being one of my favorite places to explore.

Not to be deterred from a fabulous day by a little exclusive snobbery, we continued into Boston proper and wandered around Boston Common and Beacon Hill, eventually following the Freedom Trail and visiting Paul Revere's house and church...


...some cool graveyards and, (the highlight of the day) discovering our new hero, Mary Dyer. She was a Quaker religious rights activist hanged for refusing to be exiled from the colony.

She inspired the now-flourishing, decidedly tongue-in-cheek underground newsletter-for-the-revolution, "The Mary Dyer Times". The first issue is circulating the Kripalu volunteer community as I write this - but keep it on the down low.

We finished up the day wandering the Italian section of town and visiting Caffé Vittoria, the oldest Italian coffee shop in Boston (est. 1929) - excellent cappuccino and tiramisu.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Ali, thanks for the in-depth blog. It makes me feel as if I was there, since we couldn't get the trip in last term! I loved it all--wished I could have been there, especially for embarrassing Dave with foreign accents and the cappuccino--I'm Italian you know.
Rachelle

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting the great photos. I'm a high school English teacher from the West Coast who's never had the chance to do the tour. So it was nice to experience it vicariously through your post.