In Thoreau Country: A Perspective on Today's America

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

Ever since I read Walden over two decades ago, I sometimes dreamed that I was transported back in time by a century and a half to sit on that second chair one evening and have some heart-to-heart with Henry David Thoreau.

“Do you think I am leading a life of quiet desperation?” I might begin. Or perhaps something lighter: “How are those beans coming along?” Or maybe inquire after the health of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. How about the fate of farmers mortgaging their souls to the devil, that is, to bankers, for the false privilege of “owning” their homes?

There would be much to talk about as the moon rose over the pines and its reflection gave the Walden Pond an ethereal glow.

I found the possibility of dialogue across time elusive, so this summer – August 2017 - I decided to do the next best thing. I flew from San Jose to Boston with only one goal in mind, to see Walden Pond and feel Thoreau’s presence.

I boarded a Commuter Rail from Porter Square in the city of Monmouth in Massachusetts for Concord, the fabled town where Thoreau was born and in which he spent a significant part of his life reflecting on the human inclination for both savagery and nobility.

The train journey took me through the lush summer vegetation typical of summer in the Eastern United States. The green, a shade fresher than the green in Western U.S., reminded me of the green in Bangladesh where I was born.

After about an hour, I found myself in Concord. I looked out from the station and tried to imagine what Thoreau might have seen and felt. Oh, well, there was Starbucks as well as several auto workshops, a general store, an optometry shop, a bank.

I began the walk from Concord to Walden Pond, a distance of about a mile and a half. Thoreau would walk this path to and from his cabin for an evening meal at the home of his mother and brother and keep up with current events. He lived in the cabin for 2 years, 2 months 2 days, from July 4, 1845 to September 6, 1847. How many miles did he walk in all? Thousands. No wonder he looks so fit in the only two photographs we have of him.

The walk took me by immaculate lawns and quaint homes with ancient trees spreading their ample shadows across grass and streets. It made the hot trek tolerable. Reminders of Thoreau were everywhere, from the Thoreau streets and lanes to markers pointing out where slaves hid a few years before the Civil War began, and some of whom Thoreau helped escape to Canada through the Underground Railroad.

The neighborhood was lily-white, so I was heartened to see a sign on a lawn that said “Black Lives Matter.” Thoreau, among the original abolitionists, would have smiled.

And then suddenly I was on hallowed ground. I was at the bank of the Walden Pond. Through the trees I could see the whole pond and its graceful finite shoreline enclosing infinite stories and memories.  

Walden Pond was not so much a pond as it was a poem, a magical, mathematical pi rather than a mere positive integer. People of all ages were sunbathing and swimming, about two hundred of them, with lifeguards sounding out solemn instructions from their high perch from time to time.

I swam in the waters of the Walden Pond. Opened my eyes underwater after a few laps and found the water as green as the vegetation around. A snapping turtle came by to check out the humans and unimpressed, turned back and disappeared in the dark deep waters. The water seemed cold at places and warm at others. Two enterprising tourists were rowing on a canoe, going further than any swimmer dared to venture.

In the winter of 1846, after the pond froze solid so that he could walk on it, Thoreau began to survey the pond. The instruments were unwieldy and heavy but Thoreau was undeterred. The "angle intersection survey" included the pond's perimeter, almost 2,900 feet. As described in the brilliant biography of "Henry David Thoreau, a Life" by Laura Dassow Walls, "with ax and ice chisel, he cut well over a hundred individual holes through the ice to lower the plumb line into the water ... Thoreau used the tools of science and engineering to create a remarkable work of art, a working survey that accurately mapped Walden Pond to the inch: length, breadth and depth ... it was 102 feet at the deepest point ..." This is how Thoreau summarized his work: "The line of greatest breadth intersects the line of greatest length at the point of greatest depth." The line is remarkable for the symbolism it contains for truth and purpose and life. In the incomparable prose of Thoreau: "It is the heart in man - It is the sun in the system ... Draw lines through the length & breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily experiences and volumes of life into his coves and inlets - and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character."

After swimming to my heart’s content, went to check out the Thoreau Center, selling all things Thoreau: books, pictures, mugs, candies, maple syrup, posters. Next to the souvenir shop was the replica of Thoreau’s cabin – a 10’ x 15’ house with a single bed and a large window that looked out on the Walden Woods - and a statue. 

An array of solar panels brought dignity to the parking lot. Sight of the sun’s energy being harnessed would undoubtedly have pleased the Bard of Walden. Thoreau wanted to live deliberately, that is, to live honestly with the full awareness of the consequences of his actions. For this original, singular act of courage, defiance and integrity, we remember him to this day with gratitude and humility. He pointed us all toward a better way, that a person is indeed “rich in proportion the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

On the walk back from Walden to the town, that is, Concord, I thought of the events roiling America these days. Donald Trump has emboldened racists and hate-spinners, turning America the Beautiful into America the Ugly. Thoreau would have walked the 550 miles from Concord, Massachusetts to Charlottesville, Virginia, to oppose the neo-Nazis, the Supremacists and the KKKs defiling the American ideal. On July 23, 1846, He spent a night in jail in Concord for refusing to pay a poll tax, fearing that the money could be used to pay for the Mexican-American War he opposed. How gladly he would have spent nights, if not years, in a jail if that’s what it took to free American from the shackles of the hate-mongers and the internal terrorists on the rise in Trump’s America!

“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” asked a prescient Thoreau. Global warming is the undeniable reliability of our times but Thoreau saw it coming way before anyone else. He saw it but we don’t for one simple fact: We choose not to live deliberately. That includes both the affirmers and the deniers of global warming.

Raise your hand if you think of yourself as a modern-day Thoreau, if you can live deliberately as Thoreau did, even if only for a year in the wilderness by summoning the willpower to resist the digital seduction, if you can fight for justice and equality even while raising beans and being nourished by solitude.

What, no hands? None at all?

Two Centuries Later, We Need Thoreau More Than Ever

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Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, two hundred years ago today. Why is remembering and honoring Thoreau important? Because America needs him now more than ever. With president Trump waging a relentless war against the environment, Thoreau’s essays, books and the way he lived offer a focus to the resistance movement rippling across America.

“Civil Disobedience,” his 1849 essay and blueprint for radical reform that inspired the likes of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, should be required reading in these difficult times, if only for a new generation of Americans to become acquainted with Thoreau’s ability to speak truth to power for achievable results.

When we read in “Civil Disobedience” that, “There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived,” we in the resistance movement against our current U.S. president are inspired to continue. 

What calamity has Trump wrought so far regarding the environment?

Here’s a partial list:

·        Appointed Scott Pruitt, a bona fide climate change denier, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

·        Proposed a budget that will cut EPA funding by nearly a third, with climate and clean energy programs taking the biggest hits.

·        Opened up federal lands and water for drilling.

·        Instructed the interior department to review dozens of national monuments to see if they can be scrapped to allow access for oil and gas drilling.

·        Lifted a moratorium on coal mining on federal land and is reviewing a ban on offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast.

·        Has also called for drilling in the Arctic national refuge in Alaska.

·        Demanded rapid approval of the Keystone and Dakota Access oil-carrying pipelines that will violate the rights of Native Americans and expose the environment to potential oil-leaks.

But these pale before the most serious damage Trump has set in motion on the environment and on America’s standing in the world: His declaration on June 1 that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

The agreement was reached in 2015 between 195 countries and took effect in November 2016. The goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the main reason for global warming, that raises sea levels and unleashes major droughts. Trump, clueless or indifferent to the unimaginable security threat of climate change, has called man-made global warming a hoax. At the recently-concluded G-20 summit in Germany, leaders of 19 of the 20 nations reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris accord. Trump was alone in abandoning it.

Thoreau is relevant today because we continue to confirm and learn from his observations. He taught us that treating the environment with respect not only made economic sense, it made even more sense as a moral imperative. “We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander,” he wrote. “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

He was prescient about the concentration of power and America’s shrinking role in the world that could result from misguided policies or policies driven by considerations of commerce alone: “If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.”

Thoreau’s work is also helping scientists monitor global warming, more than 160 years after the publication of his timeless Walden. In that, he was the first climatologist. Thoreau began keeping meticulous notes in 1851 about when and where plants flowered in Concord. By comparing these historical data with the data of the flowering species now, scientists were able to conclude that spring was arriving earlier now than in Thoreau’s time, a direct consequence of global warming.

There are, fortunately, many Thoreauvians among our leaders who have rejected Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord and are determined to forge ahead with sustainable and innovative environmental policies.

California governor Jerry Brown, who will be hosting a global summit on climate change in San Francisco in September, released a video message to tens of thousands attending the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, site of the G-20 summit. In it he told listeners, “President Trump doesn’t speak for the rest of America. We in California and in states all across America believe it’s time to act. It’s time to join together.”

In explaining his motivation to move into the cabin he built by his own labor on Walden Pond on July 4, 1845, and where he would spend the next two years, Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished 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.”

Whether or not it is clear to us, future generations of Americans will judge us by what we did to overturn Trump’s policies and the steps we took to address the threat of climate change. Will they indict us for having made a Faustian bargain, as many republicans have, passing our days like the living dead, or will they be grateful for having used our constitutional rights to front the fundamental challenge of our time, the physical well-being of the one and only planet we call home?

The Bard of Walden is waiting, watching, listening.

Americans Confront a Dangerous Crossroads on Independence Day

On the 241st anniversary of America's independence, we find ourselves at a crossroads unlike any other in our history.

Two words sum up the danger that confront us at this crossroads: Donald Trump.

Since he became the president a mere six months ago, a dark curtain has descended on America. We regress with every policy and tweet he hatches in the darkness of his heart and unleashes on the world. The bar for decency, civility and respect for the rule of law sinks lower and lower with every passing day.

Everyone on the planet, including (I am sure) the few dozen or so inhabitants of Internet-enabled Pitcairn Islands, Britain’s smallest colony in the South Pacific populated by the descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty in 1789, have read president Trump’s vicious and misogynistic tweets directed against Mika Brezinski and Joe Scarborough, co-hosts of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ TV program.

What has stretched the patience of even some of our fellow-Americans willing to give Trump a chance was the bald-faced lie and below-the-belt hit in the president’s tweet: “… how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with psycho Joe, came … to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift.”

It turns out that Mika and Joe did no such thing, as clarified in an article they co-wrote for the Washington Post. Their conclusion: “Donald Trump is not well.”

It also emerged that the president is a blackmailer as well. White House officials have been calling the two hosts for weeks, apparently to kill an unfavorable story the National Enquirer - a tabloid dedicated to sensationalism - was about to run on them. “They said if you call the president up and apologize for your coverage, then he will to pick up the phone and basically spike the story.” (Enquirer owner David Pecker is a dedicated Trump chum.)

The two hosts refused to fold. The Enquirer ran the story as “Morning Joe Sleazy Cheating Scandal,” which turned out to be another damn lie as well.

Trump’s obsession with women, his boast of grabbing women’s private parts, his
past-ownership of the country’s first in-casino strip club called ‘Scores’ when he built the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, suggest that misogyny runs deep in this man’s vein. Women matter to him only to the extent that they can be quantified as sex objects. If they turn out to be smart, independent and strong-willed, on the other hand, this unprincipled man feels threatened and is compelled to expose his virulent misogyny.

If this were only a character flaw of the rogue president, the damage could perhaps be contained, but it is not. It is the same flaw that is at the root of some of his policies: expansion of the Global Gag Rule that restricts women’s access to comprehensive health care, his elimination of federal funding for Planned Parenthood, his sabotaging of law against gender discrimination in education.

It is the same mindset that is at work in his crude attempt to replace Obamacare with the cruel Senate Health care plan (dubbed “Relief for the Rich Act” by Warren Buffet) that, if it becomes law, will throw 15 million Americans off Medicaid that covers 40 percent of America’s children and essentially leave 22 million Americans without health care over the next decade. It will take about $700 billion from the poor and the middle class and transfer it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts.

It’s the same mindset that made Trump withdraw for the Paris Climate accord. This will significantly weaken global warming that threatens our very survival. Trump, of course, regards global warming a hoax. It is the same mindset that propels this president to wage a relentless war against the media, as his latest crude video tweet against CNN demonstrates.

We now have a president who revels in his misogyny, who sends current of excitement through his support base because many of these men also look at women as sex objects too, who feel threatened by professional, smart, high-achieving women who will kowtow to no one. Trump speaks to their insecurity, which is why it is so difficult to reason with them.

There was always a toxic subculture of misogyny in America. President Trump has brought this to the surface. He coarsens our culture on a daily basis by attacking our values with his vile instinct and boorish behavior.

With his dangerous policies and roguish rants, Trump tarnishes the image of the United States every day and in every possible way. That is why it is important that on this 4^th of July in the year 2017, all of us, irrespective of party, faith and color, resolve to legally, intelligently and vigorously continue our resistance until this scourge is forced from office.

Affirming Science in Silicon Valley on Earth Day 2017

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Nobel Laureate Dr. William Moerner addressing the huge gathering
at the March for Science rally in Downtown San Jose on April 22. 

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- “I was 26 years old when my mother died of breast-cancer,” said Dr. William Moerner, a professor at Stanford and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry ‘for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.’ He marveled at how far the treatment of breast cancer had come, thanks to science, compared to the painful and crude treatment his mother had to endure in the ‘70s.

Moerner was one of several speakers at the “March for Science” rally in downtown San Jose at the Plaza de Cesar Chavez on Earth Day, April 22. “Today we carry supercomputers in our pockets,” he said. “We are harvesting energy from the sun without damaging nature.” Addressing climate-change deniers, he said, “Science is true whether or not you believe it,” drawing vigorous applause from his listeners who had come together to protest the policies of the ‘Denier-in-Chief’ in the White House. As to what each of us can do, the Nobel-laureate suggested that we learn how to detect fake science, how to explain the value of science to others, and to kindle our curiosity by figuring out how things work. “It’s even fun!” said Moerner, someone who should know.

About 10,000 of us – scientists, artists, students, teachers, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons and concerned citizens of every stripe and persuasion – had gathered in San Jose to affirm our faith in the importance of science in shaping our lives and in keeping our planet healthy. Similar rallies had taken place in all 50 states and in more than 500 cities around the world in seven continents.

I looked around. The posters, many made of recycled papers as befitting an Earth Day celebration, were pithy, thought-provoking, forceful, factual and witty in a nerdy way.

“The oceans are rising and so are we.”

“Evidence-based policy, not policy-based evidence, a.k.a. alternative facts.”

“No Science, Art or Humanities. No Freedom.”

“Super callow. Fragile ego. Trump you are atrocious."

“Without science you wouldn’t be taking that picture.”

“The ‘upside’ of climate change: Mara-a-Lago under water.”

“Atoms make up everything. So does he.”

The combination of outrage and passion – outrage at Trump’s destructive policies and passion for the health of the earth (“There is no planet B”) – was ineffably inspiring.

Jennifer had a ‘scientific’ message for people: “Think like a proton. Be positive.” Francesca had bedecked herself as Miss Liberty: “May we always have the liberty to seek the Truth.” Arthur used a metaphor from chemistry: “If you’re not a part of the solution, you‘re part of the precipitation.” Third-grader Eli, standing next to his approving father, was clear about his career: “I want to be president an engineer when I grow up.”
There were more women than men, debunking the myth that girls are not into science. 5-year-old Sophia, perched on her mother’s shoulder, declared: “I love science.” A woman weaved her way through the crowd: “Back off, man! I’m a scientist!” Another woman warned of the danger of learning science from politicians and not from scientists like her. Dvina, a native of San Jose currently working as a medical researcher at the University of Munich in Germany, was using her vacation time to reinforce the theme of the rally: “Science not Silence.” The proud parents of 3-month-old Lucia had pinned this sign to her stroller: “Forget princess! I want to be a rocket scientist.”

Dr. Jose Cabrera, a chemistry professor at San Jose City College elicited roars of approval when he identified the critical role community colleges play in America’s educational system and his impassioned plea to young people to consider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields as careers. (Disclaimer: Dr. Cabrera was my mentor at City College during my tenure process as a math faculty.) “We are seeing the spread of pseudo-science in our country,” he said. “We must distinguish between science and pseudo-science and learn to see the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.”

The math-themed signs were especially fascinating. Charles, a biophysics PhD from UCSF wanted everyone to know why the irrational number Pi matters: “3.14159 makes everything just so fine!” Crystal’s message was simple with profound implications: “I love Math.” But the most incisive message came from Dora and her 6th-grader son, Adrian who had designed posters praising the contributions of 8th-century mathematician al-Khwarizmi, considered the father of algebra. Married to an American, Dora is a Bulgarian who was praising a Muslim mathematician from olden times! Only in immigrant-rich America was this possible.

Tracy Van Houten, a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), also extolled the value of STEM, particularly for girls and minorities. “Scientists are underrepresented in our government,” she said. Of the 535 members of the Two Houses of Congress, only 11 are scientists. “That’s less than 2 percent! We have to not only protect science but also scientists,” she said. “We will prevail because Trump fears facts and facts are on our side.” Houten had to recently make a wrenching decision. “I was exploring the universe but gravity pulled me back to earth. I loved my job at the JPL,” she said, “but I felt the fierce urgency of now, this calling to rescue our country from partisan muck and science-deniers and put science back at the center of decision-making.” After Trump’s election, she quit her JPL job and is now running to represent the 34th Congressional District of California in the Congress.

The rally was billed not as a protest but as a march to affirm the value of science and to demand that the Trump administration use facts rather than polarizing and paralyzing ideologies to frame policies. We have a president who ignores evidence in favor of opinion, who has picked, as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a man who denies that carbon dioxide is a primary source of global warming. Trump’s proposed budget would cut $12.6 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services, including $5.8 billion from the National Institute of Health alone, with potentially disastrous consequences for medical research. His ban on immigration threatens our scientific institutions like MIT, a significant percentage of whose faculty is foreign-born.

What will it mean for America if Trump has his way? Byron, a marine biologist, shared his perspective with me at the rally. “I don’t believe Trump will succeed. He will probably be neutered by division within his own party. His policies are likely to grind to a halt. But we can never be sure, so we have to keep up the momentum.”
The most moving moment at the rally came when I ran into 14-year-old Justin, a sophomore at the local Bellarmine College Preparatory. Justin suffers from Wilson’s disease, a rare inherited disorder caused by the mutation of a certain type of gene that leads to liver inflammation and reduced kidney function. “If it were not for drugs like syprine developed by scientists at Wilson’s Disease Association, I wouldn’t be here. I owe my life to medical science.”