Thoreau may have also brooded over the reaction of Emerson, who criticized the imprisonment as pointless.
According to some accounts, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?”
Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”
Emerson was “out there” because he believed it was shortsighted to protest an isolated evil.
My response to the recent arrests in Greenfield, MA, coupled with my leftover resentment from two years of living in the Commonwealth, which includes my quarrel with Salem bureaucrats over what excise tax is and why I “owe” it after I moved out of state, and being ticketed in 2006 for riding my bike without a helmet.
Special thanks to Lou Eastman for having the foresight to create freelunchproject.com long before I thought of this idea.
NOTE: Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is played at every Boston Red Sox game.
