Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul.
(00:22):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders
service fees in terms supply.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then
(00:52):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service bees
and terms apply.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Walden by Henry David Thoreaux, Chapter ten, Baker Farm. Sometimes
I rambled to pine groves standing like temples, or like
fleets at sea, full rigged with wavy boughs and rippling
(01:22):
with light so soft and green and shady that the
druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them.
Or to the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the
trees covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher,
(01:43):
are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper
covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit. Or to swamps,
where the Usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white
sen spruce trees and toadstools round tables of the swamp
(02:06):
gods cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the
stumps like butterflies or shells vegetable winkles. Where the swamp
pink and dog wood grow. The red alderberry glows like
(02:27):
eyes of imps. The waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest
woods in its folds. And the wild holly berries make
the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he
is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild, forbidden fruits
(02:52):
too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some scholar,
I paid many a visit to particular trees of kinds
which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in
the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of
(03:12):
a wood or swamp, or on a hill top, such
as the black birch, of which we have some handsome
specimens two feet in diameter. Its cousin, the yellow birch,
with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first, the beech,
(03:35):
which has so neat a bowl, and beautifully like and
painted perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens,
I know but one small grove of sizable trees left
in the township, supposed by some to have been planted
(03:57):
by the pigeons that were once bay with beech nuts
near by. It is worth the while to see the
silver grain sparkle when you split this wood. The bass,
the horn beam, the Celtis occidentalis or false elm, of
(04:20):
which we have but one well grown, some taller mast
of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect
hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst
of the woods. And many others I could mention. These
(04:41):
were the shrines I visited, both summer and winter. Once
it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of
a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere,
tinging the grass and leaves around and dazzling me as
(05:04):
if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake
of rainbow light in which, for a short while I
lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer, it
might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked
(05:25):
on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the
halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself.
One of the elect one who visited me, declared that
the shadows of some irishman before him had no halo
about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished.
(05:48):
Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs that after a
certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his
confinement in the Castle of Saint Angelo, a resplendent light
appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening,
(06:08):
whether he was in Italy or France, and it was
particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This
was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred,
which is especially observed in the morning, but also at
other times and even by moonlight. Though a constant one,
(06:30):
it is not commonly noticed, and in the case of
an excitable imagination like Selini's, it would be basis enough
for superstition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it
to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished? Who
are conscious that they are regarded at all? I set
(06:54):
out one afternoon to go a fishing to fair Haven,
through the woods to eke a my scanty fare of vegetables.
My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the
Baker farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung.
Beginning thy entry is a pleasant field which some mossy
(07:18):
fruit trees yield partly to a ruddy brook. By gliding
musquash undertook and mercurial trout darting about. I thought of
living there before I went to Walden. I hooked the apples,
leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout.
(07:41):
It was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long
before one, in which many events may happen a large
portion of our natural life. Though it was already half
spent when I started by the way, there came up
a shower which compelled me to stand half an hour
(08:03):
under a pine, piling boughs over my head and wearing
my handkerchief for a shed. And when at length I
had made one cast over the pickerel weed, standing up
to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly in
the shadow of a cloud. And the thunder began to
rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more
(08:25):
than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought I,
with such forked flashes to rout a poor, unarmed fisherman.
So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut,
which stood half a mile from any road, but so
much the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited.
(08:48):
And here a poet builded in the completed years, for
behold a trivial cabin that two destruction steers. So the
muse fables. But therein as I found dwelt now John Field,
an irishman, and his wife and several children, from the
(09:11):
broad faced boy who assisted his father at his work,
and now came running by his side from the bog
to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sybil like cone
headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in
the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home
in the midst of wet and hunger, inquisitively upon the
(09:34):
stranger with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it
was the last of a noble line, and the hope
and cynosure of the world, instead of John Field's poor,
starveling brat. There we sat together under that part of
the roof, which leaked the least while it showered and
(09:58):
thundered without I had sat there many times of old,
before the ship was built that floated his family to America.
An honest, hard working, but shiftless man, plainly was John Field.
And his wife, She too was brave, to cook so
(10:19):
many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove,
with round, greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to
improve her condition. One day, with a never absent mop
in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere.
The chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain,
(10:42):
stalked about the room like members of the family. Too
humanized me thought to roast well. They stood and looked
in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile,
my host told me his story how hard he worked
bogging for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with
(11:04):
a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten
dollars an acre and the use of the land with
manure for one year, and his little broad faced son
worked cheerfully at his father's side, the while not knowing
how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried
to help him with my experience, telling him that he
(11:28):
was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I, too,
who came a fishing here and looked like a loafer,
was getting my living like himself, that I lived in
a tight, light and clean house which hardly cost more
than the annual rent of such a ruin as his
commonly amounts to, and how if he chose, he might
(11:50):
in a month or two build himself a palace of
his own that I did not use tea, nor coffee,
nor butter, nor milk nor fresh.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul.
(12:21):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders
service fees.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
In terms ofpply, the holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
(12:49):
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders and terms apply.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Meat and so did not have to work to get
them again. As I did not work hard, I did
not have to eat hard, and it cost me but
a trifle for my food. But as he began with
tea and coffee and butter and milk and beef, he
(13:23):
had to work hard to pay for them. And when
he had worked hard, he had to eat hard again
to repair the waste of his system. And so it
was as broad as it was long. Indeed it was
broader than it was long, for he was discontented and
wasted his life into the bargain. And yet he had
(13:44):
rated it as a gain in coming to America, that
here you could get tea and coffee and meat every day.
But the only true America is that country where you
are at liberty to pursue to such a mode of
life as may enable you to do without these, and
(14:07):
where the state does not endeavor to compel you to
sustain the slavery and war, and other superfluous expenses which
directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.
For I purposely talk to him as if he were
(14:29):
a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be
glad if all the meadows on the earth were left
in a wild state, if that were the consequence of
men's beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need
(14:49):
to study history to find out what is best for
his own culture. But alas the culture of an irishman
is an enterprise to be un undertaken with a sort
of moral bog hoe, I told him that as he
worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and
(15:11):
stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out.
But I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost
not half so much. Though he might think that I
was dressed like a gentleman, which however was not the case.
And in an hour or two without labor, but as
(15:33):
a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many
fish as I should want for two days, or earn
enough money to support me a week. If he and
his family would live simply, they might all go a
huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a
(15:54):
sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms akimbo,
and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital
enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough
to carry it through. It was sailing by dead, reckoning
to them, and they saw not clearly how to make
(16:16):
their port. So therefore I suppose they still take life
bravely after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth
and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns
with any fine entering wedge and rout it in detail,
(16:40):
thinking to deal with it roughly as one should handle
a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, living
John Field alas, without arithmetic and failing. So do you
(17:01):
ever fish? I asked, Oh yes, I catch a mess now,
and then when I'm lying by good perch, I catch
what's your bait? I catch shiners with fishworms and bait
the perch with em. You'd better go now, John, said
his wife, with glistening and hopeful face. But John demurred.
(17:27):
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the
eastern woods promised a fair evening, so I took my departure.
When I had got without, I asked for a drink,
hoping to get a sight of the well bottom to
complete my survey of the premises. But there alas are
shadows and quicksands, and rope broken withal and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile,
(17:55):
the right culinary vessel was selected, water was seemingly distill,
and after consultation and long delay, passed out to the
thirsty one, not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle.
Such gruel sustains life here, I thought, So, shutting my
(18:16):
eyes and excluding the motes by a skillfully directed undercurrent,
I drank to genuine hospitality, the heartiest draft I could.
I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain,
(18:36):
mending my steps again to the pond, my haste to
catch pickerel. Wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog holes,
in forlorn and savage places appeared for an instant trivial
to me, who had been sent to school and college.
(18:57):
But as I ran down the hill to ward the
reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some
faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed
air from I know not what quarter, my good genius
seem to say. Go fish and hunt far and wide,
(19:22):
day by day, farther and wider, and rest thee by
many brooks and hearth sides without misgiving. Remember thy creator
and the days of thy youth. Rise free from care
before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find
(19:47):
thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere
at home. There are no larger fields than these, No
worthier games then may here be played. Grow wild according
to thy nature, like these sedges and breaks, which will
(20:10):
never become English bay. Let the thunder rumble, what if
it threaten ruin to farmer's crops that is not its
Errand to thee take shelter under the cloud while they
flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living,
(20:32):
be thy trade but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but
own it not through want of enterprise and faith. Men
are where they are buying and selling and spending their
(20:52):
lives like serfs. O Baker farm landscape where the richest
element is a little sunshine, innocent no one runs to
revel on thy rail fenced lee, debate with no man
(21:15):
hast thou with questions art never perplex'd as tame at
the first sight, as now in thy plain russet gabbardine drest,
Come ye who love, and ye who hate, children of
the holy dove and guy fow of the state, and
(21:40):
hang conspiracies from the tough rafters of the trees. Men
come tamely home at night only from the next field
or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life
pines because it breathes its own breath over again, their
(22:04):
shadows morning and evening reached farther than their daily steps.
We should come home from far from adventures and perils
and discoveries every day with new experience and character. Before
(22:26):
I had reached the pond, some fresh impulse had brought
out John Field with altered mind, letting go bogging ere
this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple
of fins while I was catching a fair string, And
(22:48):
he said it was his luck. But when we changed
seats in the boat, luck changed seats too. Poor John Field.
I trust he does not read this unless he will
improve by it, thinking to live by some derivative old
country mode in this primitive new country, to catch perch
(23:14):
with shiners. It is good bait, sometimes I allow, with
this horizon all his own. Yet he a poor man,
born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or
(23:34):
poor life his Adam's grandmother in boggy ways, not to
rise in this world. He nor his posterity till their
wading webbed bog trotting feet get tillaria to their heels.
(23:56):
End of chapter ten.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart? Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows.
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul.
(24:21):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders,
service fees.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
In terms supply, The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma Secret pecan pie recipe. And now you can also
share a cart With Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
(24:49):
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service Bees
and terms apply