And the price of stamps went up on the 21st

The U. S. Post Office was established on this day in 1792.

“I have received no more than one or two letters that were worth the postage.” 

          -- Henry David Thoreau.

A good day to die--or do your taxes

"Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions." -- Henry David Thoreau.

I resist that statement

Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government was published on this day in 1849.


"There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." -- Bertrand Russell.

Today is Good Samaritan Day!

"If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." -- Henry David Thoreau.

Senior disobedience

July 12: Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817. He wrote in Walden:

"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."

Sully’s mom had filled a suitcase with letters from coaches, most of whom wrote multiple times, some of them more than once a week, and a couple of them more than once in a day. Sully was amused by all of them, by the obsequiousness and the wheedling couched in formal address. Grown men ought to know better, he thought.  --  Chapter 28, The Misforgotten.