{"id":763,"date":"2014-06-30T19:44:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T23:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=763"},"modified":"2014-12-01T09:21:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T13:21:45","slug":"a-transcendental-summer-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=763","title":{"rendered":"A Transcendental Summer Evening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An escape from the pomposity and pettiness of Boston on a Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<p>We took a drive\u00a0up Route 2 on our way to Vermont. As we passed Walden Pond,\u00a0we started talking about <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transcendentalism\">Transcendentalism<\/a><\/em>-Thoreau, Emerson, the Alcotts. My wife had just read an article about the subject and she regaled me with details of Bronson Alcott and \u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fruitlands_(transcendental_center)\">Fruitlands,<\/a> <\/em>the Utopian community he founded just off Route 2 in the 1800s. Despite the proto-vegan diet,\u00a0back to nature sensibilities, and Transcendental mojo,\u00a0\u00a0the Fruitland Utopian community only lasted seven months before they all went back to Beantown.<\/p>\n<p>We got to Vermont at dusk and witnessed the most incredible display of fireflies we have ever seen. There were thousands of them floating on and off in the field around the old farm house. It was like we were in one of those snow globes and someone had shaken it. Except it was fireflies, not snowflakes. It was like the stars had come down to the field and the forest. Amazing.<\/p>\n<p>Later, as the firefly spectacle\u00a0abated, I started\u00a0thinking that <em>Fruitlands<\/em> must have failed because they brought too much Boston pomposity and pettiness\u00a0with them.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s really quite an achievement they made it seven months!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cropped-20140703_173012.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-789\" src=\"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cropped-20140703_173012-300x99.jpg\" alt=\"cropped-20140703_173012.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"99\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cropped-20140703_173012-300x99.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/cropped-20140703_173012.jpg 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Copyright \u00a02014 Magnus Incognito<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An escape from the pomposity and pettiness of Boston on a Saturday morning. We took a drive\u00a0up Route 2 on our way to Vermont. As we passed Walden Pond,\u00a0we started talking about Transcendentalism-Thoreau, Emerson, the Alcotts. My wife had just &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=763\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}