[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1186-E1187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         WALDEN POND RED MAPLE

                                 ______


                          HON. DAVID E. BONIOR

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 7, 1995
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, whenever I return home to Michigan, I am 
always grateful to spend time with the people I have the privilege to 
represent in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am fortunate to have 
been raised in a district where people are community oriented and 
dedicated to creating organizations that better our lives.
  Last month, on May 6, 1995, I was pleased to have the opportunity to 
join the members of a group that epitomizes pride in our community--the 
Friends of the Roseville Public Library. An organization dedicated to 
improving the city's library, they gathered to commemorate the 20th 
anniversity of the founding of the group.
  The guest speaker at the anniversary celebration was Mr. Robert 
Selwa. Bob recently celebrated his 25th anniversary with our local 
paper, the Macomb Daily, where he specializes in community journalism. 
Bob relishes covering what he calls ``the heart of life in America--
people in their homes, with their families, friends, and neighbors; in 
their schools and in their churches, patriotic folks who believe in 
this country and the values of life.'' For 25 years, he has done a fine 
job covering ``the heart of life in America'' and the people of Macomb 
County know they can count on him.
  Bob has been a friend for many years and I was pleased to share the 
podium with him at the Roseville event. His remarks were enjoyed by 
everyone in attendance and I wish to share them with a large audience. 
Bob reminds us all of our literary heritage from Thoreau's Walden Pond 
to the American writers of todays. I am pleased to submit his speech as 
part of the Congressional Record and hope that my colleagues and their 
constituents find it as inspiring as I did.
   Our Literary Heritage: Books and Libraries Bring America Together

                             (By Bob Selwa)

       Our thanks for this celebration go to Rose Kollmorgen, our 
     outstanding library director in Roseville, and to the Friends 
     of the Roseville Library, and to all our students and 
     patrons, supporters and friends, including Congressman Dave 
     Bonior.
       Beginning today it will be said that a tree grows in 
     Roseville--a special tree--a tree representing our literary 
     heritage in America.
       We dedicate this special tree today to mark the 20th 
     anniversary of the Friends of the Roseville Library, a 
     dedicated group of volunteers, and of the Roseville Civic 
     Center, a magnificent facility.
       The tree we dedicate is a red maple grown from a seed from 
     one of the trees in the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, 
     Massachusetts.
       The maple tree is a proud member of our woodlands from New 
     England across the northern Appalachians and throughout the 
     Midwest. The maple is one of the favorites at home and in our 
     neighborhoods, in our yards and of our streets. The red maple 
     is honored as the state tree of Rhode Island, and its cousin 
     the sugar maple as the state tree of Vermont, West Virginia, 
     New York and Wisconsin.
       Our Walden Pond red maple will be a reminder of the 
     wonderful work for 20 years of the Friends of the Roseville 
     Library. This organization has funded 180 speaker programs at 
     the Roseville Civic Center, hosted an annual Children's 
     Christmas party, and provided bus tours for the public. The 
     Friends have given computerized
      databases, historical books and display items, a 55-gallon 
     aquarium, the compact disk collection, video shelving, the 
     ``Books on Tape'' collection, library seasonal 
     decorations, and other donation totalling an estimated 
     $140,000.
       Thanks to both our civic leaders and our volunteers, the 
     Roseville Public Library today has 110,000 books, 4,000 
     videos, and a variety of other materials including records, 
     computer software, and books on tape.
       Today the Walden Pond Reservation of Massachusetts is a 
     300-acre wilderness forever wild. It includes a 64-acre lake. 
     But New England typically saves the word lake for only the 
     largest inland bodies of water, and names its smaller lakes 
     as ponds, and so we have the name Walden Pond.
       In 1845 the woods by Walden Pond were owned by the great 
     author, poet, philosopher and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
     1803-1882, one of our foremost transcendentalists and one of 
     many great literary figures of Concord, Massachusetts.
       One of Emerson's followers and friends was Henry David 
     Thoreau, 1817-1862. Thoreau was born in Concord and graduated 
     from Harvard University in 1837. Though he could have pursued 
     any profession he wished, he chose to do odd jobs, such as 
     work as a gardener and handyman and housekeeper for his 
     friend Emerson.
       One day Thoreau approached Emerson with the idea of 
     building a cabin in the woods by Walden Pond and going there 
     to live to see what life in harmony with nature would really 
     be like.
       Both cherished nature and both encouraged and practiced 
     individualism, and so it was natural for Thoreau to want to 
     go off into the woods by himself, and natural for Emerson to 
     support the idea.
       On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved to the woods by Walden Pond. 
     With his own hands he built a simple wooden cabin, just 
     enough to shelter him from the occasional rain of the 
     Massachusetts springs, summers and autumns and the cold and 
     the snow of the Massachusetts winters.
       And so the seasons passed by at Walden Pond--the summer and 
     autumn of 1845, the winter, spring, summer and autumn of 
     1846, and the winter, spring and summer of 1847. Occasionally 
     Emerson checked on his friend in the woods. Occasionally 
     Thoreau came to town. But essentially Thoreau was there by 
     himself in his cabin in the woods, wandering those woods and 
     the shore of that beautiful lake, with the birds and the deer 
     as his company.
       Emerson attained great fame in his time, but Thoreau 
     attained even greater enduring fame, when many years later, 
     he reflected on those times in the woods, and wrote the 
     classic, ``Walden.''
       Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau believed in 
     the harmony of man and nature, in the importance of the 
     individual, and in the idea of passive resistance to civil 
     wrongs. When Thoreau went to jail rather than pay a federal 
     tax in protest of the federal government's support of slavery 
     and of war with Mexico, and Emerson came to visit him, the 
     exchange was memorable.
       ``What are you doing in there?'' asked Emerson.
       To which Thoreau asked, ``What are you doing out there?''
       Thoreau's ``On Civic Disobedience'' written from that 
     experience in jail profoundly changed the course of 
     civilization, impacting Mohandas Gandhi of India and Dr. 
     Martin Luther King of America. The writings and lectures of 
     Emerson and the writings of Thoreau created the American 
     literary revolution. And they impacted our literature all 
     through the generations including the great 20th Century New 
     England poet Robert Frost.
       From Emerson and Thoreau, to Laura Ingalls Wilder's 
     beautiful and poetic prose showing life on the frontier as it 
     really was for settlers, to the touching plays of Thornton 
     Wilder especially ``Our Town,'' to the poetry of Frost, and 
     to the sweeping historical novels today of James Michener, we 
     have a literary heritage in America to cherish.
       And today, in the wake of the terrorism that occurred in 
     Oklahoma City, as we struggle to build a national community 
     and define what our country is all about, we reflect on what 
     our literary heritage provides us and what our libraries such 
     as this excellent facility in Roseville mean to us.
       Our literary heritage began with the American Revolution, 
     the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution when 
     letters and pamphlets and newspapers brought 13 separate 
     colonies into one united nation.
       Our literary heritage today is two centuries rich of a vast 
     land. The heritage of America is full and fascinating in the 
     charms of our 50 unique states. Our literary heritage bonds a
      diverse people, as books and libraries bring America 
     together.
       So today, when we dedicate the red maple from the Walden 
     Pond woods, let us reflect on the writings of our American 
     masters such as Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost.
       Here is a little taste of what Thoreau wrote in ``Walden'':
       ``I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in 
     a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden 
     Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. . . .
       ``The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. . . . 
     But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose 
     clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way 
     of [[Page E1187]] thinking or doing, however ancient, can be 
     trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence 
     passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood 
     tomorrow. . . .
       ``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. . . . I wanted 
     to live deep and suck out the marrow of life. . . .
       ``Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . I say, let 
     your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a 
     thousand. . . .
       ``Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and 
     in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace 
     with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a 
     different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears. 
     . . .
       ``Love your life, poor as it is. . . . The setting sun is 
     reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as 
     from the rich man's abode. . . .
       ``Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not 
     trouble yourself much to get new things. . . . Turn the old; 
     return to them. . . .
       ``Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more 
     day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.''
       Such is the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau from 
     ``Walden'' represented in the red maple tree we dedicate 
     today.
       Robert Frost's deep, stirring poetry builds upon that 
     philosophy, as with ``The Road Not Taken.''

     ``Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
     ``And sorry I could not travel both
     ``And be one traveler, long I stood
     ``And looked down one as far as I could
     ``To where it bent in the undergrowth.

     ``Then took the other, as just as fair
     ``And having perhaps the better claim,
     ``Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
     ``Though as for that, the passing there
     ``Had worn them really about the same.

     ``And both that morning equally lay
     ``In leaves no step had trodden black.
     ``Oh, I kept the first for another day!
     ``Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
     ``I doubted if I should ever come back.

     ``I shall be telling this with a sigh
     ``Somewhere ages and ages hence;
     ``Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
     ``I took the one less traveled by,
     ``And that has made all the difference.''

       With these thoughts we dedicate a red maple, one of the 
     most beautiful and sturdiest of all trees. The red maple buds 
     magnificently in spring, shades us well in summer, comes to 
     full glory in autumn, and then promises us new hope in 
     winter.
       It reminds us of Robert Frost, and Henry David Thoreau, and 
     so many of the authors who have given us a great American 
     literary heritage. Thanks to that heritage, we come together 
     as Americans, linked by a common love of books and of 
     libraries and of our country.
     

                          ____________________