The Internet Bookmobile came to…

The Internet Bookmobile came to Walden Pond and learned first hand about the conflicting goals for that property. What would Thoreau think?

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_Yesterday (July 8, 2004) I took the Internet Bookmobile to Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. It was the 150th anniversary of H. D. Thoreau’s boo k “Walden.” The Thoreau Society had a dawn to dusk reading.

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_After an hour of having readers print and take away free copies of “Walden,”
I was asked by the Walden Pond Reservation police to pack up and leave
and threatened with arrest. I left.

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_The park supervisor (Denise Morrissey, 978-369-3254) told me I could
not pass out free literature without a permit. And she would not give me
a permit because, as she explained, the state park gets money from a
concession by the Thoreau Society, which operates a store that sells
“Walden”-and I was competing with them by giving away free copies.

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_There is no place to park at Walden Pond except in the state parking
lot, for which I paid $5.

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_ [via Boing Boing Blog]_