Little Visit

Must type quickly- the sun is shining and I need to get out there before the weather realizes what's happening and reverts back to its usual state of apathetic gray drizzle.

Yesterday in the brief bout of sunshininess I decided I wanted to go a-touristing and drove myself to historic Concord, home of Walden Pond and the houses of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott. I quickly scratched the Walden Reservation off my possible to-do list because of the recent flooding- I hadn't brought my wellies and I sure as hell didn't want to end up knee-deep in historic, albeit poetic, lake mud.

So then which house to see? Each one cost about $7 with a student ID (thank goodness my grad school ID has no expiration date- that thing saved me one whole dollar!) and I figured I'd try one and see if they were worth the price of admission. So I picked the Alcott house because really, who doesn't love Little Women?

Let me do you a favor- I'll save you those seven hard-earned dollars and give you the tour run down, as remembered by my (admittedly faulty) brain:

• The woman handing out tickets for the tour was doing a little needlepoint that read "Jesus love me, this I know". I didn't have the heart to tell her she forgot the "s" on loves.
  
• The first 15 minutes of the tour consisted of watching a video in which a woman pretends to be Louisa May Alcott, answering questions about different problems in today's society. "Louisa, what do you think about global warming and people harming the environment?" "Well I do believe that people should take care of the places they love. It is our duty to make sure our homes are livable." Whatevs! I'm pretty sure in reality Louisa would've actually said something closer to this: "Huh? What the eff you talkin' about, global warming? We don't even got no coal for our stove 'less I sell these here books and winter in Concord is like 19 months long or some shit and you askin' me about global warming? Bring that bitch on."
• I realized halfway through the movie that I was on the tour with about 15 Mormons. How did I know? They had their Elder badges on that said Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! They seemed very intent on the movie so I thought I might be able to snag some super spy photos, but the needlepointing lady kept peering intently into the darkness and I realized it would be horribly embarrassing to have to tell people I got kicked out of the Alcott House on my break. Suffice it to say, they were satisfactorily horrified when they realized that Bronson Alcott allowed his daughters to choose whether they wanted to marry or have careers, and that some of them actually chose careers.
  
• The girl that actually gave us the house tour looked like she had fallen off a motorcycle going 70 mph directly onto her face. I don't know what the road rash was from, but I don't remember one word of the tour, I was so fascinated thinking of things that might have happened to her.

Anyway, the whole place was very pretty and predictable. There were some interesting little vignettes about the family stories and it felt very authentic. I felt a bit funny when we were standing in the parlor and a guide mentioned that May Alcott had gotten married right there, with Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Louisa May all in attendance. Crazy.


"Welcome! Now give us money."

The place looks a little scary for the scene of Little Women, no?


The house is a landmark, but the actual orchards? Strip malls.

The needlepoint lady told me that 80% of the things in the house actually belonged to the Alcotts, but didn't seem to like it when I asked if this was an original toilet sign.