In Kim
Stanley Robinson's Science
in the Capital novels, emersonfortheday.com has a central
place in setting the tone of the novel, and provides context for one of the
protagonists - a muse that shapes his thinking about the natural world, the
ethical responsibilities of a conscious observer and an American.
The site itself, however, did not exist. I thoroughly enjoyed these novels, and as a tribute to Robinson's work and his message, I decided to make web imitate art. This site is that effort.
My initial pass at this site is to take Emerson's essays, as they appear in the Project Gutenberg archives, and break them up into their constituent paragraphs. The hope is that, as a paragraph is grammatically a discrete thought, it provides interesting daily reading. I felt that it should be easy to move through a given essay without having to look it up elsewhere, and thus I maintain the complete essays so that they can be browsed by those interested.
I would like to get all of Emerson's essays on this site eventually, as well as those of Henry David Thoreau, a contemporary of Emerson's and an excellent complement to Emerson's work. For that I could use some help, so if you are interested, please contact me at host@emersonfortheday.com