The Saunterer

Frans de Waal on emotions in animals

    Here, Frans de Waal puts it as plain as plain can be:

Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, “Doesn’t this guy have a dog?”

(Quoted from page 87 of Animals in Young Adult Fiction, by Walter Hogan, The Scarecrow Press, 2009.) For a brief biography of Frans de Waal, click here. For images of and relating to Frans de Waal, click here.

Edward A. Pollard on the lack of concern company executives have for their company’s workers

    Much of what Edward Alfred Pollard wrote in 1871 about slaveholders applies to today’s world of big business:

It is astonishing how little the slaveholders of the South, despite their supposed knowledge of the negro, really knew of what was in him. . . . The difficulty was that slavery was a perpetual barrier to an intimate acquaintance with the negro; it regarded him as a thing, and was never concerned to know what was in the sodden and concealed mind of a creature that represented only so much of productive force, and was estimated, body and soul, in dollars and cents.

    (Quoted from page 84 of From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1975, by Christopher M. Span, University of North Carolina Press, 2009. The quotation’s original source is Edward A. Pollard’s book, The Romance of the Negro, published 1871.)
    For a brief biography of Edward A. Pollard, click here. For Christopher M. Span’s homepage, click here.

James Carville on “Is Fox News fair and balanced, or is it Republican propaganda?”

    James Carville writes with the same voice and directness as he speaks:

    One of the frustrating things in Washington is that you’re supposed to go around with a solemn face and argue things that are really not arguable. Among those non-argument arguments that we’re expected to have, my favorite may be creationism. Naturally I also enjoy spending endless hours cornered in debates about global warming and whether Social Security works or not. (Of course it does.)
    So we sit around and pontificate on silly-ass things that have been decided a long time ago. There comes a point at which the body of evidence is so conclusive, is so overwhelming, is so definitive that even unreasonable people don’t attempt to make a contrary argument. For example, the earth is round, not flat. We accept that. There’s no less evidence that the earth is warming, no less evidence that the earth is not 5,000 years old, but somehow or another, we scratch our chins and argue. An argument that fits into the creationism, global warming, flat-earth sphere of issues is the “objectivity” of Fox News.

    (Quoted from page 41 of James Carville’s 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. Simon & Schuster, 2009.) For a brief biography of James Carville, click here. For images of and relating to James Carville, click here.

George W. Bush’s attitude of “to the devil with non-Americans”

    In a question and answer session on May 7, 2001, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer gave President Bush’s position of protecting the American way of life, thus promising to worsen the lifestyles of most of the rest of the world:

    Question: Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
    Mr. Fleischer: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.

    (Quoted from “Why Go To School,” by Steven Wolk, page 653 of the May 2007 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.)
    For a biography of George W. Bush, click here. For a biography of Ari Fleischer, click here.

Robert Storr on how hardship does not make people stronger

    This is how Robert Storr, curator and dean of the Yale School of Art, describes it:

I’m not a believer that hardship makes people stronger, but I do think that too much of certain things can make them weaker. Strong people can be distracted by things that come too easy. Maintaining a career nowadays is extraordinarily complicated, even if you’re just doing your work and showing up for required occasions. You can waste an amazing amount of energy, time and goodwill by chasing after stuff that’s not worth chasing after. Really wise artists know how to make dramatic appearances and how to make dramatic disappearances.

    (Quoted from The Art Newspaper, published online 16 October 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Robert Storr, click here. For images of and relating to Robert Storr, click here.

Wallace Stevens on why poets are absolutely truthful

    They cannot help being absolutely truthful, Wallace Stevens explains:

Individual poets, whatever their imperfections may be, are driven all their lives by that inner companion of the conscience which is, after all, the genius of poetry in their hearts and minds. I speak of a companion of the conscience because to every faithful poet, the faithful poem is an act of conscience.

    (Quoted from page 87 of The Philosopher Critic, volume 10 of Monograph series, by Robert E. Scholes; published by the University of Tulsa, 1970.)
    For a brief biography of Wallace Stevens, click here. For images of and relating to Wallace Stevens, click here.

Jim Holt on the pleasures of silently reciting memorized poems

    The Saunterer on October 12 and 14 featured a Robert Frost poem and a Thomas Hardy poem. To round out the week, consider the mood-pleasures of silently reciting poetry (whole poems, or choice stanzas or lines) you’ve memorized, as Jim Holt describes in an essay (to read, click here).
    How to memorize poetry? Ted Hughes’ introduction to By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember (London: Faber and Faber. 1997) suggests and illustrates the use of mnemonics. Other approaches are listed by Googling on “memorizing poems.”
    For a brief biography of Jim Holt, click here. For a brief biography of Ted Hughes, click here.

A Thomas Hardy poem for when you need an uplift

    The Saunterer’s post on October 12 gave a Robert Frost poem in which nature (through a crow) lifts one out of a bleak mood. A Thomas Hardy poem that does the same (again through a bird) is “The Darkling Thrush”:

I leant upon a coppice gate
     When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
     The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
     Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
     The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
     Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
     In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
     Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
     Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
     Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
     His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
     And I was unaware.

    Lovely line, that - “Had chosen thus to fling his soul upon the growing gloom.”

    (From page 770 of The Top 500 Poems, edited by William Harmon, Columbia University Press. 1992.)

    For a brief biography of Thomas Hardy, click here. For images of and related to Thomas Hardy, click here. For the same of William Harmon, click here.

A Robert Frost poem for when you need an uplift

    From time to time since our undergraduate years we have Sauntered in The Modern Library edition of The Poems of Robert Frost, particular reading his nature poems. A few of the short ones we’ve memorized, word pictures we sometimes recite silently. “Dust of Snow” can be relied on for an uplift:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

    (From page 233 of The Modern Library edition, 1946). For a brief biography of Robert Frost, click here.

Woodrow Wilson on what societies should fear

    Woodrow Wilson would have shed a tear over the American financial crisis that was caused by experts and is being “solved” by experts, while 99.999999 percent of the citizens watch from the sideline. In 1912 he said:

[W]hat I fear is a government of experts. What are we if we are to be scientifically taken over by a small number of gentlemen who are the only men who understand the job? Because if we do not understand the job, then we are not a free people.

    (Quoted from “What Would John Dewey Say About Science Teaching Today?,” by Frances S. Vandervoort, The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 1983.)
    For a brief biography of Woodrow Wilson, click here. For images of and relating to Woodrow Wilson, click here.