The Saunterer

Oscar Hammerstein II on his writing lyrics for Broadway

    Genius gives no escape from difficulties:

Writing comes darned hard to me. I do most of it on our farm in Doylestown. There I have a room with one of those tall old-fashioned desks you used to see in shipping offices. It takes me a long time to get started, and even then the words come slowly. I keep walking up and down the room and when I get what I want I go over to the desk and write in longhand with a soft pencil. I often wonder how many miles an act I walk.

    (Quoted from page xv of The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Amy Asch. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Oscar Hammerstein II, click here. For images of and relating to Oscar Hammerstein II, click here. For a brief biography of Amy Asch, click here.

Edwin Meese’s leaky logic

    The Saunterer’s guess is that Sarah Palin and those in the Tea Party movement believe all is right with Edwin Meese’s logic:

But the thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.

    (Quoted from page 81 of Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice, by Kristin J. Anderson. Cambridge University Press, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Edwin Meese, click here. For images of and relating to Edwin Meese, click here. For information about Kristin J. Anderson, click here.

George Washington on how to accomplish things

    George Washington had no room in his life for procrastination:

I will mention a proverb to you which you will find worthy of attention all the days of your life; under any circumstances, or in any situation you may happen to be placed; and that is, to put nothing off ’till the Morrow, that you can do to day. The habit of postponing things is among the worst in the world; doing things in season is always beneficial; but out of season, it frequently happens that so far from being beneficial, that oftentimes, it proves a real injury. It was one of the sayings of the wise man you know, that there is a season for all things, and nothing is more true; apply it to any occurrence or transaction in life.

    (Quoted from page 26 of In the Hands of a Good Providence: Religion in the Life of George Washington, by Mary V. Thompson. University of Virginia Press, 2008.)
     For a brief biography of George Washington, click here. For images of and relating to George Washington, click here. For a brief biography of Mary V. Thompson, click here.

Jane Addams on lateral progress

    The past thirty years brought great lateral progress in gaining humane respect and treatment of animals. This has readied the world for leaps of perpendicular progress. May the time be soon.
    Jane Addams explains the two kinds of progress in another context:

The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible,” and often has the sickening sense of compromising with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then “provide for channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.” What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral.
    He has taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher.

    (Quoted from page 44 of The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams, by Maurice Hamington. University of Illinois Press, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Jane Addams, click here. For images of and relating to Jane Addams, click here. For a brief biography of Maurice Hamington, click here.

Martin Buber on how a nation can become a community

     After first explaining nations as they are, Martin Buber explains how they ought to be:

The collectivity is not a warm, friendly gathering but a great link-up of economic and political forces inimical to the play of romantic fancies, only understandable in terms of quantity, expressing itself in actions and effects - a thing which an individual has to belong to with no intimacies of any kind but all the time conscious of his energetic contribution . . . .
    An organic commonwealth - and only such commonwealths can join together to form a shapely and articulated race of [persons] - will never build itself up out of individuals but only out of small and ever small communities: a nation is a community to the degree that it is a community of communities.
    (Quoted from page 198 of Rescuing Dewey: Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism, by Peter T. Manicas. Lexington Books, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Martin Buber, click here. For images of and relating to Martin Buber, click here. To learn about Peter T. Manicas, click here.

Flannery O’Connor on the use of violence in fiction

    Could Flannery O’Connor’s discovery apply also to real life?

I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader.

    (Quoted from page 49 of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Harold Bloom. Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Flannery O’Connor, click here. For images of and relating to Flannery O’Connor, click here. For a brief biography of Harold Bloom, click here.

Max Weber on politicians

    The next politician you see on TV, think of the person in light of Max Weber’s idea:

What kinds of inner joy does politics have to offer. . . ? Well, first of all, it confers a feeling of power. The professional politician can have a sense of rising above everyday existence . . . from the knowledge that he holds in his hands some vital strand of historically important events. But the question facing such a person is which qualities will enable him to do justice to this power. . . .

    (Quoted from page 119 of 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, by Mary Elise Sarotte. Princeton University Press, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Max Weber, click here. For images of and relating to Max Weber, click here. For a brief biography of Mary Elise Sarotte, click here. For images of and relating to Mary Elise Sarotte, click here.

Jonathan Safran Foer on climate change and eating meat

    Do you try your best to live in a way that doesn’t contribute to climate change? And at the same time do you eat meat? If you say yes to both, you are a contradiction and part phony. Because, eating meat requires livestock, and livestock are a major force for climate change.
    Concerning the livestock industry, here is a passage from Mark Rowlands’ review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals:

A report of the United Nations Climate Commission (the Pew Commission) shows that this industry is responsible for more climate change emissions than all forms of transport combined – in fact, nearly 40 percent more. What is less widely known is the more general pollution produced by the industry. Safran Foer develops the environmental case against eating animals with graphic dexterity. “All told, farmed animals in the United States produce . . . roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second.” Smithfield, the largest hog producer in the US, is responsible for as much fecal waste as the entire human population of California and Texas combined. But there is almost no waste-treatment infrastructure for farmed animals. Safran Foer comments: “Imagine it. Imagine if, instead of the massive waste-treatment infrastructure that we take for granted in modern cities, every man, woman and child in every city and town in all of California and all of Texas crapped and pissed in a huge open-air pit for a day. Now imagine that they don’t do this for just a day, but all year round, in perpetuity.” The industry likes to give the impression that all the toxins in this fecal waste (including hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and heavy metals) can be absorbed by the surrounding fields. But in fact, they run off into the waterways and escape into the air.
   
    For a brief biography of Jonathan Safran Foer, click here.
    For a video interview of Jonathan Safran Foer, click here.
    For a brief biography of Mark Rowlands, click here.
    For images of and relating to Mark Rowlands, click here.
    To read all of Mark Rowlands’s review, click here. (It appeared in the March 5, 2010, issue of The Times Literary Supplement.)

Petrus Alfonsi on the Muslims

    Partake of another culture the things that are good for you; shun what is bad for you. That’s what Petrus Alfonsi did:

I have read the books of the Muslims, written their language, and was always nurtured by them, but it is not proper on that account that I should follow their religion.

    (Quoted from page 77 of The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, by Jerrilynn D. Dodds et al. Yale University Press, 2008.)
    One aspect of Muslim culture we should all want to partake of its art. For a sample of Muslim art, click here.
    For a brief biography of Petrus Alfonsi, click here. For a brief biography of Jerrilynn D. Dodds, click here.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on the appeal to a higher law

    The longer that America goes without passing and enforcing laws protecting animals from abusers, and wilderness areas from developers, many citizens are going to become anarchists. Anarchy is made less difficult by their appealing to a higher law. What Martin Luther King, Jr. said holds:

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.   

    (Quoted from page 70 of “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr., published in Why We Can’t Wait. Penguin, 2000.)
    For a brief biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., click here. For images of and relating to Martin Luther King, Jr., click here.