The Saunterer

Frederick Law Olmsted on the purpose of large city parks

    Landscape architect of New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted was something of a physician of spiritual disease caused by the unnaturalness of city living. He puts it this way:

    The main object and justification is simply to produce a certain influence in the minds of people and through this to make life in the city healthier and happier: The character of this influence is a poetic one and it is to be produced by means of scenes, through observation of which the mind may be more or less lifted out of moods and habits into which it is, under the ordinary conditions of life in the city, likely to fall.   

    (Quoted from page 25 of Frederick Law Olmsted's New York, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Praeger, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972.)
    For a brief biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, click here. For images of or relating to Frederick Law Olmsted, click here.
    For information about Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, click here. For images of or relating to Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, click here.

Mabel Osgood Wright on emotional birdwatching

    Insightful line, this of Mabel Osgood Wright:

    Nature is to be studied with the eyes of the heart, as well as of the microscope, and ever so scanty a knowledge of our feathered brothers helps us to feel that the realms of Nature are very near to the human heart and its sympathies.

    (Quoted on page 44 of Binocular Vision: The politics of representation in bird watching field guides, by Spencer Schaffner. University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Mabel Osgood Wright, click here. For images of or relating to Mabel Osgood Wright, click here.
    For information about Spencer Schaffner, click here. For images of or relating to Spencer Schaffner, click here.
    For a history of early North American bird field guides, click here.

Elizabeth McAlister on knowing rhythms

    Ears alone, Elizabeth McAlister reminds us, are insufficient for fully knowing rhythms. It takes feet.

    One cannot know the entirety of a rhythm without knowing and experiencing its dance at the same time, because with the dance moves, additional rhythms are generated.

    (Quoted from page 108 of Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship, by Yvonne Daniel. University of Illinois Press, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Elizabeth McAlister, click here. For images of or relating to Elizabeth McAlister, click here.
    For a brief biography of Yvonne Daniel, click here. For images of or relating to Yvonne Daniel, click here.

Piet Mondrian on his art

    Writing in January 1914, Piet Mondrian explained:

    The masses generally find my work rather vague. I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or that which I see) inspires me . . . but I want to come as close as possible to the truth. . . . I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.

    (Quoted from page 149 of Kimbell Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection, edited by Timothy Potts. Kimbell Art Museum, 2003.)
    For a brief biography of Piet Mondrian, click here. For images of or relating to Piet Mondrian, click here.
    For a brief biography of Timothy Potts, click here. For images of or relating to Timothy Potts, click here.

Vladimir Shiltsev on Mikhail Lomonosov

    Three pivotal scientists: Germany’s Gottfried Leibniz, England’s Isaac Newton, and Russia’s Mikhail Lomonosov. Because the West knows little about Lomonosov, Vladimir Shiltsev writes:

    He is perhaps best known for being the first person to experimentally confirm the law of conservation of matter. That metals gain weight when heated –- now a well-known consequence of oxidation –- confounded British chemist Robert Boyle, who had famously observed the effect in 1673. The result seemed to implicate that heat itself was a kind of matter. In 1756 Lomonosov disproved that notion by demonstrating that when lead plates are heated inside an airtight vessel, the collective weight of the vessel and its contents stays constant. In a subsequent letter to Euler, he framed the result in terms of a broad philosophy of conservation: “All changes that we encounter in nature proceed so that . . . however much matter is added to any body, as much is taken away from another . . . since this is the general law of nature, it is also found in the rules of motion: a body loses as much motion as it gives to another body.
    In analogous experiments 17 years later, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier progressed further, showing that the increase in the weight of the metal is exactly offset by a reduction in the weight of the air’s oxygen.

    Thank goodness there are no laws of conservation of knowledge, or of compassion.

    (Quoted from “Mikhail Lomonosov and the Dawn of Russian Science,” by Vladimir Shiltsev. Page 42 of the 2012 February issue of Physics Today.)
    For a brief biography of Mikhail Lomonosov, click here. For images of or relating to Mikhail Lomonosov, click here.
    For information about Vladimir Shiltsev, click here. For images of or relating to Vladimir Shiltsev, click here.

J. B. S. Haldane on where to find religion

    Are churches the proper home of religion? No, insisted J. B. S. Haldane:

    The churches are half empty today because their creeds are full of obsolete science, and their ethical codes are suited to a social organization far simpler than that of today. . . . If I thought that the aims of science and art were merely material I should belong to some church. But I believe that the scientist is trying to express absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in science and art, and in an attempt to lead a good life, all the religion that I want.

    (Quoted from page 301 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001)
    For a brief biography of J. B. S. Haldane, click here. For images of or relating to J. B. S. Haldane, click here.

Charles S. Houston on mountaineering

    As to why people climb mountains, Charles S. Houston’s answer is as good as any:

    When men climb on a great mountain together, the rope between them is more than a mere physical aid to the ascent; it is a symbol of the spirit of the enterprise. It is a symbol of men banded together in a common effort of good will and strength against their only true enemies: inertia, cowardice, greed, ignorance, and the weaknesses of the spirit.

    (Quoted from page 76 of The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2, by Jennifer Jordan. W. W. Norton, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Charles S. Houston, click here. For images of or relating to Charles S. Houston, click here.
    For information about Jennifer Jordan, click here. For images of or relating to Jennifer Jordan, click here.
    For images of K2, click here.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on hunters

    If you think of it, hunters are absolute zero on the scale of human beings.
    What Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote upon first witnessing an otter hunt will help you think of it:

The miserable little animal was pursued by men with large poles with spikes in their heads. . . . Then the poor creature having found refuge in its hole, twenty men got on to the bank and endeavoured by jumping and other means to force the earth down into the unfortunate animal’s hiding place, and this ‘sport’ was continued, until worn out by fatigue and fright surrounded by men and dogs, without the ghost of a chance of escape, the victim became an easy prey to its enemies.

    (Quoted on pages 82 of Otter, by Daniel Allen. Reaktion Books, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here. For images of or relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here.
    For a brief biography of Daniel Allen, click here. For images of or relating to Daniel Allen, click here.

Denman Ross on why copies of great art fail

    No matter how exact a copy of great art is, something wonderful refuses to be captured, explains Denman Ross:

The harmonies of the Parthenon are the harmonies of line. The beauty of the Parthenon is largely the beauty of line. Why do not copies and restorations affect you as the original does? Why are we so indifferent in the presence of so much modern classic architecture? Because the difference between a supreme work and an ordinary work is unmeasurable, changes very slight to the eye.

    (Quoted from page 80 of Denman Ross and American Design Theory, by Marie Frank. University Press of New England, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Denman Ross, click here. For images of or relating to Denman Ross, click here.
    For material about Marie Frank, click here.

Salman Rushdie on religion

    Organized religion, apparently the most loving of all things, marked Salman Rushdie for assassination for publishing such truths as this:

    Star light, star bright . . . we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading up to our destiny, but it’s only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It’s true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you’ll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That’s not a star worth following; it’s just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.

    (Quoted from page 62 of The Moor’s Last Sigh, by Salman Rushdie. Vintage Books, 1995.)
    For a brief biography of Salman Rushdie, click here. For images of or relating to Salman Rushdie, click here.