The Saunterer

Nathaniel Hawthorne on what love brings

    As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in a love letter:

    Thou only hast revealed me to myself: for without thy aid, my best knowledge of myself, would have been merely to know my own shadow – to watch it flickering on the wall, and mistake its fantasies for my own real actions.

    (Quoted from page 80 of Select Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Joel Myerson. The Ohio State University Press, 2002.)
    For a brief biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, click here. For images of or relating to Nathaniel Hawthorne, click here.   
    For a brief biography of Joel Myerson, click here. For images of or relating to Joel Myerson, click here.

James Agee on living to seek truth

    We should all have a guiding star (or two); James Agee’s was truth seeking for truth seeking’s sake:

    I care mainly about just 2 things. Sometimes they seem identical or at least like binary stars, & sometimes they seem like a split which can completely destroy. They would be (1) getting as near truth and whole truth as is humanly possible, which means several sorts of ‘Truth’ maybe, but on the whole means spiritual life, integrity and growth; and (2) setting this (near-) truth out in the clearest and cleanest possible terms. And I feel about it in two ways which may or may not be identical; one is I believe genuine ‘hunger’ toward it, and the other, if it is another, is ambition, which I think would kill it.

    (Quoted from page 195 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of James Agee, click here. For images of or relating to James Agee, click here.

John McFerrin on the source of the “Marcellus” in the Marcellus Shale

    None of Kipling’s Just So Stories tells how this shale got its name. But John McFerrin does, and it’s so entertaining a series of events that the Saunterer decided to reprint John’s account:

    Who is this Marcellus guy and why does he get to have his very own shale?
    The Marcellus guy is Marcus Claudius Marcellus (268 BC–208 BC), a famous Roman general known by his nickname “the Sword of Rome” and for his success in the Punic Wars.
    He was killed in an ambush while reconnoitering enemy positions in 208 BC. He had been moldering in the grave for some two millennia when, in 1782, the New York State Legislature began setting apart land grants. These were to be used to compensate soldiers who had enlisted in the Revolutionary War. The New York Surveyor-General divided the land into tracts and named them. He named one of them Marcellus, in honor of Marcus Claudius Marcellus.
    During the next fifty years a settlement -- named Marcellus -- grew up on the site. In about 1836 James Hall come on the scene. He was part of a project to collect information on the geology and natural history of New York.
    Among the features he observed was the outcropping of a dark shale formation. Because the outcropping was near the village of Marcellus, he named it the Marcellus Shale.
    The village of Marcellus, NY, still exists; the population was 1,813 at the 2010 census. It is now best known for some of the finest architectural and historic landmarks in Central New York, such as the Dan Bradley House which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
    James Hall died in 1898. He is remembered for his publications, including “Geology in New York,” Part IV (1843) as well as identifying that stromatolite fossils discovered at Petrified Sea Gardens, a site near Saratoga Springs, New York that is now another National Historic Landmark, were originally organic. There is a residence hall at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute named after James Hall. It is officially known as Hall Hall.
    The Marcellus Shale is still with us.

    (With John McFerrin’s permission, from “The Marcellsu Shale and the Sword of Rome,” by John McFerrin. Page 10 of The Highlands Voice, January, 2013; published by West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.)
    John McFerrin holds the office of Secretary in the Western Virginia Highlands Conservancy (of which the Saunterer is pleased to be a 35-year member).   
    For a brief biography of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, click here. For images of or relating to Marcus Claudius Marcellus, click here.
    For images relating to the Marcellus Shale, click here.

Eugene Delacroix on preserving yourself from boredom and sadness

    Eugene Delacroix pinpoints one of the seldom-mentioned riches of creative work:

    To feel that you have done what should be done raises you in your own eyes. After that, if you have no other reason for pleasure, you enjoy that chief of pleasures, which is self-content. The satisfaction of the man who has worked and made good use of his day is immense. When I am in that state, it is delightful for me, afterward, to enjoy my rest and even the mildest recreations. Indeed, I can find myself in the company of the most tiresome people, and feel no regret about it. The memory of the task that I have accomplished comes back to me and preserves me from boredom and sadness.

    (Quoted from page 294 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Eugene Delacroix, click here. For images of or relating to Eugene Delacroix, click here.

Isabella Beeton on how to be an excellent parent

    The Saunterer bets few think about this in the way Isabella Beeton put it:

    OF THE MANNER OF PASSING EVENINGS AT HOME . . . Where there are young people forming a part of the evening circle, interesting and agreeable pastime should especially be promoted. It is of incalculable benefit to them that their homes should possess all the attractions of healthful amusement, comfort, and happiness; for if they do not find pleasure there, they will seek it elsewhere. It ought, therefore, to enter into the domestic policy of every parent, to make her children feel that home is the happiest place in the world; that to imbue them with this delicious home-feeling is one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.

    (Quoted from Chapter 5 of “Gone to the Shops” -- Shopping in Victorian England, by Kelley Graham. Praeger, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Isabella Beeton, click here. For images of or relating to Isabella Beeton, click here.
    Kelley Graham teaches history at the Friends' Central School, in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

Thomas Craven on art

    Rather than from what artists know from reading or being taught, they should take their subjects from their everyday experiences. Thomas Craven’s words from 1929 still hold:

    Go back, my friends, to our own people, and develop the rich materials of your own land. Art is not produced by culture. Art is the child of new understandings and fresh appreciations of common things, and it is beyond the reach of those who are slaves to the impulses of others.

    (Quoted from “The Curse of French Culture” in the July 1929 issue of Forum magazine.)
    For a brief biography of Thomas Craven, click here. For images of or relating to Thomas Craven, click here.

Conrad Aiken on what the poet indispensably does

    Conrad Aiken’s words apply to artist and poet equally:

    I see the poet as advancing consciousness and conscience and genius of mankind, the forerunner, firebringer, orderer and releaser; the one who by finding the words for life makes life possible and coherent, and puts it within the reach of all. The scientist and philosopher and mathematician do not make whole statements, because they leave out the feelings; it is only the poet who, by adding the feelings, or rather by transmuting his knowledge through the feelings, makes, at each stage of man’s development, the whole statement; he always has the last word, because it is always the first –- the poet was and is the one who invents language. Which is tantamount to inventing experience or awareness.

    (Quoted from page 114 of Thornton Wilder: New Essays. Locust Hill Literary Studies, No. 26, 1999.)
    For a brief biography of Conrad Aiken, click here. For images of or relating to Conrad Aiken, click here.
    For a brief biography of Thornton Wilder, click here. For images of or relating to Thornton Wilder, click here.

Massimo Pigliucci on Fermi’s paradox

    About Fermi’s paradox of why extraterrestrial life, surely plentiful, hasn’t already visited Earth, Massimo Pigliucci says:

    There are two significant problems with Fermi’s paradox, which again shouldn’t require a rocket scientist to figure out. . . . The most obvious problem with the paradox is that it simply assumes, without justification, all too familiar human psychological attributes (particularly, a penchant for exploration and/or conquest) and projects them on other life forms of which we know absolutely nothing. This is the by now familiar principle of mediocrity, but on steroids! Perhaps the simplest explanation for Fermi’s paradox is that other civilizations just don’t behave like Spanish conquistadores. . . . The second problem with the Fermi paradox, it seems to me, is that it is not exactly logically tight. Let us assume for the sake of argument that there is, in fact, another technological civilization out there, at about the same stage of development as ours (by the way, whoever decided that civilizations have to go through stages similar in any way to our own history?). Now imagine that somewhere on the mother planet of that civilization, a well-known physicist named Henry Stop is having a nice lunch with colleagues, and they are casually discussing the possibility of the existence of other civilizations just like theirs. Henry listens to his optimistic colleagues, who think that the galaxy teems with intelligent life, and quips: “Then where is everybody?” Henry Stop has just “demonstrated” that we on Earth do not exist. Now, that is what I call a paradox.   

    (Quoted from page 40 of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, by Massimo Pigliucci. University of Chicago Press, 2010.)
    For the reasons of Fermi’s paradox, click here.
    For a brief biography of Massimo Pigliucci, click here. For images of or relating to Massimo Pigliucci, click here.

On the power of advertising

    Putting its power in a weak way, advertising increases familiarity increases memory. A strong way is as an anonymous writer once put it in The American Salesman magazine:

    If you think advertising doesn’t pay –- we understand there are twenty-five mountains in Colorado higher than Pike’s Peak. Can you name one?

    (Quoted from page 321 of Standing Room Only: Strategies for Marketing the Performing Arts, by Philip Kotler and Joanne Scheff Bernstein. Harvard Business School Press, 1997.)
    For a brief biography of Philip Kotler, click here. For images of or relating to Philip Kotler, click here.
    For a brief biography of Joanne Scheff Bernstein, click here. For images of or relating to Joanne Scheff Bernstein, click here.

Bernard Berenson on what machines destroy

    iPad and gadget addicts, take Bernard Berenson’s note of your diminishing your life:

    Yesterday we drove over to Le Mans to see one of Wright’s flights. Of course he did not fly (nothing ever happens where I am). His brother in America had just had a bad accident. We looked at the machine which was made of wood, sewing thread, and cheese-cloth. At least so it seemed. I cannot tell you how I disliked the thing, this innocent monster which will destroy the world I love, the world of level vision or vision from down upwards, the world of privacy to which our species has been used for millions of years.

    (Bernard Berenson entered this in his diary on September 20, 1908. We quote it from page 136 of The Bernard Berenson Treasury: A selection from the works, unpublished writings, letters, diaries, and journals of the most celebrated humanist and art historian of our times: 1887 -- 1958. Edited by Hanna Kiel. Simon and Schuster, 1962.)
    For a brief biography of Bernard Berenson, click here. For images of or relating to Bernard Berenson, click here.