The Saunterer

Russell Baker on how to write well

    This is Russell Baker’s advice on how to be a great nonfiction writer:

    I had to concede that Catling was not just a good writer, but obviously my superior. They had been right to move him inside ahead of me. I congratulated him on his writing and meant it, and continued cultivating him, hoping some of his skill might rub off. His Oklahoma! review left me with an important lesson about newspaper writing which I tucked away in my head for the day when my luck might change: Don’t settle for writing it the way it’s always been written: dare to write it differently, and maybe you will write it better than it’s been written before.

    (Quoted from page 85 of The Good Times by Russell Baker. William Morrow and Company, 1989.)
    For a brief biography of Russell Baker, click here. For images of or relating to Russell Baker, click here.

James Wines on the value of public spaces

    Capitalism requires governments to cater mainly to economics, which is possibly the reason U. S. city streets are laid out on grid patterns. Oops there goes public spaces. James Wines:

    I lived in Italy for a long time, and the thing I noticed the most in coming back from Europe is that those cities were conceived from the outset with the idea that there will be a public domain. New York evolved as an economic force on a grid and primarily for opportunism. It’s very difficult after the fact to take that paving grid view of the world and loosen it up.

    (Quoted from page F6 of the 21 July 2016 issue of The New York Times.)
    For a brief biography of James Wines, click here. For images of or relating to James Wines, click here.

Jean Jacques Rousseau on reason as a curb to the passions

    The killing of nature from global warming nears as society makes a mockery of Rousseau’s idea:

    Reason developed and cultivated will always be the most powerful curb to the passions: this is the compass of all mankind.

    (Quoted from page 111 of the Sanuterer's copy of A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness, by J. De Finod. D. Appleton and Company, 1903.)
    For a brief biography of Jean Jacques Rousseau, click here. For images of or relating to Jean Jacques Rousseau, click here.

Albert Einstein on the nature of wondering

    A person with a tabula rasa mind is, according to Albert Einstein, unlikely to wonder (and since we all wonder, no one evidently has a tabula rasa mind):

    Sometimes we ‘wonder’ quite spontaneously about some experience. This ‘wondering’ seems to occur when an experience comes into conflict with a world of concepts which is already sufficiently fixed in us.

    (Quoted from page 29 of Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity, by Andrew Robinson. Princeton University Press, 2015.)
    For a work biography of Albert Einstein, click here. For images of or relating to Albert Einstein, click here.
    For a work biography of Andrew Robinson, click here. For images of or relating to Andrew Robinson, click here.

Vladimir Nabokov on the role of chance in producing history

    You can determine much of your life, minimizing the role of chance. Yet society, the collection of all of us, can’t. The life of society and thus its history, if Vladimir Nabokov is right, is much at the mercy of a crap shoot:

    One such wise man, a penetrating historian, was working one day on the description of some ancient war, when suddenly a noise reached his ears from the street. A crowd was separating two fighting men. And neither the very sight of the scuffle, nor the expressions of the scuffling men, nor the explanations of the onlookers could give the curious historian an accurate picture of what exactly had happened. He pondered the fact that it was impossible to get to the bottom even of a chance street scuffle, which he had personally witnessed; he reread the description of the ancient war that he was working on and understood how arbitrary and haphazard were all his profound arguments about that ancient war. Let us admit to ourselves, once and for all, that the notion of history as an exact science is just for convenience—“for simple folk”, as the museum guard used to say, showing two skulls—in youth and old age—of one and the same criminal.
If each of man’s days is a sequence of chance occurrences—and in this lies its divinity and power—then the history of mankind is even more so mere chance. You can combine those occurrences, tie them into a tidy bouquet of periods and ideas; but the fine scent of the past is lost in the process, and we are now seeing, not that which was, but that which we wish to see. By chance a commander has an acute stomach ache—and now a venerable royal dynasty is replaced by the dynasty of a neighbouring power. By chance a restless eccentric gets the impulse to sail across the ocean—and now trade is transformed and a maritime nation made rich. Why indeed should we take after those paradoxical enemies of risk, who sit for years at the green baize in Monte Carlo calculating how many spins will fall on red and how many on black, all in order to find a fail-safe system? There is no system. History’s roulette wheel knows no laws.

    (Quoted from page 17, the May 13 2016 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.)
    For a brief biography of Vladimir Nabokov, click here. For images of or relating to Vladimir Nabokov, click here.

Byron Wien on how to live forever

    He says,

    Never retire. If you work forever, you can live forever.

    (Quoted from page 20 of the May 23, 2016, issue of Barron’s.)

   For a brief biography of Byron Wien, click here. For images of or relating to Byron Wien, click here.

Pierre Curie on scientists and politicians

    Many scientists and politicians have opposing values, as they did nearly one hundred fifteen years ago when Pierre Curie said this:

    It is conceivable that radium in criminal hands may become very dangerous, and here one may ask whether it is advantageous for man to uncover natural secrets, whether he is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be detrimental to him. The example of Nobel’s discoveries is characteristic; explosives of great power have allowed man to do some admirable works. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead nations to war. I am among those who believe, with Nobel, that mankind will derive more good than evil from new discoveries.

    (Quoted from page 42 of From X-Rays to Quarks, by Emilio Segrè. Dover Publications, 2007.)
    For a brief biography of Pierre Curie, click here. For images of or relating to Pierre Curie, click here.
    For a brief biography of Emilio Segrè, click here. For images of or relating to Emilio Segrè, click here.

Charles S. Houston explains why we should all take risks

    Charles S. Houston, a mountaineer, in 1938 wrote this in his K2 diary:

    Is it not better to take risks . . . than die within from rot? Is it not better to change one’s life completely than to wait for the brain to set firmly and irreversibly in one way and one environment? I think it is . . . taking risks, not for the sake of danger alone, but for the sake of growth, is more important than any security one can buy or inherit.

    (Quoted from page 99 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.

 

William Shakespeare on our duty to die for a good cause

    You have only one death so spend it wisely. Could this be why soldiers often accept the dangers of war? Shakespeare:

    “By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death . . . and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.”

    (Excerpted from page 1 of The Middle Parts of Fortune, by Frederic Manning. New American Library, 1977.)
    For a work biography of Frederic Manning, click here. For images of or relating to Frederic Manning, click here.

Jerry Franks’ method of teaching how to play a musical instrument

    Jerry Franks was our classmate in the Uniontown, Pennsylvania, school system. He played trumpet in the school bands and later taught and played professionally. We remember his triple tonguing on fast pieces was perfectly crisp. A former pupil, Mark Van Cleve, said the following about his Jerry’s teaching methods, we pass it on because it is applicable to teaching any subject:

    He was determined to cut through all of the red tape and get right to the core of the student's problems. Find out exactly what is causing the student’s problems and focus in on that. This method was based on critical analysis of the player's problems and a knowledge of how the trumpet machine worked. The ultimate goal for one of Jerry's students was to develop all of the skills needed to play the trumpet well into reflexes. Working on each skill individually until you don't have to think about it anymore; until it's automatic. Once all of the skills have been developed into reflexes, the only thing left to think about is the music. After all of this analysis, the end result was purely visual. Thinking only about the end result or goal. Visualizing how the music is to sound and letting your visualization guide your reflexes. Jerry passed away in 1989 from complications due to diabetes. He was a great teacher, great man, and dear friend.

    To hear Jerry playing Carnival of Venice, click here.
    To read about Jerry’s method of playing in the upper range around high C, click here.