Meandering on . . .

Today is the birthday of Bertha Felicitas Sophie von Suttner (June 9, 1843 - June 21, 1914), novelist. She was the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"Bertha von Suttner was a leading figure in the growing peace movement at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe. Suttner used her literary talents to produce the 1889 political novel Die Waffen nieder, or Lay Down Your Arms; a call for disarmament, the book became a best-seller and was translated into a number of languages. The activist also promoted world peace by helping to organize the first Hague Peace Conference and encouraging her friend, Alfred Nobel, to create the internationally respected Nobel Peace Prize. Her many activities helped to remove the labels of 'utopians' and unrealistic 'idealists' from those involved in peace activism by gaining the support of respected world leaders and intellectuals for the movement." direct quote source (1)


"After the verb to Love, to Help is the most beautiful verb in the world." - Bertha von Suttner

"Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it." - Bertha von Suttner

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Suttner stamp image source (1)

Meandering about . . .

Today is the birthday of Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959), architect, interior designer, writer and educator. He is considered the most influential American architect of the 20th century.

"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Freedom is from within" - Frank Lloyd Wright

"The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind" - Frank Lloyd Wright

"The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"There is nothing more uncommon than common sense." - Frank Lloyd Wright

Trivia bit: In 1991, Frank Lloyd Wright was recognized by the American Institute of Architects as the greatest American architect of all time.

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Meandering to and fro . . .

Today is the birthday of Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born on 7 June 1952), novelist. He is best known for his novels, Kara Kitap (The Black Book), Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red), and Kar (Snow).

Orhan Parmuk received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the second youngest person to receive the award in its history. His work has sold over seven million books in more than fifty languages.

"The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy." - Orhan Pamuk

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Meandering on . . .

Today is the birthday of Paul Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955), novelist.

In 1929, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel, Buddenbrooks.

Thomas Mann is another author of banned books. His works were publicly burned by the Nazis and he was forced to leave Germany for the United States, where he became a naturalised citizen in 1938.

“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.” - Thomas Mann

"Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word? " - Thomas Mann

"If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it. " - Thomas Mann

"The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea." - Thomas Mann

"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth. " - Thomas Mann

"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. " - Thomas Mann

Trivia bit: Thomas Mann's older brother was the writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann were all noted writers.

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Meandering about . . .

A Happy Birthday salute to Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, both reknown economists.

Adam Smith (OS:June 5, 1723 [baptised 16 June 1723] – July 17, - 1790), is best known for An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations or simply The Wealth of Nations (1776), which is considered his magnus opus.

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. " - Adam Smith

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can be flourishing and happy if the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. " - Adam Smith

“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” - Adam Smith

“The mind is so rarely disturbed, but that the company of friend will restore it to some degree of tranquility and sedateness.” - Adam Smith

“Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.” - Adam Smith

"All money is a matter of belief." - Adam Smith

*****

John Maynard Keynes (June 5, 1883 – April 21, 1946), is best known for The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), which is considered his magnus opus. The ideas presented in this 1936 work formed the basis of what would be the Keynesian Theory.

John Maynard Keynes laid the foundation for the branch of economics referred to as Macroeconomics.

"When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight." - John Maynard Keynes

"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again." - John Maynard Keynes

"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion." - John Maynard Keynes

"The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future." - John Maynard Keynes

*****
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Meandering about . . .

Today is the birthday of Moishe (Millstein) Miller (June 4, 1917 – October 23, 2004), better known as Robert Merrill, one of the greatest operatic baritones of the 20th century.

Robert Merrill made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Germont on Dec. 15, 1945, and celebrated his 500th performance there on March 5, 1973. He remained on the Met roster until 1976.

Robert Merrill was probably one of the most recognizable names outside the world's opera houses because of his lifelong enthusiasm for baseball. Beginning in 1969, he followed a tradition that lasted three decades, singing the season-opener of The Star-Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium. Robert Merrill was the first person ever to sing the National Anthem and throw out the first ball at Yankee Stadium for the Yanks home opener in 1986.

Robert Merrill was honoured with the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

His epitaph states: Like a bursting celestial star, he showered his family and the world with love, joy, and beauty. Encore please.

Trivia bit: Robert Merrill was a stutter.

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Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997), poet, photographer and social activist.

Allen Ginsberg is best known for his poem Howl. The poem celebrates the Beat Generation and speaks of the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States. Soon after its 1956 publication it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among First Amendment defenders, and was lifted when the judge declared Howl possessed redeeming social importance.

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.” - Allen Ginsberg

“Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.” - Allen Ginsberg

“Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.” - Allen Ginsberg

“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” - Allen Ginsberg

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