Amphibien (3) Anthologie (3) Antiquität (2) Assoziation (6) Bestimmung (2) Bestimmungsbuch (3) Bildung (3) DDO (3) DSJ (24) erste (3) Fiktion (4) Fische (75) Fische (14) Gebunden (3) Glück (2) Hathaway Library (2) Ichthyologie (5) Jugendlich (2) Kinderbuch (2) Kindle (5) Klassifikation (10) Kurzgeschichten (2) LDS (3) marine and aquatic biology (3) Natur (6) Naturgeschichte (5) Nordamerika (4) Philosophie (2) R.R. (3) Reihe (2) Reptilien (5) Sachbuch (5) signiert (7) Säugetiere (5) Tiere (5) Vögel (5) WC (2) Wirbeltiere (5) Wissenschaft (3) Zoologie (4)

Tag-Übersetzung eingeschaltet

Wissenswertes

Geburtstag: 1851-01-19
Todestag: 1931-09-19
Begräbnisort: Alta Mesa Memorial Park, Palo Alto, California, USA
Geschlecht: male
Nationalität: USA
Geburtsort: Gainesville, New York, USA
Sterbeort: Stanford, California
Ausbildung: Cornell University
Butler University
Indiana University School of Medicine
Berufe: Ichthyologist
President, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
President, Stanford University

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

Democracy and world relations von David Starr Jordan

Reprinted 1920. Signed by the author to AT Murray in 1918

Gekennzeichnet

PAFM | Oct 19, 2019 |

Life 's enthusiasms. by David Starr Jordan. von Jordan. David Starr. 1851-1931.

This is a rabbit hole find. I came across a pretty good quote attributed to Victor Cherbuliez, but as far as my research took me, it is misattributed and David Starr Jordan appears to be the source...from this book. Because it was available from Project Gutenberg, and because it was short, and because it is interesting...I read it. Jordan was a mix of a man...his The Higher Foolishness inspired Martin Gardner to write his seminal Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, but he also covered up the poisoning murder of Stanford University co-founder Jane Stanford, and even worse ... was a proponent of eugenics. He was the chair of the first Committee on Eugenics of the American Breeder's Association (California's forced deportation and sterilization came from this) and later the Human Betterment Foundation.

Despite his shortcomings, he had some wise words. The booklet opens

That is poetry in which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the right word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help toward doing this, instinctively automatically as other habits are acquired. In the affairs of life, then, is no form of good manners, no habit of usage more valuable than the habit of good English.

Whether it is called poetry as he does, or simply good writing, as I prefer, there is something of great value in the ability to use the right words.

After his initial "sermon" (his word), he leads into poetry selections with "I heard once of a man banished from New England to the Llano Estacado, the great summer-bitten plains of Texas. While riding alone among his cows over miles of yucca and sage he kept in touch with the world through the poetry he recited to himself." Now that I've lived in Texas for more than 12 years, that "summer-bitten" is a wry truth. The poem fragment quoted is from Whittier's "Randolph of Roanoke" and Jordan says it "is good verse and it may well serve to relate the gray world of Northern Texas to the many-colored world in which men struggle and die for things worthwhile, winning their lives eternally through losing them." Too funny! The "gray world of Northern Texas" is not worthwhile in Jordan's estimation.

I have never been much for poetry, but in my later years am making an effort (for those of you who are poetry averse, I highly recommend Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within...and get the audio book - it's so much better in his voice!) Jordan quotes Kipling, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, and others - being unfamiliar with the verses, I had to look up the poets as Jordan provided no sources. I found one fragment, from James Russell Lowell's "The Present Crisis" in the Congressional Record of 1919!

Jordan advises his reader:

In the arts of music and painting and sculpture, one may find not only professional satisfaction, but the strength that comes from higher living and more lofty feeling.

Strength from the arts...yes. And continuing

In the study of history as biography, the acquaintance with the men and women of other times, those who have felt and thought and acted and suffered to make a freer world for you and me, like inspiration may be found. History is more than its incidents. It is the movement of man. It is the movement of individual men, and it is in giving illumination to personal and racial characters that the succession of incidents has its value.

"History is more than its incidents" - well said!

Now...not as well said, his dislike for a music genre:

There is a kind of music popular with uncritical audiences and with people who know no better, which answers to the name of "ragtime." It is the music of those who do not know good music or who have not the moral force to demand it. The spirit of ragtime is not confined to music: graft is the ragtime of business, the spoils system the ragtime of politics, adulteration the ragtime of manufacture. There is ragtime science, ragtime literature, ragtime religion. You will know each of these by its quick returns. The spirit of ragtime determines the six best sellers, the most popular policeman, the favorite congressman, the wealthiest corporation, the church which soonest rents its pews.

Please, Mr. Jordan, tell us how you really feel!

The quote that brought me here?

Half the joy of life is in little things taken on the run. Let us run if we must -even the sands do that-but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes open that nothing worth our while shall escape us.

And the Cherbuliez source is equally inspiring: "My son, we should lay up a stock of absurd enthusiasms in our youth or else we shall reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose a great many of them by the way." As is the poem quoted within - unsourced and unidentified, of course - "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley.… (mehr)

Gekennzeichnet

Razinha | Sep 6, 2019 |