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Dr. Crane on a New Year, At Last

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(By the end of this week we will have shed ourselves of 2020 and, we hope, soon will shed ourselves of the physical and political ills that have robbed us of our personal and national spirit. The movement of the second hand from one side of midnight to the other side three days hence can move us socially and spiritually to a new place—-at least in our minds, at least for a while. Association Men, the official magazine of the Young Men’s Christian Association, carried this article in its January, 1919 issue, as Dr. Frank Crane reflected upon—-)

THE NEW YEAR AND OPPORTUNITY

The New Year spells Opportunity.

That is its great, outstanding message.

Once a year the old Clock of the Universe strikes, at 12 o’clock on December 31st, and as its strokes thunder around the world they say to men and women everywhere:
“Now, you have a chance to try it again! Begin, begin again!”

Twelve words.

Discouraged boy, tired of waiting, ready to give up, with your heart down and the
devil whispering to you, “What’s the use?” Listen! Don’t you hear the clock? Up
and at it once more! Slough off your discouragement, as a dirty coat, roll up your
sleeves—the world’s your hickory-nut, full of meat, and you’re the boy to crack it.

Young man, wrestling with the Snake called Bad Habit, that is slowly throttling
you, poisoning you, ruining your career, breaking your mother’s heart, and turning
gray your father’s hair—listen! The twelve bells peal across the snow-fields of the earth,
ring out in the mountains and echo in the valleys. They are to you, for you. Begin
again! The Almighty Father thinks of you in every stroke, every beat is a heart pulse
of His meaning, and says, “Life is yours. The Future is yours! Step on your dead
self and rise. All things are yours, for you are Mine.”

Heartsick woman, with your lap full of shattered dreams, there’s resurrection in the New Year. Out of the broken fragments of your hopes you can make something
more beautiful. Heaven and earth are full of unexhausted resources. They are yours.
Only be strong and of a good courage. Don’t give up. No soul can be cheated of its
divine inheritance.

Old man, you’re never too old to come back. A man is only as old as his Will.
Buck up! Don’t you hear the Clock? Opportunity is ringing. There’s a place for
you, work for you, a need for your purpose, a goal still for your high emprise.

No man sinks in the waters of fate but the one cramped with fear. Kick, and
you’ll float.

No man is discharged in the great war of life. Only deserters fight no more.

Come! The Infinite is your friend, surrounds you, presses upon you like the
atmosphere, and will breathe into you tides of power, if you will but open your soul.
And the opener of souls is Courage.

No insuperable calamity can befall me except I be afraid and give up.

What! Have you not lived until this day? Have not the Everlasting Arms held you up till now, even though you be spent, and hungered, torn, bloody, desperate? Still you have Life—then look up to that Concealed One who gave you your Life, and has so far upheld it, and cry, as you tighten your belt, and adjust your gas mask against the asphyxiations of despair, and grasp your good rifle-cry out to Him, who though He seem distant and unknown, is yet “nearer to you than hands and feet, and closer to you than breathing.”

“So long Thy power hath held me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone, –
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

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Dr. Crane in his later years believed himself to be as thorough a Christian as anyone, even though he considered the dogmas and creeds of the churches to be “of little or no consequence.”

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NOTES FROM A QUIET STREET, HOLIDAY EDITION 

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It has been a while since we spoke from our lofty position on this quiet street of things not worthy of full blogitty. We have been saving up these random observations since our last haircut, or more accurately our most recent one, which means there’s a lot here. During your faithful scribe’s most recent haircut the barber thought he had discovered a growth on the side of my head. I was concerned until he announced it was just my ear.

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Your obedient servant does not want to return to normalcy after the Trump presidency. Presidential candidate Warren Harding used the word during his 1920 campaign and his wish for the America mentality to return to what it was before The Great War.  Although the word is found in some dictionaries as far back as 1857, Harding’s use of it made it popular and something repeatable for generations long after his.

Eugene P. Trani, writing for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, says Harding is ranked by historians as one of our worst presidents because, “Unlike other modern Presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, who possessed conventional minds and who thought simply, Harding never understood where he wanted to take the nation. Nor could he communicate his message effectively, because he had none to communicate. He spoke about a “return to normalcy,” but he had no idea what this slogan meant. Lacking the moral compass of a Reagan, Harding had no guide to follow. He was lucky to have had a few good men in his cabinet who generally ran fiscal and foreign affairs well. In the end, it was not his corrupt friends that tarnished his legacy and undermined his historical impact. Rather, it was his own lack of vision and his poor sense of priorities that positioned him so low in the ranking of U.S. Presidents.”

This is not the kind of man I want setting the standard for the use of the English Language.  From our lofty position, we believe the word should be “normality.”

And My Lord! Do we ever need that.

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About our lofty position—it’s time you learned the truth:

Our loft is in our house on a quiet Jefferson City street.   You can’t actually see where we write these important missives because there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam between the railing and the writing shrine.  But that’s our lofty position.  If the place looks trashy, let us remind you this is a HOME, not a museum.

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I saw my neighbor working in his yard the other day.  I wanted to go talk to him but I was worried that I’d be run over in the street.

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Anybody else bored. to. death. because of this virus?

We’re hanging in there.  But we can only watch Hamilton so many times.  And we’re sooooooo tired of some kinds of television commercials. One of the greatest insults to intelligence caused by the extended hours watching television because of pandemic-induced mobility limits is seeing an epidemic of commercials from law firms rounding up a lot of people to take part in class-action lawsuits. We have yet to see a commercial telling how much the firm will keep and what the average damage payment will be.

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(Speaking of which, we pause for this message from a sponsor):

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Now that we have vaccines against the virus, when will we get one to protect us from the physical and mental deterioration caused by binge-watching. At this point we aren’t sure whether it’s more important to get a shot that protects us from the virus or whether to get one that ends ROKU searches through Disney plus, Acorn, Netflix, PBS, National Geographic, YouTube, or the channels providing old TV shows such as Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life or the Bob Newhart channel or the Story Lady Channel.

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We’ll know when we have exhausted all other possibilities when we start watching shopping channels until midnight each night.

(Now, a word from another sponsor):

(Cute eight-year old kid): “I had to live with ugly scabs on my knees every time I fell on the sidewalk—until a friend told me about Zxxvvqnt. I tried it and within weeks my scabs went away.  Now I have the happiest knees in town!”

(Announcer): Zxxvvqnt, the magical scab healer, can restore your knees or your elbows, or even your forehead to their natural beautiful state in just days!  Laboratory-tested Zxxvvqnt is a non-animal-based cure for ugly scabs wherever they might be.

(Kid): “Just smooth it on four times a day and see pink skin come right back!”

(Announcer then spends the next 40-seconds speaking rapidly while print too small to read on a 60-inch screen scrolls past even more rapidly, warning viewers that Zxxvvqnt should not be taken internally, that it could lead to amputation or permanent scarring.  It should not be used by people who know better than to use it.  Best if used in conjunction with a large bandage over the injured area, leaves stains on sheets the next morning without one, and sticks to legs of pants or to sleeves of long-sleeved shirts unless covered. Not approved by the FDA. Not sold as a preventive or a cure for any disease.

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However, two days later a celebrity recommends it as a cure for the Coronavirus if applied as hair dressing.

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Ever wonder why in the world you’d use any medication that spends two-thirds of its commercial telling you how it could kill you?  Us, too.  And why would an old, wrinkled, and creaky person be interested in a substance that appears from the people in the commercials to be for young and handsome people to begin with?

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I will believe our economy is as good as we’re being told it is when I see stores opening in our malls and paycheck protection offices closing along our streets.

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Sent a letter in mid-July to Quincy, Illinois.  Got it back on September 2 marked “Unable to Forward. Insufficient Address.”  Zillow found the address with no problem. Showed me a lot of outside and inside pictures of the house, including the curbside mailbox. Told me how much it would sell for it if was for sale. I checked and there’s no truth to the rumor that the letter carrier on that route is related to Louis DeJoy.

 

Ya Gotta Have Heart

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(We know it’s the brain that controls emotions.  But we still act as some did hundreds or thousands of years ago as if the heart  is the center of emotion, don’t we?  The theme song for Titanic probably wouldn’t have become a big seller if it was “My Brain will Go On,” or “Achy Breaky Brain” wouldn’t have done well either.  Your Cheatin’ Brain, Brainbreak Hotel, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Brain Club Band…..you can make a game of this.  Dr. Frank Crane returns to this space today with a meditation about NOT the brain.)

THE HUMAN HEART

The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.

The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering.

The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing in its branches; a few build nests, but most are from far lands north and south, and never come again.

The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalcular life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face.

The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds.

The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world of heaven and hell.

The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.

The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of labor, and the gauds of precedence.

The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.

The human heart is a meadow full of fireflies, a summer western sky of shimmering distant lightnings, a shore set round with flashing lighthouses, far-away voices calling that we cannot understand.

The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and gain, and cannot make out the tune.

The human heart is a great city, teeming with myriad people, full of business and mighty doings, and we wander its crowded streets unutterably alone; we do not know what it is all about.

The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting-room where one knows his way in the dark.

The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunkenness and death.

The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches’ Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-spattered scene of nameless tragedies.

Listen! You will hear nameless tragedies, mandmen’s shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of livers, the curses of pirates.

Bend close!  You will smell the lily fragrance of love, the stench of lust, now odors as exquisite as the very spirit of violets, and now such nauseous repulsions as words cannot tell.

Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black—the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a sea of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universal problem.

God gave us one. Appreciate it. Use it.

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(All of us are blessed with a “thinking machine” that sometimes has to run at a higher level than usual.  Dr. Frank Crane wants to get into our heads and explore some ages-old philosophical issues with his essay on the—)

BRAIN

The most amazing thing about the world is the human brain that appreciates it.

That mass of corrugated gray matter boxed in bone which registers the impressions received from all things, from stars to dust motes, is by far the most wonderful substance of all substances.

What would a tree mean if there were no brain to see it with its eye, to hear it with its ear, and to touch it with its hand?  Nothing. Practically, it would not exist.

There would be no sun if there were no eye, no perfumes if there were no nose, no sounds if there were no ear.

Blot out brains and the universe is extinguished.

There may be other suns in the sky, there may be spirit bodies moving among us, there may be stupendous music swirling around us, all of such quality that we have no organ to perceive them.  For us they do not exist.

A telephone would be a dead thing and usless without a receiver. The brain is the receiver of the universe.

Very wonderful is Paderewski’s performance upon the piano, Raphael’s colors upon canvas, Shakespeare’s words upon paper, and all of the Creator’s glory of landscape and sea view; but not so miraculous as the grayish stuff in our heads that can receive their messages, record them, and translate them into emotions.

It was not such a task to create a world as it was to construct this curious organ that the world can play upon.  For a world with no brain it would be an Ysaye* without a violin.  So also a Wagner opera is surpassed by the brains that can understand it. Newton’s mathematical theses, and Wordsworth’s poetry and Socrates’s reasoning, and Lord Christ’s life truths, greater than these are the people that can grasp them.

My mind is the ultimate miracle.

Long before this brain came into being there were electricity, light, sound, color, and all the phenomena of existence; but actually, the universe was created when I was born and when I die it will be the end of the world.

The whole cosmos, the sum of things, is all in that pulp in the bone-cup at the top if my spine.

More strange yet than our ability to perceive sights and sounds is our capacity for understanding those motions of pure spirit that go on in the other brains. We can see the hope, love, hate, joy, and sorrow of another, interpreting them by words, signs, and other indications.

We can grasp world plans, recondite scientific theories, and the subtlest refinements of thought. We can weep at poetry, laugh at comedy, mourn in sympathy, fear from our own fancies, feel sin and rightness, follow evil or worship God.

Of all jewels found in earth or sea, of all machines made by man’s cunning, of all the incomprehensible works of the Deity, nothing excels the handful of gray substance that functions like a locked-up god in the cranium of “the two-legged animal without feathers.”

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*Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931) was a Belgian violinist, conductor, and composer. In his time he was called the “King of the Violin.”

What is law?

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(Before Dr. Frank Crane became a minister he thought of many other careers. He studied law for a year with a lawyer in Shelbyville, Illinois—not far from where your correspondent grew up—“But two or three visits to the court-room cured me of that…While I loved law as a science or a collection of ideas, I was repelled by the rough-and-tumble of courtrooms” he wrote in an autobiographical essay many years later. But law, universal law, remained part of him and in the wake of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we thought of Dr. Crane’s reflection on—)

LAW

I am Law. I am Nature’s way. I am God’s way.

By me comes order, unity. In my hand I hold three gifts: health, happiness, and success.

Those who do not follow me are devoured by the dogs of disease, misery, and failure.

The ignorant fear me; they run from my face; they tremble at my voice; but the wise love me and seek me forever. I am their desired lover.

Fools think to outwit me and that no son of man has ever done.

I am more clever than the cleverest. I am stronger than the strongest. I am old as God. I never sleep. I never err. I am virile as youth. I am accurate as mathematics. I am beautiful as poetry. I am sweet as music.

Without me there could be no art, no harmony of sounds, no cham of landscape or picture, no government, no life.

I am the secret of goodness. I am the horror of sin.

I am the eternal path, and besides me there is none else. Without me men wander in the labyrinth of death.

Heaven is where I am. Hell is where I am not.

I am efficiency in man. I am loveliness in woman.

I am everywhere: in every wrinkle of the infinite waves of water, in the oak, in the brain, in nourishment, in excreta, in disease, in soundness, in the lover’s clasp, in the corps, in the stars, in the storms.

I whirl. I dance. I flame. I freeze, but always mathematically. For I am more intricate than calculus, more accurate than any instrument.

They that live by me find peace.

They that kiss me find love.

They that walk with me come at last to God.

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Today is what we have

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(By the end of the week our political conventions will have finished, each positively assuring us that the names at the top of the ballot will make us great or build us better, each speaking as if those candidates alone can do these things—as if there are not two other branches of government that could or must  have a say.  Dr. Frank Crane suggests that candidates and their parties and their promises are less important to us the we are to ourselves, not just today but—-)

EVERY DAY

Every day!

In those two words lies the secret of all attainment.

It’s not what we do once, with all our hearts, and with every splendid ounce of strength, that counts so much as the things we’ve been doing every day, whether we felt like it or not.

Every day! Therein is mastery.  The marvelous, velvet, utterly exquisite beauty of such piano-playing of Paderewski’s, or such violin performances as Maud Powell’s—it looks spontaneous but it is the result of many a hateful day’s laborious routine.

Every day! That is the road to perfection.  The speaker who can hold and charm an audience, the debater quick and ready and not to be confused, the baseball player, the woman always socially at ease—everybody, in fact, that can do anything well owes that poise and finish to the slow efforts of every day.

No matter how gifted an actor, how naturally endowed, he cannot be a master without infinite practice.

Young people do not realize the tremendous cumulative power that lies in time.  Take ten years. Say you are twenty. By the time you are thirty what enormous efficiency you might build up if you would only use every day a certain amount of time.

Almost everybody wastes enough hours in ten years to get a doctor’s degree in any university.

In ten years you might be speaking and reading fluently in Spanish or French or Japanese, you might be an authority upon geology, botany, chemistry, English literature, history, or whatever fits your ambition, if you would only be faithful every day.

Every day!  The universe is constructed on routine. The sun rises every day, the stars revolve, the seasons come and go by schedule, your heart beats and your lungs fill and empty as regularly as the clock ticks, every generation of men or of animals is the result of numberless preceding generations, over and over again Nature tries her hand and her matchless perfection is only the stored-up treasure of endless practice.

And in character every day means even more than anywhere else. The most honest man is the man who has been honest every day; the most virtuous woman is she who has behind her present virtue the inertia of a whole life full of virtuous thought and deed; the happiest person is the one who has long practiced being happy, and that soul is coolest and surest in a crisis who every day has schooled himself in self-mastery.

No force is so great in any man as the stored-up power of what he has been doing every day.

(Ignace Paderewski (pronounced Pad-er-efski’) was a Polish statesman, pianist, and composer who, as his country’s new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister signed the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. He was a spokesman for Polish independence who, during a concert tour of the United States, encouraged President Wilson to support an independent Poland as part of the Fourteen Points discussions that led to the treaty. He was 81 when he died in 1941, about two years after Hitler ended Poland’s freedom.

Maud Powell was the first American woman to achieve worldwide notoriety as a violinist. She was among the first instrumentalists to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company’s red seal records, which later became the classical label for RCA Victor’s recordings. Her recordings are still considered a standard for violin performance. She died in 1920, at 52.)

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Us vs. It—part VIII, Laughter as medicine

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From time to time we’ll pass along observations from others that might provide some comfort, some encouragement, or even some black humor that can lift us a little bit. Today we’re going to focus on humor.

These are serious times, indeed, but the Seventeenth Chapter of the Old Testament book of Proverbs reminds us (verse 22): “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

First, this observation: This virus deserves a theme song. We have reached back many decades for a famous Peggy Lee song that we have re-titled:

An Anthem for Social Distancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqNggIve40E

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Former Missourinet reporter Drew Vogel, who now is a nursing home administrator in Ohio, passed along a comment by one of his in-laws before barber and beauty shops were allowed to open in many places: With all the beauty shops closed for the duration, in a month or so we’ll start seeing the REAL color of people’s hair.

It’s not too late for a lot of folks.

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A protestor recently had a sign saying, “Every disaster movie starts with government ignoring a scientist.”

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We saw a tweet the other day from someone called, “Sir Michael:”

Quarantine Diary:

Day 1—I have stocked up on enough non-perishable supplies to last me for months, maybe years, so that I can remain in isolation as long as it takes to see out this pandemic.

Day 1+45 minutes—I am in the supermarket because I want a Twix.

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Another tweet, this one from “JR:”

Day 2 without sports:

Found a lady sitting on my couch yesterday. Apparently she’s my wife. She seems nice.

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Atlantic Magazine recently had an article about why it’s okay to laugh at coronavirus jokes. You can find it at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/humor-laughter-coronavirus-covid19/609184/

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Our dogs think we quit our jobs to spend more time with them. Our cats think we got fired for being the loser they always thought we were.

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The website Fatherly has “28 Coronavirus jokes to retrain your face how to smile.”

We’ll share three. If you think they are sufficiently funny, you can find the rest at https://www.fatherly.com/play/best-coronavirus-jokes/

  1. If there’s a baby boom nine months from now, what will happen in 2033? There will be a whole bunch of quaranteens.
  2. What’sthe difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s the coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
  3. I’lltell you a coronavirus joke now, but you’ll have to wait two weeks to see if you got it.

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Email: 2020 is so weird that the Pentagon just confirmed UFOs exist and it’s barely news.

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A sign of the times: A high school classmate emailed me the other day, “Thirty years ago I was arrested for smoking weed while hanging out with friends. Yesterday I was arrested for hanging out with friends while smoking weed.”

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This is a bad time for introverts. They can’t wait for people to leave the house so they can be alone again.

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Another tweet: Pigeons probably think humans are extinct.

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Somebody told me the other day that newspapers can carry the virus. So I wash my newspaper each day in the kitchen sink while I sing two verses of “Happy Birthday.” Last Saturday’s paper should be dry enough tomorrow to read. If I can get the pages apart.

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Another tweet: This quarantine is really affecting the work force, especially the men. We’re losing $1 for every 79 cents that women are losing.

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I hope my barber shop reopens soon. I haven’t had a haircut since February. Hope the barber doesn’t charge by the pound.

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Some people post humorous comments, signs, or videos on the FACEBOOK pages or other social media pages. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported on a man who has a white board in his yard and he posts messages such as, “I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know.”

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And then there’s editorial cartoonist Gary Varvel of Creators.com, whose defiant cartoon surely will turn into a real product that a lot of us could wear.

In a few months, perhaps a new t-shirt will add “’20 CORONAVIRUS.”

And finally, for this entry, a comment from Max, another friend at the Y, who hopes the pandemic fades before warm weather brings out the ticks that carry Lyme Disease. If it doesn’t, he says, we’ll have Corona and Lyme.   Those of you more familiar with adult drinks than your obedient servant will appreciate the humor, I trust.

I used to say when something happened that would be memorable, if not historic, “That’s something to tell the grandchildren about.” Can’t do that now. The grandchildren are living it. So I’m changing the statement; “That’s something my grandchildren can tell their grandchildren.”

I wear a 2x, by the way.

 

Dr. Crane on the heart of the matter

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(Look, we all know it’s the brain not the heart that controls our emotions. But so what? Can you find anything romantic in a song that says, “If I give my brain to you…,” or “Brain letters in the sand…” or listen to someone pick out single keys on the piano that play “Brain and Soul, I’m so in love with you..”??????? Or do you think you could draw inspiration from a well known painting that should be entitled, “Christ Knocking at Brain’s Door?” Dr. Crane goes to the heart of the mater with—-)

THE HUMAN HEART

The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.

The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering.

The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing it its branches; a few build nests, but most are far from lands north and south, and never come again.

The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalcular life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face.

The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds.

The human heart is an egg, and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell.

The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.

The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of labor, and the gauds of precedence.

The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.

The human heart is a meadow full of fireflies, a summer western sky of shimmering distant lightnings, a shore set round with flashing lighthouses, far-away voices calling that we cannot understand.

The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and again, and cannot make out the tune.

The human heart is a great city, teeming with myriad people, full of business and mighty doings, and we wander its crowded streets unutterably alone; we do not know what it is all about.

The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark

The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunkenness and death.

The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches’ Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-splattered scene of nameless tragedies.

Listen? You will hear mothers’ lullabies, madmen’s shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of lovers, the curses of pirates.

Bent close! You will smell the lily fragrance of love, the stench of lust, now odors as exquisite as the very spirit of violets, and now such nauseous repulsions as words cannot tell.

Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black—the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a seas of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universe.

Dr. Crane and true grit

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“Grit” is a word we don’t hear much these days. Years ago, Grit was an enjoyable weekly newspaper to read at the grandparents’ home in rural Kansas. Grit is still around but is a magazine now and is often found at rural-oriented supply stores.

Sometimes we equate “grit” with courage.

But grit is something else. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth learned as a seventh-grade teacher that IQ wasn’t the only thing that separated struggling students from successful ones. She found that “grit,” which she described as “passion and sustained persistence applied to long-term achievement with no particular concern for rewards or recognition” was a quality that indicated success. She wrote a best-seller about her research, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. The subject also is addressed by Caren Baruch-Feldman and Thomas R. Hoerr in The Grit Guide for Teens.

It is also addressed in direct terms by Dr. Crane.

IT TAKES GRIT

It takes Grit to do anything worth doing.

All real progress is upstream.

All the real crowns—soul-crowns and achievement crowns, not gold crowns—are rewards for fighting.

It takes Grit—

To be Patient,

To keep your Temper,

To improve your Mind,

To Exercise, and keep your Body fit,

To diet, that is, to eat for Health and not for Sport,

To save Money,

To push your business,

To tell the truth,

To keep your mind clean, your Mouth clean, and your Soul clean,

To say No,

To do what you don’t want to do, which means Discipline,

To pay your Debts,

To be Loyal—to yoru ideals, to your Wife, to your Husband, to your Friend, to your Country,

To say “I don’t know,”

To do your own thinking,

To resist the mob,

To be honest, simple, and straight,

And not to worry.

But these things are easy:

To be irritable,

To give way to impulse, to say “I can’t help it,” and to make no effort to control yourself.

To be mentally lazy, read nothing gbut trash, and have no habits of study,

To loaf, and to exercise only when you feel like it,

To eat what you please,

To wait for something to turn up,

To lie, to be disloyal, and to be unclean,

To agree with those you feel to be wrong, just to avoid trouble,

To side-step,

To go in debt, and to say, “Charge it!”

To join something and use partisanship for loyalty,

To go with the crowd,

To acquire a bad habit, and to nurse it along,

To follow your impulses and not your intelligence,

To fill your body with disease, your mind with error, and your soul with evil,

To slump, to pity yourself, to make excuses for yourself, to magnify your ego and ruin your character,

And to commit suicide.

It’s easy going down.

It takes Grit to go up, to get on, and even to keep decent.

Dr. Crane: The Future

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(Dr. Frank Crane, by training a Methodist minister and son of a Methodist minister, became a widely-read newspaper columnist in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. His “Four Minute Essays” appeared in hundreds of newspapers. His New York Times obituary in 1928 noted, “His message was always one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking, and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” Last week, we offer his thoughts on yesterday. As we look ahead to the unpredictability of life, particularly in a campaign year, we offer these thoughts from Dr. Crane on tomorrow and other tomorrows to tome.)

AROUND THE CORNER

What’s around the corner? Something. Whatever it is, I used to be terribly afraid of it when I was a boy.

When I would take a girl home at night after meeting, I would walk out in the street a little, lest if I kept on the sidewalk I would be so close that Something around the Corner would get me. Nothing ever did jump out and grab me, never a ghost, or a boogey man, or a murderer, or anything, though I expected and feared all those boy-years.

And since I have grown up I have discovered that Something around the Corner is believed in by most mortals. It may be accident, or disease or loss or disgrace—or that old fellow himself who lurks around the corner for all of us, and will get us everyone someday—Death.

The Thing around the Corner, it is the skeleton at the feast, the shadow on our sunny day, the nightmare of our sleep, the concealed weapon of destiny, the vague enemy that will not let us bivouac in peace, but makes us always keep our pickets out alert for stealthy attack.

And yet, the Good Things of life are around the Corner. Happiness hides there and springs laughing at us. And the little things that make hearts bright and days glad. Ten of these blessed things have come upon us unaware, to one of them that we have sought and found.

Love, for instance. Don’t you remember how it was with you when it came to you that She really loved you? That wonderful, divine creature, the pearl of the world, that radiant one, the latchet of whose shoes you were not worthy to unloose—what could she see in so commonplace a mucker as you? O miracle of miracles!

The there’s Christmas, Corner of all corners, with what amazing secrets and what crowded bevy of giggles and whispers, and loving thoughts!

But, especially the Little Things are they that make the sum of our contentment, and they are nearly all surprises. If we could foresee them we wouldn’t appreciate them.

It’s not the big Olympian gods that love us most; it’s the little fairies of circumstance, the elves and pyxies of happy accident that flutter along the ways of men.

The best things of life come unexpected upon you. From the time when you were presented with your first pair of trousers, or Uncle Ed bought you home a toy pistol, down to just yesterday, when a friend paid you back the ten dollars you lent him and never expected to see again, an all through your life, your successes in business, you rarest friends, your most palatable food, your most enjoyable excursions, your most interesting books, the remarks some one made about you that most tickled your vanity, the most welcome visitors—almost all of them were not planned and worked for, but jumped at you from around the corner.

And around that last Corner, where we turn to travel the Unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly Thong of Evil, but a smiling-faced one, with welcome in His hands and the Morning Star for me.