November 20, 2020 – davidbruceblog #2

Good Deeds

• After the death of her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, punk rocker Patti Smith was understandably devastated. One person who helped her to move on was Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who telephoned her and advised, “Let go of the spirit of the departed and continue your life’s celebration.” He felt that performing would be good for her and invited her to go with him to Ann Arbor to read their poetry at a benefit to raise money for the Jewel Heart, a Tibetan Buddhist organization. Before extending the invitation to Ms. Smith, Mr. Ginsberg had already sold out all 4,000 seats available, so he wasn’t inviting Ms. Smith to perform so he could get a big audience; instead, his invitation was one of compassion and generosity.

• When African-American author James Baldwin was growing up, a white teacher named Orilla “Bill” Miller encouraged him by taking him to plays and movies. And when young James’ adoptive father, David Baldwin, had a hard time getting work, Ms. Miller helped in a big way by giving the Baldwin family gifts of such necessities as food. In part because of Ms. Miller, James did not fall into the trap of hating all white people. A grown-up James Baldwin once said, “It is certainly partly because of her that I never really managed to hate white people.”

• As a little girl, Emma Lazarus was given a good education, but because her parents were wealthy, she learned little about lower-class people. After seeing her parents give money to a woman, she asked why they had done that. They explained that the woman was poor, and young Emma, not understanding, had to ask them what the word “poor” meant. Later, the adult Ms. Lazarus became a champion of poor people. Her poem “The New Colossus” graces the base of the Statue of Liberty.

• Novelists can be brave. When Charles Dickens was 53 years old, he was traveling by train when the engineer received a wrong signal and crashed. Mr. Dickens’ train car teetered above some wrecked train cars that were lying in a ravine. Mr. Dickens was able to get out and help some of the injured by bringing them water, and later, when he remembered that he had left the manuscript of his book Our Mutual Friend in the teetering train car, he climbed back in and retrieved it.

• This anecdote is touching rather than funny. In the early 1960s, poet Allen Ginsberg and his sometimes lover Peter Orlovsky took a trip to India. There they found a man who was almost dead from starvation and around whom flies were buzzing. His eyes were yellow with pus, and his wounds were festering. They took care of the man and paid for his medical care, and the man became healthy again. Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Orlovsky also did this for some other starving people.

• When Yousuf Karsh set up an appointment to take Norman Mailer’s photograph, he was warned that the author of The Naked and the Dead was someone to be feared: an enfant terrible. However, he found Mr. Mailer to be a very warm person. After the photography session was over, Mr. Mailer even drove his car in front of Mr. Karsh’s car for several miles so that Mr. Karsh would be sure to take the correct road back to New York City.

• William Weightman, a curate and a friend to the family of the Brontës — including Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre; Emily, author of Wuthering Weights; and Anne, author of Agnes Grey — was a kind man. He discovered that none of the three women had ever received a valentine, so he wrote a poem and made a card for each sister. To mail them, he walked 10 miles!

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