Wise Up!
Good Deeds
By David Bruce
Athens NEWS Contributor
March 3, 2008
• Poet Ezra Pound suffered from mental illness late in his life, and he began to sympathize with fascists. During World War II, he lived in Italy and spoke out in favor of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. When Italy fell to the Allies, Mr. Pound was arrested and put on trial for treason. Mr. Pound’s attorney came to E.E. Cummings, a poet and friend of Mr. Pound’s (and definitely not a fascist sympathizer), to ask for help. Mr. Pound’s money was under the control of the U.S. government, and his wife’s money could not be taken out of England due to wartime restrictions. Mr. Cummings had $1,000 that he had earned from selling a painting, and he gave the money to Mr. Pound’s attorney, saying that he (Mr. Cummings) didn’t need the money. Actually, Mr. Cummings did need the money. His wife had big medical bills due to rheumatoid arthritis, and Mr. Cummings rarely earned money from his painting. Mr. Pound was found to be too mentally unstable to be tried, and he was committed to a mental hospital, from which he was eventually released.
• As young adults studying acting at Julliard in New York City, Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve became friends, and they promised that they would come to each other’s aid if either of them needed help. Of course, Mr. Williams became a famous comedian and actor, and Mr. Reeve became a famous actor who was best known for playing Superman in a series of big-budget movies. Mr. Reeve also started competing in equestrian events, and he was severely injured in a fall at one of these competitions. Mr. Reeve had good insurance, but even good insurance may run out when an accident is severe, and Mr. Reeve’s accident was severe, putting him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and forcing him to rely on a breathing tube. Mr. Williams, as he had promised, came to Mr. Reeve’s aid, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for Mr. Reeve’s medical expenses and care.
• Good things can happen because of celebrities. Singer Avril Lavigne once wore a Home Hardware T-shirt on television — when she was growing up, her local Home Hardware outlet had sponsored her hockey team. Many, many fans saw her on television and requested similar T-shirts from the Home Hardware in Napolee, Canada, where she had grown up. The Napolee Home Hardware outlet sold 20,000 T-shirts and donated money to some of Avril’s favorite charities. Later, she wore a T-shirt from an elementary school in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in her music video for “Sk8er Boi.” The school sold many, many T-shirts and used the profits to buy new computers. And Avril’s drummer, Matthew Brann, supports the Durham chapter of Autism Chapter Ontario. He helps bring awareness to the organization by displaying its logo on his drums at concerts.
• Beatrix Potter once heard of a tailor who needed to finish an elegant coat so that he could deliver it the next morning. Unfortunately, he was exhausted from working on the coat and went home to sleep before he could finish his work. Fortunately, he was a good master and his apprentices worked on the coat all night as a surprise for him. When the tailor returned to his shop the next morning, he discovered that the coat was finished except for one buttonhole. In the buttonhole was a piece of paper bearing this message: “No more twist.” (Twist was a special thread used for finishing buttonholes.) Ms. Potter visited the tailor shop, took notes, and made the story into a children’s book: “The Tailor of Gloucester.” (In Ms. Potter’s story, some friendly mice finish making the coat, except for one buttonhole.)
• Some Gentiles helped Jews during the Holocaust. Unfortunately, we don’t know the full names of some of these Gentiles. For example, in Kreuzen lived a washerwoman named Frau Schmidt, who cleaned the home of a Jewish doctor and his family for years. On “Kristallnacht” the Gestapo arrested the doctor and sent him to the Dachau concentration camp. The doctor’s family left their home and hid in a neighbor’s home. Each day, Frau Schmidt left a basket of food for them. Another example: Christine and Robert were bakers. When shopkeepers were forbidden by Nazi law to sell to Jews, Christine and Robert continued to bake challah, a bread eaten by many Jews on the Sabbath, and they continued to secretly deliver the challah to Jews for their Shabbos meal.
• At the 2008 Academy Awards, a low-budget Irish film titled “Once” won an Oscar for Best Song: “Falling Strongly.” Glen Hansard made a wonderful short speech in which he urged the audience to make art, but Markéta Irglová’s speech was unheard because music started playing. In an act of great sensitivity, Oscars host Jon Stewart brought Ms. Irglová back on stage so she could make her speech and urge the audience to dare to dream. Mr. Stewart then joked that when the two Oscar winners were backstage, Mr. Hansard had wanted the two Oscars to kiss. Ms. Irglová objected, “They’re both guys,” and Mr. Hansard argued, “But it’s Hollywood.”
• 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.
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