TITLE: "The One Form of Poverty That Should Be Shunned"
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 30, 2016  8:43 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
In her essay "The Importance of Being Scared", poet Wislawa
Szymborska talked about the fairy tales of Hans Christian
Andersen, which were often scary in ways that are out of
sync with modern sensibilities.  Of Andersen, she wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 He didn't believe that you should try to be good because
 it pays (as today's moral tales insistently advertise,
 though it doesn't necessarily turn out that way in real
 life), but because evil stems from intellectual and
 emotional stuntedness and is the one form of poverty
 that should be shunned.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I love that phrase: "the one form of poverty that should be
shunned", as well as Andersen's prescription.

I need to read more Szymborska.  She is often quite funny.
<A HREF="http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/personal/reading/szymborska-reading.html">
   This book review</A>
quotes a passage from the review of a book on caves that
made me smile:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 The first to discover caves were of course those animals
 who could find their way in the dark.  Cavemen, who had
 already lost this gift, couldn't venture too far into
 their caves.  They had to stick to the edges.  It's not
 that they didn't have the nerve, they just didn't have
 flashlights.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

That joke hits close to home in my work as a programmer and
teacher, and even as department head.  Sometimes, I don't
need more nerve.  I need a flashlight.
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