The Lights in the Habour Don't Shine for me - I'm like a lost ship adrift in the sea

 

Drawing by me - mixed media - Acrylic on canvas + Oil pastel

 

Atoms

I may be wrong but from what I understand no matter how hard we try to differentiate among ourselves (and look down on people who are different from us), we are all made up of the same basic kinds of atoms......and they really get recycled in every sense of the word......they are virtually indestructible and it is thought that the atoms we are made up of passed through several stars before miraculously combining to make each of us, I wrote this poem with this in mind.

Years came and years went

We were born again

But though many eons passed away

We couldn't comprehend

Until one day the Sun burnt out

And we became stardust

When the dust collided

Another world was born

This world formed an ocean

And the ocean formed a soup

From this primordial soup of life

Came a terrible coup

We kept on quarreling every day

Till there was little left

It never dawned on us

We were all just atoms at best

George Grosz: Satirist of a Broken Age

George Grosz (1893–1959) was a German painter, draftsman, and caricaturist whose biting satire and scathing social commentary made him one of the most distinctive voices of the Weimar Republic. Known for his sharp lines, grotesque exaggerations, and uncompromising critique of society, Grosz chronicled the turbulence of early 20th-century Europe with both humor and brutality.

Born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin, Grosz grew up in a rapidly modernizing yet politically unstable Germany. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and later at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts, where he absorbed influences ranging from German Expressionism to Futurism. In 1916, he anglicized his name to “George Grosz” in a symbolic rejection of nationalism during World War I. Conscripted into the army during World War I, Grosz experienced the chaos and senselessness of modern warfare firsthand. His deep disillusionment shaped his lifelong opposition to militarism and authoritarianism. After the war, he became involved with the Berlin Dada movement, which embraced absurdity and provocation as a response to a world shattered by violence.

Grosz also joined the Communist Party for a time, channeling his anger into art that exposed class inequality, corruption, and the failures of capitalism. His works from the 1920s often portray decadent bourgeois figures, lecherous businessmen, and war profiteers, depicted as grotesque caricatures in a morally bankrupt society. 

Grosz developed a distinctive visual style characterized by:

Caricature and exaggeration: Figures often appear distorted, their greed, cruelty, or stupidity laid bare.

Urban imagery: His Berlin was a city of sleazy cabarets, corrupt politicians, and desperate workers.

Sharp draughtsmanship: Influenced by comics, street posters, and advertising, Grosz employed clean, decisive lines with biting precision.

Key works such as The Eclipse of the Sun (1926) and Pillars of Society (1926) illustrate his critique of power structures, showing politicians and elites as grotesque puppets complicit in exploitation and war.

With the rise of the Nazis, Grosz—whose art was labeled “degenerate”—emigrated to the United States in 1933. In New York, he taught at the Art Students League and shifted toward more traditional painting, exploring landscapes and still lifes. Although his later work was less politically radical, Grosz continued to wrestle with themes of human folly and destruction. George Grosz remains a central figure in the history of modern art for his fearless social critique and innovative fusion of political satire with fine art. His unflinching depictions of hypocrisy, greed, and violence resonate as both historical documents of Weimar Germany and timeless warnings about the fragility of democracy.

Oil Pastel Drawing

 

Wandering the Island Within - A Travel Memoir

Hi Everyone, read this humorous and thoughtful travel memoir by copying and pasting this link in your browser: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FNJH9BCZ

It's an eBook and can be read on your phone or other device. It's $2.99, or approximately Rs. 903, but even if you don't buy the book, please take a moment to read the free sample chapter. Also, don't forget to share with friends. 

Charles Schwab

 

Charles Schwab (1862-1939) was an American industrialist. Under his leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second largest steel maker in the United States, and one of the most important heavy manufacturers in the world. Schwab, who received only a modest education, worked briefly as a grocery clerk before he took a job as a laborer in Andrew Carnegie's steelworks. He soon became the manager of the Thomson works.

In 1892 Andrew Carnegie appointed Schwab to heal the wounds between labor and management and get the Homestead plant back into production after the bloody strike there. So greatly did Schwab improve labour and community relations at Homestead while simultaneously increasing production efficiency through technological advances that in 1897—at the age of 35—Charles M. Schwab became president of the Carnegie Steel Company at an annual compensation in excess of $1,000,000.

In his bestselling book "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Dale Carnegie writes as follows: "One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year was Charles Schwab. He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight years old. Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did."

"Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words - words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live them:

"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people," said Schwab, "the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise."

Schwab eventually became very rich, but sadly for a human relations genius, he fell into bad days in the last decade of his life. Schwab became notorious for his "fast lane" lifestyle, which included opulent parties and high-stakes gambling. He built "Riverside", the most ambitious private house ever built in New York. Schwab also owned a 44-room summer estate on 1,000 acres in Loretto, Pennsylvania, called "Immergrün". Such unwise investments, and a lifestyle too lavish even for his enormous fortune, finally took their toll. The stock market crash of 1929 finished off what years of wanton spending had started. He could no longer afford the taxes on "Riverside," and it was seized by creditors. He had offered to sell the mansion at a huge loss but there were no buyers. At his death ten years later, Schwab's holdings in Bethlehem Steel were virtually worthless, and he was over US$300,000 in debt. He spent his last years in a small apartment.

Andrew Carnegie

 

Andrew Carnegie (1837-1919), was a United States industrialist and philanthropist who was the world's richest man during his time. After making a great fortune in the iron and steel industry, he distributed most of it in gifts and endowments for the good of mankind. Carnegie gave about $350,000,000 to build libraries, advance education and science, promote world peace, and to support other cultural and welfare work. He once said "no man can become rich without himself enriching others."

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. After his father, a weaver, lost his job, the family migrated in 1848 to Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh). Young Carnegie, then a boy of 11, worked first in a cotton mill at $1.20 a week. When he was 14 he became a telegraph messenger boy. Two years later having taught himself to send and receive messages, he was made a telegraph operator at $4.00 a week. In 1853 Carnegie became a telegraph operator and secretary to Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. During the next 12 years Carnegie advanced steadily until he succeeded Scott as superintendent of the Pittsburgh division. When Scott was named the assistant secretary of war, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he took Carnegie to Washington with him to help direct military railways and telegraphs for the Union.

Carnegie returned to Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Railroad before the end of the war. Already he had begun the investments that were to be the basis of his immense fortune. In the 1850's he had bought stock in the first company to make sleeping cars. Before the Civil War was over, Carnegie was reaping dividends from an oil land investment in Pennsylvania. Realizing that iron and steel would play an ever greater part in the American economy, Carnegie resigned from the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865 to give all his energy to this new industry. He had already helped to found the Keystone Bridge Company, and had organized the Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces (1863-64) . Now he established the Union Iron Mills.

On a visit to Great Britain Carnegie noticed that the British were using steel rather than iron for rails. He introduced the Bessemer process into his mills in 1868, and was thus able to compete with British steel manufactures- then the worlds leaders. In 1873 he established the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Mills, and within 16 years United States production overtook the British output. In 1899 he merged all his holdings into one organization, the Carnegie Steel Company. By 1900 it was producing a fourth of the country's steel.

Wishing to retire, Carnegie in 1901 sold his company to the newly formed United States Steel Corporation, headed by J. Pierpont Morgan and Elbert Henry Gary. For his share Carnegie received $250,000,000 in 5 per cent 50-year gold bonds. Now Carnegie could give more time to his major interests - reading, writing, friends, travel, and spending his money for public purposes. In 1889 he had written in an essay, "The Gospel of Wealth," that a rich man was merely a "trustee" of his fortune - that it was his duty to distribute it for "for the improvement of mankind."

The rest of his life Carnegie spent in putting his conviction into practice. His first act, in 1901, was to give the employees of the Carnegie Company $5,000,000 in the form of a pension and benefit fund. He gave a library to his native town, Dumfermline. He followed this by giving a public library and hall to Allegheny City, his first home in the United States. Later he gave many millions of dollars for libraries. He built Peace Palace at The Hague in the Netherlands, the Pan-American Union building in Washington, D. C., and Carnegie Hall in New York. He contributed to Scottish universities and set up a trust for the town of Dunfermline. (Carnegie and his wife spent many summers at "Skibo Castle" on their estate in Scotland.) His largest gifts were to the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Carnegie's writings include Triumphant Democracy (1886), in which he urged Great Britain to become a republic; The Empire of Business (1902); and Problems of Today (1909). He also wrote a number of travel books and many magazine articles. His autobiography was published in 1920.

H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, but is best known now for his early science fiction novels including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The War in the Air (1907) among many others and also his comic novels. Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. His science fiction novels revealed him as a writer of marked originality and an immense fecundity of ideas. He also wrote many short stories. During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.

John Higgs states: Wells' genius was his ability to create a stream of brand new, wholly original stories out of thin air. Originality was Wells' calling card. In a six-year stretch from 1895 to 1901, he produced a stream of what he called “scientific romance” novels, This was a dazzling display of new thought, endlessly copied since. A book like The War of the Worlds inspired every one of the thousands of alien invasion stories that followed. It burned its way into the psyche of mankind and changed us all forever .

Wells' earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English Society as a whole.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American poet and educator. His works include “Paul Revere’s Ride”, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was one of the fireside poets from New England. He studied at Bowdoin College and became a professor at Bowdoin and later at Harvard College. His first poetry collections were “Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing.

Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality. He was the most popular poet of his day. As a friend wrote, “no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime. Many of his poems helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”. He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. Longfellow had become one of the first American celebrities and was popular in Europe. The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States.

However, Longfellow’s popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th century, as academics focused attention on other poets such as Walt Whitman. In the 20th century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted: “Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow’s popular rhymings.” Poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded that “Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career…nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics.

Poet Walt Whitman considered him an imitator of European forms but praised his ability to reach a popular audience as “the expressor of common themes - of the little songs of the masses". Lewis Mumford said that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect. Toward the end of his life, contemporaries considered him more of a children’s poet, as many of his readers were children. A reviewer in 1848 accused Longfellow of creating a “goody-two-shoes kind of literature…slipshod, sentimental stories told in the style of the nursery, beginning in nothing and ending in nothing”. However, an editor of the Boston Evening Transcript wrote, “Whatever the miserable envy of trashy criticism may write against Longfellow, one thing is most certain, no American poet is more read”.

Hi Everyone, I published a science fiction - short story book, on Amazon KDP. It's an eBook and can be read on the phone or other device.

Please copy paste the following link on the browser: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLWSZJSH

It's only $ 0.99 or about 297 Rupees. Even if you don't buy, please click and read the free sample first story. Also, don't forget to share with friends.