I mistakenly pressed “Send” instead of “Return” before I was through editing this comment. I was not able to properly encase in quotation marks the words of others that appear at the base of the statute. Nor was I able to properly punctuate it where needed. My apologies.
It should have continued: The plaques around the statute note that “[t]hese three - Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb - strove to create a vibrant and distinctive intellectual climate in Texas, and their influence reached far beyond the state. This monument has been erected to celebrate their friendship, their enlightened spirit and their love for Barton Springs.”
The Walter Prescott Webb plaque quotes him as saying “Civilization shouts, gives orders, writes rules, puts man in institutions, and intimidates him with a thousand irritating directives. In return it offers him protection, soul salvation, and a living if he can find it. Nature looks down on him and broods in silence. Its noises of running streams and wind in the trees are its own, not directed at but soothing to him because he heard them before he heard the noises of civilization. Walter Prescott Webb, 1888-1963.”
This quote I think is relevant to Professor Brands’ essay.
The Roy Bedichek plaque quotes him as saying “I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will, wander over these same hills inhaling the same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill out over the green fields. Roy Bedichek, 1878-1959.”
This captures my own feelings about this place, over a half century after Prof. Bedichek’s death.
So accept the above for what it is, a very rough draft.
However, I wish to add a historical footnote that, to the best of my recollection, the phenomenon of bare breasted female swimmers and sun bathers did not occur at Barton Springs until 1969 or 1970, after Woodstock. But as a respected friend of mine, who while ushering her young children and their cousins from the shallow end, where those bathers usually spread their towels, to the middle and deeper end which was more traditional, and telling them not to stare, was told by one of her young wards: “Aunt ___. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
That 20th century juvenile philosophy, spoken some 200 years after Rousseau wrote, says something. After 50 years of first hearing the story, I am still trying to figure out why it resonates.
I am surprised that this essay of Professor Brands has not provoked a single comment although, as I write, there are at least 10 “likes.” It brings to the reader’s mind 18th century philosophical thought surely on the minds of our Founding Fathers as they crafted our great documents in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It brings 18th century French and Russian history to the front, with a little theology thrown in. It latches on to American economic history, securities law, criminal and election law. And perhaps draws from a little anthropological sociology. Yet, no comments. So I will.
I do because its argument uses as an example one of my favorite places, Barton Springs. I learned to swim there.
Outside the Bathhouse, outside the chain link fence, facing away from the pool, is a sculpture created by Glenna Goodacre, known as “Philosopher’s Rock,”depicting a shelf of limestone inside that chain link fence that once rose out of the glittering water at the edge of Barton Springs, where the naturalist Roy Bedichek and the chronicler and folklorist J. Frank Dobie and their friend, historian Walter Prescott Webb (who was not a swimmer), sat in the sun and talked about everything from classic works of literature to tales of lost Spanish treasure. The plaques around the statute note that “[t]hese three - Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb - strove to create a vibrant and distinctive intellectual climate in Texas, and their influence reached far beyond the state. This monument has been erected to celebrate their friendship, their enlightened spirit and their love for Barton Springs. Sculpture by Glenna Goodacre Site setting by Stephen K. Domigan
Walter Prescott Webb Plaque) Civilization shouts, gives orders, writes rules, puts man in institutions, and intimidates him with a thousand irritating directives. In return it offers him protection, soul salvation, and a living if he can find it. Nature looks down on him and broods in silence. Its noises of running streams and wind in the trees are its own, not directed at but soothing to him because he heard them before he heard the noises of civilization. Walter Prescott Webb, 1888-1963 (Roy Bedichek Plaque) I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will, wander over these same hills inhaling the same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill out over the green fields. Roy Bedichek, 1878-1959
I mistakenly pressed “Send” instead of “Return” before I was through editing this comment. I was not able to properly encase in quotation marks the words of others that appear at the base of the statute. Nor was I able to properly punctuate it where needed. My apologies.
It should have continued: The plaques around the statute note that “[t]hese three - Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb - strove to create a vibrant and distinctive intellectual climate in Texas, and their influence reached far beyond the state. This monument has been erected to celebrate their friendship, their enlightened spirit and their love for Barton Springs.”
The Walter Prescott Webb plaque quotes him as saying “Civilization shouts, gives orders, writes rules, puts man in institutions, and intimidates him with a thousand irritating directives. In return it offers him protection, soul salvation, and a living if he can find it. Nature looks down on him and broods in silence. Its noises of running streams and wind in the trees are its own, not directed at but soothing to him because he heard them before he heard the noises of civilization. Walter Prescott Webb, 1888-1963.”
This quote I think is relevant to Professor Brands’ essay.
The Roy Bedichek plaque quotes him as saying “I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will, wander over these same hills inhaling the same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill out over the green fields. Roy Bedichek, 1878-1959.”
This captures my own feelings about this place, over a half century after Prof. Bedichek’s death.
So accept the above for what it is, a very rough draft.
However, I wish to add a historical footnote that, to the best of my recollection, the phenomenon of bare breasted female swimmers and sun bathers did not occur at Barton Springs until 1969 or 1970, after Woodstock. But as a respected friend of mine, who while ushering her young children and their cousins from the shallow end, where those bathers usually spread their towels, to the middle and deeper end which was more traditional, and telling them not to stare, was told by one of her young wards: “Aunt ___. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
That 20th century juvenile philosophy, spoken some 200 years after Rousseau wrote, says something. After 50 years of first hearing the story, I am still trying to figure out why it resonates.
I am surprised that this essay of Professor Brands has not provoked a single comment although, as I write, there are at least 10 “likes.” It brings to the reader’s mind 18th century philosophical thought surely on the minds of our Founding Fathers as they crafted our great documents in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It brings 18th century French and Russian history to the front, with a little theology thrown in. It latches on to American economic history, securities law, criminal and election law. And perhaps draws from a little anthropological sociology. Yet, no comments. So I will.
I do because its argument uses as an example one of my favorite places, Barton Springs. I learned to swim there.
Outside the Bathhouse, outside the chain link fence, facing away from the pool, is a sculpture created by Glenna Goodacre, known as “Philosopher’s Rock,”depicting a shelf of limestone inside that chain link fence that once rose out of the glittering water at the edge of Barton Springs, where the naturalist Roy Bedichek and the chronicler and folklorist J. Frank Dobie and their friend, historian Walter Prescott Webb (who was not a swimmer), sat in the sun and talked about everything from classic works of literature to tales of lost Spanish treasure. The plaques around the statute note that “[t]hese three - Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb - strove to create a vibrant and distinctive intellectual climate in Texas, and their influence reached far beyond the state. This monument has been erected to celebrate their friendship, their enlightened spirit and their love for Barton Springs. Sculpture by Glenna Goodacre Site setting by Stephen K. Domigan
Walter Prescott Webb Plaque) Civilization shouts, gives orders, writes rules, puts man in institutions, and intimidates him with a thousand irritating directives. In return it offers him protection, soul salvation, and a living if he can find it. Nature looks down on him and broods in silence. Its noises of running streams and wind in the trees are its own, not directed at but soothing to him because he heard them before he heard the noises of civilization. Walter Prescott Webb, 1888-1963 (Roy Bedichek Plaque) I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will, wander over these same hills inhaling the same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill out over the green fields. Roy Bedichek, 1878-1959