The Joy of Writing a Column

“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anyone I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”  Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin is a much more famous columnist than I’ll ever be, and I do admire him. He is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and has even written novels--a job I’ve never even tried. I must say, however, that I disagree with what he says about needing to feel rage.

I almost never feel rage, so it certainly isn’t a part of my job with the Enquirer. I write about subjects I care about, and I truly try to be positive and encouraging because I would at least hope to influence my readers to want to make their lives not only a bit more informed but also more fulfilling and enjoyable.

Moreover, I feel nothing but gratitude that the Enquirer has allowed me to compose well over 1,000 articles and sentencing reports and close to 300 columns. I’ve worked for them part-time for 16 years, ever since I retired from teaching English at Olivet College, and I’ve loved it the whole time.

Because I now do a column for the paper every Friday, I really appreciate it when my friends suggest subjects for me, though of course I don’t always feel that I can take their suggestions. For example, one dear old friend from college wanted me to do a column about a prisoner out in Minnesota. My friend visits and admires him, but I don’t know him personally, and after I read about his various crimes, I just didn’t feel comfortable trying to emphasize his intelligence and good character.

I must say that my favorite positive subjects for my columns are certainly not about people’s crimes. It’s rather about all of the music that I play on my violin for older folks. Along with English, which was my career, music has always been my passion, and each time I’ve done a column about my love of music, I’ve received really nice, positive responses.

I’ll be 75 in December, and my memory has gone way downhill since I had open heart surgery and a stroke. It definitely takes more time to write my columns these days, but I still seem to be able to do it and still enjoy it. In fact, my very nice boss, Charles Carlson, humorously said I could keep writing columns forever.

My sweetheart, whom I plan to marry on Dec. 3, 2039, when I turn 100 and he turns 107 1/2, always reads my columns in advance. He had a fine education in England and is downright fussy about proper grammar and language. Even though he was an engineer and I was an English professor, he often has good suggestions for slight changes.

Yet another thing that I appreciate about the paper is that they put a little picture of me by my columns each week. I’m no beauty, but sometimes people I don’t even know come up to me and say they feel they recognize me through my photo and like my columns.

Finally, I’d be glad to get more suggestions for future columns. You can email me at lindajoscott@gmail.com or call me at 269 763 3041 with your ideas.

Perhaps you would even allow me to come and interview you, and I’d really like to do just that.

Two Memorable Funerals

I am generally a positive column writer and would rather write columns about happy subjects you would all enjoy and feel good about.

This column, however, is about two memorable funerals two days in a row. On Tuesday, Oct. 14, I attended the Catholic service for Helen M.Cox Lothamer at the large church in Charlotte. Helen was a wonderful woman who had 15 children, 46 grandchildren and 52 great grandchildren. After having all of those births and raising all of those children, she has happily stayed in close touch with all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren all of these years and lived a healthy, happy life all the way up to the age of 96.

Thirteen of her children are still alive and 12 of them were at the service along with most of her grandchildren and great grandchildren as well as dozens and dozens of her children’s and grandchildren’s spouses and other relatives.

I was honored to get to play my violin with Helen’s talented pianist daughter, Susanne at the service. I have played for a number of occasions over the years with her, including their family weddings, funerals and parties, but this one was especially sad but memorable for both of us.

And, speaking of large numbers, there were almost 30 priests there, for Helen Lothamer’s second child, James Lothamer, who conducted the service has been a priest for many years and is a close friend of many others of his profession.

Then the very next day I attended another equally unforgettable service for Samuel David Carpenter, who was an outstanding lawyer with Vandervoort, Christ and Fisher Law firm here in Battle Creek.

This was also a huge funeral with beautiful reminiscences from all four of Sam’s children as well as one from his nephew, Dave Carpenter, and another from a law partner and close friend, Chris T. Christ. There was even a wonderful video tribute called “A Life of Faith” about Carpenter’s many ways of  sharing his remarkable talents and his beliefs with many people in this area.

As a teenager, Sam was successful in statewide Ohio competitions for his performance on violin and ukulele. Music remained a very important part for Sam’s life not only because of his own talents but also because his loving wife of 55 years, Helga Frank Carpenter, was a professional piano teacher.  

As an adult, Sam played a piano anywhere and anytime he could find one, in homes, churches, restaurants, hotels and malls and in many senior living facilities. He played piano by ear and when asked about his favorite song, he replied that he would be happy to play any song he knew. As he said, “With so many beautiful melodies, I could play all day and never even scratch the surface.”

I certainly don’t claim to be nearly the wonderful person Sam was, but we did share a common love to play music anytime we could. I had my violin with me at his funeral because I was going afterwards to Northpointe to play for their 15th anniversary. So at the reception at the Battle Creek Country Club, I was able to play people’s requests. This wouldn’t be appropriate at most funeral receptions, but many people who loved Sam seemed grateful that I played in his memory. Some of them even said that Sam would have loved to play with me if he could have been there.

Funerals are of course sad occasions, but both of these were also extremely inspiring and memorable for us all.

The Appeal of Elephants

Dogs, cats and horses are usually considered people’s favorite
animals, but elephants are certainly one of the most lovable ones,
too.

For one thing elephants seem extremely empathetic when their kind
suffer and die. Also, they can certainly be known longer, for they
often live up to the age of 70 or so.

Though there are of course many elephants in zoos and though their
early relatives were  in North and South America thousands of years
ago, most native elephants these days are in Africa and Asia. It’s
interesting that those two groups are different enough that scientists
still disagree as to whether they are members of the same species or
not.

African elephants have bigger ears and heads and concave backs,
whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears and heads and convex backs.

Elephants in Africa stand 10 to 13 feet high and weigh between 8,800
and 14,400 pounds,  whereas those in Asian stand seven to 11 feet high
and weigh between 6,600 and 11,000 pounds.

Also, the African ones have two finger extensions at the tip of their
trunk, while the Asian ones have just one, and whereas African
elephants have 21 pairs of ribs, Asian elephants have 19 or 20 pairs.

One of the most amazing parts of any elephant is its trunk. Elephants
not only breathe through their trunks, but they also collect their
huge amounts of food with them before putting it all in their mouths.
In addition, they can hold more than two gallons of water in them  at
a time. Yet their trunks can also do such a delicate job as wiping
their eyes and even flirting with the other sex.

Those trunks are extremely long, reaching up to 23 feet in the air,
but they can also work below ground, obtaining water under sand or
mud.

Another amazing fact about elephants is that they don’t just grow baby
teeth and adult teeth, as we humans do. They get new teeth about six
times during a typical lifetime. It’s also strange that those new
teeth first grow in the back of the mouth and then move forward to
replace the older teeth.  Don’t we older folks wish we could keep
getting new teeth, too!

It’s also interesting that hough elephants are mainly walkers and
runners, they can swim for up to six hours without a break.

And then there’s the Elephants’ intelligence, which is quite
impressive, but then their brains weighs 10-12 pounds compared to ours
which weigh just four pounds.

Pregnancy for elephant mothers takes two years, and most have just one
baby at a time. At birth these babies already weigh about 260 pounds
and are about 33 inches long.

Elephants are much respected by certain religions. Some Buddhists, for
example, believe that Buddha himself was a white elephant before he
was reincarnated as the great leader of his faith.

Perhaps the nicest aspect of elephants is that unlike many other large
animals, they are extremely friendly and generally non-aggressive. I
recommend a delightful story on line, at
http://www.wimp.com/elephantdog/ which tells of the warm, loving
friendship between an elephant and a dog.

It is truly sad, these days, that elephants are killed far too often
simply for ivory. Americans are apparently especially guilty of buying
it, and there is a campaign I hope you will join to try to stop this
practice at http://www.bloodyivory.org/news.

Michigan's Long, Long History

Did you know that our state has been “in the making” for about two billion years? I learned that from a book by Dr. F. Clever Bald, a history professor who got a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He taught for many years in various schools here in our state, including teaching army, navy and marine trainees at the U. of M.

His book, though it is called “Michigan in Four Centuries,” actually starts out much, much earlier, when, “Elephants Walked in Michigan.” “If you had lived in Michigan eight or ten thousand years ago,” he says at the beginning of his book, “You would very likely have seen mammoths in the upland region.”

As he then explains, “The mammoth was a kind of elephant. It’s body was covered with long, coarse hair and the ivory tusks, and it was . . . . somewhat larger than today’s elephants.” In the lower part of the state, he went on to say, “You certainly would have seen mastodons, which looked much like mammoths and were more numerous.”

We might even have seen a whale or two, for they existed in various deep rivers here in our state and, like all of the animals mentioned above, can still be identified by their fossils.

Indians may have came to Michigan as early as several thousand years ago, certainly long before our first European arrived in about 1620. The Chippewa were mostly in the upper peninsula, the Ottawa in the upper parts of our lower peninsula, and the Potawatomi in the south from Lake Michigan to Detroit.

The Indians were practical, for when they killed animals, they used every part of them. The skin went for clothing and the meat for food. I even read that “front paws and tails were considered special delicacies.”

Dogs were also favorites for eating. Though they had a different concept from ours of how to treat dogs, Indians were nevertheless very loving and very religious. As Bald put it, “Spirits inhabited the bodies of men and animals, and they were also present in trees, rocks, and streams. There were spirits in the sun rain, thunder lightning, and wind.”

Bald even says that they believed the following: “A man’s health or sickness and his good or bad luck in hunting, fishing, planting, or war was dependent on the favors of spirits.” Apparently, though Indians were religious, they didn’t believe in a Hell. According to Bald, there was no punishment after death: “Every spirit went to the pleasant country in the West.”

Medicine Men in each tribe were expected to help Indians who felt they couldn’t obtain what they needed for themselves. As Bald puts it, “a medicine man was priest, sorcerer or physician, as the occasion demanded.”

This fascinating information about earliest Michigan and early Indians is all in the first 19 pages of Bald’s 500-page book about our state.

As he explains, though we only have fossils of the earliest animals, we have many roads which were originally Indian paths. We have a favorite vegetable, corn, which was first cultivated by Indians. We have a sport, lacrosse, which was originally an Indian game. We have canoes, and our bows and arrows were Indians’ invention for hunting.

Also, we have many Indian names such as Shiawassee, Escanaba, Mackinac and Ishpeming, and, of course, the very name of our state.

As Bald says in his preface, our state has had a long and colorful history. “Complacent Indians, restless Frenchmen, conservative Britons and ambitious Americans--all had a share in the beginnings of Michigan.”

Maya Angelou Knows Why the Caged Bird Sings.

The well-known black writer, Maya Angelou, spoke memorably about the problems she went through as a girl in her autobiography called “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” This book, which covered her first 17 years, was just the first of eight that Maya wrote about her life. This one is the most famous, however, and gives a great number of reasons that Maya’s life was never easy, even though she became famous as a speaker and writer.

When she was just three years old, for example, she and Bailey, her four-year-old brother, were sent away by their mother in California and had to take a train to Stamp, Arkansas to live with their grandmother. While they were riding on the train, the porter who was supposed to be in charge, abandoned them in Arizona. After that, the two had to travel the rest of the way with pieces of paper tacked on their bodies, listing their final destination and stating simply, “To Whom It Might Concern.”

Also, even when she was very young Maya constantly heard from others that she was ugly. She has kinky hair and dark skin, and she was always large for her age. 

Her grandmother, whom she called “Mooma,” had a food store in Stamp, and little Maya ate far too much free candy through her childhood. Eventually two of her teeth became downright rotten, and she was in great pain. Her grandmother bravely took her to the office of a local white dentist, one of many folks of both races for whom she had done favors during the difficult 30s.

After they sat for over an hour in the hot sun behind his office, the dentist finally came out and absolutely refused to deal with Maya’s problem. “My policy,” he insisted, “is that I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s.” (The paper left this sentence out!! I certainly didn't mean to show prejudice, but I do understand why they did that.) She and her mother therefore had to travel over 30 miles by bus to have her cared for by a black dentist.

When she was eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Freeman. He told her he would kill her brother if she told anyone what had happened. She eventually had to explain in a trial who had raped her, but he didn’t have a chance to kill her brother because he himself was killed very soon after the trial.

By the time she turned 16, Maya worried that with all of her other problems--and perhaps because she was still suffering from being raped--she just might be a lesbian. In order to prove to herself that this was not true, she indulged in sex with a young man, even though she didn’t really care for him. Although this happened only once, she found herself pregnant. She was able to finish high school by hiding her situation as long as possible, but then she had a baby boy whom she had to raise all alone.
True enough, I think Maya would agree that racial prejudice is not as obvious these days as it was in her childhood. 

But still, as Bill Cosby, the black American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist put it so well, “By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.”

The Great Tolstoy

Always believe that you can make huge changes in your life if you truly want to. A marvelous example of one who did just that was Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author.

Tolstoy was born of a wealthy family, but he was a difficult child. His teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn,” and though he started going to a university, he quit and began running up heavy gambling debts.

He also joined the Russian army and traveled extensively. While he was in Paris he witnessed a public execution which had a profound influence upon him. As he put it,  "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."

This experience certainly didn’t make him bitter, however. Instead, he became a much more serious person and eventually wrote a number of world-famous classics.

Also, by the time he was in his early 30s, he became a serious Christian who eventually had a strong influence on many leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

At that same time he generously founded 13 schools for serf’s children and wrote a famous book about his faith called “The Kingdom of God Is Within You.”

He married Sonya, a high-class Russian woman, and they had 13 children. Though she must have been very busy, she nevertheless helped him by proof-reading and managing the finances of his two greatest books, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.”

Eventually, however, he left his wife because she was so critical of his very strong commitment to Christianity which eventually led him to give away his money and his material possessions.

He also became a vegetarian, claiming that “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

When Tolstoy died of pneumonia in 1910, at the age of 82, he was extremely respected, and thousands of peasants lined the streets when his body was being taken to the cemetery.

In fact, his fellow writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, thought him the greatest of all living novelists. And Anton Chekhov, who was a personal friend of his, expressed a profound compliment: “When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone.

What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."

Later, other writers also had very positive comments. Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists, and James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!"

I’ve been a lover of Tolstoy’s novels for many years and if you haven’t read any of his works, I would certainly recommend that you give him a try. His most approachable and touching novel for me is “Anna Karenina,” a tragic but fascinating story about a married woman’s affair. It also includes Tolstoy’s own views on religion, morality, and social rights, especially for women.

Finally, Tolstoy certainly didn’t brag about his brilliant mind. I love his remark in “War and Peace”: “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

Biographical Novels

How would you feel if someone wrote not a true biography but rather a partly fictitious novel about you? It seems to me you or your family might not be happy trying to explain to your readers what is supposed to be true about you and what is simply made up.

I must say I enjoyed reading a novel by Nancy Horan called “Loving Frank” about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, Mamah (pronounced May-mah) Cheney. But the more I thought about it, the more strongly I felt that it really isn’t fair to mix private facts with fiction, especially about people who are no longer living and therefore can neither contribute to such a book--nor object to it if it doesn’t seem fair to them.

I realize, of course, that I’m not famous, and nobody is ever going to write either a biography or a novel about me, but it it still does concern me that writers seem to feel justified in creating such works.

The story in “Loving Frank” tells in great detail the way Cheney left her husband and two children back in 1909 for Wright, who was also married and had six children. She and Wright lived together in Europe for more than a year and seemed to love each other dearly. They probably would have married, but Catherine, Wright’s wife, would not allow a divorce.

True enough, while in Europe they both suffered from missing their children and friends at home. They also realized, however, that they would be condemned when they returned home because of rejecting their spouses and children.

Horan did a lot of research for the book, but she admits that there were “great gaps” in the story. She says, for example, that she made up all but one of the many letters but in the book.

Another somewhat similar book about Wright and marriage, was called “The Women: a Novel” and was written by T.C. Boyle in 2009, just two years after Horan wrote “Loving Frank.”  Boyle described Wright’s first wife, Catherine, and his lover, Mamah Cheney, who died just four years after they met. He then went on to tell about how Wright also married two other women after that.

His third wife was Maude Miriam Noel, whom he married in 1923, soon after his first wife finally gave him a divorce. Though Wright and Noel had traveled extensively together for some years before they married, he finally realized how much she loved morphine, and that caused their marriage to end within one year.

Finally, in 1928 he married his fourth wife, a Serbian dancer, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, who remained his wife for 31 years, until his death.

It’s interesting that this combination of research and fiction in both books seems to be an increasingly popular approach these days. I realize that true biographies cannot possibly have complete, perfect information about human lives. And autobiographers may tend either to boastfulness or to excessive modesty, but I feel that they generally come closer to truth than biographical novels.

I would simply end by saying that if I’m interested enough in someone to read a biography and perhaps even write a column about that person, I would want to learn the truth as best I can about his or her life. If the book I read is a biographical novel, however, I don’t feel I can distinguish well between facts and fiction.

Healing Opressed Women

Have you ever heard of a hospital called HEAL Africa? I hadn’t until I read an inspiring book called “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn.This hospital is located in Goma, the biggest city in eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

Sad to say, it’s in the midst of an area where five million people have died over the past 18 years in what has been appropriately called “Africa’s World War.” And there’s been some Ebola cases there, as well.

Though both sexes are cared for in this hospital, most of their patients are female victims who have been sexually abused. While there, they are fortunate to receive not only physical care but also emotional healing.

In August 2009 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the HEAL Africa hospital and said, “In Goma, I met doctors and advocates who work every day to repair broken bodies and spirits.” She said particularly of Lyn Lusi who founded the hospital, “She represents humanity at its best.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon went there in 2013 and was also extremely impressed, saying, “I was deeply moved by the stories and suffering that we heard. Many women and girls at this hospital suffer from fistula after enduring brutal rapes. In pain, they are disabled and often shunned by society. . . . I am humbled at their courage to overcome their wounds. I thank the dedicated doctors and nurses helping here and elsewhere.”

In 2002, a volcano erupted and the hospital burst into flames. Fortunately, with support from various donors, largely from America, it was rebuilt.

Also, though as of 2010 it had just 150 beds, there were sometimes as many as 250 patients there. There were 14 doctors but only two of them were gynecologists. Even electricity, water and bandages were hard to maintain, and there is still a lot of corruption in general in that area.

Harper McConnell, an American woman who went to work at the hospital also started a school there for children with orthopedic problems. Most of those children come from rural areas without decent schools at home.

In addition, she started what she calls a “skills-training program” for women who are there sometimes for months, teaching them such skills as sewing, reading, weaving baskets, making soap and baking bread. When those women can finally leave the hospital, they are given the raw materials they need to make an income for themselves and their families with their new abilities.

would like to “lift Harper up and make her their queen.”

And finally, McConnell set up a study-abroad program for Americans to study at a university in Goma. According to the authors of this book and also according to McConnell, there is no match for experience in another part of the world. As she puts it so well, “Time in HEAL Africa has turned people’s worldview upside down.”

The section of “Half the Sky” about HEAL Africa is only one of many reports of caring people all over the world who are working hard to improve the lives of women.

As Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner” describes “Half the Sky,”  “This stirring book is at once a savage indictment of gender inequality in the developing world and an inspiring testament to these women’s courage, and their struggle for hope and recovery.”

“Half the Sky” is truly an inspiring book about many worthwhile causes, and I strongly recommend it to all.

When I no longer need my body

Woody Allen, who is almost 80, remarks about the end of life: “I don’t mind death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Though he was joking, death really is something many would rather not think about. But it comes to all of us, and I think it’s sensible to consider what we want to have done with our remains.

A very old procedure was used by the Egyptians who used both cedarwood and sandalwood as embalming materials over 6,000 years ago.

Another way of disposing of a body, which is apparently still used today, is to dismember the body and feed it to vultures. This is what at least some Tibetans and Zoroastrians do, for they believe the body should have a useful purpose after death.

Then, of course, there is cremation. Surprisingly, even if one decides to be cremated, that person’s skeleton is still recognizable. The usual procedure then is that after a metal detector scoops up any metal parts such as fillings and hip and knee replacements, the remains are pulverized. Only after that procedure is the body given to the family.

Burial at sea is yet another possibility. This is too complicated a subject, however, for the present column, but you may want to read an informative article about it on Wikipedia.

A friend of mine told me she would like a “green burial” because it is the most natural way of being buried. As they say online, you can have a “biodegradable casket or shroud instead of a metal casket, natural cooling methods instead of embalming, avoiding the use of a concrete vault, and natural grounds-keeping methods like planting wildflowers instead of mowing.”

Not all cemeteries allow this more natural burial system these days, but if more people decide to be buried that way, perhaps it will become more available.

Here’s where a green burial seems to be the least complicated system, for the body is simply “recycled.” This means that it is quickly returned to the soil to give life to new organisms.

As my friend who advocated this method told me, “For some of us, it may be the closest we can come to reincarnation. The burial site would be natural. Trees or plants may be planted, or the land is left for Nature to take its course. Weeds to some may be bird food for others.”

The green burial is appealing in many ways, and I would choose this system except that I have already decided to give my body to the University of Michigan for medical students’ education. I’ve even said in my formal statement of permission that they don’t need to return any of my body after they have finished using it.

I do often remember that our family has space for eight more family members in the impressive Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, but if my body can help medical advances, that’s what I’d rather do with it.

And I don’t want a funeral with my body on display; I’d rather have a memorial service. Besides, I’ve never considered myself especially good looking, and I would hope that people would remember what I looked like without having to see my fancied-up dead body.

So, dear friends, check me out now, while you can! And if you also plan not to have your body displayed at your service, let me check you out now as well.

Beethoven - the Man and his Music

Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly a true genius, but he had a extremely complex and difficult personality. Amazingly, he also lost his hearing fairly early in his career. Both of these unfortunate factors made his life extremely difficult.

An excellent biography of Beethoven by Jeremy Siepmann describes him as having “a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic.”

Beethoven loved several women but he never married, probably because of his various problems. He was a guy who apparently didn’t care a bit about his appearance, his residence or even his manners with most people.
He was especially hard on his nephew, Karl, for whom he was responsible after Beethoven’s brother died. In fact, at age 19 Karl made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. He actually shot himself in the head, saying he did it “Because my uncle tormented me too much, and I was weary of imprisonment.” Yet Beethoven had the highest possible goals, saying that he tried to model himself on both Socrates and Jesus Christ.

Beethoven had a truly serious outlook on life in general. For example, though he did compose one really fine opera, “Fidelio,” when asked if he would like to do more operas, he said “It must be something I can take up with sincerity and love. I could never compose operas like ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Figaro.’ They are too frivolous for me.”

Despite his criticizing the stories behind Mozart’s operas, Beethoven very much admired Mozart’s music in general and was certainly influenced by him. He may even have taken a couple of lessons from Mozart just before that poor fellow’s early death.

Sad to say, many of the works of Bach, Mozart and Schubert became known and loved only after their deaths. Beethoven’s many works, however, including nine symphonies, many piano solos, string quartets, piano quartets, songs and so forth, were well known and appreciated during his own lifetime.

It’s not surprising that many of the 19th century composers, including Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms and Liszt, truly admired Beethoven’s amazing ambition and talent. As Liszt put it, “For us musicians, Beethoven’s work is like the pillar of cloud and fire which guided the Israelites through the desert. ... His darkness and his light trace for us equally the path we have to follow.”

Richard Wagner was equally impressed: “The effect on me was indescribable. . . . I soon conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique supernatural being.”

Berlioz called Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 131 “a heavenly inspiration that took material shape.”

Brahms admired Beethoven’s symphonies so deeply that he felt extremely humbled by him. As a result he felt that his own attempt at composing his first symphony was not worth further work, and in fact he didn't complete it until he was in his 40s.

That first symphony reminded people of Beethoven’s Fifth, and the main theme of the final movement also resembled Beethoven’s Ninth enough that people laughed and hailed it as “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

Even two much later composers, Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998) and Robert Simpson (1921-1997) claimed that Beethoven was “the principal shaping force on their own development.”

Finally, according to Beethoven’s biographer Siepmann, despite his difficult personality, Beethoven’s faith apparently stayed extremely strong throughout his whole life. Even as he was dying at age 56, he suddenly opened his eyes, looked upward and said, “I defy you all, powers of evil! Away! God is with me.”