“But you’re not religious,” said a female acquaintance. Her remark spilled across the tablecloth like a tipped-over glass of red wine.

“I used to go to church every Sunday,” I said, somewhat defensively. “And I went to Christian youth camp one summer.”

I went on to explain that Lourdes gets more than six million visitors each year, and I highly doubted every single person who visited the famous grotto of Massabielle was a staunch Catholic.

But who was I trying to convince, her or me?

True, her verbal stoning made me momentarily doubt my bonafides as a miracle seeker. But though not a devout Catholic, I had a good reason for the pilgrimage; being diagnosed with malignant melanoma at age 50 was reason enough. My cancer is what clinicians call Stage IIIB. Look it up. Words like “prognosis somewhat poor” and “very little chance” leap off the screen. Still, my decision to make the trek had been built on monumental hope. For months I had been imagining myself there, miraculously saved. In the end, I took this woman’s ugly remark as one of the many disconcerting side effects of having cancer and handled it the way I do with doctors’ sad faces and negative statistics—I ignored it.

I am running alongside track 19 through the Montparnasse train station toward the silvery vessel that will transport me from Paris to the Pyrenees to the place I’d been dreaming of since I was 15 when I watched the film classic The Song of Bernadette. The thought of standing at the grotto where a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, saw the Virgin Mary appear 18 times in the year 1858 makes me euphoric.

I have less than two minutes to find the designated rail car stamped on my ticket. It seems a never-ending distance. Traveling too fast, my suitcase tilts on its rickety wheels and falls over.

“S***!” I scream. As I collect my bloated baggage sprawled across the pavement, a nun crosses my path. Uh oh, I think. She’ll probably send up word on high that there’s a foul-mouthed American woman on the way. That won’t bode well for my chances for the “miracle” list. Boarding the train, I notice a sickly bald lady who looks as though she’s undergone intense chemotherapy treatments. Near her is an extremely frail teen boy in a wheelchair reading a French translation of The Hunger Games. Both of these angelic souls seem more worthy of a miracle than I. I’m certain neither of them has ever cussed in front of a nun.

Lourdes, France, became world famous after the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous. Photo courtesy Jill Paris.

Looking at me, you’d never know my plight. People say I look “fantastic” six months after undergoing two major surgeries. The first excised the tumor on my upper left arm and removed two sentinel lymph nodes to determine if the cancer had spread. The cancerous culprits indeed had set up camp in the first node. And my physician, the world-renowned Donald L. Morton of the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California, next recommended removal of my axillary lymph nodes (which form a sort of chain from the underarm to the collarbone) despite the painful side effects such as permanent nerve damage and the potential threat of lymphedema, or swelling.

“You don’t have to have chemo?” some people question. “No radiation?”

“Nope.”

“Wow, that’s great,” they say.

I guess that the thought that I won’t lose my long, blonde locks and shrink down to a skeletal frame or puke uncontrollably while sporting a headscarf is an upside. The downside is that there is no treatment or cure for this stage of melanoma—only more cutting should a new cancer emerge. My job is to be vigilant should I note anything suspicious, then to hightail it into the office for further study. This is, quite frankly, terrifying. No neon sign points to the location of a fresh melanoma. My doctor says that the next one will most likely not sprout directly on my skin, but just under it, so I’m supposed to gently rub my (numb) five-inch scar where the first growth emerged, feeling for a new invasion.

The chance of recurrence is quite high. In fact, when you’re Stage IIIB, it’s not a matter of if, but when. So every six months I undergo PET scans or chest X-rays to detect if the cancer has progressed to the dreaded Stage IV. I call it the “mean test.”

They tell me my five-year survival chances are 60 percent.

Melanoma—a cancer of the skin primarily caused by sunlight —is often confused with curable basal cell and squamous-cell skin cancers. But melanoma is the eighth most common malignancy in the U.S., and its frequency is rising faster than any other human cancer. In the 1930s the survival rate for this disease was extremely low; now 5- and 10-year survival rates of Stage I melanoma are well over 80 percent on average. But there are different forms, stages, and classifications that each have different prognoses.

I have nodular type, which is the most aggressive. Even when I discovered an abnormally large mole that quadrupled in size in less than three months, both the nurse and a dermatologist I initially visited assured me it was “nothing.” I sensed that they were both wrong and demanded its removal and biopsy. A case like mine—where skin cancers masquerade as something normal—is a perfect example of why people should get checked regularly. Don’t let your best friend, partner, neighbor, or even your family doctor discourage you from seeking expert attention. Had I listened to my healthcare team, I may have left that HMO allowing my already aggressive cancer to flourish, and I would not be writing this today.

Living with cancer is a learning experience. Part of that learning is to avoid the many misconceptions. Everyone knows somebody who has, or has had, cancer. They are quick to offer medical, herbal, even spiritual advice as well as clinical trial information. Truly, I am touched whenever someone offers any hope they feel may erase my diagnosis. But if I hear one more person tell me the story of their Aunt Jean who had skin cancer for four years and now is totally fine, I’ll lose it. (No offense Aunt Jean.) All melanomas are not alike.

“Is this your first time at Lourdes?”

I look up at a frail-looking pilgrim just beside me in the line for the sacred grotto.

“Yes,” I say.

Also in search of a miracle, Selam — whose name means peace — befriended Paris while at Lourdes. Photo courtesy Jill Paris.

The woman’s name is Selam. She has come from Vancouver, Canada, but originally hails from Ethiopia. She is 40 years old. Within seconds we are swapping war stories.

“Melanoma, Stage III,” I say.

“Colon cancer … I’ve been given six months to live,” she whispers.

I let her step in front of me and study how she grazes the grayish stone that leads to the niche with her left hand, stopping every few feet to kiss the rock. A white rosary entwined in her right hand swings gently from side to side.

I begin to copy her every move. If she makes the sign of the cross, I do, too. If she pats the water droplets that trickle from the cave-like surface and touches her face, I do the same. It is as if she’s been sent to me as a personal guide. Nearing the sacred spot, she begins to weep. I stroke her back the way a mother would soothe a child with a skinned knee.

She kneels before the statue of Mary resting high in an alcove. Dabbing moisture from the stone, my hand presses the gash on my upper left arm, but I forget to ask Mary for anything because of a deep concern for my new companion. Selam’s despairing sobs grow louder—agonizing wails echoing in an already hushed enclave.

Minutes later, she rises and turns toward me.

I open my arms wide and she collapses against me. We hold each other in a long embrace as though lifelong friends.

“I want you to have this,” I say, reaching into my bag for a vintage religious medal of Bernadette that a dear friend sent with me for luck. “Pin it over your heart. It will protect you.”

“Oh, thank you, my love,” she says. “I prayed I would meet someone here.”

Who knew my presence alone would answer a dying woman’s prayers? Fear of what I lacked spiritually had been eating away at me in the days leading up to this moment. But her words are like a salve.

Writer Jill Paris touches the smooth, moist walls of the Grotto of Massabielle, believed to be a source of healing. Photo courtesy Jill Paris.

As the two of us walk arm in arm, we sing aloud, butchering the lyrics to “Ave Maria,” giggling in between verses. We pass thousands of invalids, some on gurneys and many in wheelchairs, most assisted by unpaid hospitallers—volunteers who look like a combination of nun and nurse. I have a sudden, unexpected calling to be one of them.

Selam tries to disguise the immense pain she is suffering and insists on our sitting together for hours at a sidewalk cafe, wiling away the afternoon sharing our hopes, fears, and her desire to find one last love. As we sit and talk, any need to justify the depth of my religious belief seems to vanish.

I had arrived alone at the holy shrine, a restless soul beside those green fields, and rather than glimpse the image of the Virgin Mary I had my own singular and singularly valuable divine visitation. Melanoma had brought me to Lourdes and given me Selam, the woman whose name means “peace.”

Three days later, fighting back tears and promising we’d meet again, she gives me a final gift: a pocket Holy Rosary booklet complete with tiny red beads and crucifix.

“See? Now you never need worry,” she says sweetly. “You’ll always have the right words.”

Six months later, after a chest X-ray, I am classified as disease-free. I harbor much hope, but there is always my next scan. Upon returning from Europe, I would speak with Selam twice. Her cancer had rapidly spread, and she was bravely undergoing extreme bouts of experimental chemotherapy. Her last words to me were, “I’ll call you next week, my love.” That was several months ago.

Just recently I have signed up with Our Lady of Lourdes Hospitality North American Volunteers to become one of the thousands of companion caregivers that Selam and I had seen. Some of the pilgrims will understand English, and some will not. Yet I’m not too concerned about the language barrier. Selam showed me that faith does not require proficient verbal skills.

If she were here with me now I’d say, “Can you imagine? Me? Speaking French? Might as well be Swahili!”

She’d just smile and make the sign of the cross.

Miracle Seeker The Saturday Evening Post

I knew that Aunt Bertha was going to get in some snappy work on the Ouija board; I could have told you that before I ever saw her in action. She has always been good at anything anywhere neatly like that. Now you take solitaire, for instance. I don’t think I ever saw a prettier game of solitaire than that which Aunt Bertha puts up. You may be looking over her shoulder while she deals out the cards for a game of Canfield, and from the layout before her you would swear that she had not a chance of getting more than one or two aces up, at most. In fact, it looks so hopeless that you lose interest in the game, and go over to the other end of the room to get a magazine. And when you come back Aunt Bertha will have all the cards in four stacks in front of her, and she will smile triumphantly and exclaim: “What do you think of that? I got it again!”

I have known that to happen over and over again; I never saw such luck in my life. I would back Aunt Bertha against any living solitaire player for any amount of money you want, only providing that the judges leave the room during the contest.

It was no surprise to me to find that she had just the same knack with a Ouija board. She can take a Ouija board that would never show the least signs of life for any­body else and make it do practically everything but a tailspin. She can work it alone or she can make a duet of it—it makes no difference to her. She is always sure of results, either way. The spirits seem to recognize her touch on the board im­mediately. You never saw such a remark­able thing; it would convert anybody to spiritualism just to see her.

Aunt Bertha asks a question of the spirits, and the words are no more than out of her mouth when the planchette is flying about, spelling out the answer almost faster than you can read it. The service that she gets is perfectly wonderful. And, as she says herself, you can see that there is no deception about it, because she does not insist upon asking the ques­tion herself; anyone can ask whatever he can think of—there are no limits. Of course, the answers have occasionally turned out to be a trifle erratic, but then, to quote Aunt Bertha again, “what does that prove?” The spirits never claimed to be right all the time. It is only human of them to make a slip once in a while.

She can go deeper into the affairs of the Other Side than a mere game of questions and answers, if you want her to. Just say the word, and Aunt Bertha will get you in touch with anybody that you may name, regardless of how long ago he or she may have lived. Only the other night, for instance, someone sug­gested that Aunt Bertha summon Noah Webster’s spirit, and in scarcely less time than it takes to tell it, there he was talking to her on the Ouija board, as large as life. His spelling wasn’t all that it used to be, but otherwise he seemed to be getting along splendidly.

Again, just to show you what she can do when she sets her mind to it, she was asked to try her luck at getting connected with the spirit of Disraeli—we used up Napo­leon and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and all the other stock characters the very first week that Aunt Bertha began to work the Ouija board, and we had to go in pretty deep to think up new ones. The planchette started to move the minute that Aunt Bertha put her hands on it, if you will be­lieve me, and when she asked, “Is this Disraeli?” it immediately spelled out, “This is him.” I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes. Uncanny, it really was.

There seems to be nobody whom Aunt Bertha cannot make answer her on the Ouija board. There is even a pretty strong chance that she may be able to get Long Distance, after she has had a little more practice.

As the Spirit Moves V: Aunt Bertha’s Snappy Work The Saturday Evening Post

Those were about the only numbers that the program ever comprised. Mr. Smalley volunteered to make shadow pictures and give an imitation of a man sawing wood, including knots, but Mrs. Both somehow did not quite feel that this would have been in the spirit of the thing. So the intellectual, Sunday evenings broke up, and the local mental strain went down to normal again.

Mrs. Both is now one of the leaders in the home research movement. She has been accomplishing perfect wonders on the Ouija board; she swung a wicked plan­chette right from the start. Of course she has been pretty lucky about it. She got right in touch with one spirit, and she works entirely with him. Henry G. Thompson, his name is, and he used to live a long time ago, up round Cape Cod way, when he was undeniably a good fellow when he had it. It seems that he was interested in farming in a small way, while he was on earth, but now that he has a lot of time on his hands he has taken up poetry. Mrs. Both has a whole collection of poems that were dictated to her by this spirit. From those that I have seen I gather that they were dictated but not read.

But then, of course, she has not shown me all of them. Anyway, they are going to be brought out in book form in the fall, under the title “Heart Throbs From the Here­after.” The publishers are confident of a big sale, and are urging Mrs. Both to get the book out sooner, while the public is still in the right mood. But she has been having some sort of trouble with Henry, over the Ouija board. I don’t know if I have it quite straight, but it seems that Henry is behaving in a pretty unreasonable way about the percentage of royalties that he insists must go to the Thompson estate.

But aside from this little hitch–and I dare say that she and Henry will patch it up between them somehow–Mrs. Both has got a great deal out of spiritualism. She went about it in the really practical way. She did not waste her own time and the spirits’ asking the Ouija board questions about who is going to be the next President, and whether it will rain to-morrow, and what the chances are for a repeal of the Volstead Act. Instead she sat right down and got acquainted with one particular spirit, and let him do the rest. That is really the best way to go about it; get your control, and make him work your Ouija board for you, and like it. Some of our most experienced mediums agree that that is the only way to get anywhere in parlor spiritualism.

“As the Spirit Moves” Part IV: Henry G. Takes to Verse The Saturday Evening Post

The community dances never went over really big, that you could mention; by the time the second fox trot had reached the place where the record was scratched the men had all gathered in one corner and were arguing about how long you ought to let it stand before you put it in the still; and the women were settled along the other side of the room, telling each other how you could reduce without exercising or dieting. Those evenings were apt to cause hard feeling between husband and wife, and one word frequently led to another on the way home. Then there was the time that we went in rather heavily for bridge. The bridge hounds were unleashed on Tuesday evenings, and at eleven o’clock chicken salad and lettuce sandwiches would be served and the one who had the highest score could choose between a blue glass candy jar with a glass crab apple on its top, and a hive-shaped honey pot of yellow china with china bees that you’d swear were just about to sting you swarming all over it; in either case what was left went without any argument to the holder of the next highest score. On the next Tuesday the club would meet again, and play till eleven o’clock, at which time chicken salad and cream cheese and olive sandwiches would be provided, and the winner had to make up his mind between one of those handy little skating girls made of painted wood with a ball of colored twine instead of a bodice, and a limp-leather copy of Gitanjali, by Rabin­dranath Tagore, the well-known hyphenated Indian. The bridge club would doubtless have still been tearing things wide open every Tuesday, but the Ouija board came in, and the hostesses’ imagination in the selection of prizes gave out, at about the same time. Mrs. Both, who is awfully good at all that kind of thing, tried to inaugurate a series of Sunday evening intellectual festivals, but they were never what you could really call a riot. The idea was that everyone should meet at her house, and the more gifted among us should entertain and at the same time elevate the majority. But Mrs. Both could never get enough backing from the rest of the home talent. She herself read several papers that she had written on such subjects as The New Russia, and Why; and Modern Poetry-What of Its To-Morrow?

“As the Spirit Moves” Part III: When the Bridge Hounds Were Unleashed The Saturday Evening Post

Henry David Thoreau is an unusual hero among the millions of freedom seekers in American history. His sought freedom not from government or capital, but from human nature.

He took his search for personal freedom to the wilderness in 1845, on July 4th — the significance wasn’t lost on him. That day, he moved away from home to live in the woods around Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. For the next two years, Thoreau tried to liberate himself from a life of distractions, comforts, and routine. As he put it:  ”I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

He declared an independence from society to pursue a life of simplicity and honesty. “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” He gardened. He wrote. He visited friends (he was living only 1.5 miles outside Concord). But he continued to reside in the tiny house for over two years. The account he wrote of his time there has changed many an American’s life.

In 1849, the Post reprinted a New York review of Thoreau’s lectures about his experiences.

A Young Philosopher Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, Mass., has recently been lecturing on “Life in the Woods,” in Portland and elsewhere. There is not a young man in the land — and very few old ones — who would not profit by an attentive hearing of that lecture. Mr. Thoreau is a young student, who has imbibed (or rather refused to stifle) the idea that man’s soul is better worth living for than his body. Accordingly, he had built himself a house ten by fifteen feet in a piece of unfrequented woods by the side of a pleasant little lakelet, where he devotes his days to study and reflection, cultivating a small plot of ground, living frugally on vegetables, and working for the neighboring farmers whenever he is in need of money or additional exercise. It thus costs him some six to eight week’s rugged labor per year to earn his food and clothes, and perhaps an hour or two per day extra to prepare his food and fuel, keep his house in order, &c. He has lived in this way four years, and his total expenses for last year were $41.25, and his surplus earning at the close were $31.21, which he considers a better result than almost any of the farmers of Concord could show, though they have worked all the time. By this course, Mr. Thoreau lives free from pecuniary obligation or dependence on others, except that he borrows some books, which is an equal pleasure to lender and borrower. The man on whose land his is a squater is no wise injured or inconvenienced thereby. If all our young men would but hear this lecture, we think some among them would feel strongly impelled either to come to New York or go to California.

It wasn’t easy being Henry David Thoreau. He was a loner, a lifelong bachelor, an eccentric, and, at times, a contrarian who opposed the Mexican-American war and, with greater fervor, slavery. He who died young (at age 44, from tuberculosis.) His life was rough and irregular, but the rough passage is inevitable when you have to clear your own roads.

Thoreau would been quickly forgotten if he had not been championed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his students. “Walden” was printed in small editions over the years. Scholars recognized it as a work of great talent, but not for 40 years after Thoreau’s death. Its renown among American letters is only partly due to the endorsement of English professors. His lasting fame rests on his ability to address that American hunger for independence, as in “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

My Life.*

by H. D. Thoreau

My life is like a stroll upon the beach,

As near the ocean’s edge as I can go;

My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach,

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

My sole employment is, and scrupulous care,

To place my gains beyond the reach of tides;

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,

Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.

I have but few companions on the shore—

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;

Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er

Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse**,

Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view;

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.

* This poem, taken from Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, appears with the title “The Fisher’s Boy” in modern collections.

** “dulse”: a red seaweed that lives attached to rocks in deep water.

An Unlikely Hero in the Fight for Personal Liberty The Saturday Evening Post

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am… [but] I would have been surprised if I had been wrong

“I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Something else that was circling the globe in that year was Einstein’s reputation. At the time of this interview, his fame had spread across Europe and America. Everywhere he was acclaimed a genius for defining the principles of relativity, though very few people understood what they meant.

Imagination may have been essential to his breakthrough thinking, but Einstein’s discovery also rested on his vast knowledge of physical science. Knowledge and imagination let him see the relationship between space, time, and energy. Using mathematics, he developed a model for understanding how objects and light behave in extreme conditions — as in the subatomic world, where the old Newtonian principles didn’t appear to work.

Whenever Einstein explained his work to the popular press, though, reporters got lost in his talk of space-time continuum, absolute speed of light, and E=Δmc². So they used their own imaginations to define relativity. One of their misinterpretations was the idea that relativity meant everything is relative. The old absolutes were gone. Nothing was certain anymore.

It was a ridiculous interpretation that could only have made sense if newspaper readers were no bigger than a proton, or could travel near the speed of light.

This misperception was so common that the Post writer used it to start his interview.

“Relativity! What word is more symbolic of the age? We have ceased to be positive of anything. We look upon all things in the light of relativity. Relativity has become the plaything of the parlor philosopher.”

Einstein, as always, patiently clarified his concept.

“‘The meaning of relativity has been widely misunderstood, Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy.’”

The world of the early 20th Century certainly felt like it was being inverted — with or without relativity.  Even as Einstein was developing his theory about the space-time continuum and the nature of light, old Europe was dying in record numbers. Just a few weeks before Einstein released his general theory of relativity in 1916, the German Imperial Army began its assault at Verdun. In the ensuing, ten-month battle, France and Germany suffered 800,000 casualties. Four months later, the British launched their catastrophic attack at the Somme and suffered 58,000 casualties in a single day.

The survivors of these debacles were disillusioned by the waste of this war, and the peace that followed. The youth of Europe and America were looking for new truths. The old ones seemed empty and especially lethal to young men. They saw how noble sacrifice could be used for political ends. And they had seen how virtue and faith fared against massed machine guns.

Doctor Einstein accompanying Mrs. Einstein's piano song with his violin.

This “Relativity” they read about seemed promising, if it meant that thousands wouldn’t have to die needlessly, of that could live beyond the limiting moral codes of their parents.

Einstein, himself, didn’t indulge in any of this relativism.  He was a man of strong beliefs, not equivocations. For instance, his love of music was absolute.

“‘If… I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.’”

“Einstein’s taste in music is severely classical. Even Wagner is to him no unalloyed feast of the ears. He adores Mozart and Bach. He even prefers their work to the architectural music of Beethoven.”

He disagreed with the traditional Jewish concept of free will.

“I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew… Practically, I am nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.”

He never expressed any belief in a personal God, but he believed in the historical Jesus — not the popularized prophet such as appeared in a best-selling biography by Emil Ludwig.

“Ludwig’s Jesus,” Einstein replied, “is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.”

“You accept the historical existence of Jesus?”

“Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.”

Einstein was no relativist on the subject of nationalism, which he saw grow violent and intolerant from his Berlin home.

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

It was different in the United States, he believed.

“Nationalism in the United States does not assume such disagreeable forms as in Europe. This may be due partly to the fact that your country is so immense, that you do not think in terms of narrow borders. It may be due to the fact that you do not suffer from the heritage of hatred or fear which poisons the relations of the nations of Europe.”

Three years later, Einstein fled Germany to seek asylum in the United States, where he became a citizen in 1940. (Not for the last time, America was enriched by the intolerance of other countries.)

Judge Phillip Forman hands Albert Einstein his certificate of American citizenship on October 1, 1940. (Wikimedia Commons)

It is interesting to see how Einstein viewed America three years before he made it his new home.

“In America, more than anywhere else, the individual is lost in the achievements of the many. America is beginning to be the world leader in scientific investigation. American scholarship is both patient and inspiring. The Americans show an unselfish devotion to science, which is the very opposite of the conventional European view of your countrymen.

“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. It is not true that the dollar is an American fetish. The American student is not interested in dollars, not even in success as such, but in his task, the object of the search. It is his painstaking application to the study of the infinitely little and infinitely large.”

The only criticism Einstein could find for America was its emphasis on homogenizing its citizens into a single type.

“Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”

Read “What Life Means to Einstein,” by George Sylvester Viereck. Published October 26, 1929 [PDF].

“Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge” The Saturday Evening Post