Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248501 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
The author reflects on her fifty-three years of life with her husband Scott--their dedication to the simple life, their marriage, her relationship with Krishnamurti, and Scott's death at the age of one hundred.

Customer Reviews

Touching Insight
Helen nearing recaps the live of her husband Scott Nearing. The book gives a good insight into the life of the two, the philosophy behind their way of living. Despite being about the two as a couple, the book heavily focuses on Scott’s part. It is not so much about how to live the ‘Good Live’, but about how it feels to live the ‘Good Live’. Touching.

A wonderful book
When your 100-year old husband of 55 years has passed on and you, at 88, can see your own end, and when you have spent most of those years seeking and living the good life, and when you take the time and trouble to record your thoughts for posterity, it is surely worthwhile for us, the readers, to take note and reflect on what might be of value in our own goal of living the good life. This is not a biography of the husband, Scott, nor an autobiography of Helen but it is offered as a tribute to Scott's being as Helen knew it. She wants Scott to be remembered as an unassuming, kindly, wise, husband as well as a principled, uncompromising, intellectual radical; she also wants to share with us his peaceful, intentioned, and premeditated ending.

Born in the upper echelons of society, he worked alongside immigrant laborers in the Pennsylvania mine run by his grandfather. This was a formative experience that resulted in his speaking publicly in his early twenties on liberal reform. '''Even before I began the study of economics,' he said in an early lecture, 'I was impressed by the monstrous inequality which exists between the rich and the poor in modern society. The rich enjoy wealth, leisure, and boundless opportunity. The poor are overwhelmed by misery, overwork, and insanitation. The rich have a heaven of opportunity; the poor a hell of misery, and the heaven of the rich is founded upon the hell of the poor. If I was impressed by these conditions before I had studied them, I was appalled after having given them careful consideration. I had heard of poverty; I believed that misery and vice existed, but I was not aware that they were prevalent in every town and city of the land. Ability and capacity were suppressed; together with the progress which might well be attained, were opportunity more universal … The poor are ignorant of the fact that by standing together at the ballot box, they might revolutionize conditions in a decade.'"

Very soon he had offended the powers that be with his outspoken views and he would never teach again in the United States. From that point Scott's life can be summed up in these sentences: "The living of an ideal involves payment of a certain price … the further the ideal is removed from the common practice, the higher the price that must be paid for it … If your ideal is to live a mentally active, mentally honest life, to seek the truth, then you may have to sacrifice even food, clothing, and shelter to get it." and "The majority will always be for caution, hesitation, and the status quo - always against creation and innovation. The innovator - he who leaves the beaten track - must therefore always be a minoritarian - always be an object of opposition, scorn, hatred. It is part of the price he must pay for the ecstasy that accompanies creative thinking and acting." Scott was aware of the price he would have to pay for his convictions; he regretted enormously the loss of the day-to-day contact with his university students who lost an outstanding educator; but he never regretted standing alone. One of his file cards clearly defined the problem: "If a man is one step ahead of the crowd he is a leader; if two steps ahead, he is a disturber; if three steps, he is a fanatic and not to be trusted." Scott was too many steps ahead of those in authority and he was a danger who had to be removed. At the age of 34 his chosen career was in ruins; his books that had been standard textbooks in public schools were banned and royalty income ceased. He was at the low point of his life and that was when he met Helen.

Helen, born in 1904 into a family of high principles and adequate means was the unconventional child, always reading and addicted to the twelve volumes of the Book of Knowledge at a young age. She had a talent for the violin, preferred the company of trees and rocks, drew and wrote poetry. She did not accept unquestioningly the world in which she lived. As a teenager she felt there was a power and a purpose in the universe and queried what we are here for and what life is all about. At seventeen, she sailed to Rotterdam to study the violin, met up with the Theosophists and the young Krishnamurti who she followed for several years on his mission to be a world teacher. But she saw the vast abyss between the ultra rich and the homeless in Bombay and Calcutta while Krishnamurti surrounded himself with the well to do, the famous and the influential. It was time for her to strike out on her own path. She returned to Ridgewood and there received a phone call from Scott.

The formative years for both of them were over; they were ready for each other; they were ready to build a life together; they were ready to create their version of the good life. We have much to learn from this couple because their life together was built on high principles. We are indeed fortunate that Helen left us this book.

A revealing insight into the lives of Helen & Scott Nearing
Helen and Scott Nearing represent different things to different people. I knew them through the columns they wrote in The Mother Earth News, back in the 70's. I was unaware of the circumstances that laid the foundation for their move to their farm in Vermont, and consequently to Maine. This book puts their lives into a full perspective. While I do not agree with Scott Nearing's socialist philosophies, I now understand the motivating factors in his life. And though I have read some of Krishnamurti's work, I had no idea that there was a connection back to Helen Nearing. It is fascinating to see the threads of Helen's and Scott's lives woven together in this book. This is not a book of "how-to" information, but a book about the people we have known as true "back-to-the-land" practitioners. It gives a substance to, and a greater understanding of, the books they wrote about their "Good Life". It is also the love story of two people whose streams were destined to cross and join, resulting in a life that was more satisfying than either might have achieved alone. I highly recommend this book to those who know Helen and Scott Nearing only through the books about their lives on the farm.