"Sleepless in Connecticut"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“Sleepless in Connecticut”

February 27, 2021

 

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”

                                                                                                                Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

 

Insomnia is not uncommon as we age. Bodies that have been functioning for several decades begin to show natural signs of wear. The brain hormone melatonin, which regulates the circadian rhythm that determines our sleep cycle, may become affected by age. Being neither a doctor nor a scientist, I don’t pretend to understand our internal workings. I experience them and marvel at them.

 

An Irish proverb says: “A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” I like that advice. I laugh a good deal but do not always sleep well. I am not alone. James Hamblin wrote in the December 21, 2020 issue of The Atlantic: “Roughly three quarters of people in the United Kingdom have had a change in their sleep during the pandemic, according to the British Sleep Society.” (The Brits seem to have societies for every conceivable situation!) I suspect polls in the U.S. would show similar results. Back in September, the UC Davis Health Center issued an article headlined, “COVID-19 is wrecking our sleep with coronasomnia.” They cite the fact people, working from home, are up at “weird hours” and that we need “variety in our activities.” I am not up at weird hours, unless one counts those trips to the bathroom to satisfy nature’s call, but the pandemic haslimited the variety in my life. They (the UC Davis people) offer a lot of useful tips: keep a daily routine, avoid your smart phone before going to bed, get exercise, cut back on news and social media “especially in the evening,” go easy on alcohol and don’t nap.

 

I get the exercise I need, at least I think I do. I no longer listen to the evening news. (I read the morning papers.) I stay away from social media, which I don’t find especially social. Perhaps I do shut my eyes, or as a friend once said, “check my eyelids for holes,” for a few minutes in the early afternoon. A glass of wine or sherry is the extent of my drinking now. My iPhone does ding after I have turned off the lights, but that is usually a child or grandchild sharing a text message. I love hearing from them, so don’t want them to take me off their distribution list. Perhaps I should leave the phone in another room at night?

 

A habit my wife and I have developed since COVID-19 made its entrance a year ago is to slip between the covers and watch a movie before letting sleep take the reins. Our preference is for light fare – the Thin Man series, with William Powell and Myrna Loy; an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical, like Top Hat or Swing Time; or a comedy with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, like Desk Set, or Adam’s Rib. Professionals advise against television in the bedroom, but it does not seem to me that old black and white movies emit much of the blue light that concerns them. However, there are evenings when we risk censure by watching newer detective series, like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, Inspector Morse (whose first name is Pagan!), or Inspector Maigret. These shows include some humor and little heart-thumping suspense. About half the time, I never make it to the end of the movie anyway. But that is the advantage of watching old favorites – one knows what one has missed, so it isn’t missed!

 

If I want to shut out the sound of the television or my wife’s questions, I roll to my left, with my bad right ear up. If feeling agreeable, I roll to the right so I can half-heartedly listen to the TV and grunt responses to my wife. E. Joseph Cossman, a one-time door-to-door salesman and mail-order entrepreneur, once wrote: “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” Easy to say, but harder to do when my eighty-year-old body is re-living its fifteen-year-old adolescence. Dale Carnegie advises us to get up and do something: “It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”  So, I do. I get up, slip into another room and escape into a Trollope, a Wodehouse, or letters from E.B. White. My mind relaxes and my pulse rate subsides. If not reading something comforting, I might gather notes I had scribbled on a pad next to my bed and see if I can decipher what I had thought were so ingenious when I wrote them in the dark. 

 

When my head hits the pillow, my brain goes into overdrive. I think of luck, which plays a big part in all our lives. And I think of how lucky I have been, yet I have done nothing to be so blessed. I worry about COVID-19, and I worry about our government’s response to it. I worry about the amount of debt our state and nation carry, especially unfunded liabilities, and what the effect will be on markets, so important to our future well-being. I worry about the claim (ahistorical and unfounded, in my opinion) that we are a nation of systemic racists, of the slide in our nation’s cultural values and morals and how our grandchildren will cope in a world that combines Orwell’s 1984 with the meanness of a Senator Joseph McCarthy. I fear a “managed” economy will replace free market forces, thereby reducing everyone’s standard of living. And I know there is little I can do about any of this. On other nights, a kaleidoscopic album of childhood images races through my mind, causing me to think back on shameful things I have done and hurtful words I have uttered. I think of people I have upset, and opportunities I have missed, and I think of those I once loved who now are gone. While I know I am not alone in having these thoughts, I realize that one is never so alone as when enmeshed in childhood memories. 

 

And yet…If you know the scene from the 1950 movie Father of the Bride, with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, with the two of them in their separate beds. Tracy, as Stanley Banks, works himself into a lather, convinced his daughter’s fiancé, Buckley Dunstan, is a crook, a swindler perhaps even a kidnapper or murderer. With his rants, he wakes his wife. Having released his emotions he falls asleep, leaving Ellie Banks to silently stew over the concerns her husband passed on to her. 

 

So, I feel like Stanley. Thanks for reading. I am batter for getting these anxieties off my chest and will sleep soundly tonight. I hope I have not upset you.

"Rituals/Essays"

In a time of turbulence, both weather-wise and politically, this essay is meant to amuse and distract. Its most redeeming features are that it is less than 1000 words (one should never underestimate the value of brevity in an essay) and I had fun writing it.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Essay from Essex

“Rituals/Habits”

February 19, 2021

 

“Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and

keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.”

                                                                                                                                Tony Campolo (1935-)

                                                                                                                                American pastor, author and

                                                                                                                               spiritual advisor to President Clinton

 

“The chains of habits are too weak to be felt and too strong to be broken.”

                                                                                                                                Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

 

While a thesaurus considers ritual and habit to be synonymous, there are differences. Rituals have roots in the past, ties that bind one to history, tradition, family and community. Habits are learned or are of one’s own creation, often adopted subconsciously, like starting each day with a cup of coffee. 

 

The word ritual stems from the Latin ritus, a noun meaning a religious observance or ceremony. Webster’s defines the word as “an established procedure for a religious or other rite;” but it also includes as a definition, “any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.” Habit stems from the Latin habito, meaning to dwell, to live. However, it is defined today: “An acquired pattern of behavior that has become almost involuntary as a result of frequent repetition.” Rituals are performed with deliberate intent: going to church every Sunday or pledging allegiance. Habits, on the other hand, are taught, like being kind to strangers and saying please and thank you. Rituals we accept as part of our culture. We are criticized for bad habits and praised for good ones. Despite Samuel Johnson’s admonition, in the rubric above, habits can be controlled (with effort), whereas rituals exist whether we partake or not. 

 

“Habits are automated behaviors that we repeat over and over,” wrote Marco Badwal, cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Amsterdam. Good habits must be taught and performed subconsciously, like manners and taking prescription medicines. They provide social mobility, better health and allow us to focus on the complexities of life. Rituals are the perpetuation of obligations, like daily exercise or Sunday dinner with family – duties we should perform and activities we enjoy. P.G. Wodehouse once wrote: “Poetry is good, but tea is better.”  He was referencing the English ritual of afternoon tea with scones and clotted cream. But an Englishman’s ritual may be no more than a rare and pleasant interlude for a tourist. Rituals, in some cultures, can be horrific, like honor killings, a ritual still practiced in Pakistan, or genital mutilation, a ritual experienced by Ayaan Hirsi Ali when a young girl in Somalia. 

 

Nevertheless, most rituals are good, at least in the U.S., for they allow a continuum in a discordant age – from the baptism of a grandchild to the inauguration of a new President, from singing the National Anthem at ball games to saluting soldiers on Memorial Day. Warren Buffett sets aside a certain amount of time every day just to read and think, a ritual he claims helps him avoid impulsive decisions. A ritual I have is to read only for pleasure after 7:00PM. While I have not been a regular communicant for several years, church service is a ritual I miss, as it provides quiet moments to pray for those we knew and loved and, to use a modern maxim, because it offers time to “think outside the box,” regarding problems and current events. Whether my absence is laziness, or due to ministers trying to be relevant to “woke” congregations, is not pertinent to this essay. I did, however, find illuminating a line in Joseph Johnston’s recent book, The Decline of Nations: “Religion is more than the private worship of a deity; it is the strongest support for morality and the spiritual bond of a society.” Attendance at religious services lie on the positive side of the ledger when judging rituals.

 

Habits, on the other hand, get us through the tedious parts of living, allowing us time to be creative and take risks. Most habits are good, but others less so, like biting one’s nails, picking one’s nose or changing lanes on the highway without signaling. And we must be wary that they do not become so ubiquitous that they interfere with free choice, something the satirist Ambrose Bierce warned against in his definition of the word in The Devil’s Dictionary: “Habit, n. A shackle for the free.”

 

But to get back on track and describe the difference between habit and ritual through my own routine: Most mornings, my habit is to rise before 6:30, listen to the news as I brush my teeth and shave. A ritual is to exercise five days a week before showering and dressing. A post-pandemic habit has been to take my temperature every morning. A second daily ritual is to drive to the corner drug store to buy my newspapers before returning home to perform my third ritual – fixing and eating breakfast. On Thursdays and Sundays, I do laundry, a chore my wife assigned me when I retired. It is certainly not a ritual, but neither is it a habit…at least not yet. One habit from childhood returns every winter. In putting on my jacket, I hold the cuff of my sweater in my hand, so it won’t bunch up in the sleeve of the jacket – a lesson from my first-grade teacher. 

 

Rituals keep us linked to positive (mostly) aspects of our common culture; their link to the past helps us live in the present and prepare for the future. Habits allow us to live civilly and free our minds to inspiration. Wearing a mask is not ritual (unless one is robbing a bank), but neither, in my case, is it a habit. It is not ritual that I write essays, but it has become a habit. Can rituals become habits? I leave that to superior minds. I have gone on long enough.

"Musings on Nature and Literature"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essays from Essex

“Musings on Nature and Literature”

February 10, 2021

 

“No animal, according to the rules of animal etiquette is ever expected to do anything

strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”

                                                                                                                                      Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)

                                                                                                                                      Wind in the Willows, 1908

 

The rubric above describes Rat, Mole and Badger discussing the most recent smashup of Mr. Toad in his automobile. He was their friend, after all, and shouldn’t friends do something? But it was winter and, as Mr. Grahame wrote, most animals “are weather-bound, more or less; and all are resting from arduous days and nights…” 

 

Of course, not all animals sleep through the winter, or hibernate as the more sophisticated among us would say. And, of course, birds who spend winters in Connecticut must survive harsh winter storms and periods of below freezing temperatures – not easy for creatures whose body temperatures run about 105 degrees Fahrenheit and who must consume between a quarter and a half of their body weight every day. Of course, living within a feathered coat has advantages, but still…A dozen and more birds spend the winters near where we live, including House Finches, House Sparrows, Tufted Titmice, Black-capped Chickadees and at least one Pileated Woodpecker.

 

I was delighted to finally see our Pileated Woodpecker one morning, dining on carpenter ants on a leaf-less tree in a swampy area of the Mud River where a beaver has been harvesting timber. He was beautiful to see. With a body the size of a crow, he was elegantly dressed in a black tuxedo, with white tie and a distinctive red crown, looking like New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, dressed in a black hassock, wearing his red biretta.

 

Still, I worried about the effects of cold weather. The woodpecker wore no scarf, mittens or galoshes. I don’t believe his meal was warmed in an oven or accompanied with a hot toddy. A tendency to anthropomorphize animals dates to my childhood. While I take joy in assigning human traits to the wildlife, there are those who do not. Patricia Ganea, Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto is one. In an interview with her college newspaper, she said, “…children who have more direct experience with real animals in their daily life may be less influenced in their reasoning by anthropocentric portrayals of animals in books.”  I grew up with animals – horses, goats and chickens, along with the usual assortment of dogs and cats. But I also grew up on a diet of Aesop’s Fables, Beatrix Potter, Thornton W. Burgess, Kenneth Grahame, Hugh Lofting, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, E. B. White and others. I benefitted from real animals, as well as from children’s literature. I have never forgotten Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Bluebird, Toad, Jip, Pooh, the White Rabbit, Charlotte or Stuart Little. 

 

As an adult, I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and returned to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. With my grandchildren, I read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. In each, besides the pleasure of reading, the purpose is to instruct – to make moral judgments, like learning right from wrong; to appreciate the rewards of hard work and personal responsibility; to understand the value of kindness and to help overcome fear. We are horrified by Gollum and dazzled with talking trees, impressed with Bree and inspired by Aslan, cheered by Humpty Dumpty and amused by the Cheshire Cat and come to understand the wisdom of Hedwig. A reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm teaches that a revolution may replace an autocrat (the human, Farmer Jones) with a worse dictator (the pig, Napoleon). History is filled with lessons learnt from animals. For example, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots and defeated six times by the English: Alone in a cave, he watched a spider try to spin her web. Only on her seventh attempt did she succeed. The moral: no matter how hopeless a situation may seem, never give up. Bruce did not; he left the cave and defeated Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314.

 

Animals, both real and imagined, have been part of our fifty-seven-year marriage. We have owned, at some point, one pony, two horses, four goats (one of whom gave birth!), four sheep, a number of pigs and, of course, dogs and cats. With the exception of the pigs, which were raised to be slaughtered, all were given names – the first step toward anthropomorphizing our four-legged friends. Today, we have no animals, but our shelves are filled with books of talking animals, many from our childhoods. And when walking through the woods, we look for those who watch every move we make. Assigning them human traits fuels our imaginations and provides empathy. The chipmunk represents youth as it scurries about; in the deer we observe beauty and grace; the muskrat, as he swims home, reflects domesticity; a silent, snapping turtle is endowed with the wisdom age brings. And the Pileated Woodpecker constitutes common sense, as he concentrates on dinner. In her interview, Professor Ganea added: “Books that portray animals realistically lead to more learning and more accurate biological understanding.” I wonder?

 

Perhaps she is right, but I believe she is the one missing out. True, there are lessons to be learned of a scientific nature, as we walk through our hundred-acre wood: How life evolved over millions of years. We see trees that have stood for a hundred years and more. We note the symbiosis between plant to animal and animal to animal that seems miraculous yet is natural. We observe the adaptability of plants and animals, which Peter Wohlleben described so well in his books The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals. But there are also lessons to be learned in using one’s imagination and seeing animals and even plants as sentient beings. 

 

Dr. Doolittle was a physician who preferred animal patients to humans. He learned their languages, which provided him a better understanding. He was created by Hugh Lofting during the First World War, so one might argue his stories are escapist. Perhaps, but I believe he wanted us to view animals as capable of having feelings – the affection of a mothers for her young, a sense of loss when a parent or child dies, territorial rights, a realization of pain and suffering. Would knowing the Latin name for the Pileated Woodpecker add to my appreciation, as he hunts for food on a cold winter’s morn? I don’t think so. Professor Ganea may find me lazy and a dilletante, but that’s okay. 

 

So, during these long winter months, I worry about Mr. Toad and empathize with Rat, Mole and Badger. Sitting in my easy chair, sipping hot cocoa, I look out on the stream, swamp, fields and woods where my hibernating friends rest up for the arrival of another spring, and I marvel at their ability to survive, without a book from the Toadstool, a sweater from L.L. Bean, or a hot cup of cocoa.

"A Woman of No Importance," Sonia Purnell

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“A Woman of No Importance,” Sonia Purnell

February 6, 2021

 

“‘There are endless nightmares of uncertainty,’ explained one. ‘The tensions,

the nerve strain and fatigue, the all-demanding alertness of living a lie, these

are [the agent’s]to meet, accept and control. They are never really conquered.’”

                                                                                         Quote from a former member of the SOE in war-time France

                                                                                                   Sonia Purnell

                                                                                                   A Woman of No Importance, 2019

 

Besides being a gripping tale of the Resistance in France during the Second World War, this is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman, with an artificial leg, who operated behind enemy lines at a time when being a female in a combat zone was unusual, let alone one who was disabled. “If caught,” Ms. Purnell writes, “women were…subjected to the worst forms of torture the depraved Nazi mind-set could devise.”

 

Virginia Hall was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore banker and a social-climbing mother. She was born in 1906 and like her mother was ambitious but directed her ambition “toward a career and exploring the world rather than bagging a feckless husband.” At age twenty, after one year at Radcliffe and one at Barnard, she moved to Paris and enrolled in the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. She spent three years in Europe, becoming fluent in French, German, Spanish and Italian. She came home and joined the State Department as a clerk. In 1931, she returned to Europe, working for State in Poland and Turkey. An accident in the fall of 1933, while on a hunting trip near the Aegean Sea, caused her to shoot herself in her left foot. Fearful of gangrene, doctors in Turkey amputated the leg below the knee.

 

In the spring of 1934, she was back in Maryland. Two years later, she rejoined the State Department and returned to Europe. With the Continent spinning toward war, she worked in Vienna. “Pigeonholed as a disabled woman of no importance, she resigned from the State Department in March 1939.” In February 1940, she joined the French 9^th Artillery Regiment as an ambulance driver. In June 1941, when France was overrun, she returned to London and enlisted in the newly formed SOE (Special Operations Executive). By early September 1941 she was a spy in Lyon, France. She had found her métier.

 

The story of her exploits in France, especially in Lyons and later in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon are told in excruciating detail. All agents are scared and most suffered from insomnia. “Everyone experienced loneliness and an urge to share their thoughts and fears, but survival meant holding back.” Yet, for Virginia: “For all the grinding fear, she had never been so happy. For all the frustration, she had never been so fulfilled.” Nevertheless, “the Gestapo considered her the most dangerous of all Allied spies.”

 

The three and a half years she spent with the Resistance demonstrated her bravery, coolness, competence and selflessness. The collapse of the Vichy government, in late 1942, necessitated a recall to London, which meant a fifty-mile hike across the Pyrenees in winter, difficult for anyone, but Ms. Hall had to do it on a wooden leg, while carrying a suitcase. After a debriefing, she returned to France in May 1943, now working for the OSS and based on the Haute-Loire plateau, where she became known as the “Madonna of the Mountains.” Two years later, the War was over. In September 1945 she returned to the United States.

 

Virginia Hall was awarded medals from three countries – an MBE, the Croix de Guerre and the DSC (Distinguished Service Cross). In 1957 she married Lieutenant Paul Goillot, whom she had met in September 1944 when he parachuted into France and became one of her “irregulars.” While she became one of the first officers, of the newly formed CIA, it was “in fighting for the liberty of another nation, she had found freedom for herself.”

 

The only criticism I had with the book is that it has too much detail: the frequent moves she had to make, the naivete of some of her comrades and the savgery of her enemies. One winces as one reads. Her survival, as it was for any member of the Resistance, was a miracle – a function of navigating between tens of thousands of French collaborators and those few who never let despair or the brutality of the Nazi occupiers dictate their behavior. Ms. Hall died in 1982 at age 76. In June 1988, her name was added to the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame. On the Haute-Loire plateau, she remains a legend.