"Where Has Time Gone?"

 My wife and I had a wonderful trip through the farm country of central Pennsylvania and the horse country of northwestern Virginia last week. We visited three student grandchildren. There was no talk of having classes cancelled, or of having been offered milk and cookies. We were uplifted by their positive outlook, their youthful enthusiasm, and their intellectual curiosity. They made us optimistic for the future.

 

I had begun this essay before we left, but daily drives of three and four-hours provided time to think more deeply on the subject – something personal to each of us, yet universal in its appeal. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Where Has Time Gone?”

November 16, 2024

 

“It is strange how much you can remember about places like that

once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back.”

                                                                                                  E.B. White (1899-1985)

                                                                                                 “Once More to the Lake,” 1941

                                                                                                   Essays of E.B. White, 1977

 

Where has time gone? Shaving, I am reminded of the song: “All I see is an old man/ Where a young man used to be.” Dressing, I think of J. Alfred Prufrock: “I grow old…I grow old… I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.” All this causes me to, momentarily, yearn for the past. “Backward turn backward, O Time in your flight,” wrote Elizabeth Akers Allen in 1883, “Make me a child again just for tonight.” 

 

But when I think of the ever-increasing speed with which time passes, it is not of my own childhood, which stretched out for years, or even that of my children who took their time growing up. It is of my grandchildren I think. We expect special moments to last forever, even as the seconds and minutes tick by. Was it eighteen years ago that a photograph was taken of Caroline and me at the Hillsboro Club in Florida, each with an armful of squirming grandchildren? Now, the oldest is working in New York City and the youngest in her penultimate high school class. “How did it get so late so soon?,” asked Dr. Seuss. 

 

Time is tricky. Each day consists of twenty-four hours and each hour is comprised of sixty minutes. Yet as we age, each hour and day represent a smaller fraction of our lives. So time, which stretched interminably when we were children, is compressed as we age, with days and weeks flying toward our inevitable end. But time, as Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, “leaves its shadow behind,” in its impact on those we knew. 

 

To our children, but especially to our grandchildren, we are the continuum of history, that the past is never gone. It lives on in memories, letters and photographs. It affects those who come after – it is the shadow to which Hawthorne refers. I recently came across a photograph of my great-grandfather, born in 1837, whose name was Sydney Williams, holding his only child (also a Sydney Williams) shortly after his birth in Vevey, Switzerland in 1873. Looking at the photo gave me pause to consider all that has transpired during the 187 years since the birth of my great-grandfather – of how progress improved our lives. Yes, the past remains.

 

White’s essay, quoted in the rubric, is of taking his son to the lake where his father would take him. The final sentence reads: “As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.” When we think of time, we recognize our mortality, and that, with the exception of God’s love, nothing is eternal. Respect for the past, tradition and values is not antithetical for a desire to improve the quality of the lives of our descendants. To our grandchildren, when they reach our age, we will be historical figures to their children and grandchildren. They, too, will think of the passage of time, of the impact we have had (which we hope is positive), and how the world has changed – which we pray will be for the better.    

"Mail - Missing are Letters"

Astute readers will recall that I wrote a similar essay a year ago, entitled “The Lost Art of Writing Letters.” But this is a subject that bears repetition.

 

Here in Essex we are having another beautiful late summer day.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Mail – Missing are Letters!”

September 14, 2024

 

“In an age like ours, which is not given to letter writing, we

forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.”

                                                                                              attributed to Anatole Broyard (1920-1990)

                                                                                              literary critic and editor, The New York Times

 

Personal letters are as rare as a Woody Allen smile. I love letters, but, sadly, I don’t often write them and even less frequently receive them. I have hordes of old family letters and once edited a book, Dear Mary, which consisted of letters between my parents during the Second World War. I do have copies of letters written to each of my ten grandchildren on their tenth birthdays. I have a collection of E. B. White’s letters and Philip Stanhope’s (Lord Chesterfield) Letters. I have framed letters from Noah Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, T.S. Eliot, Gideon Welles, and P.G. Wodehouse, reflecting bygone eras. This absence of letters saddens me. They once played a big role in my life, and I am sure in yours.

 

Recently, when I stopped by the mailroom the pickings were typical – a couple of bills, two requests for money, an unwanted catalogue, and a statement. The bills were put aside, the statement filed, the catalogue recycled, and one of the requests was tabled. The other was shredded. There were no letters, not even a postcard. Going to the mailbox has lost the breathless anticipation I remember from my youth.

 

In boarding school, opening my mailbox was fraught with emotion. Would anything be there? It was thrilling if the envelope had the cursive handwriting that only a fifteen-year-old girl could master – a girl met the previous summer, or at a dance with a sister school – a girl whom I would have liked to call a girlfriend, but I was too shy. More often the envelope bore my mother’s distinctive handwriting, with a message admonishing me to study hard and stay out of trouble. Those of us who served in the armed forces remember the excitement of mail call – We would gather around the corporal who dispensed the mail. Names were called. There were days – perhaps most – when I retreated to my bunk empty-handed. On others, I was happy. Since I had met the girl who is now my wife, it was her letters I cherished. 

 

I have always liked letters. They offer a snapshot of the author. Tucked away, my wife and I have letters from our parents and grandparents. They help us better understand them. Letters were once inherent to our culture. Twenty-one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are epistles or letters. The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium is a collection of 124 letters by the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, written toward the end of his life in 65AD. But letters are rare in this internet age – e-mail, social media posts, and texts have taken their place. Some argue that the telephone, or even the telegraph, foretold the end of letters. 

 

That may be true, but if so their death was prolonged. My parents and grandparents communicated primarily by mail. A sister who died twenty-seven years ago was known as “the last of the letter writers.” But now the end seems to be finally here. In his poem “Birches,” Robert Frost ended with this line: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” One could do worse than be a writer of letters. Someone will be happy.

"Lola"

  

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Lola: May 3, 2010-June 29, 2024”

July 2, 2024

 

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never

lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”

                                                                                                                                Attributed to Helen Keller, 1880-1968

 

Toward the end of E.B. White’s novel Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte is dying and she speaks to her good friend Wilbur: “All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur – this lovely world, these precious days…You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing…After all, what’s a life anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.” Whether human or animal, in the larger scheme of things, we do only live brief lives; but life is about the love we bring to others during the time we are allotted. Lola, a gentle, but fiercely proud Cockapoo, was liberal in the love she bestowed, and in death she gifted us the sights, sounds and smells she had known.

 

Death is never easy. In his last book before he died, Oh, The Places You’ll Go, Dr, Seuss wrote: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” Growing up on a small farm in New Hampshire, death was, if not common, not rare. I remember my father burying a horse in our rocky barnyard, and I recall one wintery day digging a shallow grave for a goat that had succumbed. But Lola was the sole pet of our daughter, her husband and their three children. She was integral to their lives. For their children, now 19, 21 and 23, Lola was part of their growing up. In the memories of all who knew her, she lives on. 

 

Every death provides a moment to consider the miracle of life. The “miracle” does not refer to the mechanics of the process nor to the intricate biological composition of a living species, but rather to its uniqueness – the right sperm interacting with the right egg. The odds of that happening are measured in the billions or trillions to one. No living creature could ever live at a time other than when it did. Just as it is a miracle that each of us is alive, Lola’s birth was a miracle. Her good fortune at being born was enhanced by the luck she had in abiding with our daughter and her family. 

 

Dogs, Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, look up at us. Cats he claimed look down on us. He favored pigs who he said look us in the eye. Lola was not subservient, and she did not have the arrogance of a cat. She treated people as equals, loving to cuddle, but then protecting us when an animal appeared on the television screen.

 

On June 7, 1945, General George S. Patton, speaking at Boston’s Copley Hotel, said: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.” Lola’s immediate family especially, but all of us who knew her, including her dog cousins in Darien and Lyme, will miss her. Tears have been, and will be, shed. But we are thankful she lived and was part of our lives for fourteen years.

 

Rest in peace, Lola.

"Power is Their Goal"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Power is Their Goal”

June 24, 2024

 

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture

political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the

market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

                                                                                                                                Henry Wallace

                                                                                                                                “The Danger of American Fascism”

                                                                                                                                Essay, The New York Times

                         April 9, 1944

 

While Wallace, then Vice President of the United States, was writing of the dangers of Fascism, his words apply today to extremists on both sides of the political aisle – Progressive/Marxists on the left and Neo-Fascists on the right – those who campaign under the mantle of service but who, in reality, seek power for themselves and the state. Keep in mind, at the time Wallace wrote, the Soviet Union, with its Communist ideology and its totalitarian practices, was our ally in the fight against Germany’s Nazis. Because his socialist leanings were not broadly popular, Wallace was dropped by FDR as his choice for Vice President in favor of Harry Truman in the 1944 election. In 1946, in the early days of the Cold War, Wallace left the Democrat Party over Truman’s hard line with the Soviet Union and joined the Progressive Party. 

 

…………………………………………………………..

 

Power is an aphrodisiac, whether exercised by an individual, a cabal, or a mob. It has always existed in politics, in varying degrees. In a letter to Anglican bishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887, Lord Acton (1835-1902) wrote: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” High political office carries enormous influence – the ability to financially reward backers (as well as oneself) – that many find irresistible. While there are principled individuals who run for office for the purpose of “giving back,” we live in a time of career politicians, those who have spent their careers either in elected or appointed office. We also live in a time of polarization where slogans substitute for reason and violent protests for debate.

 

Power and the corruption that often accompanies it are not limited to one party. But single party states and cities, with an absence of competition, are more likely to attract corrupt individuals. A Wikipedia map of the U.S. shows twenty red states, twenty blue states, with seven others either leaning red or blue, and three that are purple. Of the five most populous states, three are blue – California, New York and Pennsylvania – one is red – Texas – and one is purple – Florida. BallotPedia notes that seventeen of the country’s twenty largest cities are Democrat-run. Corporate monopolies are not good for consumers, and government monopolies are not good for citizens.

 

Every ten years Congressional district maps are re-drawn. They must be contiguous and they are supposed to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nevertheless, Sam Levine writing in the February 17, 2022 issue of The Guardian claimed that only 27 of the 335 [out of 435] congressional districts that had been drawn thus far were considered competitive. The Cook Political Report, in looking at 2024 races, confirms that report, as they showed only 22 [out of 435] seats as being tossups. An earlier study – June 25, 2021 – from Yale University argued that the rise in safe seats has led to political polarization. Whatever the cause, single-party cities and states are unhealthy, as they lead to power and corruption. And our very size has made governing less personal. With a U.S. population of just under four million in 1790, the House of Representatives was comprised of 105 members. The Reapportionate Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435 members. Today, despite the addition of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959, and a population almost tripling in the past 95 years, the number of House seats remains 435. 

 

This concern for the power of the state is not new. George Orwell’s two masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) warned of totalitarianism. Like all those of his generation, he had seen despotism come from the right by way of Fascism and Nazism and from the left via Communism. He was a self-described democrat-socialist, but his alertness to the excesses of political power informed the books he wrote. 

 

America’s founding fathers were well aware of the threat of tyranny, which is why they designed a government with three co-equal branches – executive, judicial and legislative. The purpose – to avoid a concentration of power. The Founders had considered the risk of what John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) later called in his 1859 essay On Liberty a “tyranny by the majority,” where the many can oppress the few. To address that concern, the legislative branch – the most important as it is the branch closest to the people – was divided into two bodies: a Senate, with two per state, and a House whose membership is proportionate to population, and they created an Electoral College to elect the President. (Keep in mind, Virginia, from which four of the first five Presidents came, was the largest state in 1789, so that was a selfless act.)

 

In our country, power is supposed to be reserved for the people. Free speech is integral to our individual freedom – not the freedom to falsely call out “fire!” in a crowded theater, but the ability to express opinions without being censored by “thought police” for not conforming to the “right” political ideology. Today, sadly, differences of opinions can be a mark of infamy. When I once criticized President Obama for some policy decision, I was labeled a racist. Can we not criticize women without being called a misogynist? Or a Muslim without being called out as Islamophobic? Or a Black without being termed a racist? In a November 29, 1947 letter to the New York Herald Tribune, E.B. White wrote: “One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.”

 

Nevertheless, and in spite of my concerns, most people in the United States remain, in my opinion, centrist. Certainly, there are those with extreme opinions; they exist on both sides of the political divide. Agitators abound, and identity politics has driven us into corners where we are only comfortable with those like us, whether an identity is based on nationality, gender, race, religion, or ideology. Politicians favor compartmentalization, perhaps because it is easier to appeal to specific issues rather than to speak broadly to the opportunities available to those with aspiration, drive and ability. For the nation to succeed, it needs people from all backgrounds and with myriad specialties, and it needs to ensure that all young people are given a good education, one that teaches them to think independently, not conform to a preferred ideology.

 

Democracy is collaborative, not efficient. It is all right when legislation does not get passed. A smaller, less intrusive government is preferable to a large one. The buildup in debt has been ignored by both parties, a possible pending calamity. Still, I recognize there is much good government does, that we could not exist without it. But I also know that individual freedom is placed at risk by those desiring power, a risk ignored by leaders in Washington today. Personal power and wealth are the goals of too many who run for high office. And bureaucrats are their silent abettors, as they thrive on an ever-expanding government.

 

Our current choices for President – two aging men, both seduced by the prospect for power and buoyed by mindless, uncritical followers and partisan media. Together they reflect a sad picture of today’s politics: A Hobson’s Choice for a center-based electorate. As Gerard Baker wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal “…we suspend our doubts, swallow hard and make our imperfect choice.”  

"Mortality"

 Another beautiful wintery day, with light snow falling in this part of Connecticut. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Mortality”

February 17, 2024

 

“As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming

closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragility.”

                                                                                                                                Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)

                                                                                                                                Nuns and Soldiers, 1980

 

Perhaps it is because of a recent birthday and a growing consciousness of age, but I have been thinking of mortality. I scour obituaries each day, feeling a little like George Burns who allegedly once said: “I wake up each morning and read the obituary column. If my name is not there I eat breakfast.” Perhaps it is because death has been a more frequent visitor in the households of those I know and love. Living in a retirement community, where the average age is in the mid to late 80s, that is not a surprise. But I want to be clear – these thoughts on mortality are not morbid. Memories bring joy.

 

As Charlotte said to Wilbur about the life of a spider: “We are born, we live a little while, we die.” And, while people don’t trap and eat flies, life has a natural sequence. The other day I walked through the Residents’ Garden – a fenced-in half-acre holding a dozen or so small garden plots, now in winter slumber. The garden sits in the middle of a field, and as I meandered along I was reminded of “Sadie,” a Cockapoo owned by a neighbor and who died about two years ago. She was a delightful and friendly little dog who used to love to be rid of her leash and run around that field. As I stood on that cold but sunny field, I had the eerie sensation she was still there, running her heart out.

 

Walking back I passed a small nook, warmed by the sun where a friend, a victim of Polio but who lived into his 90s, would sit in his wheelchair on sun-filled chilly days, getting his dose of Vitamin ‘D.’ I thought of our conversations and remembered my maternal grandmother’s admonition that people don’t die as long as they are remembered, a sentiment George Eliot expressed in Adam Bede: “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.”

 

On my desk are family photographs: Caroline and me on our 50^th wedding anniversary in 2014; our ten grandchildren on the beach in Seabright, New Jersey; a photo taken from behind of me and our lab “Dakota” looking out on the Mystic River; one of my paternal grandfather with his ever-present pipe; another of my great grandmother Washington holding me, with my older sister sitting nearby; and a lovely one of Caroline in Bermuda on our 25^th wedding anniversary. There are photos and drawings on the walls and in albums of siblings, parents, grandparents, other family members and friends. Each recall a person, an incident, or a time. In Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” That is true, so long as the past remains in our memory.

 

Whether walking alone through fields and woods, or lying in bed waiting for sleep, my thoughts often turn to those now gone whom I was fortunate to know. We are mortal; that cannot be denied, and there is no question of the truth in Ms. Murdoch’s quote about our fragility, but memories keep us from the void, and there is comfort in the thought that remembrances of us will stay with our children and grandchildren.

The Lost Art of Writing Letters"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The Lost Art of Writing Letters”

September 17, 2023

 

“The gentle arts of conversation and letter writing have largely

given way, nowadays, to the intrusive urgency of the telephone.”

                                                                                                                Dorothy Lobrano Guth (1928-2016)

                                                                                                                Editor, Letters of E.B. White, 1976

 

Ms. Guth wrote the introduction to her godfather’s book of letters almost fifty years ago. Since, phones never leave our side. E-mails, text messages, social media, Snap-Chat, and Twitter (or whatever it is now called) have proliferated, like inebriated rabbits. Technology has increased by magnitudes the frequency and ways in which we communicate, allowing us to stay in touch with people in a way unimaginable to our parents and grandparents. In sending my essays by e-mail, I am in regular contact with childhood and school friends, unseen for decades. I hear from people I worked with at Merrill Lynch almost sixty years ago. There is much good in this, but…

 

While social media and myriad forms of communication provide benefits undreamed of a few decades ago, they have downsides. In our new, technologically efficient communication, grammar, spelling, syntax, and their progeny, thoughtfulness and the well-constructed sentence have receded in favor of succinctness and speed. Less concern for the recipient is given than when pen was put to paper. E-mails and text messages are responsive, not contemplative. 

 

Does an e-mail in your inbox spark the same excitement as a handwritten letter in your mailbox? As much as anyone, I am guilty of this omission. Most of my handwritten letters are ones of sympathy, or birthday cards to my wife, children and grandchildren. Yet I vividly recall the anticipation and receipt of a letter when at school – not the scolding or admonishing one from my mother, or the indulgent one from my grandmother, but the neat, identifiable one from a girl I knew or had recently met.  Mail call, when in the Army, was the highlight of the day. Now, when I descend to the mailbox, I expect and receive solicitations, advertisements, catalogues and bills. Ever so rarely there is a real letter, which I save.

 

Letters provide insights into the way people think and behave. An anthropologist, studying American social life, would have a treasure trove in private letters, especially those written with no expectation of being published. In the decision to publish the letters between my parents during World War II in Dear Mary, I wrote: “In the end, I decided their value as a window on a special time in our history seemed worth whatever embarrassment might accrue to those no longer alive.” But any study of American life through letters would end when their decline began in the 1960s and accelerated in the 1990s. 

 

Old letters are treasures and should be preserved. Every now and then one comes across a gem, such as that written by my mother’s youngest brother who, at age 24, had recently been given command of LST 601. Preparatory to the August 15, 1944 invasion of southern France, Prime Minister Churchill was there to wish the men well. My uncle wrote to his parents on August 13: “What a thrilling day was yesterday…I led the men in ‘three cheers for Churchill.’ Smiling and waving, he passed within fifty feet. He was in his blue playsuit looking just as much like little Sydney Williams as he could.”

 

Enough said; let’s write more letters!

"Open Letter to Grandchildren"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“Open Letter to Grandchildren”

October 8, 2022

 

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths,

but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”

                                                                                                                                Anne Frank (1929-1945)

                                                                                                                                The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

 

I last wrote you as a group in May 2017, over five years ago, when you ranged in age from nine to seventeen. Now, you are between fourteen and twenty-two. That first letter was to tell you something of what it was like to grow up in the 1950s. This letter is an open letter (meaning it will be available to others), which offers advice, but which is mindful of the risk of an older generation advising a younger. The opportunities you have, and the challenges you face, are not the same as what I had and faced. Much has changed in the past six and seven decades. But the emotions that govern our behavior are the same. We are unique individuals, but sadness, doubt, and stress are common to all, just as are joy, trust, and relaxation. It is how we handle myriad emotions – some good, others not – that help determine what kind of a person we become and what kind of life we will lead.

 

………………………………………………..

 

Coco and I could not be prouder as to how you have navigated childhood and begun to enter adulthood. The pressure on youth – always high – has intensified, as communication and social media have intruded in ways unimaginable when I was a child. It is important to maintain perspective – easier said than done – for the road of life is long. It traipses through open fields and into dark woods, past extensive vistas and around blind corners. Along its path will be experiences, places to visit, and thousands of people to meet. 

 

All of this adds to self-understanding, something the Ancients recognized as critical to a happy life. The first of the three maxims at Delphi is “Know thyself.” You will be tested and tempted. But in keeping one eye on the future and the other on your values will allow you to maintain your moral compass. While experimentation is fine, recognition of the long journey ahead will help distinguish the good from the bad, the safe from the dangerous – the helping hand versus the proffered, proverbial apple. 

 

Each of us is unique, with our own talents and aspirations. The goal should be selfless self-satisfaction, ensconced in realism – what is possible that fulfills and makes you happy. If you find a spouse to love and to share your dreams (which I hope you do), your goals will be shared ones. But there is no right goal, no one better than another. It is personal. If not in family, you may find happiness in work, in sport, or perhaps in faith. What brings you satisfaction may not apply to a sibling or cousin.

 

Through family, friends, reading, school, and college, young adulthood is the time to realize and appreciate one’s unique talents, where lie one’s abilities, and what are one’s limitations. Be mindful of your needs, enthusiastic about what you love, but exercise restraint toward what you want. A few of you may know how you would like to spend your life, but for most the quest will take longer. It is best to play to your strengths, to enforce them through study and work. And it is important to understand your weaknesses, to correct them if possible, but to avoid the unreachable, like Stuart Little’s elusive search for Margalo. As you follow your dreams you will be tested, as were King Arthur’s knights in their search for the Sangreal. As well, keep in mind the old adage that perfection is the enemy of the good.  

 

Luck plays a big role as our lives unfold – people we meet, friends, coaches, and teachers; accidents and where we live. There are events over which we have control, but much of life is based on chance. There is an old saying that we make our own luck, and there is some truth in that. We should each be responsible and accountable. But chance over which we have no control can alter one’s life. Sixty-four years ago, then thirteen-years-old, a cousin dove into what turned out to be a shallow pool; her life changed – through no fault of her own. A month shy of my 21^st birthday I met the woman who became my wife. At the time, my moral compass was faltering. But, in meeting her, the arrow spun to true north. Despite my youth, I immediately knew she was the woman for me. In order to win her, I had to straighten myself out. One blessing has been each of you. My first job after college was with Eastman Kodak. They posted me to Hartford. Would my life have taken different turns had they moved me to Nashville, Detroit, or San Francisco? Probably, but I don’t think about what might have been. Every day, we make hundreds of decisions. Most we make instinctively, unconsciously, yet all have consequences, some significant, others not. We decide and move on. It is the moral compass, gained in our early years, that guides us through life’s myriad challenges and decisions.

 

……………………………………………

 

We rarely think of how lucky we were to be born. The right sperm and the right egg, stretching back millions of years to the very origins of life. The odds against that are incalculable. Thus, to not make the most of our time on earth is a mistake. While you ten are all related by blood, either as siblings or cousins, each of you is a special individual. As citizens of this country, we are equal in our rights, but we are not equal in our abilities or aspirations. It is why knowing who we are, being honest with and about ourselves, is so important. None of you are likely to play professional football, for instance. But each of you will have opportunities to use your innate talents that have been honed at home, in school, and in college. Success to one may not be success to another. But that is no matter; a productive life, well-lived, should be the goal.

 

As I come to the end of this pontificating sermon. I cannot help thinking about life, how exciting it is, with its valleys and peaks, with its tears of sadness and joy, with its hazards and opportunities. In the final act of my life, I envy you still in your first. Keep in mind, the one constant in your life is character. Guard it with care. Do not let it be diluted. Try not to follow the mob. Do not be seduced by suggestive slogans, bewitching words, or tantalizing offers.  Keep in mind Anne Frank’s advice in the rubric that heads this letter. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius speaks to his son Laertes, as he is headed to France: “To thine own self be true.” That is all you need to know.

"Aging"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essays from Essex

“Aging”

May 21, 2022

 

“This is what youth must figure out:

Girls, love, and living.

The having, the not having,

The spending and giving,

And the melancholy time of not knowing.

 

This is what age must learn about:

The ABC of dying.

The going, yet not going,

The loving and leaving,

And the unbearable knowing and knowing.”

                                                                                                                                              E.B. White (1899-1985)

                                                                                                                                              “Youth and Age”

                                                                                                                                              Poems & Sketches of E.B. White, 1981

 

We are born; we grow up, and we die. In a nutshell, that is aging. In truth, however, aging is much more. Aging takes us from a time where everything is new – people, things, experiences – when joy is in the anticipation and when the future stretches toward infinity and unknowns are exciting, to a time when we recognize life is finite, when joy is found in memories and experiences, and when, with apprehension, we look toward unknowns. Where are we headed? Will those I leave behind fare well?  

 

We age differently. Some become old betimes, others age gracefully and pain free. For a few, old age is lonely, a period of quiet despair. For others, it is a time of creativity and of giving back. Plato, who lived to be about eighty, thought aging natural and therefore good. His student Aristotle, who died at sixty-two, denounced old men as miserly and loquacious. In a some ways, however, we age similarly. Bones become brittle and our skin wrinkles. Hair thins or turns white. We forget where we left the keys, or the name of the person with whom we dined yesterday. Doctors’ visits become more frequent, and our pill intake increases. Almost fifty years ago an older client told me that a man spends the first half of his life making money and the second half making water. I now understand what he was saying.

 

There is a tendency, as we get older, to favor the past over the present. Michel de Montaigne, the 16^th Century French essayist, wrote: “Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present times?” In truth, age gives us perspective – there is good and bad in the past and in the present.

 

Two photographs – one of Caroline and me leaving the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York on a Saturday afternoon in April 1964; a second is of the two of us following renewal of our wedding vows in April 2014 – a 50^th anniversary celebration, performed at the insistence of our grandchildren who, oddly, missed the original event! With us in the second photo are our three children, their spouses and ten grandchildren, the latter dressed as bridesmaids and ushers. So, while the population of the U.S. increased 66% from 192 million to 318 million between 1964 and 2014, our family increased 900% from two to eighteen. Granted, there is some double counting because of in-laws. Nevertheless, I am happy to have helped give life to so many.

 

I look at my grandchildren and remember myself at their age and wonder: Would we have been friends? It seems such a short time ago, but so much has transpired in the intervening decades – in the world, in our nation, in my life. We long for simpler times. We empathize with the siren call of Elizabeth Akers Allen’s 1859 poem, “Rock Me to Sleep:”

 

“Backward turn backward, oh time in thy flight.

Make me a child again just for tonight.”

 

But there is no turning back. Nor should there be. So long as there is breath in our lungs, life in our limbs and reason in our brains, we should look ahead, enjoy what time we have, and do what we can to make life bearable for those who follow. As a friend once said: “In life, it is not the destination that counts, but the trip.” That does not mean ignoring history, for we are molded by the past, and mementos in the form of photographs, books, pictures and objects remind us of earlier years. They allow us to see life as a continuum, that we are part of a never-ending production line. Just as we were fashioned by those who came before us, we help shape those who come later. Life is not static; it is in constant flux. Man is a creative animal, so as standards of living change so do the standards by which we live; though the moral code embedded in the Ten Commandments is eternal. While we become more judgmental as we get older, that reflects our recognition that evil exists and is in competition with good; age helps us distinguish between the two

 

 

For me, old age has provided the opportunity to relax, to spend time with family and friends, to read and to write of issues that confront our times. I realize, as one does when old age creeps up, how short is our time, and that we owe it to ourselves to make the most of the time we have. I am thankful to be alive at this moment and to be able to record my opinions and reactions. I have been blessed in the family in which I was born and raised, in my wife, my children, my grandchildren and in my friends. 

 

As for age, I say bring it on!

"Winter"

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Essays from Essex

“Winter”

November 13, 2021

 

“The summer days are over and the fields are waving gold,

The days are getting’ shorter and the nights are turning cold;

Autumn is a lonesome time when the year begins to wane,

But I’m eagerly awaiting those winter nights again.”

                                                                                            “Long Winter Nights,” 1989

                                                                                                                     Tommy Makem (1932-2007)

                                                                                                                      Irish Folk Musician

 

Winter in Connecticut will arrive at 10:59 am on December 21, probably after we see our first snowflakes. Those first flurries are harbingers of winter. In “A Winter Eden,” Robert Frost wrote about snowfall: “It lifts existence on a plane of snow/One level higher than the earth below/One level nearer heaven overhead…” Our first snow usually arrives in November, a transition month that marks the change from Autumn’s glorious foliage to winter’s leafless (but not lifeless) branches. As the first snow falls, children catch flakes in mittened hands, each appearing to be unique, an imagery spoiled by scientists who have determined there are only thirty-five unique crystals or flakes[1].

 

When I was young, before the onset of winter, seasonal chores had to be performed: Snow tires were placed on the car’s rear wheels, with chains easily accessible. Its radiator was topped off with antifreeze. The woodshed was filled with logs and kindling. Chimneys were swept and stove pipes and fireplaces cleaned. The coal-burning furnace was readied, and the bin filled. Insulating autumn leaves were banked against the house’s foundation. Flashlight batteries and candles were replaced. Winter clothes were taken out of moth balled-filled closets. Skis were waxed and steel edges sharpened.

 

Preparation is easier today. With all-weather tires there is no need for snow tires. A 50/50 water/coolant in radiators means less need to add antifreeze. Gas and electric fireplaces are replacing wood-burning ones. In 1940, 75% of homes in the U.S. were heated with wood or coal; today, the number is less than two percent. Mothballs have given way to cedar-lined closets. Today, we exchange a polo shirt for a sweater, a light jacket for a parka, a baseball cap with a wool hat. While wood is still the core of most skis, the use of carbon fiber or aluminum alloys and plastic bottoms have obviated the need for steel edges and waxes.

 

Perhaps it is because I was born on a January afternoon in New Haven, but winters have always been special. It may be because one of my earliest memories was Christmas 1944, with my father about to sail to Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division. We were in Madison, Connecticut, with our mother and her parents. Among my gifts that year was a pair of skis, suitable for the eldest son (about to turn four) of a Ski Trooper.  Or my love of winter could be because skiing became my favorite sport. But it may be because I met my wife on a cold, sunny day on New Hampshire’s Temple Mountain, on December 31^st, 1961; and ten weeks later, still in winter, she agreed to become my wife.

 

No longer skiing, I enjoy a walk through the woods, if the snow is not too deep. Snow hushes footfalls and many animals sleep through the winter. Most birds are in winter quarters. Leafless trees are soundless in a gentle breeze. The silence is audible. Yet life is all around. Roots provide nutrition to trees above. A hawk alights on a branch in Mud River Swamp. Tracks show that a rabbit preceded me down the path.     

 

I love winter, but a long season of short, cold days make one yearn for warmer ones. Winter prepares us for spring’s birth. “Winter will pass,” said Charlotte speaking to Wilbur in E.B. White’s eponymous story, “the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur – this lovely world, these precious days…” Spring days will come for all of us. Days will lengthen as we pass through January and February. By March we will be looking forward to spring’s return – listening to songbirds and peepers as they herald a new season, observing turtles as shells harden in the sun, smelling blossoms as they wave to us, and eyeing a shy garter snake as it makes its way through the grass.

 

Winter clothes will be packed; sneakers will replace boots, as we walk along trails once covered with snow.