"The Election: Issues, Not Personalities"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“The Election: Issues, Not Personalities”

September 12, 2016

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic,

nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him he is right.”

                                                                                           Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

                                                                                           “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings & Speeches” 1969  

Cheered on by the media, abusive and personal invective have dominated the campaign. But beneath the mud-slinging, the election is really about issues that are critical – policies that will shape the country over the next one or two decades. To the extent these topics get ignored, we the people are the losers.

There are dozens of issues facing the electorate: public school education; the economy; the Supreme Court; immigration; race relations; inequality; political correctness; national security; the war against Islamic terror and extremism; cyber-attacks; disintegrating democracies in Latin America; and relations with Russia, China, Iran, Israel and Europe.  This essay will focus on the first two problems: public school education and the economy.

This is not to trivialize other issues. A Democrat victory in November will assure that the Supreme Court becomes more activist – with relativism subsuming universal moral truths, and the bending of the Constitution to fit an interpretation that suits current mores. Immigration has been elemental to our success as a nation; but we need a policy that promotes legal immigration and that relies on secure borders.  While it is unrealistic to deport eleven million illegals, we cannot allow criminal aliens to remain, nor should we permit sanctuary cities to take the law into their own hands. Does anyone believe that United Health and Aetna dropping out of ObamaCare markets will be positive for the pricing of health insurance? Or that a single payer will allow for better and less expensive healthcare? Sadly, our first African-American President has presided over worsening race relations. National security remains a priority. The next President needs to be forthright with the American people about Islamic terrorism and how long the war against it might last. She or he needs resolve and leadership. We cannot back away from our responsibilities and commitments. The world is fortunate that the strongest nation on the planet is one with democratic principles and free market capitalism.

However, education and economics are fundamental to success in all endeavors. A democratic republic requires an educated electorate. Similarly, we cannot do all we want, or be all we would like, without a robust economy based on free market principles. When children graduate from high school without basic groundings in English, math, history, science and geography, we assign them to lives of deprivation. When our economy is seen principally as a source of revenue to government, and when regulation is biased toward the large and the favored, we find ourselves on the path to diminished economic returns.

The most highly regarded indicator of high school competence is the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years tests half a million 15-year-olds in math, science and reading, in 70 countries and educational jurisdictions including the other 34 OECD nations. Results for the 2015 tests will be released in December, but the ones for 2012 showed American students lagging in achievement. They ranked 17^th in reading, 20^th in science and 27^th in math – essentially unchanged from tests taken twelve years earlier. The problem is not our children – the success of Basis charter schools in Arizona and Success Academy charter schools in New York show the capability of minority and impoverished students. The problem, in one word, is unions. Union leaders are more interested in expanding membership than in producing qualified graduates. Non-teaching administrative jobs have proliferated. In most cities and towns, public schools are monopolies. Unions don’t want school competition, especially from those that hire non-union employees, which is why they fight charter schools and voucher programs with such intensity.

The problem of substandard public school education is biggest in inner cities, and especially for poor and minority children. The wealthy have choices. They can opt for private schools, or they can move. Without people like Olga Block (co-founder of Basis charter schools) and Eva Moskowitz (founder of Success Academy charter schools), the poor have no options. Yet charter schools are in constant battle with union leaders. Fifty million children are educated in roughly 100,000 public schools in the U.S., and about 7,000 charter schools. (Another 5 million attend private schools.) It is little wonder that minority parents scramble to get their children admitted to these alternate venues. Often they must resort to a lottery system and live with the angst that brings. While Democrats and progressives claim to represent the people most negatively affected by this situation, they don’t because of large dollar donations teachers’ unions make to their political campaigns. In 2014, the NEA (National Education Association) and the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) gave $50 million to political campaigns, with over 99% going to Democrats. I accept that unions have improved labor conditions for millions of workers over decades, but I also believe that the power they have in our public schools works to the detriment of students. They have essentially shut off competition – the single most important factor in driving down costs and improving results.

The anemic economic recovery of the last seven years – since recession ended in June 2009 – is not the natural consequence of the credit collapse that preceded it. It is because the Obama Administration relied on a stimulus plan that, in primarily supporting existing public sector unions, did not stimulate. They ignored the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. They depended on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates artificially low, which served to mask the increased federal deficit. They raised taxes, diverting money from the private sector, and implemented a series of regressive regulations that hampered new business development. According to a February 12, 2015 article in The Washington Post, the number of business start-ups has declined by over 20% since 2008, while the number of businesses that have closed has increased. For the first time, more businesses are now closing than opening. Success in human development and progress is based on failure, on the concept of “creative destruction.” If a hundred and fifty years ago I was making harnesses and you were developing an internal combustion engine we know that you became rich and I poor.  When people in New York found it difficult to get a cab on a rainy evening at rush hour, Uber came up with differentiated pricing. It was what people wanted, even if they had not known that they did. Central planning cannot solve myriad problems people face in a dynamic economy. Only free market capitalism can do so.

Others may disagree with the issues I find most important, but education and the economy are too important to ignore. A democracy cannot function without the former. And our financial well-being is dependent on the latter. The key to both is increased competition, giving hope to aspirant youth and letting markets discover prices. Monopolies, whether the Trusts of Theodore Roosevelt’s day, a single payer in health insurance, or public schools today, inhibit creativity, curb development and keep prices high. If AT&T still had a monopoly, would cell phones be as sophisticated, ubiquitous and inexpensive as they are?

There is much in the character of Donald Trump I don’t like, and he is untested in public office. Can I, or anyone, be certain he will endorse those policies I believe are decisive? No. But the path we are on leads in the wrong direction; so a change seems necessary and the choice seems clear…at least to me.   

"Osprey"

                                                                                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

Note from Old Lyme

“Osprey”

“Within the slightest moment’s breath,

Two mighty wings released,

Two claws full-stretched, two legs reach out

The sinews, strained, unleashed.”

                                                                                                                The Osprey, 2008

Steve Hagget

Nature is filled with wonder: The changing of the seasons; the life-cycles of plants and animals; the symbiotic way in which all life co-exists. I am in awe when considering that from single-celled, microscopic bits have emerged millions of different forms of life. The Osprey, with its fierce yellow eyes, graceful flight and sharp talons, is one of nature’s most beautiful creations.

They are not uncommon, though the pesticide DDT and the then Coast Guard policy of removing Osprey nests from channel markers came close to killing them off in the 1950s-1960s. The banning of DDT in 1972 and a change in Coast Guard policies permitted their survival. The recent return of Menhaden have allowed them to thrive, at least in our part of Connecticut – the tidal marshes that compose the estuary where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound. From my dock I count 22 nests, most are located on Great Island, a marsh island that separates the Back River from the Connecticut. A nest was recently erected on the marsh in front of our house; another is in a large tree three hundred yards to the north.

The Osprey, like Hawks and Eagles are Raptors – birds of prey. The word raptor derives from the Latin word, rapere, meaning to seize or take by force. In ornithology, birds of prey have four characteristics: excellent vision; strong, curved talons for catching and killing fish; strong legs for holding what they have caught as they return to the nest; and a strong, curved beak for tearing flesh. The Osprey is unique among raptors in that its two outer toes are reversible. It is sometimes known as a “Sea Hawk,” as it is the only raptor that dines exclusively on fish.

Ospreys can reach two feet in length, with a six-foot wing span and weigh three to four pounds. They soar high above the water. When a fish is spotted they dive at high speed, hitting the water feet first, often fully submerging to bring up their catch. Their barbed pads allow them to hold their victim, which they then carry back aerodynamically, the head leading. The female is heavier than the male, with stockier legs. She guards the nest; her mass providing coverage for unhatched eggs and newly-hatched young. The smaller male is better suited to be the hunter, diving for a fish, eluding Sea Gulls and carrying his catch back to the nest.

Nests are built high to avoid predators like raccoons. In our area, they are usually built on man-made platforms. The bed typically consists of sticks, sod and grasses. Ospreys tend to mate for life and have one brood a year. Eggs, of which there are generally two to four, are hatched in sequence, usually three to five days apart. In times of food shortages, the weakest will be sacrificed for the strongest, usually the first born. Chicks fledge in eight weeks – around the beginning of August, but it takes about three years to reach maturity. Life expectancy is anywhere from ten to twenty years.

Migratory habits are, as they are with all birds, fascinating. Alan Poole, author of the 1989 book, Ospreys, wrote of their migration from Martha’s Vineyard. He strapped a 0.75 ounce, solar-powered satellite transmitter to the back of a few. Cuba and Hispaniola (the island containing Haiti and Dominican Republic) were the preferred destination of most, though some stopped in the Florida Everglades and others flew on as far as South America. One female flew the 2700 miles from the Vineyard to the rain-forest rivers in French Guiana in 13 days. The trip included layovers in Maryland, North Carolina and the Bahamas.

The name Osprey first appeared around 1460, according to researchers at Cornell, presumably derived from the Medieval Latin phrase for birds of prey – avis prede. The scientific name for the bird is Pandion haliaetus, and is of the order Accipitriformes, which includes most of the diurnal birds of prey. Pandion comes from the mythical Greek king of Athens. While man can be traced back about 1.8 million years, Accipitriformes date back 44 million years.

With a rap sheet like that, one would expect grace, majesty and beauty. And one would not be disappointed. There is nobility in the way they patiently wait, either perched on a pole, or in the way they soar effortlessly through the skies. Observers note that on average it takes about twelve minutes for an Osprey to catch a fish – a shorter time than it takes most fishermen.

Paul Spitzer, a conservation biologist who grew up in Old Lyme, was a neighbor and friend of Roger Tory Peterson who made his home here for almost fifty years. After graduating from Wesleyan, he received his PhD from Cornell the year of the first Earth Day in 1970. Conservation became both his avocation and vocation. For forty-five years he has observed and studied Ospreys. While he spends most of the year on the Eastern Shore, he often returns to Old Lyme in summers.

It is Paul Spitzer to whom I owe thanks for the nest erected in the marsh in front of our house – a nest that was occupied within less than a day of its being erected. As he once said, “…I think of us on a voyage of understanding.” On the first of June he wrote us of the nests he had been watching, and of the Osprey and their love affair with the Connecticut River estuary: “I find spiritual freedom out here in the tideland. I have entered a separate world: Sky so blue and crisscrossed with Osprey. A succession of males arrive with freshly caught Menhaden hanging below in their talons: Held parallel to the Osprey’s flight, thus streamlined. The lowering evening sun illuminates yellow forked Menhaden tails, and blood streaming bright from talon wounds. Arriving males hover, scream and display – which reports the direction and species of fresh prey to others.” His words evoke the beauty and the purpose of this estuary.

It is that completeness – the interdependency of nature, with its necessary cruelties, the success of evolution, man’s role in correcting past faults, so now playing a positive role – that can be observed by those of us lucky to be living in this place. Dr. Spitzer told me that man-made nests were put up not only so that we could be witness to this wonder of nature, but also so that the Osprey will know man as a non-threatening co-inhabitant.

"Where Have All the Frogs Gone?"

                                                                                                                 May 27, 2015

                    Sydney M. Williams

Notes from Old Lyme

“Where Have All the Frogs Gone?”

“Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing.”

                                                                                                                           Pete Seeger

                                                                                                                          “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” 1955

Every spring morning, once the swimming pool has been opened, I clean the filters. Inevitably, there are one or two frogs who wandered into the pool during the night. This is common after a night’s rain lured them on a nocturnal stroll looking for snackable insects. The temptation of cold clear water causes them to hop in. Unfortunately, finding no easy way out, they lose strength and get pulled by the currents into the filters. By the time I get there, most have drowned.

This year there have been no frogs. Not being a herpetologist, or even much of a naturalist, I could think of no reason other than the cold winter, with its heavy blanket of snow, or some fungi that had become rampant. Ignorant of an explanation, I read and contacted some experts. Frogs are amphibious, meaning they can live on both land and water. The cold winter should not have affected them, as frogs are ectothermic, meaning they rely on the environment to regulate their body temperatures. They also survive long periods without eating. In the winter, frogs find a cozy place known as a hibernaculum that protects them from extreme temperature changes, as well as from predators. It is only when their resting spot warms above freezing that the frog body thaws. He awakens, ready to eat and to mate.

The males emerge harrumphing, uttering mating calls, a sound with which those of us who live in the country are familiar. For the females that respond, their burden – after a few moments of delight – has just begun. She typically lays around 10,000 eggs, making my mother who raised nine children look like a piker. She lays such a large number because the odds on survival in this Darwinian world are small. (I wonder if my mother had similar thoughts?) Within a few weeks, the eggs that survive become tadpoles. In two to three months, tadpoles become small frogs. Life expectancy varies by species, but generally lasts between six to eight years.

Writing about frogs got me reflecting on the extraordinariness of nature and the interdependency of all species. Frogs, for example, are pretty far down the food chain. Like most people, I marvel and seek to understand what I understand least. Ospreys, one of nature’s most beautiful birds, have returned in abundance to the marshlands at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Dr. Paul Spitzer, a naturalist who grew up in this area, explained that their return is due to the Menhaden, which has resurged. The Menhaden is a foraging fish often used as fertilizer or crab and lobster bait by humans, but found especially tasty by Ospreys. In this “knee-bone connected to the leg bone” world of nature, the Menhaden’s return is due to Plankton, which grows in abundance in our creeks, and to the fear of Bluefish, Striped Bass and other predators that inhabit the Sound. The Osprey’s real name, for even those who are not interested, is Pandion Haliaetus, which derives from Pandion, a mythical king of Athens and haliaetus, which means a sea eagle. To watch them soar and then dive, talons poised for a fish having no idea that his life is about to end, is a beautiful sight to see – except, of course, for the fish. No matter, the Osprey is worthy of such a distinguished name.

While Osprey feast on fish, their feathered friends, seagulls and hawks have been known to toss down a frog or two. So frogs, when not drowning in my pool, play a critical link in the food chain among shore birds in our marshes. Typically, frogs eat insects, ridding us of natural pests. Having no teeth, they swallow whole whatever they have engorged. In turn, they are also eaten by fox (one of whom lives under our hedge) and swallowed whole by various snakes that slither about.

Living at the mouth of the Connecticut River is an extraordinary blessing. The marsh and the creeks that abut it, with the River and Sound a short swim or kayak ride away, are abundant with life. The estuary is one of the Western Hemisphere’s “40 Last Great Places;” so proclaimed the Nature Conservancy.

But to return to my concern about frogs: There are, from what I have learned, eleven species living in Connecticut. Among those that have found their way into my pool and its filters have been Wood Frogs, Pickerels and Bull Frogs, but most commonly Green Frogs, or at least that is what I believe from looking at pictures in the “Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians” by Roger Conant.

Like the flowers that Pete Seeger wrote and sang about, frogs die, as do all living things. Not only the individual, but also, over varying periods of time, the species. “The history of life,” wrote Evolutionary Ecologist James P. Collins in 2004, “is a story of extinction: ninety-nine percent of the species that ever existed are now extinct.” Regardless of what actions we may take, the same fate ultimately will be mankinds. We do what we can to survive – we try to limit our impact – but eventually nature wins. Its forces exceed anything man has devised.

In the meantime, however, I was happy to hear from Gregory Watkins-Colwell, collections manager for Herpetology and Ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. In response to my question about no frogs appearing in my pool, he told me that the cold winter had delayed their regeneration and mating. He added that a dry spring meant fewer nocturnal wanderings. He assured me they would show up. Wait, he said, for a morning after a good night of soaking rain. It hasn’t rained, but I remain vigilant and hopeful. 

"Remembering 1965"

                    Sydney M. Williams

                    April 20, 2015

                A Note from Old Lyme

“Remembering 1965”

“Without memory, there is no culture.

Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”

                                                                                                                                Elie Wiesel (1928 - )

Several years ago, while selecting a telephone number for our home in Old Lyme, my wife was unable to obtain 1964, the year we were married. She was also not able to get 1966, 1968 or 1971, the years our children were born. So she settled on 1965 – the first full year of our marriage…and our last without children.

Our first wedding anniversary (April 11, 1965) was spent in Vienna. We had dinner that evening at Griechenbeisl, Vienna’s oldest restaurant, dating back to the 15^th Century. About ten days ago, we had another Viennese weekend of sorts. Saturday we saw the movie, “The Woman in Gold,” a story of a woman living in Pasadena who, defying all odds, sues and wins back a portrait of her aunt (a painting considered the Mona Lisa of Austria). It had been stolen by the Nazis in 1939. The next day we saw Mona Golabek in her one-woman show, “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” in Hartford. Both the movie and the show are based on actual events; both worth seeing. The latter tells the story of Mona’s mother, Lisa Jura, a musical prodigy, who, at age fourteen in December 1938, was sent from Vienna to London. Her mother, whom she would never again see, said to her, as she put her on the train: “hold on to your music.” She traveled on the Kindertransport, by which 10,000 Jewish children were saved over a nine month period from almost certain death in Nazi prison camps. Lisa did, however, hang onto her music…and so has her daughter.

1965 began with us living in a small apartment in Durham, New Hampshire, with a bedroom so tiny that in order to get to the bathroom, one had to crawl across the bed. The year ended with us moving into a five-room cape in Glastonbury, Connecticut. My new job paid $6,500, about the median for a household that year. The house cost $19,000, about $5,400 above the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Accounting for some of the inequality we read about, median household income has increased eight fold to $54,000, while home prices have risen eleven fold to $220,000. Adding fuel to the argument, stock prices, as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Averages, are up twenty times, while GDP is higher by twenty-three times.

It was a year of protests that, while violent, had not reached the deadliness of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Civil Rights and Vietnam were the primary causes. While President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the previous July that declared segregation illegal, Jim Crow laws remained in effect throughout much of the south. Voting rights were the reason for Martin Luther King’s January speech at Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, a speech given in defiance of an anti-meeting injunction. Two months later, 600 protesters marched east over the Edward Pettus Bridge. Their goal: a peaceful protest at Alabama’s capital in Montgomery. However, on the far side of the bridge, the marchers were attacked by state and local police, with nightsticks and tear gas. That same year race riots broke out in other cities, notably in Watts.

On the other side of the globe, the United States was becoming embroiled in what would become a twelve-year war in the jungles of Vietnam. The U.S. had been involved in Vietnam in a minor way since the defeat of the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu by Ho Chi Minh. But it was the White House-approved assassination of Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 that caused the dye to be cast. It was not until February 1965, though, that America’s participation in the war intensified, when Lyndon Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder. This was an aerial attack on Hanoi and Haiphong, which began in June and had the objectives of destroying the North’s industrial and transportation base, halting the flow of men and material into the south, and raising the morale of the people in Saigon. It failed on all accounts. In November, the Battle of La Drang Valley in South Vietnam’s central highlands was the first major conflict involving U.S. troops, a battle that saw American soldiers facing an enemy as committed and as idealistic as were they. It is a story movingly told by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway in “We Were Soldiers Once…And Young.” The outcome was unclear, but by the end of the year, there were 125,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. Anti-war protests intensified.

Those of us who lived through it will never forget the Northeast blackout, which occurred on November 9 and affected 30 million people. Oil was discovered in the U.K. portion of the North Sea. Rhodesia declared independence from Great Britain and became Zimbabwe. Malcolm X was shot and killed in New York City. In an act whose ramifications are being felt today, the Higher Education Act of 1965, which provided low-interest loans for students, was enacted into law. Warren Buffett gained control of Berkshire-Hathaway at $18.00 a share. (Today’s price of $212,982 represents a compounded annual return of 20.6%!) The Beatle’s, who had first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show the year before, were, with the Rolling Stones, the year’s most popular musicians. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead played their inaugural concert in San Francisco. The “Sound of Music” and “Goldfinger” were two of the top films. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series, beating the Minnesota Twins in seven games. “Lucky Debonair” won the Kentucky Derby. And, hard to believe, Charles de Gaulle was then President of France.

As for my wife and me – I finished college in February. After lining up a job with Eastman Kodak, my wife and I, with $2,000, took off for eleven weeks in Europe. We had no plans other than a rented VW bug, and hotel rooms in Paris for the night we arrived and the evening before we were to return home. With Arthur Frommer’s book, “Europe on $5 a Day” and sleeping bags, we drove the VW throughout Europe. It was a delightful, belated honeymoon that neither of us will ever forget. Back home, following a four-week-long training session with Kodak’s Recordak Division I was assigned to the World’s Fair for two months. We lived at my in-law’s apartment in New York, until I was transferred to an office in Hartford.  There, we rented a room in an old-fashioned boarding house for about a month, until we moved into our cape. I was still in the U.S. Army reserves, but with traveling and moving, they didn’t catch up with me until the next year.

Thinking of those days half a century ago brings to mind Tennessee Williams’ observation: “Life is all memory, except for the present moment that goes by so quickly you hardly catch it going.” It is a message that resonates: when we allow each day to slip by unappreciated, we have no one to blame, but ourselves.

"Another Birthday!"

Sydney M. Williams
January 29, 2015

                                                                A Note from Old Lyme

“Another Birthday!”

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

                                                                                                                                Satchel Paige (1906-1982)

“It takes a long time to become young.”

                                                                                                                                Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

In two days I turn 74. ‘My God,’ some will say. ‘I had no idea he was such a child. He seemed so old.’ Others will say, ‘The old goat really is old. He seemed so immature.’

On commencing one’s 75^th year, one can be excused for thinking of mortality, but healthily not morbidly. We know that everything alive will die; and we can be excused for feeling that this is not our time.  There is a wisp of truth to the old saying, ‘One is as old as one feels.’ Lewis Carroll had “old Father William” stand on his head and then, at the end of the poem, threaten the youth: “Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs.” In contrast, T.S. Eliot advised readers: “…be careful of Old Deuteronomy.” There is wisdom in Satchel Paige’s observation, quoted above: Does knowing our age influence who we are? Is my birth certificate accurate? I assume it is, but I have no memory of being born. Perhaps I will not be turning 74? Do I care? No. It’s as good a day as any.

Picasso had it right too: It does take a long time to become young. As children, we said whatever was on our minds. The same is true when we are older. Age provides freedoms, especially of expression; though perhaps less of the physical variety. We are less mindful (but hopefully still respectful) of what others think; so more apt to speak as we please. A few weeks ago in the New York Times, Anne Karpf, a British journalist and sociologist, wrote “…our sense of what’s important grows with age. We experience life more intensely than before, whatever our physical limitations, because we know it won’t last forever” – a sobering, but compelling thought. 

A mid-seventy’s birthday is an opportunity to consider how different various cultures treat the aged. The price of medicine translates into a high – some, like Dr Ezekiel Emanuel who feels that 75 is a good age to die, might say exorbitant – cost of keeping the elderly alive. Jared Diamond, UCLA professor and author of Guns, Germs and Steel and who writes on the subject of aging, gave a lecture a few years ago: “Honor or Abandon: Why Does Treatment of the Elderly Vary so Widely Among Human Societies?” Japan celebrates “Respect for the Aged Day.” Other societies do not. Some of what he noted may have been true, but was a little creepy. Natural selection, he said, meant that there had been times and circumstances, starvation, for example, and particularly among nomadic tribes, when it was deemed right for children to abandon or kill their parents – not an outcome I particularly desire! But Professor Diamond’s principal point was that Eastern cultures place greater value on family and the elderly than do Western ones, with the latter’s tendency to celebrate youth and self-reliance. Improved medical care and better living standards means that we are all living longer. As societies we are aging, which will have consequences. Affordability will be one of them.

Not surprisingly, as it would give me but a year or so to live, I disagree with Dr. Emanuel. I suspect that if he enters his 75^th year in good health, he might revise his opinions and perhaps decide that 80 or 85 might be a better age to call it quits. While I disagree with the concept of Dr. Emanuel’s targeting a specific age, I do not want to live as a vegetable, or be so impaired I cannot perform the simplest tasks. I don’t want to be carried by one of my sons, as Aeneas did his father, Anchises. But I would rather any decision be made by my family, not the state.

Mental gymnastics are as important as their physical kin, in holding back aging, but the process cannot be stopped. As an old southern expression has it: “Ain’t time a wrecker!” It is, and despite the allegation by Ponce de León, there are no ‘Fountains of Youth;’ there are only face lifts, Botox and the like, all of which are obvious to even the casual observer. The march of time is inexorable. Stopping the aging process is as futile as turning back the tide, as Canute discovered. So, we are best off to get on with it and enjoy ourselves.

Those among us fortunate to have grandchildren derive an invaluable, secondary benefit as we age. When we were new parents, our children looked upon us as the font of all knowledge. Soon enough, realism replaced credulity, as our fallibilities surfaced and became too obvious to ignore.  With grandchildren, we get a second shot. These are sensations normally available only to those the media worships – Democrat Presidents, movie stars, athletes, rock stars, etc. However, like belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, we know that this adulation will, too, pass. In the meantime, such adoration provides for wonderful moments of confidence building. While the limits to our knowledge will soon be exploited by our fast-learning grandchildren, there is, if I may be so bold, something more lasting in the wisdom we have accumulated and can offer. Professor Jared concluded his lecture: “So, if you want to get advice on complicated problems, ask someone who is 70; don’t ask someone who is twenty-five.”

Sitting at my computer, I note that I am sixteen years older than was my father when he died and only five years younger than my mother when she slipped her harness. But I emerge from that self-induced funk and look out at the snow accumulating in the fields, sense the cold of the ground underneath, but derive comfort from the knowledge that beneath that frozen soil lives the promise of spring and the resurrection of life.

The most important thing to realize, as birthdays appear with what seems increasing frequency, is how lucky we are to be here in the first place. When one considers the happenstance of our parents and their parents meeting (going back thousands of generations) and the billions of spent sperms and unfertilized eggs that are wasted, the odds against being born are billions and billions to one. So, life must be rejoiced and part of life is getting older. We should not rue that fact. I do not feel as did T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock; though I admit to losing height:

“I grow old…I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

We should celebrate life, no matter our age. We are indeed lucky to be here and I am even more fortunate to have a family I love, to be healthy and to be having another birthday. I hope for many more.

"One Man's Education"

                  Sydney M Williams

                  December 29, 2014

A Note from Old Lyme

“One Man’s Education”

“You are always a student, never a master.

You have to keep moving forward.”

                                                                                                                Conrad Hall (1926-2003)

                                                                                                                Cinematographer

The end of the year is a good time to reflect on subjects we deem of particular importance. Education, along with stability at home, is perhaps the most critical requirement for future success. I want to offer my own experience and to provide some additional thoughts. In public schools, administrators too often put students and parents second to demands of unions. They are, for example, reluctant to approve options available to the well-off. Vouchers and charter schools are inimical to their interests. In colleges and universities, political correctness has driven out the concept of liberalness – the importance to confront differing opinions. Walter Lippman once wrote: “When genuine debate is lacking, freedom of speech does not work as it is meant to work.” With ten grandchildren in school, education, especially its promises, is close to my heart.

Too often, our high schools are considered successful if 80% of their students graduate on time and matriculate. The fact that many seniors may be illiterate and/or innumerate seems of little concern. Any number of colleges and universities – for profit as well as not-for-profit – have sprung up to accommodate the growing supply of students, most of whom must borrow the cost of tuition, and many of whom are unqualified. They have been told that a college degree – not education – is critical to success.

What has been lost in this mechanical process of sloppy manufacturing has been learning how to think. Too often, high school students graduate in need of remedial training. College seniors, in turn, graduate unprepared for the real world. I recognize that condemnation is broad; it ignores hundreds of good schools – public and private – and tens of thousands of even better teachers. But, as a generalization it stands; for learning should be pleasurable, solid and provocative.

I am sensitive to this issue because of my own experience. While I grew up in an educated household – my father, like his father and both his grandfathers, were alumni of Harvard – I never took advantage of the opportunities offered …or I did not until I was twenty-one, after I met the woman who became my wife. I blame only myself. I did have a few teachers in school and in college who tried to reach an unreachable boy. I remember those few fondly, and some of what they taught did stick, in spite of my best efforts to remain impervious to their attempts.

As a youngster, I liked to read. I loved Greek and Roman mythology, and read the Scribner classics. I read and enjoyed books of less importance, like the Hardy Boy series. By the age of fourteen, I had read Carl Sandburg’s two volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, and memorized the Gettysburg Address. About the same age, I became the youngest member of the high school debating team. But around that time I became rebellious; so when I went off to boarding school – Williston Academy in East Hampton, MA – I was in no mood to study, or behave as I should.

After barely graduating, I scraped my way into the University of New Hampshire. I recall a professor of algebra handing back an exam, telling me it was the lowest mark he had ever given, but also noting that I had scored one of the highest marks ever recorded on the university’s math entrance exam. After two years of dissipated living, I left. I worked, met Caroline, joined the army and returned to college. With less than a year to go in college, Caroline and I married.

Looking back at those pre-Caroline years, I regret not having had a positive interaction with teachers and professors. But my mishaps provided lessons. First, my wife and I worked to ensure our children would have positive school experiences, which they did. Second, I established a personal reading curriculum. Generally, I read about 35 books a year, divided roughly equally between fiction and nonfiction. For the past fifteen years, I have maintained a record of the books I have read. I collect and read a fair amount of P.G. Wodehouse and it is easy to forget titles read. Additionally, the list allows me to more easily recall what I have read and which books I enjoyed most. In terms of fiction, besides Wodehouse and my daughter-in-law Beatriz’s novels, I prefer mysteries and classics, like Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Character studies in great literature provide clues to human behavioral responses. Biographies and history help us understand the manifestations of that behavior.

Writing ‘Thoughts of the Day’ requires staying abreast of current events. Most days I read six papers, as well as numerous publications and essays sent me. While I am not a fan of the editorial page of the New York Times, it is like perusing enemy dispatches as a friend put it. We should know what the other side thinks. A reason we are polarized is because most people tend to read and watch only that which supports their beliefs. And college graduates tend to mimic what they have been taught in our “liberal” universities, institutions where open forums have become rare. 

A baby is born with an empty brain, but with an insatiable appetite for learning. Watching my grandchildren grow from infancy to childhood to early teens, I have been amazed at how fast they learn and how rapacious is their desire. The role of a teacher is to keep inquisitiveness alive. The role of the school is to support teachers. There are few jobs more critical than that of the one charged with encouraging and channeling curiosity, in a bid to satisfy the quest for knowledge. As children get older, other interests intercede and distractions appear. Students must understand the consequences of decisions. Einstein said, “Education is…the training of the mind to think.”

Learning is fun and exciting. That flame should never be doused. It is incumbent on all of us to continue our own education; to inspire our youth; to inculcate the desire to learn; to question; to think; to seek answers, even where none may be found. In spite of my criticism of our educational system and despite how poorly our students do in international competition, no other country comes close to ours in terms of creativity and innovation. Something is working.

It is telling that one of the more successful TV series is called “How It’s Made.” Over the past dozen years this Canadian company has documented the process behind 1,200 products, from pantyhose to race-car engines. Young people want to learn. School administrators could learn something from watching this program. Education should encourage aspirations and allow us to think independently. As we roll into 2015, our New Year’s resolutions should include: don’t stop learning and don’t stop thinking!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!