"Home"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Home”

October 19, 2024

 

“Maybe the best part of going away for a vacation – coming home again.”

                                                                                                     Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007),

                                                                                                     Meet the Austins, 1960

 

A couple of weeks ago Caroline and I returned from a long weekend visit with a grandson, whom we love and are proud; but what really brought happiness was returning to our apartment on Monday. Charles Dickens is alleged to have said: “Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”

 

I have always liked being home, whether it was where I grew up, school or college, but especially the homes Caroline and I have made – from our first apartment to our six houses in four Connecticut towns, to our new home, an apartment at Essex Meadows. As we age, we are embraced by those we knew, know, loved and love, as well as by the places we have been and the people and events we have seen and experienced, all of which can be recalled through photos and mementos. Even on the bleakest of days, I gorge on memories of bygone days by observing and picking up treasures: photo albums, books, sculptures created by my parents, paintings and drawings, a few by Caroline, my parents, siblings, children and grandchildren.

 

On my desk are photos of Caroline, our children and grandchildren. There are photos of my parents and siblings, as well as ones of my grandparents. There are postcards from a brother, now deceased, who suffered from Prader-Willi Syndrome, a photo of the group with whom I skied in Vail every winter for twenty years, and a framed photo of an evening with Wodehousian Drones of New York. On the walls are drawings of my parents, paintings of our house in Old Lyme, portraits of Caroline and my mother, and a framed letter from P.G. Wodehouse to my uncle when a student at Andover. In Emma, Jane Austen wrote: “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

 

Home is awakening in a familiar bed. It is following a morning ritual – breakfast with the day’s newspapers. It is talking with Caroline about the day’s schedule, a few hours at the computer, a walk and cup of tea in the afternoon. A perfect day in eating dinner with family or friends, or while watching an old movie. In his book The Poet at the Breakfast Table, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. includes this poem “Homesick in Heaven.”

 

“For there we loved, and where we loved is home,

Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,

Though o’er us shine the jasper lighted dome: –

The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!

 

In a 1938 posthumously published collection, The Coloured Lands, G.K. Chesterton wrote: “It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic to his own imagination as he can.” To which I reply, Amen!

"Common Sense"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Common Sense”

September 19, 2022

 

“Do not be bullied out of your common sense

by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.”

                                                                                                                     Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)

                                                                                                                     Over the Teacups, 1891

 

Webster’s defines common sense as “sound and prudent judgement, based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.” Lucretia Peabody Hale’s The Peterkin Papers provides fictions best (and most amusing) examples of common sense – with the “Lady from Philadelphia” offering obvious solutions to what seem insurmountable obstacles to the Peterkin family.

 

…………………………………………………………….

 

A year ago, I wrote an essay regretting the loss of common sense in the political realm: “Common Sense – Where has it Gone?” (September 29, 2021). It was a lament, without answer. 

 

Now, three disparate events remind me that common sense remains AWOL: First, I have been re-reading a 1999 collection of essays by Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates. The book speaks to the loss of common sense in political, social, and cultural realms. Second, Queen Elizabeth’s death was a reminder of the importance of personal traits like common sense, stability, tradition, and personal virtue, which Western culture has replaced with silliness, variability, ignorance, and social virtues. And third, a eulogy for Common Sense was recently sent me. I had seen it before, but it is worth re-reading.

 

Sowell’s book, published in 1999, was prophetic, as conditions he then wrote about remain with us – racism, declines in education standards, hyperbole over man-caused climate change, the advocacy for socialism and the criticism of capitalism in the West, and political extremism. Sowell is a realist who relies on facts and who cares little for sentiment. His observations reflect his intolerance for the idiocy of most politicians. In an essay titled “From Marxism to the Market,” he wrote: “The rhetoric of socialism may be inspiring, but the actual record is dismal.” In another, “The Multiculturalism Cult,” he wrote of how real people around the world do not “celebrate diversity;” they “pick and choose which of their own cultural features they want to keep and which they want to dump…” In a third, “Life is Culturally Biased,” he noted: “As limited human beings, we must make our choices among the alternatives actually available.” A fourth essay, “Anti-Elitism in Education:” “…you cannot let everyone go to Stuyvesant (where Sowell went in the late 1940s) without its ceasing to be the kind of school that makes them want to go there.” That the problems he wrote of so long ago have only worsened is a sad commentary on our social, cultural, and political life.

 

Much has been written of the remarkable saga of Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year reign. In death, if not always in life, she was admired from those across the political spectrum. I have read several obituaries, including those in England’s Spectator and The London Telegraph. The best, in my opinion, was Andrew Roberts’ essay in the September 10-11 edition of The Wall Street Journal. He wrote: “Would to God that more of our leaders in public life had a fraction of her grace, her gravitas and, above all, her common sense.” In her 1957 Christmas message, as Britain was transitioning from Empire to Commonwealth, Elizabeth warned against “carelessly” throwing away “ageless ideals.” While I am not a monarchist, I applaud the Queen’s role in helping unwind the Empire, and I appreciate the unity she helped bring to Britain, something that in the U.S. was once provided by universal respect for the ideals – if not the lives – of the Founders. Today, we have imposed current moral standards on historical individuals and cultures (along with the divisive and historically erroneous 1619 Project), which have destroyed what had been a near-universal faith in the words embedded in the writings of the Founders. No matter our political leanings, we all – immigrant and native born, white and black, men and women – once believed in the universal truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. Sadly, that is no longer true. With the death of the Queen, Brits – no matter their sex, religion, or country of origin – have rediscovered their British commonality. 

 

As for the obituary for common sense (“Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense”), it first appeared in The London Times at least twenty-four years ago. The obituary mentions that “he” was preceded in death “by his parents, Truth and Trust; by his wife, Discretion; by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.” While it makes one smile, its truth makes one cringe.

 

We see the loss of common sense in the hypocrisy of our immigration policy, where elites who favor open borders squeal when migrants land in their backyards. We see it in the exaggerations of our climate scaremongers who play Canute, while ignoring extreme climate changes that have occurred naturally over millions of years. We read of it in the wacky assumption that increased spending will somehow bring down debt and reduce inflation. We see it in the lack of choice in public schools for the poor, especially in inner cities. We see it in the political indoctrination of college students, and in racism that persists against Asians and whites. We see it in a call for diversity and inclusion that excludes conservative speakers and opinions. We see it in the spewing of hatred and in the absence of civility. Common sense is the antithesis of political correctness. Worse, its absence is never mentioned by mainstream media.

 

Common sense interferes with politicians’ desire for control. They are less interested in answers than in keeping alive issues. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization did not ban abortion. It threw the decision back to the states, to allow the people to decide, as is proper in a democracy. Our Founders did not create a country to be run by an oligarchy of nine unelected judges in black robes. Common sense tells us that we, the people, should make such decisions through our elected representatives. The Left explains, commonsensically, that higher taxes on tobacco and booze reduce consumption of both. However, they fail to apply the same logic when it comes to higher taxes on employers and capital investments. Common sense uses reason, not emotion. It employs restraint, not indulgence.

 

Will common sense be resurrected? I hope so, but I worry. The Hoover Institute’s Thomas Sowell does not hold out much hope. He once wrote: “What is so rare as a day in June? Common sense on the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals.” Sad, but true.

"Friendships - Old and New"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

Essay from Essex

“Friendships – Old and New”

December 18, 2021

 

“’Friendship,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘is a very comforting thing to have.’”

                                                                                                                                Winnie the Pooh, 1926

             A.A. Milne (1882-1956)

 

An unexpected benefit of writing essays has been old friends retained and new friends made. With an e-mail list that approaches two thousand, included are friends who go back to boarding school days, a few from college, and from my first job on Wall Street with Merrill Lynch in 1967, to my last at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., from which I retired in 2015. While not everyone agrees with my political opinions, they tolerate my right to express them. Some on the list are friends of friends and even friends of those friends. Many I have never met but hearing from them is pleasurable, as they are provocative and energizing. In a letter to Lidian Jackson Emerson, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and the longitudes.” In my case, I don’t think of latitudes and longitudes; what I do think is that friends make the world smaller and more intimate – a happier and better place.

 

Some of my more personal Essays from Essex are based on nostalgia – that time cleanses memory of past unpleasantness. Quoting studies by Professor Clay Routledge, a psychologist at North Dakota State University, Elizabeth Bernstein wrote in the November 17, 2021 issue of The Wall Street Journal: “Nostalgia increases positive mood, self-esteem and self-confidence…It makes us feel more socially connected and optimistic. It helps us feel that life has more meaning.” Recently, I attended a lunch with a few alumni from Williston Academy, three of whom were 1959 classmates. While our genetic determinants are decided at conception, our character is molded over time, especially in our early years, from families, friends and school. So, it is unsurprising that we prize returning to those days when our identity was being formed. Each of us is unique, but we share certain of life’s experiences, like teachers, coaches, bosses and even drill sergeants. A shared past allows us to recollect, companionably, of former times. 

 

Friendship is a non-obligatory, reciprocated relationship between two people who share common interests. Most of us have friends, orbiting different spheres. For example, I have school friends, work friends, friends with whom I skied, friends my wife and I see in Florida, or on the New Jersey shore where we go in August. My wife and I have friends at Essex Meadows, where we now live. I have friends with whom I enjoy ROMEO (retired old men eating out) lunches, and friends from volunteering at local organizations. Friendships outlast separation. In his collection of essays Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “I was going to say, when I was interrupted…” The interruption to which he referred had occurred twenty-five years earlier. That quote would come to mind during my first evening in Vail with skiing friends, when the conversation would pick up just where it had left off a year earlier. 

 

“To be without friends is a serious form of poverty,” speaks Victor Moore as Aloysius T. McKeever in Roy Del Ruth’s 1947 comedy, It Happened on Fifth Avenue. He is right, and I am fortunate to have all of you as friends, as well as a wife who is my best friend – and has been for almost sixty years.

 

Thank you for your friendship, and I wish you the best for the Holidays and for all of the New Year.